A #1 New York Times Bestseller: Mark Helprin’s masterpiece transports you to New York of the Belle Époque, to a city clarified by a siege of unprecedented snows, and to a love story that is one of the most beautiful and unforgettable in American literature. One winter night, Peter Lake—master mechanic and second-story man—attempts to rob a fortresslike mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks it is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the affair between a middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl dying of consumption. It is a love so powerful that Peter, a simple and uneducated man, will be driven to stop time and bring back the dead. "Utterly extraordinary . . . A piercing sense of the beautiful arising from narrative and emotional fantasy is everywhere alive in the novel . . . Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled."— New York Times Book Review "Utterly extraordinary . . . A piercing sense of the beautiful arising from narrative and emotional fantasy is everywhere alive in the novel . . . Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled." - New York Times Book Review "This novel stretches the boundaries of contemporary literature. It is a gifted writer's love affair with the language." - Newsday "A prodigious, imaginative vibration of a novel." - D.T. Max, New York Times "A book of wonders." - Vanity Fair "He creates tableaux of such beauty and clarity that the inner eye is stunned." - Publisher's Weekly Mark Helprin's magical masterpiece will transport you to New York of the Belle Epoque, to a city clarified by a siege of unprecedented snows. One winter night, Peter Lake - master mechanic and master second-storey man - attempts to rob a fortress-like mansion on the Upper West Side. Though he thinks it is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the affair between a middle-aged Irish burglar and Beverly Penn, a young girl who is dying of consumption. It is a love so powerful that Peter Lake, a simple and uneducated man, will be driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature. "This novel stretches the boundaries of contemporary literature. It is a gifted writer's love affair with the language." - Newsday "Is it not astonishing that a work so rooted in fantasy, filled with narrative high jinks and comic flights, stands forth centrally as a moral discourse? It is indeed . . . . I find myself nervous, to a degree I don't recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance." - Front Page, The New York Times Book Review A New York Times Bestseller Educated at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford, Mark Helprin served in the Israeli army, Israeli Air Force, and British Merchant Navy. He is the author of, among other titles, Refiner's Fire, Ellis Island and Other Stories, Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case, The Pacific and Other Stories, and Freddy and Fredericka. Mark Helprin  is the acclaimed author of Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War, The Oceans and the Stars, Freddy and Fredericka, The Pacific, Ellis Island, Memoir from Antproof Case, and numerous other works. His novels are read around the world, translated into over twenty languages. A WHITE HORSE ESCAPES THERE WAS a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when snow covered the streets gently and was not deep, and the sky was swept with vibrant stars, except in the east, where dawn was beginning in a light blue flood. The air was motionless, but would soon start to move as the sun came up and winds from Canada came charging down the Hudson. The horse had escaped from his master's small clapboard stable in Brooklyn. He trotted alone over the carriage road of the Williamsburg Bridge, before the light, while the toll keeper was sleeping by his stove and many stars were still blazing above the city. Fresh snow on the bridge muffled his hoofbeats, and he sometimes turned his head and looked behind him to see if he was being followed. He was warm from his own effort and he breathed steadily, having loped four or five miles through the dead of Brooklyn past silent churches and shuttered stores. Far to the south, in the black, ice-choked waters of the Narrows, a sparkling light marked the ferry on its way to Manhattan, where only market men were up, waiting for the fishing boats to glide down through Hell Gate and the night. The horse was crazy, but, still, he was able to worry about what he had done. He knew that shortly his master and mistress would arise and light the fire. Utterly humiliated, the cat would be tossed out the kitchen door, to fly backward into a snow-covered sawdust pile. The scent of blueberries and hot batter would mix with the sweet smell of a pine fire, and not too long afterward his master would stride across