Piet Barol has an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. He applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe’s leading hotelier: a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion on Amsterdam’s grandest canal. As the young man enters this glittering world, he learns its secrets --- and soon, quietly, steadily, finds his life transformed as he in turn transforms the lives of those around him.

Piet Barol has an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. He applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe’s leading hotelier: a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion on Amsterdam’s grandest canal. As the young man enters this glittering world, he learns its secrets --- and soon, quietly, steadily, finds his life transformed as he in turn transforms the lives of those around him.

From the acclaimed author of THE DROWNING PEOPLE (“A literary sensation” —The New York Times Book Review) and NATURAL ELEMENTS (“A magnum opus” —The New Yorker), an opulent, romantic coming-of-age drama set at the height of Europe’s belle époque, written in the grand tradition with a lightness of touch that is wholly modern and original.
 
The novel opens in Amsterdam at the turn of the last century. It moves to New York at the time of the 1907 financial crisis and proceeds onboard a luxury liner headed for Cape Town.
 
It is about a young man --- Piet Barol --- with an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. Piet’s father is an austere administrator at Holland’s oldest university. His mother, a singing teacher, has died --- but not before giving him a thorough grounding in the arts of charm.
 
Piet applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe’s leading hotelier: a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion on Amsterdam’s grandest canal. As the young man enters this glittering world, he learns its secrets --- and soon, quietly, steadily, finds his life transformed as he in turn transforms the lives of those around him.
 
HISTORY OF A PLEASURE SEEKER is a brilliantly written portrait of the senses, a novel about pleasure and those who are in search of it; those who embrace it, luxuriate in it, need it; and those who deprive themselves of it as they do those they love. It is a book that will beguile and transport you --- to another world, another time, another state of being.

Jake’s grandfather, Billy, hears the talk of birds, is 88 years old, and is going to live forever. Even when Billy gets sick, Jake knows that everything will go on as always. But there’s one thing Billy wants: to rebuild the sod house where he grew up. Can Jake give him this one special thing?

Jake’s grandfather, Billy, hears the talk of birds, is 88 years old, and is going to live forever. Even when Billy gets sick, Jake knows that everything will go on as always. But there’s one thing Billy wants: to rebuild the sod house where he grew up. Can Jake give him this one special thing?

In this compelling tale, two characters yearn for family. One is Arthur Opp, an obese recluse living in his family home in Brooklyn. The other is Yonkers teen baseball star Kel Keller, who has a remote connection to Arthur. Can these strangers triumph over loneliness?

In this compelling tale, two characters yearn for family. One is Arthur Opp, an obese recluse living in his family home in Brooklyn. The other is Yonkers teen baseball star Kel Keller, who has a remote connection to Arthur. Can these strangers triumph over loneliness?

Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, 17-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career --- if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene’s unexpected phone call to Arthur --- a plea for help --- that jostles them into action.

Through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, HEFT tells the winning story of two improbable heroes whose sudden connection transforms both their lives. Like Elizabeth McCracken’s THE GIANT'S HOUSE, HEFT is a novel about love and family found in the most unexpected places.