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25 Books You Can't Put Down

Go on, take what you need. A perfect mystery, a mouthful of poetry…O serves up a smorgasbord of the summer's best reads.


Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment

 

Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment

208 pages; Pantheon

After a lifetime together, 70-something Alex and his wife, Ruth, are still smitten—with each other ("He has loved her for so long that he can no longer distinguish between passion and familiarity") and with their elderly dachshund, Dorothy. About to sell their Manhattan walk-up, the couple is caught up in crisis: Their dog is suddenly paralyzed, a truck jackknifes in a tunnel, news channels click into terrorist-hype overdrive. Read Jill Ciment's Heroic Measures (Pantheon) for its painterly depictions of a rattled city, its deliciously biting satire of media and real estate madness, its tender knowledge of the creaturely ties that bind.

Q&A: Read a conversation with Jill Ciment
First chapter: Read an excerpt from Heroic Measures 
Photos: Charlotte Jenks Lewis/Studio D