Hubert Selby Libri

In Coney Island, Brooklyn, lonely widow Sarah Goldfarb wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. In her obsessive quest, she becomes addicted to diet pills, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and best friend, Tyrone, attempt to secure an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by selling heroin.Entranced by the gleaming visions of their futures, these four convince themselves that unexpected setbacks are only temporary. Even as their lives slowly deteriorate around them, they cling to their delusions and become utterly consumed in a spiral of drugs and addiction, refusing to see that they have instead created their own worst nightmares."Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists . . . To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." —The New York Times Book Review

Harry White is the man other men want to be: admired by his peers, talented, rich, and desired by countless women. His steady rise to a position of unprecedented influence in a New York investment firm seems inevitable to those who know him, and on the way he acquires a beautiful wife and children.

The decadence and violence of the urban streets is graphically portrayed in this novel set in a post-WWII Brooklyn slum.

Set in the Bronx, this novel tells the story of Bobby, a young black man, and his Hispanic friend, Maria. Their lives together are irrevocably shattered when a vicious Hispanic street gang attack leaves Bobby savagely beaten and Maria lying in a hospital bed with a badly burned face.

Fat Phil can't lose at dice, even when his friends turn nasty and he's trying his hardest; a salesman finds success comes from fortune cookie mottoes, but panics when these mottoes turn against him; and, a commuter finds himself obsessed with a plain young woman on his train, at the expense of his marriage.

'It is quite an experience to be locked up all by yourself in any size room' says the anonymous narrator of Hubert Selby Jr.'s second novel. What follows is a startling series of recollections and fantasies that illuminate the workings of a prisoner's unhinged mind. He yearns for his violent childhood, rages against obscure authorities, and imagines enacting horrible revenge on those who imprisoned him. The prisoner's remand cell becomes the scene of a surreal mental torture. Disorienting, nightmarish and structurally inventive, "The Room" is a shocking examination of the suffering humans can inflict on each other.

Driven to desperation by the hand the world has dealt him, a man attempts to buy a gun to end his life. But a computer malfunction causes a delay with the gun license: a life-saving event that sees the man questioning why he should die when there are so many others he believes should go before him.