Mark Helprin

"One winter night, Peter Lake--master mechanic and second-story man--attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks it is empty , the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the affair between a middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl dying of consumption. It is a love so powerful that Peter Lake, a simple and uneducated man, will be driven to stop time and bring back the dead."--

Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. He forges a denouement that is staggering...

A Roman student is torn from his carefree life when World War I breaks out, and fifty years later, recounts the triumphs and tragedies of his existence to an illiterate factory worker.

The bittersweet memoir of an aging man-of-the-world. In a tone tinged with humor and regret he describes his many lives, from banker to fighter pilot, to inmate of a mental asylum, commenting on every subject under the sun, including his visceral hate of coffee.

Set in a mythic New York City and spanning more than a century, follow a story of miracles, crossed destinies, and the age-old battle between good and evil.