Andrew Taylor has written over 25 crime novels, and won many awards for his books. His best selling historical crime novel THE AMERICAN BOY was selected by Richard and Judy's book club. This new story is set in Bleeding Heart Square in the 1930s. In case you were wondering, there is no 'Bleeding Heart Square' in London, but there is a 'Bleeding Heart Yard'. It is apparently named after Elizabeth Hatton, a 17th century society beauty who was murdered one night in 1626 after a ball, and her body found in the Yard torn limb from limb and with her heart still bleeding on the cobblestones, a story that is used in this book to describe the origins of Bleeding Heart Square.

At the start of the book, Lydia has a violent argument with her husband, Marcus. She decides to leave him and her life of privilege to take refuge with her father in his rooms at 7 Bleeding Heart Square, to live in much reduced circumstances. She does not know her father well, as her mother divorced him when she was young. But she is determined to stay with him, and not to give in to her mother (re-married and now Lady Cassington) and return to live with Marcus, to keep up appearances. The current owner of the house is a shady character called Serridge. Narton, a policeman, suspects Serridge of murdering the previous owner, Phillipa Penhow, about four years ago. Ms Penhow, a rich spinster, had become smitten with Serridge. He persuaded her to buy a remote farmhouse in Essex, and to move there to live with him, until she disappeared shortly afterwards. When questioned, Serridge claimed that she met an old boyfriend and moved away to America with him, but no-one has heard from her since. Narton recruits Rory, a young man he sees hanging about the square, to help him find evidence that Serridge is to blame. Rory wants to find out what happened to Ms Penhow, because she is the aunt of his girlfriend Fenella. It also turns out that Lydia's father is somehow connected to Serridge, not only through their time together in the army during the First World War, but also because he used to own the farm in Essex that Serridge persuaded Ms Penhow to buy.

The main mystery to be solved in the book is whether Serridge murdered Ms Penhow for her money, or whether she really did move to America. However, in true Dickensian fashion, there is a whole host of characters, and many subplots that contribute to the main story. Ms Penhow's infatuation with Serridge, and the consequences of that, are gradually revealed through excerpts from her diary, read by an unknown person, who has somehow acquired the diary. These convey her initial optimism and subsequent slide into despair, and raise the hope that perhaps she did just run away after all. Meanwhile, with the help of Narton, Rory starts to find out what really happened to Ms Penhow, while gradually realising that Fenella no longer wants to marry him, and struggling to find himself a job as a journalist. A third subplot describes how Lydia starts to make a new life for herself, her growing friendship with Rory after he also moves into 7 Bleeding Heart Square, and her own part in discovering what happened to Ms Penhow.

The book evokes the period partly through its descriptions of the British Fascist movement, and Marcus's involvement in it, and through the stark differences between the lives of the wealthy and those of the poor. It is a hugely enjoyable book, in which the many different threads, and rich detail, are skilfully woven together. It was an exciting read, and I had to restrain myself from turning to the ending to find out what happened before finishing the book. But, I'm afraid when I finally did get there, I was a bit underwhelmed by the final unveiling of the fate of Ms Penhow, and I don't think this was just because I hadn't been paying enough attention to the clues dotted through the story. Despite this, and because the story of Ms Penhow is in some ways almost incidental, mostly serving as a means to throw the various characters together, one can just about forgive the ending, and simply enjoy the rest of the book. One to recommend, but I don't think it's going to make my top five of the year.

Александр Вяльцев — родился в 1962 году в Москве. Учился в Архитектурном институте. Печатался в “Знамени”, “Континенте”, “Независимой газете”, “Литературной газете”, “Юности”, “Огоньке” и других литературных изданиях. Живет в Москве.

Premio Nadal 1998

Tres mujeres: Cat, lesbiana convencida, Mónica devorahombres compulsiva Y Beatriz, que considera que el amor no tiene género. Tres momentos de la vida de una mujer y dos ciudades, Edimburgo y Madrid, para una novela únicasobre el amor a los amigos, a la familia y a los amantes.

ZENTA ĒRGLE

Bez piecām minūtēm pieauguši

Stāsts. Stāsta „Bez piecām minūtēm pieauguši” (1983) darbība risinās kādā profesionāli tehniskajā šuvēju vidusskolā. Galvenajiem varoņiem Baibai un Daumantam piepulcējas citi — bārene Svetlana, skaistā, iecirtīgā Dēzija, paslinkais Leons.  Un atkal lasītāji nemitīgi pieprasīja turpinājumu: „Ļoti gribētos zināt, kā izveidosies jauniešu turpmākā dzīve, vai Daumants un Baiba būs laimīgi, vai Daces un Pētera draudzība turpināsies,” Siguldas internātskolas audzēkņu vārdā raksta bibliotēkas pulciņa sekretāre Laila Čevere. „Es ļoti vēlētos, lai rakstniece uzrakstītu grāmatu vai pat mazu stāstiņu par jau pieaugušajiem jauniešiem, kuri mācās augstskolās vai strādā,” raksta V. Žarska no Rīgas 47. vidusskolas. „Tas varētu būt arī turpinājums grāmatai „Bez piecām minūtēm pieauguši”. Stāsta pamatā būtu jauniešu dzīve, kad jau šīs piecas minūtes ir pagājušas un liekas, ka dzīvē viss ir sasniegts. Bet vēl jau ir daudzas neiekarotas virsotnes.”

Stāstā attēlotās personas, darbības vietas un laiks — izdomāti.

Noskannējis grāmatu un FB2 failu izveidojis Imants Ločmelis

Biedrs mauzeris

Gunārs Cīrulis un Anatols Imermanis

For ten summers, the Seton family-all three generations-met at their country home in New England to spend a week together playing tennis, badminton, and golf, and savoring gin and tonics on the wraparound porch to celebrate the end of the season. In the eleventh summer, everything changed. A hunting rifle with a single cartridge left in the chamber wound up in exactly the wrong hands at exactly the wrong time, and led to a nightmarish accident that put to the test the values that unite the family-and the convictions that just may pull it apart.

Before You Know Kindness is a family saga that is timely in its examination of some of the most important issues of our era, and timeless in its exploration of the strange and unexpected places where we find love.

As he did with his earlier masterpiece, Midwives, Chris Bohjalian has written a novel that is rich with unforgettable characters-and absolutely riveting in its page-turning intensity.

In Richmond, Virginia, Stephanie and Jasmine compete for affection from their grandmother, Big Mama. The oldest sister, Jasmine, is waiting on her boyfriend, Derrick, to get out of jail. After three years of loyalty and celibacy, on one of her visits she finds Derrick in a compromising position with his baby's mama, Wendy. The hurt of that encounter causes her to seek out her friend, Dylan. Their relationship starts off shaky when his ex-girlfriend claims that she is pregnant. Little sister, Stephanie, has a daughter by her high-school sweetheart, Malek, who left her to pursue a music career in Washington, D.C. Throughout all of the "baby's mama drama," Jasmine and Stephanie learn that they actually have more in common and that no matter what they will always be sisters.

The school year is almost at an end, and the chocolate sale is past history.  But no one at Trinity School can forget The Chocolate War.

Devious Archie Costello, commander of the secret school organizationcalled the Virgils, stall has some torturous assignments to hand out before he graduates.  In spite of this pleasure, Archie is troubled by his right-hand man, Obie, who has started to move away from the Virgils.  Luckily Archie knows his stooges will fix that.  But won't Archie be shocked when he discovers the surprise Obie has waiting for him?

And there are surprises waiting for others.  The time for revenge has come to those boys who secretly suffered the trials of Trinity.  The fuse is set for the final explosion.  Who will survive?

Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching neck, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her. Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that's where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful, undead redhead walks through the door… and proceeds to rock Tommy's life — and afterlife — in ways he never imagined possible.

A wildly original story of romance, lust, bloodlust, and blood loss — from the author of Coyote Blue and Practical Demonkeeping.

"Goofy grotesqueries… wonderful… delicious… bloody funny… like a hip and youthful 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Lugosis. " — San Francisco Chronicle

"Delightful… highly recommended… filled with oddball characters, clever dialogue and hilarious situations." — Library Journal

"Moore's storytelling style is reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams." — Philadelphia Inquirer

"A series of bizarre misadventures that take place at breakneck speed in a variety of interesting locales. The dialogue is sharp and from the hip, the pace frenetic, and the situations tinged with a healthy dose of the supernatural… Moore is one of those rare writers who is laugh-out-loud funny." — Santa Barbara Independent

At last! An astonishing and original new novel by the author of Life of Pi.

A famous author receives a mysterious letter from a man who is a struggling writer but also turns out to be a taxidermist, an eccentric and fascinating character who does not kill animals but preserves them as they lived, with skill and dedication – among them a howler monkey named Virgil and a donkey named Beatrice…

Nathan Glass ha sobrevivido a un cáncer de pulmón y a un divorcio después de treinta y tres años de matrimonio, y ha vuelto a Brooklyn, el lugar donde nació y pasó su infancia. Quiere vivir allí lo que le queda de su `ridícula vida`. Hasta que enfermó era un próspero vendedor de seguros, ahora que ya no tiene que ganarse la vida, piensa escribir El libro de las locuras de los hombres. Contará todo lo que pasa a su alrededor, todo lo que le ocurre y lo que se le ocurre, y hasta algunas de las historias caprichosas, disparatadas, verdaderas locuras de personas que recuerda. Comienza a frecuentar el bar del barrio, el muy austeriano Cosmic Diner, y está casi enamorado de la camarera, la casada e inalcanzable Marina. Y va también a la librería de segunda mano de Harry Brightman, un homosexual culto y contradictorio, que no es ni remotamente quien dice ser.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Judy Budnitz

Does government-sanctioned suicide offer the same potential for satire as, say, the consumption of children? Possibly. One need only look to Kurt Vonnegut's story "Welcome to the Monkey House," with its "Federal Ethical Suicide Parlors" staffed by Juno-esque hostesses in purple body stockings. Or the recent film "Children of Men," in which television commercials for a suicide drug mimic, to an unsettling degree, the sunsets-and-soothing-voices style of real pharmaceutical ads. Now, Christopher Buckley ventures into a not-too-distant future to engage the subject in his new novel, Boomsday.

Here's the set-up: One generation is pitted against another in the shadow of a Social Security crisis. Our protagonist, Cassandra Devine, is a 29-year-old public relations maven by day, angry blogger by night. Incensed by the financial burden soon to be placed on her age bracket by baby boomers approaching retirement, she proposes on her blog that boomers be encouraged to commit suicide. Cassandra insists that her proposal is not meant to be taken literally; it is merely a "meta-issue" intended to spark discussion and a search for real solutions. But the idea is taken up by an attention-seeking senator, Randy Jepperson, and the political spinning begins.

Soon Cassandra and her boss, Terry Tucker, are devising incentives for the plan (no estate tax, free Botox), an evangelical pro-life activist is grabbing the opposing position, the president is appointing a special commission to study the issue, the media is in a frenzy, and Cassandra is a hero. As a presidential election approaches, the political shenanigans escalate and the subplots multiply: There are nursing-home conspiracies, Russian prostitutes, Ivy League bribes, papal phone calls and more.

