Report an issue
Tell us what's wrong and we'll take a look.
Thanks – we got it. We'll review and follow up if needed.
From the "wonderfully quirky imagination" of the New York Times–bestselling author: A tabloid reporter is surprised to find magic in a mundane world (The New York Times). Vera Pearl is a staff writer for This Week, a supermarket tabloid which trades in the bizarre and the absurd—though rarely, if ever, the true. No one is better than Vera at imagining these weird, wild stories, because more than anything, she wants them to be real. During one particularly slow week, Vera takes a photograph snapped by a colleague showing two children selling lemonade outside their Brooklyn home and drafts up a scoop to fit the snap, the story of two enterprising children who have discovered—and are profiting off of—the literal Fountain of Youth. By astonishing coincidence—or perhaps by magic—the details she concocts about the children (except for the properties of the tap water) turn out to be true, and hundreds of miracle-seekers descend upon this modern Lourdes-in-Flatbush. The resulting lawsuit sends this master of hoaxes into a very real tailspin: she is fired, her estranged husband flies in from Los Angeles to whisk away their precocious young daughter, and Vera takes off for Arizona to attend a meeting of the Cryptobiological Society, hoping for evidence of their furry quarry, Bigfoot. Just one glance, and Vera's longing to finally transcend the quotidian may come true . . .
Francine Prose
Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.
More by Francine Prose
Why Readwise Books?
Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →