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A is a work of fiction in which Andre Alexis presents the compelling narrative of Alexander Baddeley, a Toronto book reviewer obsessed with the work of the elusive and mythical poet Avery Andrews. Baddeley is in awe with Andrews's ability as a poet — more than anything he wants to understand the inspiration behind his work — so much so that, following in the footsteps of countless pilgrims throughout literary history, Baddeley actually tracks Andrews down thinking that meeting his literary hero will provide some answers. Their meeting results in a meditation and a revelation about the creative act itself that generates more and more questions about what it means to be "inspired." Alexis further develops this narrative through a reflection in essay form presented as an annex that build layers of thought upon not only the original narrative, but provides Alexis's own motives (and perhaps, obsessions) behind writing A.

A, B, C: Three Short Novels contains the first three novels of Samuel R. Delany's long and illustrious career.

The Jewels of Aptor is a science-fantasy story about a seafaring quest that sets out to find powerful magic jewels on a mystical, forbidden island where unimaginable danger lies.

The Ballad of Beta-2 is about a future academic searching for the true story behind an interstellar voyage, a journey over multiple generations that ended in tragedy.

They Fly at Çiron is a fantasy about the clash between a marauding army and a peaceful village at the foot of a mountain from which a race of winged people oversees both sides.

Presenting these three novels in this omnibus volume for the first time, along with a new foreword and afterword by the author, A, B, C showcases Delany's masterful storytelling ability and deep devotion to his craft.

Samuel R. Delany’s stories are available in Aye, and Gomorrah and Other Stories (science fiction and fantasy) and Atlantic: Three Tales (experimental fiction). He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. His novel Dark Reflections won the Stonewall Book Award in 2008. He has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and received the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master of Science Fiction Award. His novels include science-fiction works such as Nova, Dhalgren, The Fall of the Towers, Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection; also the four-volume fantasy series Return to Nevèrÿon. Delany is the author of several other novels and works of nonfiction. He lives in New York City and has recently retired after sixteen years of teaching creative writing at Temple University.

A highly charged fiction debut about a young woman in India, and the love that both shatters and transforms her.

She is twenty, restless in New Delhi. Her mother has died; her father has left for Singapore.

He is a few years older, just back to India from New York.

When they meet in a café one afternoon, she — lonely, hungry for experience, yearning to break free of tradition — casts aside her fears and throws herself headlong into a love affair, one that takes her where she has never been before.

Told in a voice at once gritty and lyrical, mournful and frank, A Bad Character marks the arrival of an astonishingly gifted new writer. It is an unforgettable hymn to a dangerous, exhilarating city, and a portrait of desire and its consequences as timeless as it is universal.

Winner of the Anthony Award for Best First Novel!

Stella Hardesty dispatched her abusive husband with a wrench shortly before her fiftieth birthday. A few years later, she’s so busy delivering home-style justice on her days off, helping other women deal with their own abusive husbands and boyfriends, that she barely has time to run her sewing shop in her rural Missouri hometown. Some men need more convincing than others, but it’s usually nothing a little light bondage or old-fashioned whuppin’ can’t fix. Since Stella works outside of the law, she’s free to do whatever it takes to get the job done—as long as she keeps her distance from the handsome devil of a local sheriff, Goat Jones.

When young mother Chrissy Shaw asks Stella for help with her no-good husband, Roy Dean, it looks like an easy case. Until Roy Dean disappears with Chrissy’s two-year-old son, Tucker. Stella quickly learns that Roy Dean was involved with some very scary men, as she tries to sort out who’s hiding information and who’s merely trying to kill her. It’s going to take a hell of a fight to get the little boy back home to his mama, but if anyone can do it, it’s Stella Hardesty.

A Bad Day for Sorry won an Anthony Award for Best First Novel and an RT Book Award for Best First Mystery. It was also shortlisted for Edgar, Barry, Crimespree, and Macavity Awards, and it was named to lists of the year’s best mystery debuts by the Chicago Sun-Times and South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWmH_CMZTzQ

"The burlesque echoes the greatest Spanish classics, from Quevedo to Camilo José Cela." — M. García Posada, El País

A Bad End is the story of Goyito, a dwarf at the end of his life, who tells us, in a bitter and sarcastic way, the miserable reality of his lonely childhood, his macabre experiences as a circus clown, and his liaisons dangereuses in Madrid's underworld. Mischief, desire, death, ambition, revenge — the life of a rascal told in exuberant, exhilarating language. Winner of the Premio Ojo Crítico.

Fernando Royuela is a Spanish lawyer and fiction writer who lives in Madrid, Spain.

Shamus Awards Best Novel

Working late-night surveillance at a luxury condominium development, Chicago private investigator Joe Kozmarski encounters a burglary crew. Two of the crew members show up in a police cruiser dressed in uniform. In the chaos that follows, Kozmarski shoots and kills one of the thieves, who, like the rest of the crew, is one of Chicago's Finest. And just like that Kozmarski finds he's in for many a bad night's sleep.

Kozmarski joins the burglary crew, working as an inside agent for his old friend Lieutenant Bill Gubman. Facing dangerous suspicions from both the criminal gang and the uncorrupted ranks of the police department, uncertain about who wishes to help him stay alive and who wishes to kill him, Kozmarski takes his wildest ride yet. A Bad Night's Sleep pushes full throttle through the streets of Chicago to a stunning conclusion.

M. Blanc m'avait pourtant prévenu : « Quand on entre dans le grosso modo du Lion, rien ne va plus ! Une période de haute merde commence. »

Tout foire : les femmes les plus choucardes deviennent tartes comme un plat de furoncles et les mecs les plus virils se mettent à goder comme des cravates !

Voilà pourquoi, ayant à charge de protéger un couple de vieux kroums gâtochards, nous nous retrouvons, mes potes et moi, avec quatre cadavres sur les brandillons.

Moi, tu me connais ? Au début, je ne voulais pas y croire, cartésien comme il est, ton Sana.

Seulement, j'ai vite pigé ma douleur !

On vit une époque épique, je te jure !

Henri Michaux (1899–1984), the great French poet and painter, set out as a young man to see the Far East. Traveling from India to the Himalayas, and on to China and Japan, Michaux voices his vivid impressions, cutting opinions, and curious insights: he has no trouble speaking his mind. Part fanciful travelogue and part exploration of culture, A Barbarian in Asia is presented here in its original translation by Sylvia Beach, the famous American-born bookseller in Paris.

Fue uno de los incidentes menos gloriosos de una antigua guerra.

Provocó la destrucción de dos soles y de los miles de millones de vidas que sustentaban.

Ahora, ochocientos años después, la luz del primero de estos antiguos errores ha llegado al orbital de la Cultura Masaq. La luz del segundo podría no llegar a hacerlo.

Miles Ryan's life seemed to end the day his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident two years ago. Missy had been his first love, and Miles fervently believes she will be his last. As a deputy sheriff in the North Carolina town of New Bern, he not only grieves for Missy, but longs to bring the unknown driver to justice.

Then Miles meets Sarah Andrew. The second-grade teacher of his son, Jonah, Sarah had left Baltimore after a difficult divorce to start over in the gentler surroundings of New Bern. Perhaps it is her own emotional wounds that make her sensitive to the hurt she sees first in Jonah's eyes, and then in his father's. Tentatively, Sarah and Miles reach out to each other. Soon they are both laughing for the first time in years.and falling in love.

Neither will be able to guess how closely linked they are to a shocking secret – one that will force them to question everything they ever believed in. and make a heartbreaking choice that will change their lives for ever.

In A Bend In The Road, Nicholas Sparks writes with a luminous intensity about life's bitter turns and incomparable sweetness. His affirming message carries a powerful lesson about the imperfections of being human, the mistakes we all make, and the joy that comes when we give ourselves to love.

Daniel Abraham

The stories in A Better Angel describe the terrain of human suffering — illness, regret, mourning, sympathy — in the most unusual of ways. In “Stab,” a bereaved twin starts a friendship with a homicidal fifth grader in the hope that she can somehow lead him back to his dead brother. In “Why Antichrist?” a boy tries to contact the spirit of his dead father and finds himself talking to the Devil instead. In the remarkable title story, a ne’er do well pediatrician returns home to take care of his dying father, all the while under the scrutiny of an easily-disappointed heavenly agent.

With Gob’s Grief and The Children’s Hospital, Chris Adrian announced himself as a writer of rare talent and originality. The stories in A Better Angel, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, and McSweeney’s, demonstrate more of his endless inventiveness and wit, and they confirm his growing reputation as a most exciting and unusual literary voice — of heartbreaking, magical, and darkly comic tales.

"In each little life we can see great truth and beauty, and in each little life we glimpse the way of all things in the universe."

DEAN KOONTZ thought he had everything he needed. A successful novelist with more than twenty #1 New York Times bestsellers to his credit, Dean had forged a career out of industry and imagination. He had been married to his high school sweetheart, Gerda, since the age of twenty, and together they had made a happy life for themselves in their Southern California home. It was the picture of peace and contentment. Then along came Trixie.