Buckley orchestrates all these characters and complications with ease. He has a well-honed talent for quippy dialogue and an insider's familiarity with the way spin doctors manipulate language. It's queasily enjoyable to watch his characters concocting doublespeak to combat every turn of events. "Voluntary Transitioning" is Cassandra's euphemism for suicide; "Resource hogs" and "Wrinklies" are her labels for the soon-to-retire. The opposition dubs her "Joan of Dark."

It's all extremely entertaining, if not exactly subtle. The president, Riley Peacham, is "haunted by the homophonic possibilities of his surname." Jokes are repeated and repeated; symbols stand up and identify themselves. Here's Cassandra on the original Cassandra: "Daughter of the king of Troy. She warned that the city would fall to the Greeks. They ignored her… Cassandra is sort of a metaphor for catastrophe prediction. This is me. It's what I do." By the time Cassandra asks Terry, "Did you ever read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'?" some readers may be crying, "O.K., O.K., I get it."

Younger readers, meanwhile, may find themselves muttering, "He doesn't get it." The depiction of 20-somethings here often rings hollow, relying as it does on the most obvious signifiers: iPods, videogames, skateboards and an apathetic rallying cry of "whatever."

But Buckley isn't singling out the younger generation. He's democratic in his derision: boomers, politicians, the media, the public relations business, the Christian right and the Catholic Church get equal treatment. Yet despite the abundance of targets and the considerable display of wit, the satire here is not angry enough – not Swiftian enough – to elicit shock or provoke reflection; it's simply funny. All the drama takes place in a bubble of elitism, open only to power players – software billionaires, politicians, lobbyists, religious leaders. The general population is kept discretely offstage. Even the two groups at the center of the debate are reduced to polling statistics. There are secondhand reports of them acting en masse: 20-somethings attacking retirement-community golf courses, boomers demanding tax deductions for Segways. But no individual faces emerge. Of course, broadness is a necessary aspect of satire, but here reductiveness drains any urgency from the proceedings. There's little sense that lives, or souls, are at stake.

Even Cassandra, the nominal hero, fails to elicit much sympathy. Her motivations are more self-involved than idealistic: She's peeved that her father spent her college fund and kept her from going to Yale. And she's not entirely convincing as the leader and voice of her generation. Though her blog has won her millions of followers, we never see why she's so popular; we never see any samples of her blogging to understand why her writing inspires such devotion. What's even more curious is that, aside from her blog, she seems to have no contact with other people her own age. Her mentors, her lover and all of her associates are members of the "wrinklies" demographic.

Though I was willing for the most part to sit back and enjoy the rollicking ride, one incident in particular strained my credulity to the breaking point: Cassandra advises Sen. Jepperson to use profanity in a televised debate as a way of wooing under-30 voters, and the tactic is a smashing success. If dropping an f-bomb were all it took to win over the young folks, Vice President Cheney would be a rock star by now.

Bella y oscura es el relato alegórico de lo que poseemos sin haber conquistado: la sabiduría de la infancia. Es la evocación de un tiempo pasado, solitario, fermento necesario de la libertad esperada. Es la belleza que la fantasía extrae de la crueldad y de los inocentes olvidados de la niñez.

From an emerging master of short fiction and one of Canada's most distinctive voices, a collection of stories as heartbreaking as those of Lorrie Moore and as hilariously off-kilter as something out of McSweeney's.

In Better Living through Plastic Explosives, Zsuzsi Gartner delivers a powerful second dose of the lacerating satire that marked her acclaimed debut, All the Anxious Girls on Earth, but with even greater depth and darker humour. Whether she casts her eye on evolution and modern manhood when an upscale cul-de-sac is thrown into chaos after a redneck moves into the neighbourhood, international adoption, war photography, real estate, the movie industry, motivational speakers, or terrorism, Gartner filets the righteous and the ridiculous with dexterity in equal, glorious measure. These stories ruthlessly expose our most secret desires, and allow us to snort with laughter at the grotesque world we'd live in if we all got what we wanted.

El texto nos remite a un pasado argentino, a la oculta sordidez de un mundo de novela rosa transcrito con implacable objetividad a través del calco paródico de los clichés del lenguaje periodístico, de la impasibilidad feroz de las descripciones aparentemente neutras, de la trivialidad exasperante de unas vidas despersonalizadas.

Nené, varias décadas después, aún conserva las cartas de su antiguo enamorado, Juan Carlos, a pesar de su actual matrimonio. Don Juan Carlos ya fallecido en un sanatorio víctima de la tuberculosis, se va reconstruyendo, mediante la intimidad de unos seres rencorosos o inocentes, esa relación amorosa acontecida en la Argentina de los años treinta.

Paulo Coelho, con más de 35 millones de libros vendidos, no es sólo uno de los autores más leídos del mundo, sino también uno de los escritores con mayor influencia ideológica de hoy en día. Lectores de más de 150 países, sin distinción de credos ni culturas, le han convertido en uno de los autores de referencia de nuestro tiempo. Brida es una novela basada en una historia real de cautivadora belleza, la de la joven irlandesa Brida O` Fern. A la edad de veintiún años, Brida conoce a un mago al que le pide que le ayude a convertirse en bruja. Para ello, la muchacha deberá superar una serie de obstáculos que harán que cambie su concepción de la vida y descubrirá, junto al lector, que el amor es el único medio de alcanzar el mundo espiritual y que nos transfigura, porque cuando amamos queremos ser mejores de lo que somos.

En 1818, l 'auteur de ce livre avait seize ans et il paria qu'il écrirait un volume en quinze jours. Il fit Bug-Jargal. C'est un roman d'aventures décrivant les péripéties de Léopold d'Auvernay, jeune officier de l'armée française, qui part pour Saint-Domingue, colonie française à l'époque, pour retrouver sa promise, fille d'un colon français, et l'épouser. Cependant la veille de son mariage les esclaves, menés par le mystérieux Bug-Jargal, se révoltent contre la domination des colons, et sa future épouse se fait enlever par un esclave, de qui Léopold pensait être l'ami. Commence ensuite pour Léopold une course-poursuite à travers l'île pour retrouver sa bien-aimée et pour assouvir sa vengeance…

Bartleby y compañía trata de todos aquellos no escritores o escritores interruptus que han existido. Aquellos que, como Rimbaud o Rulfo, dejaron de escribir tras la publicación de sus obras maestras. Aquellos que nunca escribieron, como Sócrates o como Clément Cadou, que tras conocer a Witold Gombrowicz (a quien admiré mucho en mis juveniles años), decidió no escribir nunca y sólo fue autor de su epitafio, que pasó así a ser su opera omnia.

Bartleby y compañía, nos remite a esos escritores del `No`, como él los llama, a los que han renunciado a la escritura (con pretexto o sin él) y también a la posibilidad de que esos libros en realidad no escritos, floten o estén en estado latente en el mundo, hasta que alguien los encuentre y los escriba. Habla también Vila-Matas de una biblioteca de libros no publicados en Burlington, Vermont (USA), en donde aquellos libros escritos, pero no leídos, son mimados, guardados y cuidados con esmero, a la espera de lector.

Esta es una historia tierna e inocente, fiera y salvaje, entrañable y cálida, cruel y despiadada.

Es una historia tejida con recuerdos, ilusiones y esperanzas, pero teñida también de fracasos, decepciones y derrotas…

Es la crónica de una España que la guerra partió en dos… para obligarnos de nuevo a juntarla. Es una historia que nos pertenece un poco a todos… porque entre todos hacemos la Historia.

BALTAIS KLUSUMS

BRŪNIS VILKS

DŽEKS LONDONS

KOPOTI RAKSTI-3

Tulkojums latviešu valodā.

«Liesma», 1974

SASTĀDĪJUSI TAMĀRA ZĀLĪTE

NO ANGĻU VALODAS TULKOJUSI VALIJA BRUTĀNE, ALBERTS DZENITIS, ROTA EZERIŅA UN HELMA LAPIŅA MĀKSLINIEKS ĀDOLFS LIELAIS

Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. A city is hit by an epidemic of 'white blindness.' The blindness spreads, sparing no one. Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards. Inside, the criminal element among the blind hold the rest captive: food rations are stolen, women are raped. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers through the barren streets. The developments within this oddly anonymous group -- the first blind man, the old man with the black eye patch, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with no mother, and the dog of tears -- are as uncanny as the surrounding chaos is harrowing.

A parable of loss and disorientation, of man's worst appetities and hopeless weaknesses,Blindnessis one of the most challenging, thought-provoking, and ultimately exhilarating novels published in any language in recent years.

An allegory of the struggle between good and evil, in which Eliot Nailles, a chemist, meets Paul Hammer, who is not the ordinary citizen he seems to be. "We're the Hammers," The stranger said to the priest. Nailles did not think this funny, anticipating the fact that almost everyone else in the neighborhood would. How many hundreds or perhaps thousands cocktail parties would they have to live through, side by side: Hammer and Nailles." Hammer is the illegitimate son of a kleptomaniac, and he plans to awaken the suburban world – by burning Eliot's son Tony in a church.

Boy Meets Boy is a young adult novel by David Levithan, published in 2003. It is set in a gay-friendly small town in America, and describes a few weeks in the lives of a group of high school students. As the title suggests, the central story follows the standard romantic plotline usually known as "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" except that the main characters are both boys, the narrator Paul and newcomer Noah. The novel won a Lambda Literary Award.

Distinguished at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Confederate Captain Nate Starbuck's career is jeopardized once again by the suspicion and hostility of his brigade commander, General Washington Faulconer. The outcome of this vicious fight drastically changes both men's fortunes and propels AX into the ghastly bloodletting at the Second Battle of Manassas.

Evocative and historically accurate, Battle Flag continues Bernard Cornwell's powerful series of Nate's adventures on some of the most decisive battlefields of the American Civil War.

The tragicomedy of a young man in NYC, struggling with the reality of his mother's death, alienation and the seductive pull of drugs.

***

All messed up and no place to go. It's six a.m., the party's over and reality is threatening to intervene in the frenetic, powder-fuelled existence of a young man who should have everything but might just end up with nothing at all…

His wife, a famous model, has left him. His job at a Prestigious Magazine can't last much longer. And the life he's been living in Manhattan's fast lane as if he owned it is about to end. Even a bright young man eventually has to face the biggest question of them all: which is worse, living an illusion – or losing it?

Peter and Rebecca Harris: mid-forties denizens of Manhattan’s SoHo, nearing the apogee of committed careers in the arts—he a dealer, she an editor. With a spacious loft, a college-age daughter in Boston, and lively friends, they are admirable, enviable contemporary urbanites with every reason, it seems, to be happy. Then Rebecca’s much younger look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, “the mistake”), shows up for a visit. A beautiful, beguiling twenty-three-year-old with a history of drug problems, Mizzy is wayward, at loose ends, looking for direction. And in his presence, Peter finds himself questioning his artists, their work, his career—the entire world he has so carefully constructed.

Like his legendary, Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Hours, Michael Cunningham’s masterly new novel is a heartbreaking look at the way we live now. Full of shocks and aftershocks, it makes us think and feel deeply about the uses and meaning of beauty and the place of love in our lives.

