August News and Highlights

Letter from Hudson Street August 2017 Dear Readers, It's that time again: the calm before the storm that is fall in the book business. We're savoring it as much as we can here. We're finding old editions of our books to share with you (as you'll see below) and dreaming about doing nothing but watching film adaptations of books in the NYRB Classics series (including the one mentioned later on). But of course there's work to do. At least it's for a good cause: books. Have a safe end of summer everyone! Sincerely, The NYRB Staff From Pulp to NYRB Classic A lot of the books in the NYRB Classics series have interesting pasts. Many have been banned at one point or another, some were international best-sellers when they were first published, others sat for decades as unread manuscripts in a drawer somewhere. In honor of this month's publication of Dorothy Hughes's neo-noir thriller, [In a Lonely Place](, we've dug up old editions of books in the NYRB Classics series that have had past lives on the pulp fiction shelves—complete with some very, very pulpy cover art and tag lines. [In a Lonely Place]( [Black Wings Has My Angel]( [The Big Clock]( [To Walk the Night]( [The Edge of Running Water]( [Fancies and Goodnights]( [Really the Blues]( ["The 10th Victim"]( [The Outward Room]( [The Dud Avocado]( [Tropic Moon]( William Sloane's novels To Walk the Night and The Edge of Running Water are published together in the NYRB Classics series as [The Rim of Morning](. The original version of Robert Sheckley's story "The 10th Victim," first published as "Seventh Victim," is collected in [Store of the Worlds](. Celebrating In a Lonely Place On August 16 at 6:30pm we'll be marking the release of our edition of Dorothy B. Hughes's [In a Lonely Place]( in a very appropriate setting: the [Mysterious Bookshop](, here in New York City. Authors and noir buffs Megan Abbott and Sarah Weinman will be discussing Hughes's groundbreaking mystery-writing. In September, we'll have a screening of [the film adaptation]( of Hughes's novel by director Nicholas Ray at NYC's Metrograph. More information on that in a future newsletter, but for now, take a look at the trailer for Ray's adaptation, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. Without spoiling anything, it's safe to say that the film version turned some key points of Hughes's story upside down. That's Hollywood for you. In a Lonely Place is the August selection for the [NYRB Classics Book Club](. If you join the club by August 16th, In a Lonely Place will be your first selection. Your Favorite Summer Novels We received some great responses from you all about your favorite novels set over a single summer. Here are a few. [Dandelion Wine]( by Ray Bradbury "My favorite go-to summer reading book...Douglas details his adventures over the course of a summer and they remind me of summer vacations when I was a girl and the possibilities of each new day were fresh and endless. Just thinking of the title can send me down memory lane." —Carolyn [The Summer Without Men]( by Siri Hustvedt "I’ve only just finished this novel and I was especially impressed by the way she deals with the gender divide on different levels. Opening with the effect of a husband wanting a 'pause' in a long-term marriage, it is clearly going to be about men vs women but Hustvedt develops that theme so skillfully by including women from near teenagers to the very aged in a natural way, no sense of straining for effect." —John [Seventeenth Summer]( by Maureen Daly "Don't laugh. My most memorable summer reading experience has to be Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer. If I hadn't been so moved by that when I was thirteen, I might never have grown up to treasure [The Go-Between]( or [A Month in the Country](." —Jane [The Great Gatsby]( by F. Scott Fitzgerald "The thwarted romance between Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan takes place in the raised temperatures of New York City and its environs. Some of the action takes place during house parties, by the water, and in a hotel room, all calling to mind summer pursuits. This seems the perfect time of year to read this great novel again." —Edward [Hot Milk]( by Deborah Levy "I love Deborah Levy's Hot Milk. The story line is confusing, elusive, like something seen through the shimmer of heat waves in the dead of summer—fickle yet gorgeous." —Molly [The Summer Book]( by Tove Jansson "The Summer Book by Tove Jansson was the first book I ever found on my own, picked up, read, rolled around in, hid, dreamed of, and truly loved. I read it in the grass of a distant small town summer in the 1970s. I remember the little animated prizes certain pages offered. I recall the book inspiring my first experience of joyful unknowing - that underrated intersection of the exotic, the esoteric, and the ambiguity of feeling 'at home' and less alone with such new and friendly thoughts. That is to say, how