Miranda Cowley Heller is the American author of the critically acclaimed debut novel The Paper Palace (2021). Before her writing career, she worked as associate fiction and books editor at Cosmopolitan Magazine, and for almost a decade she was Senior Vice President and Head of Drama Series at HBO, where she developed some tremendously successful shows.
Miranda Cowley Heller
Miranda Cowley Heller
The Paper Palace
The Pond
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Summer in Cape Cod
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On How Personal Life Influenced The Paper Palace
Miranda Cowley Heller’s Mother and Sister
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On Her Sisters as an Inspiration
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Miranda Cowley Heller’s Step-Father, Paul Resika – Painter
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The Beach
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Still Life by Miranda Cowley Heller
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Hummingbird
Inspiration
The Beach Path
An Ambiguous Ending
Featured book by Miranda Cowley Heller
The Paper Palace
It’s a glorious August morning, when Elle Bishop wakes up after a dinner party and heads for a swim in the freshwater pond below ‘The Paper Palace’ – the gently decaying summer camp in the back woods of Cape Cod where her family has spent every summer for generations. As she dives into the cold water, she suddenly remembers the passionate encounter she had the previous night, while her husband and mother chatted to the guests inside. This is the beginning of a story which will unfold over twenty-four hours and across fifty years, as decades of family legacies, love, lies, secrets, and one unspeakable incident in her childhood lead Elle to the precipice of a life-changing decision.
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All The Light We Cannot See
By Anthony Doerr
Recommended by: Elif Shafak & Miranda Cowley Heller
Publish Date: 2014 Awards: 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
In this powerful novel, set against the backdrop of WW2, the lives of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl who fled to Brittany with her father after the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940, and Werner, a German orphan boy whose…
The Poisonwood Bible
By Barbara Kingsolver
Recommended by: Miranda Cowley Heller & Bonnie Garmus
Publish Date: 1998
The story of a family’s tragic undoing and efforts to rebuild what’s been lost, The Poisonwood Bible is an epic novel full of suspense. Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist, decides to take his wife, four daughters and mission…
Pride & Prejudice
By Jane Austen
Recommended by: Miranda Cowley Heller
Publish Date: 1813
While Mrs Bennet wishes nothing better for her daughters than the prospect of an advantageous marriage, her daughter Elizabeth thinks otherwise. When the wealthy and eligible bachelor Mr Bingley moves into the neighbourhood, he soon becomes attached to Elizabeth’s…
Cape Cod
By Henry David Thoreau
Recommended by: Miranda Cowley Heller
Publish Date: 1865
In this fascinating book, Henry David Thoreau details his journey of discovery along the Massachusetts coastline. Spending his days walking along the beach and his nights in lighthouses, fishing huts and remote farms, Thoreau came to more deeply understand the complex…