Bettina Wolter, eine deutsche Stewardeß, gehört zu den Überlebenden einer Flugzeugkatastrophe in Tiflis. Ihr Schicksal wird Rußland — und Dimitri, der ihren Fluchtweg im zerklüfteten Kaukasus kreuzt. Und was eigentlich das Ende ihres Leidensweges bedeuten sollte, war erst der Anfang…

Der vorliegende Roman erschien bisher unter dem Autorenpseudonym Henry Pahlen in einer gekürzten Fassung

"DAZZLING… MAGICAL… AN EXTRAORDINARY WORK!" -New York Times

"BRILLIANT… RESONATES FROM PAST TO PRESENT." – San Francisco Chronicle

"A MAGNIFICENT HEROINE… A GLORIOUS BOOK!" – Baltimore Sun

"BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN… POWERFUL…

TONI MORRISON HAS BECOME ONE OF AMERICA 'S FINEST NOVELISTS." -Cleveland Plain Dealer

"THERE IS SOMETHING GREAT IN BELOVED: A PLAY OF HUMAN VOICES, CONSCIOUSLY EXALTED, PERVERSELY STRESSED, YET HOLDING TRUE. IT GETS YOU." – The New Yorker

"A STUNNING BOOK… A LASTING ACHIEVEMENT!" -Christian Science Monitor

"Magical… rich, provocative, extremely satisfying!" – Milwaukee Journal

"Superb… a profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history… exquisitely told." -Cosmopolitan

"Compelling… Morrison shakes that brilliant kaleidoscope of hers again, and the story of pain, endurance, poetry, and power she is born to tell comes out right." -Village Voice

"In her most probing novel, Toni Morrison has demonstrated once again the stunning powers that place her in the first ranks of our living novelists." – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Shattering emotional power and impact!" -New York Daily News

"A book worth many rereadings." – Glamour

"Astonishing… a triumph!"-New Woman

"A work of genuine force… beautifully written." -Washington Post

"Written with a force rarely seen in contemporary fiction… One feels deep admiration." -USA Today

"Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure of our national literature."-New York Review of Books

"Heart-wrenching… mesmerizing!" – Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Powerful is too tame a word to describe Toni Morrison's searing new novel." -Library Journal

"Shatteringly eloquent."-Booklist

"A rich, mythical novel… a triumph!"- St. Petersburg Times

"Powerful… voluptuous!" – New York Magazine

Brand-new stories by: Dennis Lehane, Stewart O'Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron.

Dennis Lehane (Mystic River , The Given Day) has proven himself to be a master of both crime fiction and literary fiction. Here, he extends his literary prowess to that of master curator. In keeping with the Akashic Noir series tradition, each story in Boston Noir is set in a different neighborhood of the city-the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor, and all stops in between.

Lehane’s own contribution-the longest story in the volume-is set in his beloved home neighborhood of Dorchester and showcases his phenomenal ability to grip the heart, soul, and throat of the reader.

In 2003, Lehane’s novel Mystic River was adapted into film and quickly garnered six Academy Award nominations (with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins each winning Academy Awards). Boston Noir launches in November 2009 just as Shutter Island, the film based on Lehane’s best-selling 2003 novel of the same title, hits the big screen.

"Bliss" was Peter Carey's astonishing first novel, originally published in 1981 - a fast-moving extravaganza, both funny and gripping, about a man who, recovering from death, is convinced that he is in Hell. For the first time in his life, Harry Joy sees the world as it really is and takes up a notebook to explore and notate the true nature of the Underworld. As in his stories and some of his later novels, it is Peter Carey's achievement in "Bliss" to create a brilliant but totally believable fusion of ordinary experience with the crazier fantasies of the mind. This powerful and original novel is a love story about a man who misunderstands the world so totally that he almost gets it right.

John Banville's black comedy of life in a disaster-ridden house on a large Irish estate.

Erzählung aus Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten(1795)

Hamburger Ausgabe, Band 10

Akcja Białej gardenii rozpoczyna się pod koniec II wojny światowej w wiosce na granicy chińsko-rosyjskiej. Książka opisuje historię matki i córki, rozdzielonych wojenną zawieruchą. W Harbinie, schronieniu dla rodzin, które uciekły z Rosji po upadku caratu, Alina Kozłowa musi podjąć rozdzierającą serce decyzję, dotyczącą życia lub śmierci swojego jedynego dziecka, córki Ani. Biała gardenia to książka o zderzeniu kultur różnych kontynentów. Jej bohaterów spotkamy zarówno w nocnych klubach Szanghaju, jak i w surowej Rosji radzieckiej lat sześćdziesiątych XX wieku, w najtrudniejszym okresie zimnej wojny, na samotnej wyspie Pacyfiku i w powojennej Australii. Matka i córka muszą się przygotować na wiele poświęceń, ale czy cena przetrwania nie jest zbyt wysoka? I, przede wszystkim, czy jeszcze się kiedyś odnajdą? Mnogość przygód przeplatanych licznymi faktami historycznymi owocuje znakomitą opowieścią o tęsknocie i wybaczaniu.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary American classic, a book that still captivates and inspires readers twenty years after its first publication. Now, in Beautiful Maria of My Soul, Oscar Hijuelos returns to this indelible story, to tell it from the point of view of its beloved heroine, Maria.

She's the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, ''Beautiful Maria of My Soul.'' Now in her sixties and living in Miami with her pediatrician daughter, Teresa, Maria remains a beauty, still capable of turning heads. But she has never forgotten Nestor, and as she thinks back to her days-and nights-in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the Mambo Kings story unfolds.

A fictional portrait of Jiang Ching follows her life from her youth as the unwanted daughter of a concubine, to her search for fame as an actress in Shanghai, to her marriage to revolutionary Mao Zedong, to her role in the turbulent Communist rule of China.

Biedrs mauzeris

Gunārs Cīrulis Anatols Imermanis

MIHAILS BULGAKOVS

STĀSTI

«BIJA MAIJS…»

Baltā gvarde

Mihails Bulgakovs

Romāns

Veltīts

Ļubovai Jevgeņjevnai Belozerskai

Holly Golightly is generally up all night drinking cocktails and breaking hearts. She hasn't got a past. She doesn't want to belong to anything or anyone, not even to her one-eyed rag-bag pirate of a cat. One day Holly might find somewhere she belongs.

From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at the height of the Inquisition. National bestseller.

‘A lively and original talent’ – Sunday Times

‘Harris is at her best when detailing the sensual pleasures of taste and smell. As chocoholics stand advised to stock up on some of their favourite bars before biting into Chocolat, so boozers everywhere should get a couple of bottles in before opening Blackberry Wine’ – Helen Falconer, Guardian

‘Joanne Harris has the gift of conveying her delight in the sensuous pleasures of food, wine, scent and plants… [Blackberry Wine] has all the appeal of a velvety scented glass of vintage wine’ – Lizzie Buchan, Daily Mail

‘If Joanne Harris didn’t exist, someone would have to invent her, she’s such a welcome antidote to the modern preoccupation with the spare, pared down and non-fattening. Not for her the doubtful merits of an elegant and expensive sparkling water or an undressed rocket salad. In her previous novel, Chocolat, she invoked the scent and the flavour of rich, dark, sweet self-indulgence. In Blackberry Wine she celebrates the sensuous energy that can leap from a bottle after years of fermentation… Harris bombards the senses with the smells and tastes of times past… Harris’s talent lies in her own grasp of the quality she ascribes to wine, “layman’s alchemy, the magic of everyday things.” She is fanciful and grounded at the same time – one moment shrouded in mystery, the next firmly planted in earth. Above all, she has wit’ – -Jenni Murray, Sunday Express

***

Jay Mackintosh's memories are revived by the delivery of a bottle of home-brewed wine from a long-vanished friend. Jay, disillusioned by adulthood, escapes to a derelict farmhouse in France. There he faces old demons and the beautiful Marise, a woman who hides a terrible secret.

Bruno, dying, obsessed with spiders and preoccupied with death and reconciliation, lies at the centre of an intricate spider's web of relationships and passions. Including creepy Nigel the nurse and his besotted twin Will, fighter of duels.

Por su capacidad para poner en evidencia el ridículo, pocos recursos artísticos resultan tan eficaces como la caricatura que revela en breves trazos lo animalesco y monstruoso que todos llevamos dentro. Juan José Arreola manejaba este recurso como pocos y en su Bestiario y en sus relatos breves supo esgrimirlo con destreza para señalar nuestras pasiones y defectos y ayudarnos a conocernos mejor.

En esta extraordinaria novela, Ricardo Piglia se confirma, incontestablemente, como uno de los escritores mayores en lengua española de nuestro tiempo.

Tony Durán, un extraño forastero, nacido en Puerto Rico, educado como un americano en Nueva Jersey, fue asesinado a comienzos de los años setenta en un pueblo de la provincia de Buenos Aires. Antes de morir, Tony ha sido el centro de la atención de todos, el admirado, vigilado, diferente pero también el fascinante. Había llegado siguiendo a las bellas hermanas Belladona, las gemelas Ada y Sofía, hijas de una de las principales familias del lugar. Las conoció en Atlantic City y urdieron un feliz trío sexual y sentimental hasta que una de ellas, Sofía, «quizá la más débil o la más sensible», desertó del juego de los casinos y de los cuerpos. Tony Durán continuó con Ada y la siguió cuando ella volvió a la Argentina, donde encontró su muerte. A partir del crimen, esta novela policíaca muta, crece, y se transforma en un relato que se abre y anuda en arqueologías y dinastías familiares, que va y viene en una combinatoria de veloz novela de género y espléndida construcción literaria. El centro luminoso del libro, cuyo título remite a la cacería nocturna, es Luca Belladona, constructor de una fábrica fantasmal perdida en medio del campo que persigue con obstinación un proyecto demencial. La aparición de Emilio Renzi, el tradicional personaje de Piglia, le da a la historia una conclusión irónica y conmovedora.

Situada en el impasible paisaje de la llanura argentina, esta novela poblada de personajes memorables tiene una trama a la vez directa y compleja: traiciones y negociados, un falso culpable y un culpable verdadero, pasiones y trampas. Blanco nocturno narra la vida de un pueblo y el infierno de las relaciones familiares.

Jason Wilson escribió en The Independent: «Ricardo Piglia ocupa un lugar muy alto en la literatura. Ha heredado la desconfiada inteligencia de Borges, su incansable y gozosa exploración de la literatura y su atracción por los oscuros bajos fondos. Las ficciones de Piglia son inventivas parábolas sobre las pesadillas recientes y pasadas de la historia de su país».

Desde el desierto del Génesis hasta el asfalto de Nueva York, la figura de Caín navega en el corazón de todos los mortales. Manuel Vicent nos recuerda cómo el perfil del fratricida se funde con nuestra memoria, transgrede el tiempo y vive errante por la tierra reencarnándose en sucesivas figuraciones.

Der Brief an den Vater ist ein 1919 verfasster, jedoch niemals abgeschickter Brief Franz Kafkas an seinen Vater. Er wurde postum veröffentlicht und ist ein bevorzugter Text für psychoanalytische und biographische Studien über Kafka.

