Telegraph Avenue: A Novel

From Michael Chabon, the bestselling author of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay', his first novel in five years is a lovingly painted pop-culture epic.

One street, two families. As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there, longtime friends, band mates and co-regents of Brokeland Records. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary nurse midwives.

When former star quarterback Gibson Goode announces plans to go forward with the construction of his latest Dogpile megastore on Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear the worst for their vulnerable little enterprise. But behind Goode's announcement a nefarious story lurks.

As their husbands struggle to mount a defence, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a professional struggle that tests the limits of their friendship. And, simultaneously, into their already tangled lives comes Titus Joyner, the teenaged son Archy has never acknowledged.

An intimate epic set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all of its own, 'Telegraph Avenue' is Michael Chabon's most dazzling book yet.