“All kinds of funny—raucously, wickedly, sweetly, saucily, surprisingly, profanely funny…a wonderful novel.”—Jess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets

“Deft and funny, true and real. If you read one book this year, read this one.”—Molly Jong-Fast, author of The Social Climber’s Handbook

Senior editor at the online literary magazine The Nervous Breakdown and author of Totally Killer, author Greg Olear brings us a not-so-typical day in the life of stay-at-home dad Josh Lansky, juggling myriad fatherly responsibilities while dealing with the maddening realization that his  away-on-business wife just might be having an affair. Fathermucker is a sweet, heartrending, often hilarious look at family life from the dad’s perspective that Nick Hornby fans will most certainly respond to. As Jessica Anne Blau, author of Drinking Closer to Home and The Summer of Naked Swim Parties so insightfully points out, “Only a writer with the verve, daring, and great talent of Greg Olear could pull off a novel that deals with sippy cups, masturbation, autism spectrum disorder, affairs, and play-dates all at once.”

In 2016, construction workers in Istanbul made a remarkable discovery. Sealed in a lead pot twelve feet underground was a lost manuscript by the Byzantine princess and historian Anna Komnene-an intimate account of the royals who held sway in Constantinople in the High Middle Ages. This is the first English translation of the Anekdota, or Secret History, of Anna Komnene (1083-1153). Not since the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed at Quran has an archeological find threatened to upend everything we know about a heretofore-fuzzy historical period.

"A magnificent work of imagination and scholarship, Greg Olear''s Empress: The Secret History of Anna K. reveals the intrigues of 11th and 12th century Byzantium. Princess Anna Komnene, a precocious child and shrewd adult, exposes the power grabs, turns of fortunes, betrayals, and alliances that gave rise and fall to one of the world''s great empires. Times, they do change, but human nature does not."

-Ronlyn Domingue, internationally published author of The Mercy of Thin Air and the Keeper of Tales Trilogy

"With the imagination of a novelist and the exacting attention of a journalist, Greg Olear has written a transportative tale of sex, violence and politics. These timeless themes, and the characters they swirl around, make the richly embroidered tapestry of medieval details and Byzantine machinations he''s woven feel as urgent and compelling as current news."

-Aja Raden, author of Stoned and The Truth About Lies

MY FATHER-IN-LAW WAS BORN IN 1938, in a house without a toilet, in a flyspeck of a town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His grandfathers were both lumberjacks. His father was a plowman. If anything was expected of Franklin St. John at all, it was that he would follow one of those two career paths. Instead, through more quirks of fate that can quickly be recounted, he became, of all things, a metallurgical engineer. . . .

What he sees as a personal account of random events that happened to him, I view as a story of 20th century America itself. He is a legitimate rags-to-riches tale, a Horatio Alger story-the sort of character who isn''t much seen outside of fiction. He''s the American Dream made flesh, a popular myth come to life.

"You''re that rarest of things," I told him. "Something people talk about all the time, but hardly ever encounter: A self-made millionaire."

This book, by LA Times best-selling author Greg Olear, is that story.

“All kinds of funny—raucously, wickedly, sweetly, saucily, surprisingly, profanely funny…a wonderful novel.”—Jess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets

“Deft and funny, true and real. If you read one book this year, read this one.”—Molly Jong-Fast, author of The Social Climber’s Handbook

Senior editor at the online literary magazine The Nervous Breakdown and author of Totally Killer, author Greg Olear brings us a not-so-typical day in the life of stay-at-home dad Josh Lansky, juggling myriad fatherly responsibilities while dealing with the maddening realization that his  away-on-business wife just might be having an affair. Fathermucker is a sweet, heartrending, often hilarious look at family life from the dad’s perspective that Nick Hornby fans will most certainly respond to. As Jessica Anne Blau, author of Drinking Closer to Home and The Summer of Naked Swim Parties so insightfully points out, “Only a writer with the verve, daring, and great talent of Greg Olear could pull off a novel that deals with sippy cups, masturbation, autism spectrum disorder, affairs, and play-dates all at once.”

In 2016, construction workers in Istanbul made a remarkable discovery. Sealed in a lead pot twelve feet underground was a lost manuscript by the Byzantine princess and historian Anna Komnene-an intimate account of the royals who held sway in Constantinople in the High Middle Ages. This is the first English translation of the Anekdota, or Secret History, of Anna Komnene (1083-1153). Not since the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed at Quran has an archeological find threatened to upend everything we know about a heretofore-fuzzy historical period.

"A magnificent work of imagination and scholarship, Greg Olear''s Empress: The Secret History of Anna K. reveals the intrigues of 11th and 12th century Byzantium. Princess Anna Komnene, a precocious child and shrewd adult, exposes the power grabs, turns of fortunes, betrayals, and alliances that gave rise and fall to one of the world''s great empires. Times, they do change, but human nature does not."

-Ronlyn Domingue, internationally published author of The Mercy of Thin Air and the Keeper of Tales Trilogy

"With the imagination of a novelist and the exacting attention of a journalist, Greg Olear has written a transportative tale of sex, violence and politics. These timeless themes, and the characters they swirl around, make the richly embroidered tapestry of medieval details and Byzantine machinations he''s woven feel as urgent and compelling as current news."

-Aja Raden, author of Stoned and The Truth About Lies

MY FATHER-IN-LAW WAS BORN IN 1938, in a house without a toilet, in a flyspeck of a town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His grandfathers were both lumberjacks. His father was a plowman. If anything was expected of Franklin St. John at all, it was that he would follow one of those two career paths. Instead, through more quirks of fate that can quickly be recounted, he became, of all things, a metallurgical engineer. . . .

What he sees as a personal account of random events that happened to him, I view as a story of 20th century America itself. He is a legitimate rags-to-riches tale, a Horatio Alger story-the sort of character who isn''t much seen outside of fiction. He''s the American Dream made flesh, a popular myth come to life.

"You''re that rarest of things," I told him. "Something people talk about all the time, but hardly ever encounter: A self-made millionaire."

This book, by LA Times best-selling author Greg Olear, is that story.