JANET FITCH

Josie Tyrell, art model, teen runaway, and denizen of LA's rock scene, finds a chance at real love with Micael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces her to his spiritual quest for beauty and to a world of sophistication she had never dreamed existed. But the day she is called to identify her lover's dead body, Josie's bright dreams all turn to black. Struggling to understand Michael's death, Josie finds herself both repelled by and attracted to his formidable mother, Meredith, who holds Josie responsible for her son's torment. With the luxurious prose and fever-pitch intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch has written a powerful new story of first love, loss, and a young woman's search for truth.

White Oleander is a painfully beautiful first novel about a young girl growing up the hard way. It is a powerful story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, their selfish love and cruel behaviour, and the search for love and identity.Astrid has been raised by her mother, a beautiful, headstrong poet. Astrid forgives her everything as her world revolves around this beautiful creature until Ingrid murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life. Astrids fierce determination to survive and be loved makes her an unforgettable figure.LIQUID POETRY - Oprah WinfreyTangled, Complex and extraordinarily moving - Observer

The unforgettable story of a young womans odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes on her journey to redemption. Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet who wields her luminous beauty to intimidate and manipulate men. Astrid worships her mother and cherishes their private world full of ritual and mystery - but their idyll is shattered when Astrids mother falls apart over a lover. Deranged by rejection, Ingrid murders the man, and is sentenced to life in prison. White Oleander is the unforgettable story of Astrids journey through a series of foster homes and her efforts to find a place for herself in impossible circumstances. Each home is its own universe, with a new set of laws and lessons to be learned. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become. Oprah Winfrey enjoyed this gripping first novel so much that she not only made it her book club pick, she asked if she could narrate the audio release.

A young Russian woman comes into her own in the midst of revolution and civil war in this "brilliant" novel set in "a world of furious beauty" (Los Angeles Review of Books). After the loves and betrayals of The Revolution of Marina M., young poet Marina Makarova finds herself alone amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War -- pregnant and adrift, forced to rely on her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child and eventually make her way back to her native city, Petrograd. After two years of revolution, the city that was once St. Petersburg is almost unrecognizable, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, its streets teeming with homeless children. Moved by their plight, though hardly better off herself, she takes on the challenge of caring for these orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction. Shaped by her countrys ordeals and her own trials -- betrayal and privation and inconceivable loss -- Marina evolves as a poet and a woman of sensibility and substance hardly imaginable at the beginning of her transformative odyssey. Chimes of a Lost Cathedral is the culmination of one womans s journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century -- the epic story of an artist who discovers her full power, passion, and creativity just as her revolution reveals its true direction for the future.

From the mega-bestselling author of White Oleander and Paint It Black, a sweeping historical saga of the Russian Revolution, as seen through the eyes of one young woman. St. Petersburg, New Years Eve, 1916. Marina Makarova is a young woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life, a life about to be violently upended by the vast forces of history. Swept up on these tides, Marina will join the marches for workers rights, fall in love with a radical young poet, and betray everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn. As her country goes through almost unimaginable upheaval, Marinas own coming-of-age unfolds, marked by deep passion and devastating loss, and the private heroism of an ordinary woman living through extraordinary times. This is the epic, mesmerizing story of one indomitable womans journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century.

Now a major film directed by Amber Tamblyn starring Alia Shawkat and Janet McTeerJanet Fitch writes the way women think in a way that is so different and poetic and brutal Amber Tamblyn, Fast CompanyReal . . . filled with sensual detail Oprah WinfreyAmy Poehler had given me the book . . . and said, "You should just read this, its amazing" And I did, and I was so blown away Amber Tamblyn, WWDA young womans search for truth in the aftermath of loss.Josie Tyrell, artists model, teen runaway, at home in LAs punk rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Micheal takes her into his sophisticated world. But then comes a call from the Los Angeles County Corner asking her to identify her lovers dead body.Passionate, wounded, fiercely alive, Josie walks the brink of her own destruction as she fights to discover what is left of the brilliant future she and Michael had dreamed.