Kathleen Rooney Books in Order

Kathleen Rooney examines Oprah Winfrey’s book club as a meeting point of literature, television and commerce. Research, author interviews and analysis of selected novels explore its cultural influence and the disputes over taste and authority that accompanied its popularity.

A sequence of poems approaches marriage through dreams, contrasting romantic aspiration with doubt and ceremony with private feeling. Shifting voices, formal play and echoes of older poetic traditions explore the unstable relationship between sincere commitment and the rituals surrounding it.

Personal essays follow a young woman negotiating adulthood through unlikely romances, political work, literary curiosity and family experiences. Kathleen Rooney considers love, mortality and citizenship while questioning how to create a meaningful life in a country that disappoints its ideals.

Drawing on her work as an artists’ model, Kathleen Rooney considers what it means to pose nude and become an object of artistic attention. Personal experience and historical examples connect the practice with broader questions about beauty, vulnerability, desire and mortality.

A novel in poems follows Robinson, a figure drawn from the work of poet Weldon Kees, through mid-century American life. His uneasy relationship with provincial roots and urban experience reveals tensions between optimism, cultural excess and an enduring sense of alienation.

A young staffer works for an Illinois senator during the 2008 election while another senator captures national attention. Frustrating office routines give way to a scandalous discovery, leaving her to weigh political influence against loyalty, self-interest and the responsibilities of citizenship.

On New Year’s Eve in 1984, an elderly former advertising writer walks across Manhattan toward a party. Encounters along the way prompt memories of professional triumphs, private disappointments and a city whose changes mirror the unexpected turns of her own life.

A novel composed of poems and brief prose pieces inhabits a surreal world inspired by René Magritte’s paintings. An immortal dog and a guardian angel guide readers through watchful rooms where familiar objects become unstable and humor mingles with unease.

A messenger pigeon and an American officer enter the First World War from very different lives. Their paths converge during a desperate battle in France, exposing the demands of duty and endurance and the complicated consequences of becoming celebrated for wartime heroism.

These poems consider the disappearance of earlier generations and the passing of beauty, strength and virtue. Historical references meet contemporary political anger and dark comedy, asking how mortality and collective memory shape the present and the futures people imagine.

A teenage girl leaves Chicago for Hollywood and becomes a silent-film star, but fame conceals a dangerous marriage and personal tragedy. As her career shifts, building an extraordinary miniature castle offers another creative purpose amid the upheavals of twentieth-century America.

A former college swimmer finds himself alone in the ocean after falling from a family cruise ship. Unsure exactly how he went overboard, he struggles to survive while memories of strained relationships and accumulated regrets force him to reconsider what keeps him afloat.