Dean had always wanted a dog-had even written several books in which dogs were featured. But not until Trixie was he truly open to the change that such a beautiful creature could bring about in him. Trixie had intelligence, a lack of vanity, and an uncanny knack for living in the present. And because she was joyful and direct as all dogs are, she put her heart into everything-from chasing tennis balls, to playing practical jokes, to protecting those she loved.

A retired service dog with Canine Companions for Independence, Trixie became an assistance dog of another kind. She taught Dean to trust his instincts, persuaded him to cut down to a fifty-hour work week, and, perhaps most important, renewed in him a sense of wonder that will remain with him for the rest of his life. She mended him in many ways.

Trixie weighed only sixty-something pounds, Dean occasionally called her Short Stuff, and she lived less than twelve years. In this big world, she was a little thing, but in all the ways that mattered, including the effect she had on those who loved her, she lived a big life.

"Highly recommended – well-rounded, believable characters, a multi-layered plot solidly based on human nature, all authentically set in the England of 1917 – an outstanding and riveting read." – Stephanie Laurens

Already deservedly lauded for the superb historical crime novels featuring shell-shocked Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge (A Lonely Death, A Pale Horse et al), acclaimed author Charles Todd upped the ante by introducing readers to a wonderful new series protagonist, World War One battlefield nurse Bess Crawford. Featured for a third time in A Bitter Truth, Bess reaches out to help an abused and frightened young woman, only to discover that no good deed ever goes unpunished when the good Samaritan nurse finds herself falsely accused of murder. A terrific follow up to Todd's A Duty to the Dead and An Impartial Witness, A Bitter Truth is another thrilling and evocative mystery from 'one of the most respected writers in the genre' (Denver Post) and a treat for fans of Elizabeth George, Anne Perry, Martha Grimes, and Jacqueline Winspear.

Amy Bloom was nominated for a National Book Award for her first collection, Come to Me, and her fiction has appeared in "The New Yorker, Story, Antaeus, " and other magazines, and in The Best American Short Stories""and""Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards." "In her new collection, she enhances her reputation as a true artist of the form.

Here are characters confronted with tragedy, perplexed by emotions, and challenged to endure whatever modern life may have in store. A loving mother accompanies her daughter in her journey to become a man, and discovers a new, hopeful love. A stepmother and stepson meet again after fifteen years and a devastating mistake, and rediscover their familial affection for each other. And in "The Story," a widow bent on seducing another woman's husband constructs and deconstructs her story until she has "made the best and happiest ending" possible "in this world."

When Ernest Fletcher is found bludgeoned to death in his study, everyone is shocked and mystified: Ernest was well liked and respected, so who would want to kill him? Enter Superintendent Hannasyde who, with consummate skill, begins to uncover the complexities of Fletcher’s life. It seems the real Fletcher was far from the gentleman he pretended to be.

Third in the intriguing Leonardo da Vinci mystery series known for "capturing the essence of 15th-century Milan ".

As court engineer to the Duke of Milan, Leonardo da Vinci turns his superior mind to many pursuits – from outlandish contraptions to the odd murder…

With war looming ever closer, the iron-fisted Duke of Milan calls upon Master da Vinci to invent the deadliest weapon ever – a flying machine. So da Vinci calls in a craftsman who happens to be father to his star apprentice, Dino.

But da Vinci does not know that Dino is actually the craftsman's daughter, Delfina, who keeps her gender a secret to serve as apprentice. But as Delfina worries that her father will prove her undoing, someone murders another apprentice. Now, as her master works his brilliance, Delfina can only pray that no other apprentice – including herself – will fall victim.

Aurora Teagarden's life was pretty much in order, though she wouldn't have objected to a nice relationship. All things considered, however, there wasn't anything to complain about. Then Jane Engle died. Aurora and Jane had been friends – not particularly close friends, but they'd both been members of the Real Murder Society and on occasion had shared tea, as well as an interest in crime. So Aurora was surprised to discover that she was named in Jane's will as the heir to her home and some money… about a half million dollars, in fact. A nice house, a lot of money… things were looking up nicely. But the house held a secret – a fact that was frighteningly obvious the first time Aurora went there and realized that someone had broken in, had been searching for something. It didn't take long to discover the secret: Jane had hidden a skull, and Aurora had just found it. Aurora Teagarden was no stranger to a good mystery, but she wasn't quite certain what to do with this one. Before she has a chance to consider her next move, someone decides that she already knows too much. Now she has a few more questions to answer: Whodunit? Who was it done to? And who seemed to keep on wanting to do it?

