Most Popular Books by Heidi Pitlor

“By turns revealing, hilarious, dishy, and razor-sharp, Impersonation lives in that rarest of sweet spots: the propulsive page-turner for people with high literary standards.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers Allie Lang is a professional ghostwriter and a perpetually broke single mother to a young boy. Years of navigating her own and America’s cultural definitions of motherhood have left her a lapsed idealist. Lana Breban is a powerhouse lawyer, economist, and advocate for women’s rights with designs on elected office. She also has a son. Lana and her staff have decided she needs help softening her public image and that a memoir about her life as a mother will help. When Allie lands the job as Lana’s ghostwriter, it seems as if things will finally go Allie’s way. At last, she thinks, there will be enough money not just to pay her bills but to actually buy a house. After years of working as a ghostwriter for other celebrities, Allie believes she knows the drill: she has learned how to inhabit the lives of others and tell their stories better than they can. But this time, everything becomes more complicated. Allie’s childcare arrangements unravel; she falls behind on her rent; her subject, Lana, is better at critiquing than actually providing material; and Allie’s boyfriend decides to go on a road trip toward self-discovery. But as a writer for hire, Allie has gotten too used to being accommodating. At what point will she speak up for all that she deserves? A satirical, incisive snapshot of how so many of us now live, Impersonation tells a timely, insightful, and bitingly funny story of ambition, motherhood, and class.

Hannah was tall and graceful, naturally pretty, spirited and impulsive, the upper-class young woman who picked, of all men, Lovell---the introverted climate scientist who thought he could change the world if he could just get everyone to listen to reason. After a magical honeymoon, they settled in the suburbs to raise their two children. But over the years, Lovell and Hannah’s conversations have become charged with resentments and unspoken desires. She has become withdrawn. His work affords him a convenient distraction. And then, after one explosive argument, Hannah vanishes. For the first time, Lovell is forced to examine the trajectory of his marriage through the lens of memory. As he tries to piece together what happened to his wife--and to their life together--readers follow Hannah on that single day when a hasty decision proves irrevocable. With haunting intensity, a seamless balance of wit and heartbreak, and the emotional acuity that author Heidi Pitlor brings to every page, The Daylight Marriage mines the dark and delicate nature of a marriage. “A page-turning exploration of unexpressed love and unnecessary loss. Riveting and heartbreaking.” —GERALDINE BROOKS, author of Caleb’s Crossing “In The Daylight Marriage, there are two mysteries--the whereabouts of a missing woman and the vagaries of the human heart. Heidi Pitlor explores both of these enigmas with equal mastery, merging a shocking crime story with an incisive portrait of a failed marriage. The result is a novel that is fast-moving, emotionally complex, and ultimately heartbreaking.” —Tom Perrotta, author of Nine Inches “Pitlor brings forth the emotions that surge beneath the surface with the precision and power of a conductor . . . This powerful analysis of how dreams become nightmares will make readers want to hold their loved ones close.” —Booklist, starred review

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee and series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Without stories, we cannot live well,” shares guest editor Min Jin Lee, describing how storytelling affects and nurtures readers. The Best American Short Stories 2023 features twenty pieces of short fiction that reflect a world full of fractured relationships, but also wondrous hope. A lifelong friendship may become a casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war. Rejected by his lover, a man seeks to reconcile with his family. Twitter users miraculously muster enough empathy to help a lost cat find a forever home. Enlightening, poignant, and undeniably human, the stories in this anthology bravely confront societal darkness and offer, in Lee’s words, “our emotional truths, restoring our sanity and providing comfort for the days ahead.” The Best American Short Stories 2023 includes Cherline Bazile • Maya Binyam • Tom Bissell • Taryn Bowe • Da-Lin • Benjamin Ehrlich• Sara Freeman • Lauren Groff • Nathan Harris • Jared Jackson • Sana Krasikov • Danica Li • Ling Ma • Manuel Muñoz • Joanna Pearson • Souvankham Thammavongsa • Kosiso Ugwueze • Corinna Vallianatos • Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi • Esther Yi

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, author of Matrix and The Vaster Wilds, and series editor Heidi Pitlor. “There have never been as many exquisitely built stories in existence than there are now,” proclaims guest editor Lauren Groff in her introduction. This abundance led to a volume of robust stories with the nerve to push against narrative expectations. The Best American Short Stories 2024 boasts a collection of twenty stories that “buzz with their own strange logic.” A man becomes a tourist in his own hometown. An unemployed jeweler sails in an antique slave ship. A therapist decides to call an ex-patient years after their last session. Daring and resonant, the stories in this volume invite in Groff “a feeling that both the author and I were simultaneously discovering something together.” The Best American Short Stories 2024 includes JAMEL BRINKLEY • ALEXANDRA CHANG • LAURIE COLWIN • MOLLY DEKTAR • TAISIA KITAISKAIA • DANIEL MASON • JIM SHEPARD • AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI • PAUL YOON • and others

On an island off the coast of Maine, the Miller family reunites to celebrate the father''s 75th birthday. Each of the adult children is expecting a first child, and at the same time each is at a major crossroads in life. The novel deftly explores the myriad ways of seeking sustenance after disappointment or loss.