Nachdem Kafka im Januar 1919 bei einem Kuraufenthalt in Schelesen (Böhmen) Julie Wohryzeck kennen gelernt hatte und sich einige Monate später mit ihr verlobte, reagierte sein Vater ungehalten auf seine neuen und unstandesgemäßen Heiratspläne. Es wird angenommen, dass dies der Auslöser für die Verfassung des Briefes zwischen dem 10. und 13. November 1919 war. Die Hochzeit war ursprünglich für den November geplant, fand jedoch nicht statt. Der vordergründige Anlass war eine vergebliche Wohnungssuche.

Der Brief besteht im Original aus mehr als hundert handschriftlichen Seiten, auf denen Kafka versucht, seinen Vaterkonflikt schreibend zu bewältigen. Viele seiner Lebensschwierigkeiten schreibt er der Wesensunvereinbarkeit zwischen sich und dem Vater zu. Der Brief endet mit der Hoffnung, dass durch ihn sich beide ein wenig beruhigen werden und Leben und Sterben leichter gemacht werden kann.

Najbardziej wstrząsająca, bardzo pouczająca i rozbijająca mity książka, w której były ksiądz-Roman Jonasz, na kanwie własnych przeżyć, opisuje prozę kapłańskiego życia- pełnego intryg, skandali, ludzkich słabości i upadków. Nie księża są tu jednak piętnowani, ale błędny system który ich deprawuje.

"…Najbardziej wstrząsająca, bardzo pouczająca i rozbijająca mity książka, w której były ksiądz-Roman Jonasz, na kanwie własnych przeżyć, opisuje prozę kapłańskiego życia- pełnego intryg, skandali, ludzkich słabości i upadków. Nie księża są tu jednak piętnowani, ale błędny system który ich deprawuje…"

Bartleby the Scrivener (1853), by Herman Melville, tells the story of a quiet, hardworking legal copyist who works in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City. One day Bartleby declines the assignment his employer gives him with the inscrutable "I would prefer not." The utterance of this remark sets off a confounding set of actions and behavior, making the unsettling character of Bartleby one of Melville's most enigmatic and unforgettable creations.

 Herman Melville towers among American writers not only for his powerful novels, but also for the stirring novellas and short stories that flowed from his pen. Two of the most admired of these - `Bartleby` and `Benito Cereno` - first appeared as magazine pieces and were then published in 1856 as part of a collection of short stories entitled `The Piazza Tales`.

`Bartleby` (also known as `Bartleby the Scrivener`) is an intriguing moral allegory set in the business world of mid-19th-century New York. A strange, enigmatic man employed as a clerk in a legal office, Bartleby forces his employer to come to grips with the most basic questions of human responsibility, and haunts the latter`s conscience, even after Bartleby`s dismissal.

`Benito Cereno`, considered one of Melville`s best short stories, deals with a bloody slave revolt on a Spanish vessel. A splendid parable of man`s struggle against the forces of evil, the carefully developed and mysteriously guarded plot builds to a dramatic climax while revealing the horror and depravity of which man is capable.

Reprinted here from standard texts in a finely made, yet inexpensive new edition, these stories offer the general reader and students of Melville and American literature sterling examples of a literary giant at his story-telling best.

When Billy, a handsome, unpretentious, stuttering young able-seaman, is falsely accused of inciting mutiny, he lashes out, kills his accuser and is condemned to die. Written in allusive and beautiful prose, many-layered, resonant with ideas and meanings, Billy Budd has inspired drama, films and opera and continues to elude interpretation.

The main theme of the novel, however, is generally considered to be the vulnerability of innocence in a fallen world. Billy, a victim of one man's unnatural hatred, is the embodiment of goodness destroyed by evil, but as "the criminal pays the penalty of his crime", a greater justice comes into play.

The original source for this text has not been identified. The text has been checked for italics against Harrison Hayford and Merton M. Sealts, Jr., eds, Billy Budd: Sailor (An Inside Narrative) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).

Published: 1924

Named one of the best books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times, Gordon's novel takes on the difficult subject of a young girl coming of age and falling in love with an older woman, her psychiatrist.

From China 's first-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature comes an exquisite new book of fictions, none of which has ever been published before in English. A young couple on honeymoon visit a beautiful temple up in the mountains, and spend the day intoxicated by the tranquillity of the setting; a swimmer is paralysed by a sudden cramp and finds himself stranded far out to sea on a cold autumn day; a man reminisces about his beloved grandfather, who used to make his own fishing rods from lengths of crooked bamboo straightened over a fire! Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft afterglow of memory and nostalgia, these stories hum with simplicity and wisdom – and will delight anyone who loved Gao's bestselling novels, Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible.

***

These six stories by Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian transport the reader to moments where the fragility of love and life, and the haunting power of memory, are beautifully unveiled. In "The Temple," the narrator's acute and mysterious anxiety overshadows the delirious happiness of an outing with his new wife on their honeymoon. In "The Cramp," a man narrowly escapes drowning in the sea, only to find that no one even noticed his absence. In the title story, the narrator attempts to relieve his homesickness only to find that he is lost in a labyrinth of childhood memories.

Everywhere in this collection are powerful psychological portraits of characters whose unarticulated hopes and fears betray the never-ending presence of the past in their present lives.

***

"Beautiful… Suffused with the melancholy of nostalgia." – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"[Gao's] narrators walk as if in a dream through a private landscape of memory and sensation." – Boston Globe

"Precisely detailed and delicately suggestive: the best work of Gao's yet to appear in English translation." – Kirkus Reviews

"Beautiful." – Village Voice

"These spare, evocative pieces… offer a sample of Nobel-winner Gao's sharp, poetic early work." – Publishers Weekly

"Observant… For variety of content, stylistic experimentation, graceful language, and poignant insight, Xingjian is a writer who does it all beautifully." – Booklist

Zapis codziennych zmagań z życiem i próba rozrachunku z brutalną przeszłoscią kobiety chorej na schizofrenię. Poruszająca historia człowieka, którego cierpienie i choroba psychiczna popychają ku samobójstwu.

Prostitution, homosexualité, meurtres, vols… deux jeunes filles, Nadine et Manu, refusant de se résigner face à la vie, s'aventurent dans un monde immoral et sans loi. Prédatrices insatiables, elles nient défaites et frustrations, persuadées que ce qui ne les tuera pas les rendra plus fortes…

" Voici du pain blanc pour cinquante ans de critique " écrivait Céline en rendant le manuscrit de Voyage au bout de la nuit. Ce n'est pas le cas du premier roman de Virginie Despentes, qu'on lui a pourtant longtemps comparé. Cette réédition en poche du livre par lequel le scandale est arrivé nous permet de constater à quel point on a fait beaucoup de bruit pour rien. Les aléas de la vie de Nadine et Manu, deux paumées en mal de sensations fortes, ont à peu près autant d'épaisseur qu'un Manix 00. Un sujet que nos deux héroïnes – le sexe – connaissent bien. Car aucun cliché ne nous est épargné: la prostitution, le meurtre de sang froid, l'argent, le vol, l'homosexualité… Sorte de Thelma et Louise à la française, Baise-moi passe au miroir grossissant tous les vices que deux marginales peuvent potentiellement développer. D'une écriture frigide, Virginie Despentes nous plonge dans l'univers chaotique de deux petites frappes en cavale. A grands coups de JB, de masturbation et de tirs de revolver, elles tentent de trouver les limites. Mais cet opus, qui se veut provocateur, finit sur un ton bien comme il faut. Pour ne pas casser le suspense – si tant est qu'il y en ait -, nous dirons qu'elles finissent frappées par un juste coup du sort. Aussi excitant qu'une partie de pêche à la mouche sur un lac suisse.-Chloé S.-

Jan V, władca Portugalii na początku XVIII wieku, pragnie syna i ślubuje po jego narodzinach wznieść ogromny klasztor. Gdy królowa zachodzi w ciążę, przyszły ojciec, chcąc dotrzymać obietnicy, kładzie kamień węgielny pod budowę monumentalnej bazyliki. W tym samym czasie, pewien ksiądz -heretyk realizuje swoje marzenie: budowę napędzanej siłą ludzkiej woli maszyny latającej, która mogłaby go przenieść do innej, szczęśliwszej krainy. W zadaniu tym pomagają mu okaleczony żołnierz Baltazar i olśniewająca Blimunda, córka zesłanej do Angoli czarownicy. Niesamowite przygody tej trójki splatają wątek miłosny z historią o uporze człowieka walczącego o swoją godność i wolność.

Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, Brokeback Mountain is her masterpiece.

Brokeback Mountain was originally published in The New Yorker. It won the National Magazine Award. It also won an O. Henry Prize. Included in this volume is Annie Proulx's haunting story about the difficult, dangerous love affair between a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy. Also included is the celebrated screenplay for the major motion picture " Brokeback Mountain," written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. All three writers have contributed essays on the process of adapting this critically acclaimed story for film.

Without warning, a driver waiting at traffic lights goes blind.A good samaritan takes pity on him, and drives him home to his wife. The next morning, the wife takes her husband to see an optician, who is baffled. That afternoon, the wife goes blind. So does the samaritan. The following morning, the doctor goes blind. Later that day, one by one, the doctor's patients go blind.The contagion spreads through the city. Panicked, the government sets up internment camps, and rounds up the blind. The camps are undermanned and underprovisioned. Thereafter, the situation deteriorates.Standard SF plot, right? Reminiscent of John Wyndham, in fact: total breakdown of society in the face of inexorable disaster. Except the novel I'm describing is Blindness, written by Jose Saramago, 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I first saw Blindness mentioned a couple of years ago, in one of Robert Silverberg's columns for Asimov's. I meant to get hold of a copy – Nobel Prize-winning speculative fiction seeming too good a chance to pass up – but somehow forgot and it was only when a customer came in before christmas to request a copy that I remembered it.There's something more, though, something I haven't told you about the novel. It's the writing style. Saramago uses only commas and periods to punctuate his sentences. That means no hyphens, no semicolons – and no quotation marks, either. Speech runs on in a sprawling mess, How does that work, By separating each statement with a comma and a capital, Oh I see, It takes a while to get used to. I initially thought it was clever; none of the characters are named, either, merely referred to by their position – the first man, the doctor's wife, the man with the black eye-patch, and so on – and the combination of the two is intensely claustrophobic. You never quite feel you can see what's going on, you feel that your viewpoint is constrained – in fact, you feel partially blind. I was somewhat disappointed when I opened one of Saramago's other novels to find exactly the same style; apparently, his books are experiments in timbre and rhythm and pace, and he merely feels that punctuation gets in the way.That aside, the novel is very good, both as a novel and as science fiction. The breakdown of order, the process of the progression of the blindness – the inevitability of it – is the main thrust of the novel, with the characters doing what they must to survive. In places, the novel is bleak, and brutal; in places, as you might expect from a novel employing a metaphor of such grand power and conception, it is genuinely enlightening. It is never boring, though, even when Saramago is describing the minutiae of life in one of the blind camps, and even when you're struggling through a particularly dense page of exposition and authorial asides directed squarely at the reader. Recommended.

Відверта історія розкутого життя молодої кінорежисерки Тріші Торнберг, яка знімає провокативне кіно. У вільний час Тріша розважається в колі друзів, і розваги їхні з погляду пересічного громадянина досить нестандартні, навіть скандальні, її черговий фільм забороняє цензура, однак відбуваються підпільні покази, і картина Тріші здобуває премію престижного Венеційського кінофестивалю. Під час вручення кінопремії на неї чинить замах маніяк. Із жахом Тріша розуміє, що це – один з її колишніх коханців...

