A series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection

"In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon offers a compilation of pieces about literature--age-old classics as well as his own--that presents a unique look into his literary origins and influences, the books that shaped his taste and formed his ideas about writing and reading. Chabon asks why anyone would write an introduction, or for that matter, read one. His own daughter Rose prefers to skip them. Chabon's answer is simple and...

Retired to the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, rumored to be a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion : an African gray parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out-a top secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank...

By the New York Times–bestselling author of Moonglow: "When you read these stories, it may strike you how seldom you come across really beautiful writing" (USA Today).
Cherished by readers and critics alike for such extraordinary novels as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon is at the height of his considerable powers...

Essays inspired by Chabon's interactions with his four children and his own father illuminate the meaning, magic, and mysteries of fatherhood. "For the September 2016 issue of GQ, Michael Chabon wrote a piece about accompanying his son Abraham, then thirteen, to Paris Men's Fashion Week. Possessed with a precocious sense of style, Abe was in his element chatting with designers he idolized and turning a critical eye to the freshest runway looks of...

For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control,...