grateful I would be to roll around in such curious pages 40 years later." —Jon [Summer of Night]( by Dan Simmons "While Simmons may not be the best writer, he is an excellent crafter of scenes, and in this book he creates scenes showing the kind of closeness that can only exist between young friends, and scenes that show pure terror, again the kind that can only exist at that certain age spent during those all too short but poignant summer vacations." —Rick [The Summer Guest]( [The Summer Guest]( by Alison Anderson "The summer in question is 1888, which the young Anton Chekhov spent (actually) visiting the Lintvaryova family in the Ukraine. Zinaida Lintvaryova was a doctor, and blind, and she strikes up a friendship with Chekhov, sharing intimate conversations. The book is a glimpse into the young Chekhov’s mind and ambitions, the complexities of friendship, and raises the tantalizing question of what would have happened had the short story master written a novel. A parallel story is told of a woman who is translating the diary of Zinaida Lintvaryova in contemporary times, longing to make her own literary mark on the world." —Laura [Over Sea, Under Stone]( by Susan Cooper "Three siblings, vacationing with their parents in a seaside village in Cornwall, find an ancient map and, unsure of what it might lead them to—treasure of some kind?—are drawn into a mythic battle between good and evil. The book was published in the mid-1960s, but the author knew exactly how to dole out suspense, and the dialogue still reads completely naturally. I've probably read this book fifteen times in my life." —Matt [The Penderwicks]( [The Penderwicks]( by Jeanne Birdsall "My favorite book set over a single summer...A young adult novel that I read in my early 30s, it follows a quartet of sisters and the challenges they face while vacationing with their father at a New England estate. The story trades in classic tropes yet manages to feel grounded through the strength of its characters and the integrity of their emotions, communicated in clear, refined writing. You almost can't tell when it was written, but the book is still drenched in summer. It's either that or the [Simpsons episode]( where Lisa reinvents herself at a beach house. Also a classic." —Jacob August Books [Late Fame]( [LATE FAME]( by Arthur Schnitzler [In a Lonely Place]( [IN A LONELY PLACE]( by Dorothy B. Hughes [Other Men's Daughters]( [OTHER MEN'S DAUGHTERS]( by Richard Stern [Resurgence of Central Asia]( [THE RESURGENCE OF CENTRAL ASIA]( by Ahmed Rashid [Lizard Music]( [LIZARD MUSIC]( by Daniel Pinkwater [Uncle]( [UNCLE]( by J. P. Martin In the Press “It is a book about life and fate, a book about everything that is meaningful, everything that is human, everything that the state cannot control.” —Mark Powell, [The Daily Beast](, on Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman “Oh, what we would give to sip pastel-colored cocktails with Eve Babitz in '70s Los Angeles.” —[W Magazine]( “Schlump is brilliantly warm, funny, tragic and shocking, containing an honest, raw account of the reality of life in the trenches.” —Charlie Connelly, [The New European]( “Why does writing this vivid take so long to find its way West? Equal parts lament, paean, and family saga. . . [Katalin Street] captures handily the 'double tragedy of eastern Europe'—razed by Nazis and rebuilt by Communists.” —[The Millions]( “NYRB Classics has put out a splendid edition of these operas’ libretti, whose audience should go well beyong opera to those who like good drama, good poetry, or just good writing.” —Scott Esposito, [Lit Hub](, on History is our Mother by Alice Goodman "This fine, revealing career retrospective showcases the late Hardwick, a novelist and cofounder of the New York Review of Books, honing her favorite form, the literary review, to razor-sharp precision...this book contains ample examples of literary criticism that might be imitated or even matched but not surpassed in its style, insight, and genuine love for literature." —[Publishers Weekly]( on The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick which PW selected as one of the [most anticipated books of Fall 2017](. "This is in many ways a quiet, glistening distillation of 'summer'...unerringly wise, funny and, quite simply put, stunning." —Charlotte Delattre, bookseller at Desperate Literature (Madrid, Spain), in [high life]( on The Summer Book by Tove Jansson "Imagine the incisive wit of Virgina Woolf mingling with the listlessness of Françoise Sagan—this is the work of Eve Babitz...it is the clarity of her language and her painterly style that cement her place in the pantheon of American literature." —Sarah Nasar, bookseller at Atlantis Books (Santorini, Greece), in [high life]( Image at top of newsletter: Leroy and Bleecker Street, NYC, July 2017. New York Review Books 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014 [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](