"Heady and dark and dangerous, The Pink Hotel is an intoxicating binge of a book. Liska Jacobs's stunning indictment of a society teetering toward apocalypse is one you won’t easily forget.” —Janelle Brown, author of I'll Be You Newlyweds Keith and Kit Collins can hardly believe their luck when the general manager of the iconic, opulent Pink Hotel invites them to come for a luxurious stay as a bid to hire Keith. Kit loves their small-town life, but Keith has always wanted more, and the glittering, lily-scented lobby makes him feel right at home. Soon after their arrival, wildfires sweep through the surrounding mountains and Los Angeles becomes a pressure cooker, with riots breaking out across the city amid rolling blackouts. The Pink Hotel closes its doors to "outsiders," and Keith and Kit find themselves confined with an anxious, disgruntled staff and a growing roster of eccentric, ultra-wealthy, dangerously idle guests who flock to the hotel for sanctuary, company, and entertainment. The Pink Hotel exposes a tenuous class system within its walls, full of insurmountable expectations and unspoken resentments, which deteriorate as the city burns. In her barbed, provocative new novel, Liska Jacobs explores the corrosive nature of greed and interrogates the notion of true love, while hurtling readers toward certain disaster.

A 17-year-old girl pieces together the mystery of her mother's life and deathin Venice Beach over one summer in this debut novel.

Travel Back to a Time of Innocence and Adventure "Until Kirby Mellen was ten nothing very exciting had ever happened to him or his father or his mother or his little sister Bitsy." All of this changes very suddenly with the death of far-distant Uncle Hiram, who leaves his Florida motel-painted pink-to Kirby's mom. People like the Mellens, from Minnesota, do not paint their buildings pink. And these seven buildings are not just quietly pink-they are outrageously PINK. "It was pinker than Kirby's necktie or Bitsy's hair ribbon. It was pink, pink, PINK." It isn't long after the Mellens arrive at the motel that things go even more off kilter with regulars (and some irregulars) taking up residence in the cottages. There's old Miss Ferry who talks to crabs and other beach creatures, Marvello the magician, the two gangsters Locke and Black, and jolly Mr. Carver, who has a knack for uncovering the secrets left by Uncle Hiram. Carol Ryrie Brink's classic children's tale evokes a time of innocence and adventure in the lives of the Mellen children and their friends. Written long before the introduction of the internet, it speaks of people solving problems through understanding and coming together. With delightful illustrations by Sheila Greenwald, this story will capture the imagination of children of all ages.

Nights in the Pink Motel is the first historical account of the strategic process that sought to reverse the negative consequences of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. It offers details and insights into the Iraqi insurgency and Coalition counterinsurgency available nowhere else. This book is a sustained, comprehensive account of all the conflicting factors that have made Iraq such an intractable international crisis and offers an intriguing narrative of how the American-led Coalition returned sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, while defending Iraq’s fledgling interim government against a rising insurgency and terrorism and helping ensure the success of Iraq’s first national election in January 2005. The author, Robert Earle—recruited by the first U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, to serve as Negroponte’s strategist—documents the Coalition’s uncertainty about the nature of the insurgent/terrorist enemies, whose aim is to defeat democratization in Iraq. Earle’s story explores the impediments frustrating the massive, $18 billion U.S. reconstruction effort and recounts the formulation of a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy issued by Negroponte and Multinational Force-Iraq Commanding General George Casey. The title of the book is derived from the name given to the author's dingy offices a former palace of Saddam Hussein in the Green Zone of Badgad where he wrestled with developing a startegy for peace. Upon drafting the strategy, Earle learns he must be evacuated from Iraq because of massive deep vein thrombosis in his left thigh.This narrative twist takes him from the company of senior diplomats, generals, and Iraqi politicians and places him in the medical pipeline of wounded soldiers. Upon arriving home, Earle thinks his nightmare assignment in Iraq is over, but Negroponte requests that he return to Baghdad to write a long message to the President, explaining that U.S. policy is failing and offering an alternative approach. Casey, meanwhile, also wants Earle to assess the evolution of Iraqi politics and possible outcomes of the risky January 2005 election.Returning to Iraq over the strenuous objections of State Department doctors, Earle occupies the dingy environs he calls the “Pink Motel” and completes his assignments, digging deeper into the realities of the international effort to end the violence and build the peace. Nights in the Pink Motel is a graphic, first-person account of the political, military, and human efforts to dispel the fog of 21st century warfare.The book is an essential contribution to understanding how all elements of national power must be combined to defeat insurgency and terror.

“Dark, seductive . . . Noirish and sexy, this provocative novel explores what it’s like to be a woman on the edge.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire “[A] crispy biscotti of a novel . . . You’ll feel indecent reading it in public.” —Molly Young, Vulture A trip to Italy reignites a woman’s desires to disastrous effect in this dark ode to womanhood, death, and sex To cool-headed, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that's starting to feel like one long decline. Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, forty-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving, babysitting is the last thing Cilla wants to do. Instead she throws herself into Hannah's youthful, heedless world—drinking, dancing, smoking—relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. After years of feeling used up and overlooked, Cilla feels like she's coming back to life. But being so close to Hannah brings up complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly reckless, and a dangerous flirtation with a teenage boy soon threatens to send her into a tailspin. With the sharp-edged insight of Ottessa Moshfegh and the taut seduction of Patricia Highsmith, The Worst Kind of Want is a dark exploration of the inherent dangers of being a woman. In her unsettling follow-up to Catalina, Liska Jacobs again delivers hypnotic literary noir about a woman whose unruly desires and troubled past push her to the brink of disaster.

"Heady and dark and dangerous, The Pink Hotel is an intoxicating binge of a book. Liska Jacobs's stunning indictment of a society teetering toward apocalypse is one you won’t easily forget.” —Janelle Brown, author of I'll Be You Newlyweds Keith and Kit Collins can hardly believe their luck when the general manager of the iconic, opulent Pink Hotel invites them to come for a luxurious stay as a bid to hire Keith. Kit loves their small-town life, but Keith has always wanted more, and the glittering, lily-scented lobby makes him feel right at home. Soon after their arrival, wildfires sweep through the surrounding mountains and Los Angeles becomes a pressure cooker, with riots breaking out across the city amid rolling blackouts. The Pink Hotel closes its doors to "outsiders," and Keith and Kit find themselves confined with an anxious, disgruntled staff and a growing roster of eccentric, ultra-wealthy, dangerously idle guests who flock to the hotel for sanctuary, company, and entertainment. The Pink Hotel exposes a tenuous class system within its walls, full of insurmountable expectations and unspoken resentments, which deteriorate as the city burns. In her barbed, provocative new novel, Liska Jacobs explores the corrosive nature of greed and interrogates the notion of true love, while hurtling readers toward certain disaster.

BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • Forget room service: this is a riotous elegy, a deadpan celebration of colliding worlds, and a spirited defense of love. Blending incisive wit with surprising compassion, Hotel World is a wonderfully invigorating, life-affirming book. Five people: four are living; three are strangers; two are sisters; one, a teenage hotel chambermaid, has fallen to her death in a dumbwaiter. But her spirit lingers in the world, straining to recall things she never knew. And one night all five women find themselves in the smooth plush environs of the Global Hotel, where the intersection of their very different fates make for this playful, defiant, and richly inventive novel.