Random House New Releases - Fiction - Psychological

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

Hardcover, 224 pages | Random House | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Visionary & Metaphysical | $26.00 | 978-1-4000-6881-4 (1-4000-6881-9)

This brilliant new novel by an American master, the author of Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, Billy Bathgate, and The March, takes us on a radical trip into the mind of a man who, more than once in his life, has been an inadvertent agent of disaster.

Speaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, Andrew is thinking, Andrew is talking, Andrew is telling the story of his life, his loves, and the tragedies that have led him to this place and point in time. And as he confesses, peeling back the layers of his strange story, we are led to question what we know about truth and memory, brain and mind, personality and fate, about one another and ourselves. Written with psychological depth and great lyrical precision, this suspenseful and groundbreaking novel delivers a voice for our times—funny, probing, skeptical, mischievous, profound. Andrew’s Brain is a surprising turn and a singular achievement in the canon of a writer whose prose has the power to create its own landscape, and whose great topic, in the words of Don DeLillo, is “the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.”

Praise for E. L. Doctorow

“On every level, [Doctorow’s] work is powerful. . . . His sensitivity to language is perfectly balanced, and complemented by a gigantic vision.”—Jennifer Egan

“E. L. Doctorow is a national treasure, and I mean this in a very specific sense: He has rewarded us, these forty-five years, with a vision of ourselves, as a people, a vision possessed of what I might call ‘aspirational verve’—he sees us clearly and tenderly, just as we are, but also sees past that—to what we might, at our best, become.”—George Saunders

“[His great topic is] the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history. . . . Doctorow’s prose tends to create its own landscape, and to become a force that works in opposition to the power of social reality.”—Don DeLillo

“A writer of dazzling gifts and boundless imaginative energy.”—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker

“One of our greatest living writers . . . a virtuosic storyteller with enormous range.”—People

“Doctorow is a magician. . . . His prose is dazzling.”—Vogue

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

eBook, 224 pages | Random House | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Visionary & Metaphysical | $ | 978-0-8129-9504-6 (0-8129-9504-X)

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

Unabridged Compact Disc | Random House Audio | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Visionary & Metaphysical | $35.00 | 978-0-8041-2775-2 (0-8041-2775-1)

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

Unabridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Visionary & Metaphysical | $17.50 | 978-0-8041-2776-9 (0-8041-2776-X)

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

Dept. of Speculation
Written by Jenny Offill

Hardcover, 176 pages | Knopf | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Family Life; Fiction - Psychological | $22.95 | 978-0-385-35081-5 (0-385-35081-3)

Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.

Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to in these pages as simply “the wife,” once exchanged love letters with her husband, postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes—a colicky baby, bedbugs, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions—the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it, as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.

With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Jenny Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed. Exceptionally lean and compact, Dept. of Speculation can be read in a single sitting, but there are enough bracing emotional insights in these pages to fill a much longer novel.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

2014-01-28T00:30:00-05:00

Dept. of Speculation
Written by Jenny Offill

eBook, 176 pages | Knopf | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Family Life; Fiction - Psychological | $ | 978-0-385-35102-7 (0-385-35102-X)

The Human Comedy by Jordan Stump

2014-01-14T00:30:00-05:00

The Human Comedy Selected Stories
Written by Honore de Balzac
Edited by Peter Brooks
Translated by Linda Asher, Carol Cosman and Jordan Stump

Trade Paperback, 376 pages | NYRB Classics | Fiction - Short Stories (single author); Fiction - Classics; Fiction - Psychological | $17.95 | 978-1-59017-664-1 (1-59017-664-2)

An NYRB Classics Original

We think of Honoré de Balzac as the author of long and fully upholstered novels, stitched together into the magnificent visionary document called The Human Comedy. Yet along with the full-length fiction within The Human Comedy stand many shorter works, among the most brilliant and forceful of his fictions. Drawn always to the tradition of oral storytelling—to the human voice telling of experience—and to the kinds of reactions produced in the listeners to stories, Balzac repeatedly dramatizes both telling and listening, and the interactions of men and women around the story told. It’s in the short fiction that we get some of his most daring explorations of crime, sexuality, and artistic creation. As Marcel Proust noted, it is in these tales that we detect, under the surface, the mysterious circulation of blood and desire.

