Emma Straub

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK "In a time when all we want is hope, it's a beautiful book to reach for." -Jenna Bush Hager"Literary sunshine."--New York Times "The queen of the summer novel."--Entertainment Weekly "Brimming with kindness, forgiveness, humor and love and yet (magically) also a page turner that held me captive until it was finished. This is Emma Straub's absolute best and the world will love it. I love it." --Ann Patchett "An immensely charming and warmhearted book. It's a vacation for the soul."--Vox A warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family--as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes. From the New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers. When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid's thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most. In All Adults Here, Emma Straub's unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.

A family keepsake journal for parents and children to record the magic of reading together Reading Is Magic is a guided journal in which families can capture that magical period when parents and children read together. It begins with a foreword by bestselling author and independent bookstore owner Emma Straub and contains recommended reading lists, entry pages for logging each book as you read it, and superlative pages for noting a child’s favorite authors, illustrators, and characters. There are also entry pages where parents can reminisce about their own childhood reading memories. A wonderful gift to give at a baby shower or for any special occasion (along with a few books, of course!), Reading Is Magic is a unique way for parents to record memories with their children.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK In a time when all we want is hope, it's a beautiful book to reach for. -Jenna Bush Hager Brimming with kindness, forgiveness, humor and love and yet (magically) also a page turner that held me captive until it was finished. This is Emma Straub's absolute best and the world will love it. I love it. --Ann Patchett "An immensely charming and warmhearted book. It's a vacation for the soul."--Vox A warm, funny, and keenly perceptive novel about the life cycle of one family--as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes. From the New York Times bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers, and the forthcoming novel This Time Tomorrow. When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid's thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most. In All Adults Here, Emma Straub's unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.

** 'It's the beautifully drawn, vibrant characters that make this smart, compelling novel so irresistible.' Liane Moriarty **From the New York Times Bestselling author of The Vacationers, Emma Straub brings us a sharply observed tale of modern love . . . Twenty years later and they were supposed to be grown-ups... Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. Summer in the city . . . College friends Elizabeth, Zoe and Andrew had a band, grew up, settled in New York and now they are still living round the corner from one another (and in each other's pockets). One hot summer as their kids come of age, making those first hesitant steps into adulthood, it's the parents who find that the lives they've so carefully stitched together begin slowly to come apart . . .'Has all the pleasures of Anne Tyler's compelling family portraits . . . with a Lorrie Moore-like sense of the absurdities of contemporary life' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times'Really entertaining. The characters are complex and likeable. It's one of those stories that makes you realise that life really does run away from you' Guardian'Straub's characters thrum off the page. The sort of witty and relatable summer title you'll devour with a contented smack of the lips' Independent'Funny yet tart, warm yet incisive. I adored it' Red

"It's 'Friends' meets 'Almost Famous' meets the beach read you'll be recommending all summer." -TheSkimm From the author of the New York Times bestsellers All Adults Here and This Time Tomorrow, a smart, highly entertaining novel about a tight-knit group of friends from college-- and what it means to finally grow up, well after adulthood has set in. Friends and former college bandmates Elizabeth and Andrew and Zoe have watched one another marry, buy real estate, and start businesses and families, all while trying to hold on to the identities of their youth. But nothing ages them like having to suddenly pass the torch (of sexuality, independence, and the ineffable alchemy of cool) to their own offspring. Back in the band's heyday, Elizabeth put on a snarl over her Midwestern smile, Andrew let his unwashed hair grow past his chin, and Zoe was the lesbian all the straight women wanted to sleep with. Now nearing fifty, they all live within shouting distance in the same neighborhood deep in gentrified Brooklyn, and the trappings of the adult world seem to have arrived with ease. But the summer that their children reach maturity (and start sleeping together), the fabric of the adult lives suddenly begins to unravel, and the secrets and revelations that are finally let loose--about themselves, and about the famous fourth band member who soared and fell without them--can never be reclaimed. Straub packs wisdom and insight and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions--be they food, or friendship, or music--never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us.

"Delicious . . . richly riveting . . . The Vacationers offers all the delights of a fluffy, read-it-with-sunglasses-on-the-beach read, made substantial by the exceptional wit, insight, intelligence and talents of its author."--People (four stars) An irresistible, deftly observed novel from the New York Times-bestselling author of All Adults Here and This Time Tomorrow-- about the secrets, joys, and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of an American family's two-week stay in Mallorca. For the Posts, a two-week trip to the Balearic island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is a celebration: Franny and Jim are observing their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and their daughter, Sylvia, has graduated from high school. The sunlit island, its mountains and beaches, its tapas and tennis courts, also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the vacation, secrets come to light, old and new humiliations are experienced, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds are exacerbated. This is a story of the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again, and the bonds that ultimately hold us together. With wry humor and tremendous heart, Emma Straub delivers a richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of a maelstrom of change, emerging irrevocably altered yet whole.

A Bookpage Best Books of 2012 pick "At once a delicious depiction of Hollywood's golden age and a sweet, fulfilling story about one woman's journey through fame, love, and loss."--Boston Globe In 1920, Elsa Emerson is born to the owners of the Cherry County Playhouse in Door County, Wisconsin. Elsa relishes appearing onstage, where she soaks up the approval of her father and the embrace of the audience. But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a child's game of pretend. While still in her teens, Elsa marries and flees to Los Angeles. There she is discovered by Hollywood mogul Irving Green, who refashions her as an exotic brunette screen siren and renames her Laura Lamont. But fame has its costs, and while Laura tries to balance career, family, and personal happiness, she realizes that Elsa Emerson might not be gone completely. Ambitious and richly imagined, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures is as intimate--and as bigger-than-life--as the great films of the golden age of Hollywood.

Irving snapped his fingers, so loudly that it echoed through the room, over all the chatting and flirting. Elsa was surprised that such a sharp, loud noise could come out of such a small person. "Laura Lamont," he said. "You want it? It's yours. Come see me when you're ready." When the most famous producer in 1930s Hollywood plucks Elsa Emerson from a party and gives her a brand-new name, a star of the silver screen is born. Step by step she succumbs to the consuming power of the studio. But her transformation is more profound than she could ever have foreseen . . .