CHRISTINA SCHWARZ

"Un fuerte sentido de presagio y unos vivaces personajes definen este sorpendente debut literario sobre los turbios secretos de familia y el peso de la culpabilidad". Anita Shreve

ALL IS VANITY is the second novel by Christina Schwarz, the acclaimed author of number-one bestseller DROWNING RUTH. A page-turnerNew York Times Book ReviewAs they reach their mid-thirties, Margaret and Letty, best friends since childhood, begin to chafe at their sense that they are not where they ought to be in life. Margaret decides to quit her job and whips out a literary tour de force. But as Letty, a stay-at-home mother of four, begins to feel pressured to make a good showing in the upper-middle-class Los Angeles society, Margaret sees a plot unfolding thats better than anything she could make up. Desperate to finish her book and hungry for acclaim, she pushes Letty to take greater and greater risks and sacrifices one of the things most precious to her... Like DROWNING RUTH, ALL IS VANITY probes into the mysteries of the human heart and uncovers the passions that drive ordinary people to break the rules in pursuit of their own desires.

Absorbing...poignant, often heartbreaking...Schwarz is a vivid storyteller. The New York Times Book ReviewThe #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drowning Ruth vividly evokes the perennially fascinating true crime love affair of Bonnie and Clyde in this suspenseful, gorgeously detailed fictional portrait of Bonnie Parker, one of Americas most enigmatic women.Born in a small town in the desolate reaches of western Texas and shaped by her girlhood in an industrial wasteland on the outskirts of Dallas, Bonnie Parker was a natural performer and a star student. She dreamed of being a movie star or a singer or a poet. But her dramatic nature, contorted by her limited opportunities and her overwhelming love for Clyde Barrow, pushed her into a course from which there was no escape but death.Infusing the psychological acuity of literary fiction with the relentless pacing of a thriller, Bonnie follows Bonnie from her bright, promising youth to her final month of shoot-outs, kidnappings, and desperate car chases through Americas hinterland in the grip of the Great Depression, as the noose of the law tightened around her. Enriched by Christina Schwarzs extensive research in the footsteps of Bonnie and Clyde and written with her powerful sense of place and time, Bonnie is a plaintive and page-turning account of a woman destroyed by a lethal combination of longing and love.

From the author of Drowning Ruth, a haunting, atmospheric novel set at the closing of the frontier about a young wife who moves to a far-flung and forbidding lighthouse where she uncovers a life-changing secret. In 1898, a woman forsakes the comfort of home and family for a love that takes her to a remote lighthouse on the wild coast of California. What she finds at the edge of the earth, hidden between the sea and the fog, will change her life irrevocably. Trudy, who can argue Kant over dinner and play a respectable portion of Mozarts Serenade in G major, has been raised to marry her childhood friend and assume a life of bourgeois comfort in Milwaukee. She knows she should be pleased, but shes restless instead, yearning for something she lacks even the vocabulary to articulate. When she falls in love with enigmatic and ambitious Oskar, she believes shes found her escape from the banality of her preordained life. But escape turns out to be more fraught than Trudy had imagined. Alienated from family and friends, the couple moves across the country to take a job at a lighthouse at Point Lucia, Californiaan unnervingly isolated outcropping, trapped between the ocean and hundreds of miles of inaccessible wilderness. There they meet the light stations only inhabitantsthe formidable and guarded Crawleys. In this unfamiliar place, Trudy will find that nothing is as she might have predicted, especially after she discovers what hides among the rocks. Gorgeously detailed, swiftly paced, and anchored in the dramatic geography of the remote and eternally mesmerizing Big Sur, The Edge of the Earth is a magical story of secrets and self-transformation, ruses and rebirths. Christina Schwarz, celebrated for her rich evocation of place and vivid, unpredictable characters, has spun another haunting and unforgettable tale.

No. 1 New York Times bestseller: Powerful... Suspenseful... chillingNew York TimesChristina Schwarzs bestselling novel DROWNING RUTH is a powerful and shocking psychological drama, for everyone who loved THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS or THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES. At the close of World War One, Amanda Starkey leaves the city and travels to her familys farm to recover from a broken heart. Instead, she is caught up in a tragedy that will take her sisters life and leave Amanda to raise her niece Ruth. What happened that terrible night when Mattie died? Why does Ruth say she can remember drowning? When the truth is revealed, it is shocking, dramatic, and unforgettable. [A] gripping psychological thriller Francine Prose, US WeeklyA mesmerizing first novel about horrifying family secrets Anita ShreveRiveting... A very suspenseful tale, one that will keep readers up shivering in [the] nightUSA Today

At once darkly comedic and moving, this witty exploration of female friendship, envy, and misguided ambition by the author of the number-one bestseller Drowning Ruth, deliciously satirizes the desire to shine in the world.In All is Vanity, Margaret and Letty, best friends since childhood and now living on opposite coasts, reach their mid-thirties and begin to chafe at their sense that they are not where they ought to be in life. Margaret, driven and overconfident, decides the best way to rectify this is to quit her job and whip out a literary tour de force. Frustrated almost immediately and humiliated at every turn, Margaret turns to Letty for support. But as Letty, a stay-at-home mother of four, begins to feel pressured to make a good showing in the upper-middle-class Los Angeles society into which her husbands new job has thrust her, Margaret sees a plot unfolding thats better than anything she could make up. Desperate to finish her book and against her better nature, she pushes Letty to take greater and greater risks, and secretly steals her friends stories as fast as she can live them. Hungry for the worlds regard, Margaret rashly sacrifices one of the things most precious to her, until the novels suspenseful conclusion shows her the terrible consequences of her betrayal. Widely celebrated for her debut novel, Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz once again proves herself to be a writer of remarkable depth and range. Like Drowning Ruth, All is Vanity probes into the mysteries of the human heart and uncovers the passions that drive ordinary people to break the rules in pursuit of their own desires.

Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut.Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her familys farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge--she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathildas husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night.Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunts secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered.Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarzs first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on it.

Is it possible to be in love with two women at the same time? This is a question Jon has been asking himself frequently these days. Hes loved his wife Ginny since the days when a chance encounter in the halls of their high school would leave him unable to speak. But recently Jon has found himself bewitched by Freddi, his colleague at the ad agency, where late-night brainstorming sessions devolve into giggles and sexual attraction. As Jons guilt becomes all-consuming and Ginny inches closer discovery, a secret kept for thirty years threatens any hope of salvation. Weaving together past and present in a small Midwestern town, Schwarz beautifully conjures the emotional labyrinth of a marriage on the brink of collapse, and a history of love and revenge.