Full AspenCat Catalog

"Set in 1960s California, this blockbuster debut is the hilarious, idiosyncratic and uplifting story of a female scientist whose career is constantly derailed by the idea that a woman's place is in the home, only to find herself starring as the host of America's most beloved TV cooking show. Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it's the...

Mesmerized by a band of girls in the park whom she perceives as enjoying a life of free and careless abandon, 1960s teen Evie Boyd becomes obsessed with gaining acceptance into their circle. Evie, grateful for their charismatic leader's attention, the sense of family the group offers, and the assurance of the girls, is swept into their chaotic cult existence. As things turn darker, her choices become riskier. A wonderfully written debut novel about...

One-time underground journalist Sandy Blair has come a long way from his radical roots in the '60s--until something unexpectedly draws him back: the bizarre and brutal murder of a rock promoter who made millions with the '60s band the Nazgûl. Now, as Sandy sets out to investigate the crime, he finds himself drawn back into his own past--a magical mystery tour of the pent-up passions of his generation. For a new messiah has resurrected the Nazgûl...

Here are real-time accounts of these years of turmoil: Calvin Trillin reports on the integration of Southern universities, E. B. White and John Updike wrestle with the enormity of the Kennedy assassination, and Jonathan Schell travels with American troops into the jungles of Vietnam. The murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., the fallout of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Six-Day War: All are brought to immediate...

From their first meeting during the turbulent summer of 1968, five young California mothers--Frankie, Linda, Brett, Ali, and Kath--form a sister-like bond as they confront the ups and downs of life and pursue their mutual dreams of becoming writers.

"It's London, the swinging sixties, and by all rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. Alas, his postings are usually rather unglamorous, but thankfully he has a knack for doing well for himself even in unpromising situations. In divided Berlin, he smuggled coffee into the East, a rather profitable racket until he had to transport something else-a spy. After an aborted mission on Berlin's famous "Bridge of Spies,"...

To escape an abusive marriage, Frankie Saunders flees across the country to Los Angeles with her reckless, profane Aunt Daisy, who will do whatever it takes to settle old scores and resolve the past--no matter what the damage, forcing Frankie to make some hard choices.

"Friendships are built on chatter, on gossip, on revelations--on talk. Over the course of the summer of 1965, Linda Rosenkrantz taped conversations between three friends (two straight, one gay) on the cusp of thirty vacationing at the beach: Emily, an actor; Vince, a painter; and Marsha, a writer. The result was Talk, a novel in dialogue ... Topics covered include LSD, fathers, exes, lovers, abortions, S&M, sculpture, books, cats, and of course,...

A group of Americans in Northern California in 1984 are struggling with the consequences of their lives in the sixties, still run by the passions of those times -- sexual and political -- which have refused to die. Among them is Zoyd Wheeler who is preparing for his annual act of televised insanity (for which he receives a government stipend) when an unwelcome face appears from out of his past. An old nemesis, federal prosecutor Brock Vond, storms...

The American West in the early 1960s appears to be a pastoral paradise: golden wheat fields, mist-filled canyons, frolicking animals. Aspiring novelist Aaron Holland Broussard has observed it from the open door of a boxcar, riding the rails for both inspiration and odd jobs. Jumping off in Denver, he finds work on a farm and meets Joanne McDuffy, an articulate and fierce college student and gifted painter. Their soul connection is immediate, but their...