Presents a selection of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer and series editor Heidi Pitlor. Andrew Sean Greer, “an exceptionally lovely writer, capable of mingling humor with sharp poignancy” (Washington Post), selects twenty stories out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.

Best-selling, award-winning, pop culture powerhouse Roxane Gay guest edits this year’s Best American Short Stories, the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction. “I am looking for the artful way any given story is conveyed,” writes Roxane Gay in her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2018, “but I also love when a story has a powerful message, when a story teaches me something about the world.” The artful, profound, and sometimes funny stories Gay chose for the collection transport readers from a fraught family reunion to an immigration detention center, from a psychiatric hospital to a coed class sleepover in a natural history museum. We meet a rebellious summer camper, a Twitter addict, and an Appalachian preacher—all characters and circumstances that show us what we “need to know about the lives of others.”

Presents a collection of stories selected from magazines in the United States and Canada.

Edited by the award-winning, best-selling author Richard Russo, this year''s collection boasts a satisfying "chorus of twenty stories that are by turns playful, ironic, somber, and meditative" (Wall Street Journal). With the masterful Russo picking the best of the best, America''s oldest and best-selling story anthology is sure to be of "enduring quality" (Chicago Tribune) this year.

“As our vision becomes more global, our storytelling is stretching in many ways. Stories increasingly change point of view, switch location, and sometimes pack as much material as a short novel might,” writes guest editor Elizabeth Strout. “It’s the variety of voices that most indicates the increasing confluence of cultures involved in making us who we are.” The Best American Short Stories 2013 presents an impressive diversity of writers who dexterously lead us into their corners of the world. In “Miss Lora,” Junot Díaz masterfully puts us in the mind of a teenage boy who throws aside his better sense and pursues an intimate affair with a high school teacher. Sheila Kohler tackles innocence and abuse as a child wanders away from her mother, in thrall to a stranger she believes is the “Magic Man.” Kirstin Valdez Quade’s “Nemecia” depicts the after-effects of a secret, violent family trauma. Joan Wickersham’s “The Tunnel” is a tragic love story about a mother’s declining health and her daughter’s helplessness as she struggles to balance her responsibility to her mother and her own desires. New author Callan Wink’s “Breatharians” unsettles the reader as a farm boy shoulders a grim chore in the wake of his parents’ estrangement. “Elizabeth Strout was a wonderful reader, an author who knows well that the sound of one’s writing is just as important as and indivisible from the content,” writes series editor Heidi Pitlor. “Here are twenty compellingly told, powerfully felt stories about urgent matters with profound consequences.”

Die Ghostwriterin Allie bringt sich und ihren Sohn Cass gerade so durch. Von ihrem Idealismus in Bezug auf Mutterschaft und feministische Erziehung musste sie sich längst verabschieden, zu Gunsten der pragmatischen Frage, wo eigentlich die Miete für den nächsten Monat herkommen soll. Doch dann ergattert sie einen hochkarätigen Auftrag: Sie soll ein Buch für die bekannte Aktivistin Lana schreiben. Die ist ebenfalls Mutter, kennt jedoch keine wirtschaftlichen Nöte und hat zudem Ambitionen auf ein politisches Amt. Die Zusammenarbeit der beiden ungleichen Frauen birgt ungeahnten Zündstoff ...

Quand Hannah a rencontré Lovell, elle sortait d''une rupture difficile et cherchait juste "quelqu''un de bien". Lui n''avait pas l''intention de passer à côté de la femme de sa vie. Dix-neuf ans plus tard, mariés et installés dans une banlieue résidentielle de Boston, ils sont presque devenus l''un pour l''autre des étrangers. Au lendemain d''une dispute, Hannah décide de bousculer sa routine domestique. Ayant quelques heures devant elle, elle prend sa voiture et part "à l''aventure". Sur la plage où elle s''arrête, un homme l''accoste et engage la conversation. Il l''inquiète autant qu''il la trouble. Depuis combien de temps n''a-t-elle pas ressenti cela ? A la nuit tombée, Hannah n''est pas rentrée. Puis les jours passent. Sans nouvelles. Et l''anxiété grandit. Essayant de faire bonne figure vis-à-vis des enfants, Lovell est contraint pour la première fois d''examiner la trajectoire de leur couple. Et tandis qu''il cherche à savoir ce qui a pu arriver à sa femme, nous sont révélés, à travers les yeux d''Hannah, les événements de la journée. Entremêlant avec virtuosité les misères de la vie conjugale et le mystère entourant une disparition, Heidi Pitlor livre un roman inexorable, émotionnellement complexe, qui hantera le lecteur longtemps après les dernières pages.