Debiut powieściopisarski prozaika i poety, autora Powrotu do Breitenheide, opowiada o klęsce pokolenia, które schodzi ze sceny życia w obliczu nowego świata. Akcja tej pierwszej polskiej powieści o Erze Wodnika rozgrywa się w latach czterdziestych XXI wieku. U Kowalewskiego nie ma jednak futurystycznych wizji. Podobnie jak w swoich opowiadaniach, autor pozostaje pesymistycznym realistą. Bohater Bóg zapłacz! jest najzwyklejszym starym człowiekiem. Nieuleczalnie chory, trafia do szpitala, by zostać uśmierconym wedle przyjętej procedury. Bohaterowie Kowalewskiego z pasją rozprawiają o życiu. Dialogi są pełne egzystencjalnych sentencji i międzypokoleniowych sporów, a sceneria z przełomu lat 60. i 70. nabiera rangi symbolu minionego świata.

Książka otrzymała nagrodę Poznańskiego Przeglądu Nowości Wydawniczych i była nominowana do Nagrody Literackiej NIKE 2000. Wkrótce ukaże się węgierski przekład powieści.

Juego de falsas apariencias y medias verdades que terminan por desvelar una sola verdad última, Beatus Ille reveló a uno de los jóvenes narradores más rigurosos y mejor dotados de nuestra llteratura actual.

Minaya es un joven estudiante, implicado en las huelgas universitarias de los años 60, que se refugia en un cortijo a orillas del Guadalquivir para escribir una tesis doctoral sobre Jacinto Solana, poeta republicano, condenado a muerte al final de la guerra, indultado y muerto en 1947 en un tiroteo con la Guardia Civil. La investigación biográfica permite a Minaya descubrir la huella de un crimen y la fascinante estampa de Mariana, una mujer turbadora, absorbente, de la que todos se enamoran. Envuelto por las omisiones, deseos y temores de los habitantes del cortijo, Minaya se acerca lentamente hacia la verdad oculta. La indagaci6n del protagonista de Beatus Ille permlte al autor una delicada evocación literaria, de impecable belleza expresiva, con técnica segura y eficaz, de una época, de una casa y los personajes que en ella viven y se esconden.

Twórczość Jerzego Pilcha nie wymaga specjalnej rekomendacji. W swojej książce Pilch rejestruje różnorodność życia społeczno-obyczajowego współczesnej Polski, łącząc swe obserwacje z nostalgiczno-ironicznymi wspomnieniami z okresu dzieciństwa i młodości. Oryginalność obserwacji, humor i sarkazm, błyskotliwe paradoksy i groteska to dodatkowe atuty autobiograficznej prozy Pilcha. Jerzy Pilch wybitny prozaik, autor Monologu z lisiej jamy (1996), zbioru opowiadań pt. Wyznania twórcy pokątnej literatury erotycznej (1988), powieści Spis cudzołożnic (1993), Tysiąc spokojnych miast (1998), felietonów opublikowanych w zbiorach Rozpacz z powodu utraty furmanki (1994) oraz Tezy o głupocie, piciu i umieraniu (1997), które znalazły się w siódemce najlepszych książek roku, nominowanych do Nagrody NIKE 98.

La ambigüedad de la traición es el motor de una intriga policíaca que constituye el tema aparente de Beltenebros. Sin embargo, lo que en realidad encubre es el desorientado transitar de los personajes por una fascinante galería de espejos en la que se reflejan el amor y el odio, el pasado y el presente, la realidad y la ficción, en un trepidante clarouscuro de corte premeditadamente cinematográfico que mantiene al lector bajo su hipnosis hasta el último renglón del libro.

Convocado por una organización comunista subversiva, Darman, antiguo capitán del ejército republicano exiliado en Inglaterra, regresa a Madrid para ejecutar a un supuesto traidor a quien no ha visto nunca. En los lóbregos escenarios de la clandestinidad, emprende con desgana un periplo trepidante en pos de su víctima del que una misericordiosa cabaretera, viva imagen de una mujer a la que amó, tratará de desviarlo.

En Beltenebros, el arte de narrador de Muñoz Molina, su vigorosa maestría técnica y su estilo preciso y envolvente alcanzan un grado extremo de plenitud y de tensión expresiva cuyo logro admite escasos parangones en la narrativa española contemporánea.

Voller Situationskomik ist dieser neue Roman Rita Mae Browns, der in der amerikanischen Kleinstadt Runnymede spielt. Dort leben die beiden ebenso unzertrennlichen wie streitlustigen Hunsenmeir-Schwestern, die immer wieder aufs Neue für allerhand Aufruhr im Ort sorgen.Die Hunsenmeir-Schwestern sind wieder da! Und in der Kleinstadt Runnymede zerreißt man sich einmal mehr herzerwärmend das Maul. Denn: Die ebenso unzertrennlichen wie streitlustigen Schwestern Wheezie und Juts, bekannt aus "Jacke wie Hose" und "Bingo", treiben es wie gewohnt bunt...

Bei Kaffee und Kuchen sitzen die beiden in Cadwalder's Drugstore. Doch bald geraten sie darüber, ob ein grauenhaftes Ereignis in Wheezies Leben (ihr vierzigster Geburtstag) geheim bleiben soll, in ein gnadenloses Handgemenge, bei dem das halbe Lokal zu Bruch geht. Um den Schaden ersetzen zu können, werden die Schwestern unternehmerisch tätig und eröffnen einen Schönheitssalon - bekanntlich ein Ort intimer Geständnisse und äußerster Diskretion. Diskretion? Bald dringt von dort allerhand interessanter Klatsch an die lauschenden Ohren der Mitmenschen.Введите сюда краткую аннотацию

Djian's five novels have won acclaim in Europe, and the present one was a bestseller later adapted into an offbeat film. It's not likely, however, that this tedious and melodramatic on-the-road novel of the most formless kind will have much impact here. The story revolves around the love affair between a drifter with an unpublished novel to his credit and a beautiful girl with itchy feet who, for no discernible reason (Djian doesn't seem to believe in reasons), goes from such eccentricities as pouring paint over a car and torching a house to self-destructive madness. Her passion-driven lover follows her from place to place (none identified), flattered by her faith in his literary talents and ready to try his hand at practically anything to keep the affair afloatplumbing, housepainting, pizza-making, selling pianos and, finally, armed robbery. The lovers fail to inspire credibility, or even interest, the events smack more of fantasy than reality and every so often the generally sloppy prose sinks to the level of "A smile spread over her face like an atomic bomb." Here is one disciple Kerouac would have disclaimed.

It’s so thin and small it seems impossible that it can end a human life. Two long, quick slices and the pain bleeds away… So begins But inside I’m screaming, an intense and absorbing novel. It is the unforgettable story of one woman’s account of what it is to lose control as the world watches, to figure out what went so every wrong, and to accept an imperfect life in a world that demands perfection.

While breaking the hottest new story of the year, broadcast journalist Isabel Murphy unravels on life television in front of an audience of millions. She lands at Three Breezes, a four-star psychiatric hospital nicknamed the “nut hut,” where she begins the painful process of recovering the life everyone thought she had.

But accepting her place among her fellow patients proves more difficult as Isabel struggles to reconcile the fact that she is, indeed, one of them, and faces the reality that in order to mend her painfully fractured life she must rely solely on herself.

Akcja reportaży składających się na Busz po polsku rozgrywa się w latach 50 i 60., na prowincji, w Olecku, w Puszczy Białowieskiej, nad Narwią, w okolicach Brodnicy, pod Mławą, we wsi Grunwald, w Pratkach koło Ełku, krótko mówiąc – gdzie diabeł mówi dobranoc.

Kapuściński znajduje w polskiej rzeczywistości bohaterów, którzy robią wrażenie. Bohaterami są: dwie Niemki uciekające z domu starców w Szczytnie, flisak, stróż nocny, małorolny chłop klepiący biedę, robotnicy sezonowi, wyrzuceni ze studiów, którzy nie chcą wracać z Warszawy do swoich rodzinnych miasteczek i wsi, ludzie bez stałego adresu. Ale także inżynier, nauczyciel historii, student SGPiS nazwiskiem Piątkowski, który jest rekordzistą świata w rzucie dyskiem, młodzi mężczyźni odbywający służbę wojskową.

Historia każdego bohatera jest na swój sposób niezwykle ciekawa. Problemy, jakie trawią polskie społeczeństwo zostają tutaj ukazane bez żadnego cięcia, bez cenzury. Takich problemów nie poruszała ówczesna prasa. Wszystko to opisane jak zwykle doskonale. Literatura podróży doskonała.

Рассказ вошёл в сборники:

Quicker Than The Eye (В мгновение ока)

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (Сборник ста лучших рассказов)

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult and her teenage daughter present their first-ever novel for teens, filled with romance, adventure, and humor.

What happens when happily ever after.isn't?

Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book – one book in particular. Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah.

And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He's a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He's sure there's more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom.

Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.

***

“REAL FAIRY TALES are not for the fainthearted. Children get eaten by witches and chased by wolves; women fall into comas and are tortured by evil relatives. Somehow all that pain and suffering is worthwhile, though, when it leads to the ending: happily ever after. Suddenly it no longer matters if you got a B- on your midterm in French or you’re the only girl in the school who doesn’t have a date for the spring formal. Happily ever after trumps everything.

But what if ever after could change?”

JODIPICOULT.COM

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN

HAPPILY EVER AFTER…

ISN’T?

Delilah hates school as much as she loves books. In fact, there’s one book in particular she can’t get enough of. If anyone knew how many times she has read and reread the sweet little fairy tale she found in the library, especially the popular kids, she’d be sent to social Siberia…forever.

To Delilah, though, this fairy tale is more than just words on the page. Sure, there’s a handsome (well, okay, hot) prince, and a castle, and an evil villain, but it feels as if there’s something deeper going on. And one day Delilah finds out there is. Turns out, this Prince Charming is real, and a certain fifteen-year-old loner has caught his eye. But they’re from two different worlds, and how can it ever possibly work?

Together with her daughter, Samantha van Leer, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult has written a classic fairy tale with a uniquely modern twist. Readers will be swept away by this story of a girl who crosses the border between reality and fantasy in a perilous search for her own happy ending.

Всемирно признанный классик чешской литературы XX века Богумил Грабал стал печататься лишь в 1960-е годы, хотя еще в 59-м был запрещен к изданию сборник его рассказов «Жаворонок на нитке» о принудительном перевоспитании несознательных членов общества на стройке социализма. Российскому читателю этот этап в творчестве писателя был до сих пор известен мало; между тем в нем берет начало многое из того, что получило развитие в таких зрелых произведениях Грабала, как романы «Я обслуживал английского короля» и «Слишком шумное одиночество».

Предлагаемая книга включает повесть и рассказы из трех ранних сборников Грабала. Это «Жемчужина на дне» (1963) и «Пабители» (1964) с неологизмом в заглавии, которым здесь автор впервые обозначил частый затем в его сочинениях тип «досужих философов», выдумщиков и чудаков, а также «Объявление о продаже дома, в котором я уже не хочу жить» (1965).