Included here are tales of artists, of the moneylender who controls the lives of others, of passion in the desert sands and in the drawing rooms of Parisian duchesses, episodes of madness and psychotherapy, the uncovering of fortunes derived from crime and from castration. And stories about the creation of story, the need to transmit experience. All are newly translated by three outstanding translators who restore the freshness of Balzac’s vivid and highly colored prose.

The Human Comedy by Jordan Stump

2014-01-14T00:30:00-05:00

The Human Comedy Selected Stories
Written by Honore de Balzac
Edited by Peter Brooks
Translated by Linda Asher, Carol Cosman and Jordan Stump

eBook, 376 pages | NYRB Classics | Fiction - Short Stories (single author); Fiction - Classics; Fiction - Psychological | $17.95 | 978-1-59017-698-6 (1-59017-698-7)

Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

Deep Water
Written by Patricia Highsmith

Unabridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Thrillers - Crime | $20.00 | 978-0-8041-6497-9 (0-8041-6497-5)

Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

Leaving the Sea Stories
Written by Ben Marcus

Hardcover, 288 pages | Knopf | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Short Stories (single author); Fiction - Psychological | $25.95 | 978-0-307-37938-2 (0-307-37938-8)

From one of the most innovative and important writers of his generation, a brilliant collection of stories that showcase his gifts--and his range--as never before.

In the dystopian "Rollingwood," a divorced father struggles to hold on to his job while taking care of his ill infant son. In the hilarious "I Can Say Many Nice Things," a writer toying with infidelity teaches a brutal creative writing workshop on a cruise ship. In "Watching Mysteries with My Mother," a man spends time with his aging mother and meditates on mortality. And in the title story, told in a single breathless sentence, we watch as the narrator's marriage and his sanity unravel.

Surreal and tender, terrifying and life-affirming, Leaving the Sea brings us an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.

Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

Leaving the Sea Stories
Written by Ben Marcus

eBook, 288 pages | Knopf | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Short Stories (single author); Fiction - Psychological | $ | 978-0-385-35043-3 (0-385-35043-0)

You Disappear by Christian Jungersen

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

You Disappear A Novel
Written by Christian Jungersen

Hardcover, 464 pages | Nan A. Talese | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Medical | $27.95 | 978-0-385-53725-4 (0-385-53725-5)

An unnerving and riveting psychological drama that challenges our notions of how we view others and how we construct our own sense of self.

Mia is an elementary schoolteacher in Denmark, while her husband, Frederik, is the talented, highly respected headmaster of a local private school. During a vacation in Spain, Frederik has an accident and his visit to the hospital reveals a brain tumor that is gradually altering his personality, confirming Mia's suspicions that her husband is no longer the man he used to be. Now she must protect herself and their teenage son, Niklas, from the strange, blunted being who lives in her husband's body—and with whom she must share her home, her son, and her bed.

When it emerges that one year ago Frederik had defrauded his school of millions of crowns, the consequences of his condition envelope the entire community. Frederick's apparent lack of concern doesn't help, and longstanding friendships with colleagues are thrown by the wayside. Increasingly isolated, Mia faces more tough questions. Had his illness already changed him back then when he still seemed so happy? What are the legal ramifications?

In her support group for spouses of people with brain injuries, Mia meets a defense attorney named Bernhard. Together they help prepare for Frederik's court case by immersing themselves in the latest brain research and in classic philosophical questions of free will, while simultaneously navigating the uncertain waters of their growing mutual infatuation. Jungersen's clear, spare prose and ceaseless plot twists will keep readers hooked until the last page.