In this Conradian masterpiece of American innocence and evil set in the fictional Central American country of Boca Grande, two American women face the harsh realities, political and personal, of living on the edge in a land with an uncertain future. Writing with her signature telegraphic swiftness, the author creates a terrifying commentary on an age of conscienceless authority.

The Classic Guide To Strategy

Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon is considered the towering figure of modern Hebrew literature. With this collection of stories, reissued in paperback and expanded to include additional Agnon classics, the English-speaking audience has, at long last, access to the rich and brilliantly multifaceted fictional world of one of the greatest writers of the last century. This broad selection of Agnon's fiction introduces the full sweep of the writer's panoramic vision as chonicler of the lost world of Eastern European Jewry and the emerging society of modern Israel. New Reader's Preface by Jonathan Rosen.

A “borotva éle” — szimbólum: azt a szinte érzékelhetetlen határt jelenti, amely a tudat és a tudatalatti között húzódik, vagyis amely a teljesen egészséges én pszichikai tengelye. Így magyarázza meg regényének címét maga a szerző, a szovjet tudományos-fantasztikus irodalom klasszikusa, aki ezúttal a legújabb biológiai kutatások és felfedezések fényében boncolgatja az ember pszichofiziológiájának időszerű kérdéseit. Csodával határos, de megtörtént esetek, valóságos jelenségek hiteles leírásával igyekszik feltárni az emberi test és lélek rejtett tartalékait, energiaforrásait.

A történések középpontjában egy titokzatos fekete korona, annak különös kisugárzása áll. Több csoport is meg akarja szerezni, hajszákat rendeznek érte. E kalandok leírásával válik a mű térben és időben több dimenziójúvá. Visszanyúl a régmúltba is, például Nagy Sándor korába, vagy az óindiai művészet kezdeteihez, hogy pontosabban megvilágítsa a tegnap, a ma, sót a holnap eseményeit. Oroszországból kiindulva, Itálián, Dél-Afrikán át a forró Indiáig és a jeges Tibetig húzódik a cselekmény fonala.

A bőven áradó események egzotikus környezetben, titokzatos templomokban, lámakolostorokban, tengerfenéken stb. játszódnak le. Szemünk előtt zajlik le egy kalandos nőszöktetés; látjuk, hogyan verekszenek meg erőművészek túlerőben lévő fogdmegekkel; megismerjük a különleges, bénító folyadékot kilövő pisztolyt.

A mű hősei sarkított jellemű, különleges képességű férfiak, hősnői egzotikus szépségű és rendkívüli sorsú nők. Tanúi vagyunk hipnózissal való csodálatos gyógyításnak, az önszuggesztió nem mindennapi eseteinek. Csak egy példa a sok közül: a tibeti önsanyargató reszpáknak melegük lesz, amikor a fagyos szélben meztelenül állva locsolgatják magukat — a vizes törülköző megszárad rajtuk!

Jefremov a tudománynak és a valóságban gyökerező fantasztikumnak olyan tájaira vezet el bennünket, amelyeken szovjet írók még nemigen jártak.

Emmett has a wife and two children, a cat, and a duck, and he wants to know what life is about. Every day he gets up before dawn, makes a cup of coffee in the dark, lights a fire with one wooden match, and thinks.

What Emmett thinks about is the subject of this wise and closely observed novel, which covers vast distances while moving no farther than Emmett’s hearth and home. Nicholson Baker’s extraordinary ability to describe and celebrate life in all its rich ordinariness has never been so beautifully achieved.

Baker won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper. He now returns to fiction with this lovely book, reminiscent of the early novels—Room Temperature and The Mezzanine—that established his reputation.

From the acclaimed Giller Prize Finalist and Governor General’s Award Winner: a delightfully funny and charming second novel about Canada’s smallest town.

Life in Winnipeg didn’t go as planned for Knute and her daughter. But living back in Algren with her parents and working for the longtime mayor, Hosea Funk, has its own challenges: Knute finds herself mixed up with Hosea’s attempts to achieve his dream of meeting the Prime Minister — even if that

means keeping the town’s population at an even 1500. Bringing to life small-town Canada and all its larger-than-life characters, A Boy of Good Breeding is a big-hearted, hilarious novel about finding out where you belong.

A triumphant literary debut with notes of both The Art of Fielding and The Flamethrowers, which introduces the striking figure of Owen Burr, a gifted Olympics-bound athlete whose dreams of greatness are deferred and then transformed by an unlikely journey from California to Berlin, Athens, Iceland, and back again.

