The Passenger unfolds the thrilling story of a salvage diver named Bobby Western, who, after a late-night dive to a sunken jet, finds himself enmeshed in a mysterious and dangerous situation. The jet crash site reveals nine bodies still strapped into their seats, but the tenth passenger, the pilot's flight bag, and the plane's black box are inexplicably missing. As Western is drawn deeper into the ensuing intrigue, he is haunted not only by those seeking answers but also by the specters of his own past, including the ghost of his father, the man behind the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima, and the memories of his sister, Alicia, whose presence continues to torment his soul.
In Stella Maris, set in 1972, we meet Alicia Western, a brilliant but troubled young woman. At twenty years old, she checks into a psychiatric facility with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, along with a bag containing forty thousand dollars. Alicia, a mathematics prodigy, refuses to discuss her brother Bobby. Instead, she delves into the nature of insanity, the universal human experience, and her own personal grief for a brother who is both lost and unattainable.
Together, The Passenger and Stella Maris paint a portrait of a brother and sister bound by tragedy, conspiracy, and a quest for a reconciliation that seems beyond their grasp.
Zahra and Maryam have been best friends since childhood in Karachi, even though—or maybe because—they are different in nearly every way. They never speak of the differences in their backgrounds or their values, not even after the fateful night when a moment of adolescent impulse upends their plans for the future.
Three decades later, Zahra and Maryam have grown into powerful women who have each cut a distinctive path through London. But when two troubling figures from their past resurface, they must finally confront their bedrock differences—and find out whether their friendship can survive.
London 1926. Roaring Twenties.
Corruption. Seduction. Debts due.
In a country still recovering from the Great War, London is the focus for a delirious nightlife. In Soho clubs, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.
There, Nellie Coker is a ruthless ruler, ambitious for her six children. Niven is the eldest, his enigmatic character forged in the harsh Somme. But success breeds enemies. Nellie faces threats from without and within. Beneath the gaiety lies a dark underbelly, where one may be all too easily lost.
Sunset Park is a luminous, passionate, and expansive novel, an emotional tour de force from the bestselling author Paul Auster. Set during the dark months of the 2008 economic collapse, this novel follows the hopes and fears of a cast of unforgettable characters.
At the heart of the story is Miles Heller, an enigmatic young man working as a trash-out worker in southern Florida, obsessively photographing thousands of abandoned objects left behind by evicted families. When Miles falls in love with Pilar Sanchez, he finds himself on the run again, returning to New York, where his family lives, and into an abandoned house of young squatters in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Woven together from various points of view, including that of Miles's father, an independent book publisher trying to stay afloat, and Miles's mother, a celebrated actress preparing her return to the New York stage, Auster creates a vibrant tapestry of contemporary America and its ghosts. Sunset Park is a surprising departure that confirms Paul Auster as one of our greatest living writers.