Cuando parece que la tranquilidad ha vuelto a reinar en el country La Maravillosa, Pedro Chazarreta aparece degollado, sentado en su sillón favorito, con una botella de whisky vacía a un costado y un cuchillo ensangrentado en la mano. Todo hace suponer que se trata de un suicidio. Pero pronto aparecen las dudas. ¿Acaso algún justiciero habrá querido vengar la muerte de la mujer del empresario, asesinada tres años antes en esa misma casa? ¿Será ésta la última muerte?

El Tribuno, uno de los diarios más importantes del país, deja de lado por unos días su enfrentamiento con el gobierno para cubrir a fondo la noticia. Al escenario del crimen, envía a Nurit Iscar, una escritora retirada, y a un periodista joven e inexperto. Y aunque el antiguo jefe de la sección Policiales, Jaime Brena, ha sido desplazado por sacar los pies del plato, decide involucrarse en el caso y ayudar a su reemplazante y a Nurit, a quien admira en secreto.

On India's south-western coast, between Goa and Calicut, lies Kittur – a small, nondescript every town. Aravind Adiga acts as our guide to the town, mapping overlapping lives of Kittur's residents. Here, an illiterate Muslim boy working at the train station finds himself tempted by an Islamic terrorist; a bookseller is arrested for selling a copy of "The Satanic Verses"; a rich, spoiled, half-caste student decides to explode a bomb in school; a sexologist has to find a cure for a young boy who may have AIDS. What emerges is the moral biography of an Indian town and a group portrait of ordinary Indians in a time of extraordinary transformation, over the seven-year period between the assassinations of Prime Minister Gandhi and her son Rajiv. Keenly observed and finely detailed, "Between the Assassinations" is a triumph of voice and imagination.

Dos adolescentes chinos son enviados a una aldea perdida en lasmontañas del Fénix del Cielo, cerca de la frontera con el Tíbet, paracumplir con el proceso de «reeducación» implantado por Mao Zedong afinales de los años sesenta. Soportando unas condiciones de vidainfrahumanas, con unas perspectivas casi nulas de regresar algún día asu ciudad natal, todo cambia con la aparición de una maleta clandestinallena de obras emblemáticas de la literatura occidental. Así pues,gracias a la lectura de Balzac, Dumas, Stendhal o Romain Roland, losdos jóvenes descubrirán un mundo repleto de poesía, sentimientos ypasiones desconocidas, y aprenderán que un libro puede ser uninstrumento valiosísimo a la hora de conquistar a la atractivaSastrecilla, la joven hija del sastre del pueblo vecino.

Con la cruda sinceridad de quien ha sobrevivido a una situaciónlímite, Dai Sijie ha escrito este relato autobiográfico que sorprenderáal lector por la ligereza de su tono narrativo, casi de fábula, capazde hacernos sonreír a pesar de la dureza de los hechos narrados. Ademásde valioso testimonio histórico, Balzac y la joven costurera china esun conmovedor homenaje al poder de la palabra escrita y al deseo innatode libertad, lo que sin duda explica el fenomenal éxito de ventas queobtuvo en Francia el año pasado, con más de cien mil ejemplaresvendidos apenas dos meses después de su publicación.

Brand-new stories by: Dennis Lehane, Stewart O'Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron.

Dennis Lehane (Mystic River , The Given Day) has proven himself to be a master of both crime fiction and literary fiction. Here, he extends his literary prowess to that of master curator. In keeping with the Akashic Noir series tradition, each story in Boston Noir is set in a different neighborhood of the city-the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor, and all stops in between.

Lehane’s own contribution-the longest story in the volume-is set in his beloved home neighborhood of Dorchester and showcases his phenomenal ability to grip the heart, soul, and throat of the reader.

In 2003, Lehane’s novel Mystic River was adapted into film and quickly garnered six Academy Award nominations (with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins each winning Academy Awards). Boston Noir launches in November 2009 just as Shutter Island, the film based on Lehane’s best-selling 2003 novel of the same title, hits the big screen.

Trigiani's sequel to Very Valentine is a sweet second act for shoemaker and designer Valentine Roncalli. Val takes over the New York family-run shoe business with feet-of-clay older brother, Alfred; falls for the dashing, older Gianluca in Italy; and takes a business risk in South America, where she unearths a dusty chapter of family history. There are plenty of picturesque globe-trotting adventures in Tuscany, Manhattan, and Buenos Aires, and, for artistic and independent Val, a grown-up commitment evolves. There is no art without love. Only love can open someone up to the possibilities of living and creating art, Val writes to the wary Gianluca. And the startling twist of family history finally challenges an old-fashioned, insular clan to join the modern world. But it's always the endearing, unnerving and rowdy Roncallis who steal the show. Look for a heartbreaking exit of one beloved character, and a cliffhanger breakup in this charming valentine to love, forgiveness, and family.

Tessa has just months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It's her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is Sex. Released from the constraints of '-normal' life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa's feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, and her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallised in the precious weeks before Tessa's time finally runs out.

In this novel, adapted by the author for easier reading by German learners, a young girl struggles with young love, bulimia, and adolescent self-acceptance. The novel has been a success with adolescent and young adult readers. The accompanying "Suggestion for Lesson Plans" offers photocopiable worksheets and teaching tips for classroom use.

Soon after she returns to Bleak House, Esther decides to go to London to see Mr. Guppy. First, she visits Caddy and Prince Turveydrop. Taken aback by Esther's scarred face, Guppy emphatically retracts his former marriage proposal to Esther. Esther obtains from him a promise to "relinquish all idea of . . . serving me." She no longer needs Guppy's assistance in helping her learn her real identity, and Guppy's presence could possibly endanger her attempt to be secret about what she has learned from Lady Dedlock.

In Bookends, four friends in their 30s cope with changes. Following a dream, Cath is leaving a stable job to open a bookstore with her friend Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy's husband, Josh, seems to be straying into the arms of an old college flame, and longtime friend Simon finds that his new beau is not winning favor among his dearest friends.

Cleo Tyler is a fraud. A fake. A phony. At least that's what police officer Daniel Sinclair thinks. And Cleo agrees. But she's out of money and needs a job, so when the call for a psychic comes from the chief of police in Egypt, Missouri, Cleo, and her dog Premonition board a train in Seattle for the cross-country journey to the Midwestern town that is so small a vegetarian would-be psychic can't find a decent meal. There, beneath the picture of pulchritudinous perfection, Cleo finds a whole cast of eccentrics, including former San Diego hostage negotiator Daniel Sinclair who has returned home to care for his developmentally challenged brother Beau, a police chief who consults tarot cards, and a dentist mayor with the phoniest smile money can buy. Haunted by nightmares of the accident that killed her fiancé and their unborn child, Cleo believes her "gift" for seeing things relates solely to the horrible night she'll never forget. Imagine her surprise when she finds her dreams filled with torrid visions of her dubious escort, Daniel-and details of Egypt's only murder, which is as yet unsolved. Award-winning author Theresa Weir blesses audiences here with her talent for vivid prose ("He looked at her with spoon-bending concentration…"), quirky characters, and unexpected humor.

W pożarze, który wybucha w słynnej katedrze turyńskiej, ginie mężczyzna pozbawiony języka i linii papilarnych, prawdopodobnie rabuś. Podobne próby włamania, a nawet pożary, miały wielokrotnie miejsce w przeszłości, na przestrzeni wieków. Sprawcy pozostawali zawsze anonimowi, nie dawało się ustalić ich tożsamości. Sprawą zajmuje się policyjny wydział do spraw dzieł sztuki. Okazuje się, że rozwiązania zagadki należy szukać w historii. Śledztwo, które prowadzi komisarz Marco Valoni, historyk sztuki Sofia Galloni oraz dociekliwa dziennikarka Ana Jimenez ujawnia, że włamywacze pochodzą z tego samego środowiska, wspólnoty chrześcijańskiej z miasta Urfa, antycznej Eddessy.Obiektem ich zainteresowania jest najcenniejsza relikwia chrześcijaństwa: Syndon, pośmiertna szata Chrystusa.

In David Sedaris's world, no one is safe and no cows are sacred. A manic cross between Mark Leyner, Fran Leibowitz and the National Enquirer, Sedaris's collection of essays is a rollicking tour through the national Zeitgeist: a do-it-yourself suburban dad saves money by performing home surgery; a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tries to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; a bitter Santa abuses the elves.

David Sedaris made his debut on NPR's Morning Edition with "SantaLand Diaries," recounting his strange-but-true experiences as an elf at Macy's, and soom became one of the show's most popular commentators. With a perfect eye and a voice infused with as much empathy as wit, Sedaris writes stories and essays that target the soulful ridiculousness of our behavior.

Barrel Fever is a blind date with modern life, and anything can happen.

Tennyson:

Don’t get me started on the Bruiser. He was voted “Most Likely to Get the Death Penalty” by the entire school. He’s the kid no one knows, no one talks to, and everyone hears disturbing rumors about. So why is my sister, Brontë, dating him? One of these days she’s going to take in the wrong stray dog, and it’s not going to end well.

Brontë:

My brother has no right to talk about Brewster that way—no right to threaten him. There’s a reason why Brewster can’t have friends—why he can’t care about too many people. Because when he cares about you, things start to happen. Impossible things that can’t be explained. I know, because they’re happening to me.

Award-winning author Neal Shusterman has crafted a chilling and unforgettable novel about the power of unconditional friendship, the complex gear workings of a family, and the sacrifices we endure for the people we love.

…Между ними нет ничего общего. Они могли встретиться раньше или встретиться позже, при других обстоятельствах. Они могли встретиться и тут же позабыть о встрече, посчитать ее ничего не значащим фактом. Они могли не встретиться вообще. Последний вариант – самый предпочтительный, ведь тогда бы им удалось избежать смерти. Но в этом случае они ни за что бы не узнали, что такое настоящая любовь. Цепь случайностей, которая приводит их к друг к другу, – и есть главная закономерность жизни. Ни один поступок не остается незамеченным высшими силами, и ничто не остается безнаказанным – ни добро, ни зло. Об этом нужно помнить всегда, ведь люди влияют на других людей, как солнце влияет на движение планет. А каждый человек и есть – маленькое солнце…

Antoine cree que el mejor regalo que puede hacerle a su hermana es un viaje al lugar donde iban de vacaciones en su infancia. Pero este viaje trastocará sus vidas actuales por culpa de un impactante hecho que presenciaron siendo unos niños y que ahora recordarán con lucidez.

Recordar la infancia puede despertar momentos anquilosados en la mente que harán que la vida no vuelva a ser la misma.

Hay recuerdos que siempre vuelven… para quedarse.

