“The Cider House Rules is filled with people to love and to feel for. . . . The characters in John Irving’s novel break all the rules, and yet they remain noble and free-spirited.”—The Houston PostFirst published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is set in rural Maine in the first half of the twentieth century. The novel tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch—saint and obstetrician, founder and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Cloud’s, ether addict and abortionist. This is also the story of Dr. Larch’s favorite orphan, Homer Wells, who is never adopted.Praise for The Cider House Rules“ [Irving] is among the very best storytellers at work today. At the base of Irving’s own moral concerns is a rare and lasting regard for human kindness.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer“ Superb in scope and originality, a novel as good as one could hope to find from any author, anywhere, anytime. Engrossing, moving, thoroughly satisfying.”—Joseph Heller“ An old-fashioned, big-hearted novel . . . with its epic yearning caught in the nineteenth century, somewhere between Trollope and Twain.”—Boston Sunday Globe

"The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life lived in hotels."So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they "dream on" in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Widow for One Year and The Cider House Rules.The New York Times - James Atlas. . .Irving has decided to charm and entertain his readers -- with a vengeance. The Hotel New Hampshire, the story of an eccentric family that sets up house in various unlikely hotels here and abroad, is a hectic gaudy saga with the verve of a Marx Brothers movie. . . .Irving has always been inventive, and [the novel] is crammed with the exotic characters and fantastic events that spill from the pages of his other novels.

“A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation. ... An amazingly brave piece of work ... so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world.” —STEPHEN KING, Washington PostI am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys—best friends—are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary.A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

John Irving Returns To The Themes That Established Him As One Of Our Most Admired And Beloved Authors In This Absorbing Novel Of Fate And Memory. In Avenue Of Mysteries, Juan Diego—a Fourteen-year-old Boy, Who Was Born And Grew Up In Mexico—has A Thirteen-year-old Sister. Her Name Is Lupe, And She Thinks She Sees What’s Coming—specifically, Her Own Future And Her Brother’s. Lupe Is A Mind Reader; She Doesn’t Know What Everyone Is Thinking, But She Knows What Most People Are Thinking. Regarding What Has Happened, As Opposed To What Will, Lupe Is Usually Right About The Past; Without Your Telling Her, She Knows All The Worst Things That Have Happened To You. Lupe Doesn’t Know The Future As Accurately. But Consider What A Terrible Burden It Is, If You Believe You Know The Future—especially Your Own Future, Or, Even Worse, The Future Of Someone You Love. What Might A Thirteen-year-old Girl Be Driven To Do, If She Thought She Could Change The Future? As An Older Man, Juan Diego Will Take A Trip To The Philippines, But What Travels With Him Are His Dreams And Memories; He Is Most Alive In His Childhood And Early Adolescence In Mexico. As We Grow Older—most Of All, In What We Remember And What We Dream—we Live In The Past. Sometimes, We Live More Vividly In The Past Than In The Present. Avenue Of Mysteries Is The Story Of What Happens To Juan Diego In The Philippines, Where What Happened To Him In The Past—in Mexico—collides With His Future.

Meet Hickey, An American School Teacher In His Late Thirties, An American School Teacher Who Burns His Bridges With The School Board And Goes To Africa As An Aid Worker. Working For An Agency In Nairobi, One Of His Jobs Is To Drive Food And Medical Supplies To Southern Sudan To An Aid Station Run By Ruth, A Middle-aged Woman, Who Acts As Nurse, Doctor, Hospice Worker, Feeder Of Starving Children, And Witness. Ruth Is Gruff But Efficient, And Hickey, Who Is Usually Drawn To Youth And Beauty, Is Struck By Her Devotion. Returning To Nairobi, He Can{u2019}t Forget What He Has Seen. When The Violence And Chaos In The Region Increase To A Fever Pitch And Aid Workers Are Being Slaughtered Or Evacuated, Hickey Is Asked To Save Ruth Overland By Jeep. What Happens To Them And The Children That Have Joined Their Journey Is The Searing Climax Of This Novel. Hoagland Paints An Unflinching Portrait Of A Living Hell At Its Worst, And Yet Amid That Suffering There Is Hope In The Form Of Humility, Sacrifice, And Life-affirming Friendship. A Novel By Edward Hoagland.

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist leader ahead of her time. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes, even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with lunacy and sorrow, yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries–with more than ten million copies in print–this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

When The Humanitarian Lawyer Tom Harrington Travels To Haiti To Investigate The Murder Of A Beautiful, Seductive Photojournalist, He Is Confronted With A Dangerous Landscape Of Poverty, Corruption, And Voodoo.--publisher's Website. Fuzzing It Up: Haiti 1998, 1996, 1998 -- How Peace Begins: Croatia 1944, 1945 -- Tradecraft: Istanbul, 1986 -- The Friends Of Golf. Bob Shacochis.

“His most daringly political, sexually transgressive, and moving novel in well over a decade” (Vanity Fair). A New York Times bestselling novel of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity, In One Person is a story of unfulfilled love—tormented, funny, and affecting—and an impassioned embrace of our sexual differences. Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a “sexual suspect,” a phrase first used by John Irving in 1978 in his landmark novel of “terminal cases,” The World According to Garp. In One Person is a poignant tribute to Billy’s friends and lovers—a theatrical cast of characters who defy category and convention. Not least, In One Person is an intimate and unforgettable portrait of the solitariness of a bisexual man who is dedicated to making himself “worthwhile.”

While reporting a story from India, New York journalist Patrick Wallingford inadvertently becomes his own headline when his left hand is eaten by a lion. In Boston, a renowned surgeon eagerly awaits the opportunity to perform the nation’s first hand transplant. But what if the donor’s widow demands visitation rights with the hand? In answering this unexpected question, John Irving has written a novel that is by turns brilliantly comic and emotionally moving, offering a penetrating look at the power of second chances and the will to change. The Fourth Hand asks an interesting question: "How can anyone identify a dream of the future?" The answer: "Destiny is not imaginable, except in dreams or to those in love."

Twenty years after "The World According To Garp", John Irving gives us a new novel about family marked with tragedy. Centering around the complex, often self-contradictory character of celebrated writer Ruth Cole, "A Widow For One Year" manifests all the compassion and undertow of Irving's best, big-hearted novels.San Francisco Examiner-ChronicleJohn Irving as at the peak of his considerable powers in A Widow for One Year, his most intricate and fully imagined novel.

It is 1967 and two Viennese university students want to liberate the Vienna Zoo, as was done after World War II. But their good intentions have both comic and gruesome consequences, in this first novel written by a twenty-five year old John Irving, already a master storyteller. From the Paperback edition. Siggy and Hannes were disenchanted students and fellow conspirators. Astride a 700cc Royal Enfield motorcycle, they roamed the Austrian countryside. When Gallen, a lovely hitchhiker, joined them, they zeroed in on the Vienna Zoo--and Siggy's dream: setting free the bears!