You Disappear by Christian Jungersen

2014-01-07T00:30:00-05:00

You Disappear A Novel
Written by Christian Jungersen

eBook, 464 pages | Nan A. Talese | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Medical | $ | 978-0-385-53726-1 (0-385-53726-3)

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See by Juliann Garey

2013-11-12T00:30:00-05:00

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
Written by Juliann Garey

Trade Paperback, 304 pages | Soho Press | Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Literary | $15.00 | 978-1-61695-344-7 (1-61695-344-6)

A studio executive leaves his family and travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to hide for 20 years.

"Juliann Garey writes with stark, lucid power about the tumbling journey into madness and the agonizing climb back out."--Brian Yorkey, book and lyrics for Next to Normal

In her tour-de-force first novel, Juliann Garey takes us inside the restless mind, ravaged heart, and anguished soul of Greyson Todd, a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free rein to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years. The novel intricately weaves together three timelines: the story of Greyson's travels (Rome, Israel, Santiago, Thailand, Uganda); the progressive unraveling of his own father seen through Greyson's eyes as a child; and the intimacies and estrangements of his marriage. The entire narrative unfolds in the time it takes him to undergo twelve 30-second electroshock treatments in a New York psychiatric ward. This is a literary page-turner of the first order, and a brilliant inside look at mental illness.

From the Hardcover edition.

Parade by Shuichi Yoshida

2013-10-22T00:30:00-05:00

Parade
Written by Shuichi Yoshida

Trade Paperback, 320 pages | Vintage | Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Literary | $15.00 | 978-0-307-45493-5 (0-307-45493-2)

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

2013-10-08T00:30:00-05:00

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

Hardcover, 400 pages | Random House | Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Thrillers - Crime; Fiction - Literary | $26.00 | 978-0-8129-9586-2 (0-8129-9586-4)

Written with the riveting storytelling and moral seriousness of authors like Emma Donoghue, Adam Johnson, Ann Patchett, and Curtis Sittenfeld, Cartwheel is a suspenseful and haunting novel of an American foreign exchange student arrested for murder, and a father trying to hold his family together.

When Lily Hayes arrives in Buenos Aires for her semester abroad, she is enchanted by everything she encounters: the colorful buildings, the street food, the handsome, elusive man next door. Her studious roommate Katy is a bit of a bore, but Lily didn’t come to Argentina to hang out with other Americans.

Five weeks later, Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home, and Lily is the prime suspect. But who is Lily Hayes? It depends on who’s asking. As the case takes shape—revealing deceptions, secrets, and suspicious DNA—Lily appears alternately sinister and guileless through the eyes of those around her: the media, her family, the man who loves her and the man who seeks her conviction. With mordant wit and keen emotional insight, Cartwheel offers a prismatic investigation of the ways we decide what to see—and to believe—in one another and ourselves.

Jennifer duBois’s debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction and was honored by the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 program. In Cartwheel, duBois delivers a novel of propulsive psychological suspense and rare moral nuance. Who is Lily Hayes? What happened to her roommate? No two readers will agree. Cartwheel will keep you guessing until the final page, and its questions about how much we really know about ourselves will linger well beyond.

Praise for A Partial History of Lost Causes

“Astonishingly beautiful and brainy . . . [a] stunning novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“A thrilling debut . . . duBois writes with haunting richness and fierce intelligence. . . . Full of bravado, insight, and clarity.”—Elle

“DuBois is precise and unsentimental. . . . She moves with a magician’s control between points of view, continents, histories, and sympathies.”—The New Yorker

“I can’t remember reading another novel—at least not recently—that’s both incredibly intelligent and also emotionally engaging.”—Nancy Pearl, NPR

“A real page-turner . . . a psychological thriller of great nuance and complexity.”—The Dallas Morning News

“Hilarious and heartbreaking and a triumph of the imagination.”—Gary Shteyngart

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

2013-10-08T00:30:00-05:00

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

eBook, 400 pages | Random House | Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Thrillers - Crime; Fiction - Literary | $12.99 | 978-0-8129-9587-9 (0-8129-9587-2)

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

2013-10-08T00:30:00-05:00

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

Unabridged Compact Disc | Random House Audio | Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Thrillers - Crime; Fiction - Literary | $50.00 | 978-0-8041-6485-6 (0-8041-6485-1)