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?  Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High—from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life.  Instead, it turns out to be her last.  Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

It's 2:15 A.M. and the phone is ringing. Jolted awake, Polly stares wide-eyed at it. She is certain it must be bad news because no one with good news calls at that hour. A wrong number, maybe. But more likely it's the Bug, the stalker who has been harassing her for ages. But as Polly reaches for the phone, the one thing she cannot imagine, the one thing she doesn't remotely expect, is the voice on the other end of the line. Her very own blast from the past… "Don't freak out," the voice says. "It's Jack." And so begins a steamy two-in-the-morning stroll down memory lane. Sixteen years ago Polly Slade collided with an American knight-in-shining-armor at a roadside restaurant, when she wore a T-shirt with a cruise missile on it and he fell in love like a man without a parachute. For one summer the coolly polished American soldier and his red-hot anarchist British lover shared hotel rooms and noisy sex in the kind of burning-furnace love that can only happen once in any lifetime. Then Jack went back to America and his oh-so-promising career in the U.S. military. And Polly went on to her demonstrations, an unsatisfactory string of lovers, a dismal apartment, and, of course, the Bug… "Now Jack is a four-star general. And the Bug is a menace with a knife, standing outside Polly's building as the American makes his dashing return.

Sir Giles Lynchwood, millionaire property developer and Tory MP, is determined to see a motorway driven through the ancestral home of his spouse, Lady Maud. As local opposition grows, the MP is devoured by lions, and Lady Maud marries her gardener, Blott.

Los McDurney y McFersson están enfrentados desde hace décadas. Desde que sus bisabuelos provocaron un choque que acabó con la vida de uno de ellos.

Al regresar de una aldea en la que ha estado ayudando a sanar a los enfermos, la patrulla de Josleen hace prisionero a un hombre, creyéndole culpable de un robo de caballos perpetrado a su clan. Atraída por él, averigua asombrada que se trata de un McFersson y, temiendo las represalias, le deja escapar para evitar posteriores complicaciones o incluso una guerra.

Meses más tarde, Josleen parte de Durney Tower hacia la fortaleza de Ian McCallister, con quien su madre se ha casado en segundas nupcias. Pero jamás llegará allí.

La patrulla dispuesta a robar el ganado de su hermano Wain, está liderada por el mismo guerrero al que ella dejó escapar. Y ese hombre, aunque ella lo ignora, no es otro que el laird Kyle McFersson, jefe del clan enemigo. Un guerrero sobre el que corren las historias más terroríficas.

La primera intención de Kyle es pedir rescate por la joven, pero luego la idea de dejarla marchar se le hace imposible.

Sin embargo, Wain McDurney no está dispuesto a dejar a su hermana en manos del rival al que desea matar hace mucho tiempo.

Josleen tendrá que tomar una penosa decisión: regresar con los suyos o permanecer al lado de las personas a las que acaba queriendo y del hombre que, aún enemigo de su clan, consigue ganar poco a poco su corazón.

Y para angustia de la joven, Stone Tower se verá rodeada por huestes enemigas, al mando de su hermano, decidido a no dejar piedra sobre piedra.

Anna została poczęta, by zostać dawczynią szpiku dla swej siostry, Kate. Nigdy nie kwestionowała tej roli, choć musi żyć tak, jakby była ciężko chora.

Ma dopiero trzynaście lat, a już przeszła niezliczone zabiegi operacyjne, by jej starsza siostra miała szansę wyleczyć się z białaczki. Jak większość nastolatków, Anna zastanawia się, kim jest; inaczej jednak niż przeciętna nastolatka ma poukładane życie: istnieje właściwie wyłącznie jako dopełnienie siostry. Dlatego podejmuje decyzję, która zagrozi jej rodzinie i prawdopodobnie będzie mieć fatalne konsekwencje dla Kate.

Powieść Picoult stawia wiele ważnych pytań. Co to znaczy być dobrym rodzicem, dobrą siostrą, dobrym człowiekiem? Czy rzeczywiście można robić wszystko, by ratować życie jednego dziecka, kosztem drugiego? Czy należy podążać za głosem serca, czy raczej pozwolić kierować sobą innym? W książce Jodi Picoult znów podejmuje kontrowersyjny temat – i robi to z wdziękiem, mądrością i wrażliwością.

Jodi Picoult to bestsellerowa autorka „New York Timesa”, ceniona za przenikliwość psychologiczną i umiejętność wglądu w serca i umysły ludzkie. Tym razem opowiada historię rodziny dotkniętej nieszczęściem choroby dziecka.

Nobel Prize Winners

The central crisis of the Modern Age is the crisis of faith, the failure of our belief in God. Our disbelief is an inevitable outgrowth of increased scientific understanding of the world around us, particularly in the realms of Physics and Evolutionary theory. It is a predictable corollary of the individualistic political and economic doctrines we have adopted with such success. And to a little appreciated degree, it is a function of the material comfort that we enjoy. Taken together, all of these factors have removed ignorance, superstition, subservience and desperation as reasons to believe in religion. Since Reason would require proof of God's existence, which it is probably impossible to provide, all that's really left is simple faith and, from what we've seen this past century, faith is not enough. There is much that is good about this liberation, the freeing of man from God, but there are also some terrible consequences. The most important consequence is the removal of metaphysical standards of Right and Wrong, of Truth and Beauty, and the resulting disastrous slide into moral relativity. The other main consequence is the sort of inchoate longing that, even if you haven't experienced it personally, is so readily apparent in things like the Psychiatric, Environmental, New Age and Wicca movements. Absent God and his laws, what is there to give our lives meaning and direction? What are we doing here? Do we have a purpose or are we, individually and as a species, as insignificant as science has made us seem? The difficulty of answering those questions lies at the heart of the soul sickness that human society suffers. This inability to attach meaning or value to ourselves and our actions has left an enormous void at the core of our beings and, thus far, science has offered us nothing to fill the vacuum.

Given the tremendous difficulty that even we have reconciling our skepticism with our desire for certitude, separated as we are by two thousand years from the Biblical age, imagine how much more difficult it would have been to struggle against belief if you were a contemporary who witnessed the living Christ and encountered evidence of his miracles. Imagine further that you are not just any man, but are actually the criminal who was spared from the cross when the mob was offered the choice of setting Jesus or one of his fellow prisoners free, that the innocent Christ quite literally died for your sins. This is what Par Lagerqvist has done in this beautiful and moving novel. Barabbas is set free but not before seeing the luminescent figure of Christ and hearing him plead that Barabbas be spared and not himself. Barabbas then feels compelled to follow Christ to Golgotha, where he witnesses the Crucifixion and sees the darkness fall as Christ dies. Through the rest of his life, Barabbas's path intersects with the disciples and followers of Christ. Always he resists their belief-how after all can one believe in a Savior who allows himself to be crucified-but looks for some irrefutable proof from them that Jesus was the Messiah. His ambivalence comes to represented on a medallion that he wears. On the front it says that he is property of the Roman State-it is placed on him while he is enslaved in the mines-but he has a Christian acolyte scratch the symbols on the back that show him to be a follower of Christ. Still later he scratches this out. Ultimately, while living in Rome, he hears rumors that the Christians have set the city aflame and, taking up a burning brand, he proceeds to start the fires that he hopes will signal the return of the Messiah. In the final scene, he is crucified along with Peter and the other Christians accused of arson:

When he felt death approaching, that which he had always been so afraid of, he said out loud into the darkness, as though he were speaking to it:

– To thee I deliver up my soul.

And then he gave up the ghost.

These lines concisely capture the human dilemma. The darkness reappears, recall it descended as Christ died, and Barabbas calls out "as if" he were speaking to it. Does his addressing the darkness mean that in the end he believes it is God? Or does the "as if" imply that he dies doubting? And though he delivers his soul, he gives up the ghost-is he in fact imbued with a divine spark which he can surrender to God?

I found the following story in one of the sermon's below:

Par Lagerkvist, in his short story, My Father and I, tells of an experience he had as a small boy when he and his father went for a walk one Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day when their walk began, but suddenly night came and they were engulfed in darkness. In order to find their way home, they followed the familiar railroad tracks. The boy was filled with great fear at the encroaching darkness, though the father walked calmly along. The boy tried to walk closer to his father. He confesses to his father that the darkness is terrifying him and the father replies:

"'No, my boy, it's not horrible,' he said, taking me by the hand.

'Yes, father, it is.'

'No, my child, you mustn't think that. Not when we know there is a God.'

I felt so lonely, forsaken. It was so strange that only I was afraid, not father, that we didn't think the same. And strange that what he had said didn't help me and stop me from being afraid. Not even what he said about God helped me… We walked in silence, each with his own thoughts. My heart contracted, as though the darkness had got in and was beginning to squeeze it.

Then, as we were rounding a bend, we suddenly heard a mighty roar behind us! We were awakened out of our thoughts and alarmed. Father pulled me down onto the embankment, down into the abyss, held me there. Then the train tore past, a black train. All the lights in the carriages were out, and it was going at frantic speed. What sort of train was it? There wasn't one due now! We gazed at it in terror. The fire blazed in the huge engine… sparks whirled out into the night. It was terrible. The driver stood there in the light of the fire, pale, motionless, his features as though turned to stone. Father didn't recognize him,… the man just stared straight ahead, as though intent only on rushing into the darkness, far into the darkness that had no end.

… I stood there panting, gazing after the furious vision. It was swallowed up by the night. Father took me onto the line; we hurried home. He said, 'Strange, what train was that? And I didn't recognize the driver.' Then we walked on in silence.

My whole body was shaking. It was for me, for my sake. I sensed what it meant: it was the anguish that was to come, the unknown, all that father knew nothing about, that he wouldn't be able to protect me against. That was how this world, this life, would be for me; not like father's where everything was secure and certain. It wasn't a real world, a real life. It just hurdled, blazing, into the darkness ahead." (Par Lagerkvist, "My Father and I," The Marriage Feast, 1954)

This story relates to Barabbas in a couple of illuminating ways. First, there is the use of darkness as a metaphor for the unknown, the abyss. Second, the name "Barabbas" itself means "son of the father"-Christ, of course, referred to himself as the "Son of Man." Though this is a historical novel, Barabbas is the quintessential modern man. Where our fathers (fathers broadly, not yours or mine) were blessed (cursed?) with an unquestioning faith which made sense of their world, we must wrestle with doubt and accompanying confusion. No book better captures this internal struggle than Par Lagerkvist's haunting novel Barabbas.

"The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner," writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his Introduction to the Modern Library edition. "I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable."

Cormac McCarthy's masterwork, Blood Meridian, chronicles the brutal world of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Its wounded hero, the teenage Kid, must confront the extraordinary violence of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians and sell those scalps. Loosely based on fact, the novel represents a genius vision of the historical West, one so fiercely realized that since its initial publication in 1985 the canon of American literature has welcomed Blood Meridian to its shelf.

"A classic American novel of regeneration through violence," declares Michael Herr. "McCarthy can only be compared to our greatest writers."

"The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and Faulkner," writes esteemed literary scholar Harold Bloom in his Introduction to the Modern Library edition. "I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable."

Cormac McCarthy's masterwork, Blood Meridian, chronicles the brutal world of the Texas-Mexico borderlands in the mid-nineteenth century. Its wounded hero, the teenage Kid, must confront the extraordinary violence of the Glanton gang, a murderous cadre on an official mission to scalp Indians and sell those scalps. Loosely based on fact, the novel represents a genius vision of the historical West, one so fiercely realized that since its initial publication in 1985 the canon of American literature has welcomed Blood Meridian to its shelf.

"A classic American novel of regeneration through violence," declares Michael Herr. "McCarthy can only be compared to our greatest writers."

