Random House: Staycation Reading
Monumental books and tremendous ebook deals!
Have you been dreaming of starting that Big Book but just haven’t had the time? Take advantage of the long weekend and immerse yourself in one of these. Then get excited for what’s on the horizon (hello, new Outlander novel!).
TIME FOR BIG FICTION
#1 New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon returns with the newest novel in the epic Outlander series.
The past may seem the safest place to be . . . but it is the most dangerous time to be alive. . . . Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same.On sale November 23 and available to preorder now! READ MORE »Order Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone
#1 New York Times Bestseller
George R. R. Martin
Now in paperback!
Charlie Kaufman Penguin Random House ▸
TAKE A TRIP TO D.C.
“Important . . . [a] landmark presidential biography . . . Bird is able to build a persuasive case that the Carter presidency deserves this new look.”—The New York Times Book ReviewAn essential reevaluation of the complex triumphs and tragedies of Jimmy Carter’s presidential legacy—from the expert biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of American Prometheus. READ MORE »
Order The Outlier Shop Penguin Random House ▸
New York Times Bestseller
Penguin Random House ▸ #1 New York Times Bestseller
Barack Obama
Penguin Random House ▸ LET’S DO A DEEP DIVE
A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House.“This biography-through-letters gives an intimate and warm voice to the imagination behind the treasury of uncanny tales that is Shirley Jackson’s legacy.”—Joyce Carol Oates READ MORE »
Order The Letters of Shirley Jackson Shop Penguin Random House ▸
READ AN EXCERPT
One
Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco, California, on December 14, 1916. Her father, Leslie, had immigrated from England at age twelve with his mother and two sisters and was a self-made successful business executive with the largest lithography company in the city. Her mother, Geraldine, was a proud descendant of a long line of famous San Francisco architects and could trace her ancestry back to before the Revolutionary War.
Shirley primarily grew up in Burlingame, an upper-middle-class suburb south of the city. But when she was sixteen, Leslie was promoted and transferred, and the family moved—luxuriously, by ship, through the Panama Canal—to Rochester, in upstate New York. The Jacksons quickly joined the Rochester Country Club and became well-established in the city’s active society world. The move was very hard on Shirley, who missed California and her friends there, especially her best friend, Dorothy Ayling. She finished high school in Rochester (where one of her classes was once interrupted for a few minutes so that Shirley could marvel at snow falling outside the window), then attended Rochester University for one difficult year, before deciding to spend the next year writing alone in her room at home, with the lofty goal of producing a thousand words a day. Little of what Shirley wrote during that period is believed to have survived.