Richard Russo

William Henry Devereaux, Jr., spiritually suited to playing left field but forced by a bad hamstring to try first base, is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week, he threatens to execute a duck, has his...

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls, this slyly funny, moving novel about a blue-collar town in upstate New York—and about Sully, one of its unluckiest citizens, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years—is a classic American story. "Remarkable...

To this irresistible debut collection of short stories, Richard Russo brings the same bittersweet wit, deep knowledge of human nature, and spellbinding narrative gifts that distinguish his best-selling novels. His themes are the imperfect bargains of marriage; the discoveries and...

A New York Times 2016 Notable Book An immediate national best seller and instant classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. Richard Russo returns to North Bath—“a town where dishonesty abounds, everyone misapprehends everyone else and half the citizens are half-crazy”...

A provocative, unprecedented anthology featuring original short stories on what it means to be an American from thirty bestselling and award-winning authors with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen: “This chorus of brilliant voices articulating the shape and...

Richard Russo—from his first novel, Mohawk, to his most recent, Straight Man—has demonstrated a peerless affinity for the human tragicomedy, and with this stunning new novel he extends even further his claims on the small-town, blue-collar heart of the country. Dexter County, Maine, and...

Following the best-selling Everybody's Fool, a new collection of short fiction that demonstrates that Richard Russo--winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls--is also a master of this genre. Russo's characters in these four expansive stories bear little similarity to the blue-collar...

Originally published in 1986 in the Vintage Contemporaries paperback series—and reissued now in hardcover alongside his masterful new novel, Empire Falls—Richard Russo’s Mohawk remains today as it was described then: A first novel with all the assurance of a mature writer at the peak of...

Following Bridge of Sighs—a national best seller hailed by The Boston Globe as “an astounding achievement” and “a masterpiece”—Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises of youth. Griffin...

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls comes “a magnificent, bighearted” novel (The Boston Globe) about small-town America that follows Louis Charles Lynch (“Lucy”) and his wife of forty years as they...

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls Three men in their late sixties—old friends from college, each with a secret—come together on Martha’s Vineyard in this “gripping, wise, and wonderful summer treat.” (The Boston Globe). “A cascade of...

A marvelous new essay collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Somebody's Fool and The Destiny Thief Life and Art—these are the twin subjects considered in Richard Russo’s twelve masterful new essays—how they inform each other and how the stories we tell ourselves about both...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath, in upstate New York, and to the characters that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers in his beloved best sellers Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool. “Sumptuous...

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls One of the most valuable spaces for an artist is the inner life—the sacred place where, outside of the constraints of time and space, meaning is extracted from raw experience and fashioned into art. In this timely new essay, Pulitzer...

A Vintage Shorts Short Story original. David and Ellie didn’t realize how much they have missed their friends, two other couples who had moved out of their modest neighborhood in a desert city for the comforts of the suburbs, until the day of Donald Trump’s election. Separated also from...

"It turns out that Russo the nonfiction writer is a lot like Russo the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He is affably disagreeable, wry, idiosyncratic, vulnerably bighearted, a craftsman of lubricated sentences."—Jay Fielden, New York Times Book Review A master of the novel, short story, and...

After eight commanding works of fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winner now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving, and always surprising account of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape. Anyone familiar with Richard Russo's acclaimed...