Owen Burr, a towering athlete at Stanford University, son of renowned classicist Professor Joseph Burr, was destined to compete in the Athens Olympic Games of 2004. But in his final match at Stanford, he is blinded in one eye. The wound shatters his identity and any prospects he had as an athlete.

Determined to make a new name for himself, Owen flees the country and lands in Berlin, where he meets a group of wildly successful artists living in the Teutonic equivalent of Warhol’s Factory. An irresistible sight — nearly seven-feet-tall, wearing an eye patch and a corduroy suit — Owen is quickly welcomed by the group’s leader, who schemes to appropriate Owen’s image and sell the results at Art Basel. With his warped and tortured image on the auction block, Owen seeks revenge.

Professor Burr has never been the father he wants to be. Owen’s disappearance triggers a call to action. He dusts off his more speculative theory, Liminalism, to embark on a speaking tour, pushing theory to its radical extreme — at his own peril and with Jean Baudrillard’s help — in order to send up flares for his son in Athens, Berlin, and Iceland.

A compulsively readable novel of ideas, action, and intrigue, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall offers a persuasive vision of personal agency, art, family, and the narratives we build for ourselves.

In a sensational breach of promise suit, two wealthy social climbers are suing on behalf of their beautiful daughter, Zillah. The defendant is Zillah's alleged fiancé, brilliant young architect Killian Melville, who adamantly declares that he will not, cannot, marry her. Utterly baffled by his client's refusal, Melville's counsel, Sir Oliver Rathbone, turns to his old comrades in crime -investigator William Monk and nurse Hester Latterly. But even as they scout London for clues, the case suddenly and tragically ends. An outcome that no one -except a ruthless murderer- could have foreseen.

After university and Sandhurst, Charles Thoroughgood has now joined the Assault Commados and is on a four-month tour of duty in Armagh and Belfast. The thankless task facing him and his men — to patrol the tension-filled streets through weeks of boredom punctuated by bursts of horror — takes them through times of tragedy, madness, laughter and terror.

Alan Judd tells Thoroughgood’s tale with verve, compassion and humour. The result is an exceptionally fine novel which blends bitter human incident with army farce.

After wealthy Guy Carver arrives in Australia to take over Jenny Westmere's wedding salon, he finds he has only one piece of business in mind: to make Jenny and her little boy his family-by Christmas!

Returning to his hometown after a failed marriage, recovering alcoholic Tom Winter purchases a house only to discover that it connects with another time and place—and his desire to “start over” suddenly becomes a literal possibility.

Wilson excels at psychological suspense, as the spiritual and emotional challenges his characters face are as intense as the physical dangers.

Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for Best novel in 1991

An English language ‘tourist guide’ to life in the ‘caliphate’.

The online book reads like a travel brochure, focussing on life “under the just shade of Islamic law in the Caliphate”. Al Britani describes the street food available and speculates that “in the near future we will be eating curries and chow meins on the streets of Raqqah and Mosul,” in reference to the worldwide recruitment that has been undertaken by Islamic State (IS).

He describes the weather as “Mediterranean”, and writes approvingly of the “bright fluffy snow” in the winters. Although the guide doesn’t contain instructions on terrorism, or how to join IS, it meanders around topics such as global domination while explaining the transport system.

The publication is peppered with British colloquialisms, with al-Britani claiming that IS is “dead serious about state building.” In a chapter regarding technology, the creation of anti-aircraft weaponry is raised, acknowledging that such a thing would be a “game changer”. The “real movers and shakers” are on the battlefield.

It concludes with the threat, “When we descend on the streets of London, Paris and Washington the taste will be far bitterer [sic], because not only will we spill your blood, but we will also demolish your statues, erase your history and most painfully, convert your children who will then go on to champion our name and curse their forefathers.”

An author (a version of Vila-Matas himself) presents a short history of a secret society, the Shandies, who are obsessed with the concept of portable literature. The society is entirely imagined, but in this rollicking, intellectually playful book, its members include writers and artists like Marcel Duchamp, Aleister Crowley, Witold Gombrowicz, Federico Garcia Lorca, Man Ray, and Georgia O Keefe. The Shandies meet secretly in apartments, hotels, and cafes all over Europe to discuss what great literature really is: brief, not too serious, penetrating the depths of the mysterious. We witness the Shandies having adventures in stationary submarines, underground caverns, African backwaters, and the cultural capitals of Europe."