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

2013-10-08T00:30:00-05:00

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

Unabridged Audiobook Download | Random House Audio | Fiction - Psychological; Fiction - Thrillers - Crime; Fiction - Literary | $25.00 | 978-0-8041-6486-3 (0-8041-6486-X)

Half the Kingdom by Lore Segal

2013-10-01T00:30:00-05:00

Half the Kingdom A Novel
Written by Lore Segal

Hardcover, 176 pages | Melville House | Fiction - Literary; Fiction - Psychological; Literary Collections - Women Authors | $23.95 | 978-1-61219-302-1 (1-61219-302-1)

A brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in America told with Segal's characteristic humor, crystalline style and deadpan delivery—and her hilarious sense of the absurd.

Half the Kingdom is a brilliant dark comedy about life, death and growing old in post-9/11 America—a place where terrorist paranoia and end-of-the-world hysteria masks deeper fears about mortality; a place where the broken medical system leads one character to quip, "Kafka wrote slice-of-life fiction."

Characters from Segal's earlier novels are part of the cast whose lives intersect at Manhattan's Cedars of Lebanon emergency room—where doctors have noticed a marked up-tick in Alzheimer victims. People who seemed perfectly lucid just a day earlier exhibit signs of advanced dementia. Is it just normal aging or a coincidence? Is it an epidemic, or a secret terrorist plot?

As profoundly moving as Joan Didion's latest non-fiction, and as thoughtful and charming as Diana Athill, Segal's crystalline writing and deep appreciation of the absurd make this most tragic and hilarious novel a joy for all to read.

Random House New Releases - Fiction - Psychological

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain A NovelWritten by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain A NovelWritten by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain A NovelWritten by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain A NovelWritten by E.L. Doctorow

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Dept. of Speculation Written by Jenny Offill

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Dept. of Speculation Written by Jenny Offill

The Human Comedy by Jordan Stump

The Human Comedy Selected StoriesWritten by Honore de Balzac Edited by Peter Brooks Translated by Linda Asher, Carol Cosman and Jordan Stump

The Human Comedy by Jordan Stump

The Human Comedy Selected StoriesWritten by Honore de Balzac Edited by Peter Brooks Translated by Linda Asher, Carol Cosman and Jordan Stump

Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith

Deep Water Written by Patricia Highsmith

Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus

Leaving the Sea StoriesWritten by Ben Marcus

Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus

Leaving the Sea StoriesWritten by Ben Marcus

You Disappear by Christian Jungersen

You Disappear A NovelWritten by Christian Jungersen

You Disappear by Christian Jungersen

You Disappear A NovelWritten by Christian Jungersen

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See by Juliann Garey

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See Written by Juliann Garey

Parade by Shuichi Yoshida

Parade Written by Shuichi Yoshida

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel A NovelWritten by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel A NovelWritten by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel A NovelWritten by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel A NovelWritten by Jennifer duBois

Half the Kingdom by Lore Segal

Half the Kingdom A NovelWritten by Lore Segal

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

Andrew's Brain A Novel
Written by E.L. Doctorow

Dept. of Speculation
Written by Jenny Offill

Dept. of Speculation
Written by Jenny Offill

The Human Comedy Selected Stories
Written by Honore de Balzac
Edited by Peter Brooks
Translated by Linda Asher, Carol Cosman and Jordan Stump

The Human Comedy Selected Stories
Written by Honore de Balzac
Edited by Peter Brooks
Translated by Linda Asher, Carol Cosman and Jordan Stump

Deep Water
Written by Patricia Highsmith

Leaving the Sea Stories
Written by Ben Marcus

Leaving the Sea Stories
Written by Ben Marcus

You Disappear A Novel
Written by Christian Jungersen

You Disappear A Novel
Written by Christian Jungersen

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See
Written by Juliann Garey

Parade
Written by Shuichi Yoshida

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

Cartwheel A Novel
Written by Jennifer duBois

Half the Kingdom A Novel
Written by Lore Segal