Польская писательница. Дочь богатого помещика. Воспитывалась в Варшавском пансионе (1852–1857). Печаталась с 1866 г. Ранние романы и повести Ожешко ("Пан Граба", 1869; "Марта", 1873, и др.) посвящены борьбе женщин за человеческое достоинство.

В двухтомник вошли романы "Над Неманом", "Миер Эзофович" (первый том); повести "Ведьма", "Хам", "Bene nati", рассказы "В голодный год", "Четырнадцатая часть", "Дай цветочек!", "Эхо", "Прерванная идиллия" (второй том).

Новая книга Мацуо Монро на первый взгляд резко отличается от созерцательной "Научи меня умирать". Действие, действие и еще раз действие. Причем, чем оно неожиданнее и жестче, тем лучше - так считает автор.

Но есть нечто, делающее обе книги Монро похожими друг на друга: даже под дулом пистолета герои не перестают философствовать, а тонкий психологизм и специфический юмор до последней страницы держат читателя в напряжении.

В черном джипе, несущемся по дорогам Японии, четыре человека - психотерапевт-убийца; наркоманка, объявившая войну произведениям искусства; девушка, одержимая идеей глобального уничтожения человечества, и уставший от жизни простой страховой агент. У каждого из этих людей своя цель и свое понимание добра и зла. Во что выльется их противостояние? К чему приведет "крестовый поход" героев против общепринятой морали и законов?..

Paha Sapa, a young Sioux warrior, first encounters General George Armstrong Custer as Custer lies dying on the battlefield at Little Bighorn. He believes?as do the holy men of his tribe?that the legendary general's ghost entered him at that moment and will remain with him until Sapa convinces him to leave.

In BLACK HILLS, Dan Simmons weaves the stories of Paha Sapa and Custer together seamlessly, depicting a violent and tumultuous time in the history of Native Americans and the United States Army. Haunted by the voice of the general his people called "Long Hair," Paha Sapa lives a long life, driven by a dramatic vision he experiences in the Black Hills that are his tribe's homeland. As an explosives worker on the massive Mount Rushmore project, he may finally be rid of his ghosts?on the very day FDR comes to South Dakota to dedicate the Jefferson face.

It is Enniscorthy in the southeast of Ireland in the early 1950s. Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady's intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation.

Slowly, however, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of her new life – until she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. As she falls in love, news comes from home that forces her back to Enniscorthy, not to the constrictions of her old life, but to new possibilities which conflict deeply with the life she has left behind in Brooklyn.

In the quiet character of Eilis Lacey, Colm Tóibín has created one of fiction's most memorable heroines and in Brooklyn, a luminous novel of devastating power. Tóibín demonstrates once again his astonishing range and that he is a true master of nuanced prose, emotional depth, and narrative virtuosity.

Macmillan Readers Starter Level

THE ZONE 9 • BODY COUNT

The Russians have dropped two hundred of their crack Spetznaz commando troops in to Frankfurt. They attack communications centres, power plants and anything that will disrupt the city and bring it to its knees. Major Revells’ Special Combat Force joins the hunt for them, and a gruesome body count is maintained.

SYNOPSIS

A giant Russian transport aircraft evades Frankfurts anti-aircraft defences and drops two hundred paratroopers in to the city. They are Spetsnaz, the elite Russian commandos’. Falling behind the NATO frontline, catching the cities defenders by surprise, they attack communication centres, power stations and any target that will bring the city to its knees. Major Revells’ Special Combat Force has to throw itself into the effort to eliminate the deadly enemy. One by one they have to account for them, employing any tactics, any methods they can improvise. Hampered by the civilians who remain in the city the S.C.F. go after the Russian, hunting them down in a long and lethal game of hide and seek across the city. And all the time a count has to be kept, a body count.

PUBLISHED

First NEL Paperback Edition August 1990

First IMPRINT Publication E-Book Edition May 2005

First Revision IMPRINT Publications E-Book Edition April 2007

* * *

Major Revell and his Special Combat Company, a new breed of super-warriors waging the war of the future in a land wasted by nuclear destruction, must reclaim the blood-soaked city of Frankfurt, but they find themselves outgunned by an insidious new force from inside the Zone.

THE ZONE 2 • BLIND FIRE

A Russian armoured column has hurled across the Zone and is heading for Frankfurt, a soft target. Major Revells’ men are ordered to stop it. But they intend to destroy it down to the last tank, no matter what destruction and mayhem is necessary.

SYNOPSIS

Seemingly out of nowhere a powerful Russian armoured column has launched itself towards Frankfurt, crushing and thrusting aside any opposition. The city is unprotected, highly vulnerable and the only NATO force that can move to protect it is Major Revells’ tank hunter Special Combat Force. Ordered to halt the enemy, Major Revells’ men decide that half measures will not do, they have to utterly destroy the tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Employing only hand held weapons, time after time they ambush the Russian armour, blasting it apart at close range with anti-tank rockets and cannon fire until in the outskirts of the city both sides engage in a spectacular battle to the death.

PUBLISHED

First NEL Paperback Edition November 1980

First IMPRINT Publication E-Book Edition May 2005

First Revision IMPRINT Publications E-Book Edition April 2007

From the New York Times best-selling author Paul Theroux, Blinding Light is a slyly satirical novel of manners and mind expansion. Slade Steadman, a writer who has lost his chops, sets out for the Ecuadorian jungle with his ex-girlfriend in search of inspiration and a rare hallucinogen. The drug, once found, heightens both his powers of perception and his libido, but it also leaves him with an unfortunate side effect: periodic blindness. Unable to resist the insights that enable him to write again, Steadman spends the next year of his life in thrall to his psychedelic muse and his erotic fantasies, with consequences that are both ecstatic and disastrous.

Set in a devastated Berlin one month after the close of the Second World War, Berlin has been acclaimed as “ambitious. filled with brilliantly drawn characters, mesmerizingly readable, and disturbingly convincing” by the Sunday Telegraph. An electrifying thriller in the tradition of Joseph Kanon and Alan Furst, Berlin is a page-turner and an intimate portrait of Germany before, during, and after the war. It is 1945 in the American sector of occupied Berlin, and a German boy has discovered the body of a beautiful young woman in a subway station. Blonde and blue-eyed, she has been sexually assaulted and strangled with a chain. When the bodies of other young women begin to pile up it becomes clear that this is no isolated act of violence, and German and American investigators will have to cooperate if they are to stop the slaughter. Author Pierre Frei has searched the wreckage of Berlin and emerged with a gripping whodunit in which the stories of the victims themselves provide an absorbing commentary. There is a powerful pulse buried deep in the rubble.

A city — known for its light-heartedness, vibrancy and capacity for fun — is ripped apart by war.

A young man — full of the vim, vigour and desires of youth — refuses to allow his spirit to be dampened…

November, 1980. An Egyptian writer has chosen the wrong time to come to Beirut in search of a publisher for his controversial book. Men with machine guns are on every street corner. When the writer meets an old friend from his revolutionary student days, he is introduced to two fascinating women: idealistic film-maker Antoinette and Lamia, the seductive wife of his would-be publisher. His attentions inevitably turn towards the two women, but the background rumble of strife and struggle becomes increasingly hard to ignore.

Based on the author's real-life experience of the civil war in Lebanon, Beirut, Beirut is an exploration of how, even in the midst of chaos and violence, universals such as love, desire and yearning are still always our guiding forces.

A man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes out at the daughter he both loves and resents. In these raw, startling, and incandescently lovely stories, the author of Veronica yields twelve indelible portraits of people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know. Because They Wanted To is further evidence that Gaitskill is one of the fiercest, funniest, and most subversively compassionate writers at work today.

From one of the most exciting novelists writing in France today comes this literary saga of a dozen men and women — engineers, designers, machinery operators, cable riggers — all employees of the international consortium charged with building a bridge somewhere in a mythical and fantastic California.

Told on a sweeping scale reminiscent of classic American adventure films, this Médicis Prize — winning novel chronicles the lives of these workers, who represent a microcosm of not just mythic California, but of humanity as a whole. Their collective effort to complete the megaproject recounts one of the oldest of human dramas, to domesticate — and to radically transform — our world through built form, with all the dramatic tension it brings: a threatened strike, an environmental dispute, sabotage, accidents, career moves, and love affairs … Here generations and social classes cease to exist, and everyone and everything converges toward the bridge as metaphor, a cross-cultural impression of America today.

Kerangal’s writing has been widely praised for its scope, originality, and use of language. The style of her prose is rich and innovative, playing with different registers (from the most highly literary to the most colloquial slang), taking risks and inventing words, and playing with speed and tension through grammatical ellipsis and elision. She employs a huge vocabulary and, most strikingly, brings together words not often combined to evoke startling comparisons. Not since Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate has such a great Californian novel been told.

Winner of the Bakeless Prize for Fiction, an imaginative debut that ranges from Havana to Berlin.

Ancient cities and fallen empires come to life in this masterful collection. In the Byzantine court, a noble with a crippled hand is called upon to ensure that a holy man poses no threat to the throne. On an island in Lake Michigan, a religious community crumbles after an ardent convert digs a little too deep. And the black detective Jackson Hieronymus Burke rises to fame and falls from favor in two stories that recount his origins in Havana and the height of his success in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany. Ben Stroud’s historical reimaginings twist together with contemporary stories to reveal startling truths about human nature across the centuries. In his able hands, Byzantium makes us believe that these are accounts we haven’t heard yet. As the chronicler of Burke’s exploits muses, “After all, where does history exist, except in our imagination? Does that make it any less true?”

Barley Patch takes as its subject the reasons an author might abandon fiction — or so he thinks — forever. Using the form of an oblique self-interrogation, it begins with the Beckettian question “Must I write?” and proceeds to expand from this small, personal query to fill in the details of a landscape entirely unique in world letters, a chronicle of the images from life and fiction that have endured and mingled in the author’s mind, as well as the details (and details within details) that they contain. As interested, if not more so, in the characters from his books — finished or unfinished — as with the members of his family or his daily life, the narrator lays bare the act of writing and imagining, finally giving us a glimpse of the mythical place where the characters of fiction dwell before they come into existence in books.

Forced into a brutal concentration camp during a great war, Brodeck returns to his village at the war’s end and takes up his old job of writing reports for a governmental bureau. One day a stranger comes to live in the village. His odd manner and habits arouse suspicions: His speech is formal, he takes long, solitary walks, and although he is unfailingly friendly and polite, he reveals nothing about himself. When the stranger produces drawings of the village and its inhabitants that are both unflattering and insightful, the villagers murder him. The authorities who witnessed the killing tell Brodeck to write a report that is essentially a whitewash of the incident.

As Brodeck writes the official account, he sets down his version of the truth in a separate, parallel narrative. In measured, evocative prose, he weaves into the story of the stranger his own painful history and the dark secrets the villagers have fiercely kept hidden.

Set in an unnamed time and place, Brodeck blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck.

Broken Glass Park made a remarkable debut when it was published in Germany in 2008. Its author, the twenty-nine-year old Russian-born Alina Bronksy has since been hailed as a wunderkind, an immense talent who has been the subject of constant praise and debate.

The heroine of this enigmatic, razor-sharp, and thoroughly contemporary novel is seventeen- year-old Sacha Naimann, born in Moscow. Sacha lives in Berlin now with her two younger siblings and, until recently, her mother. She is precocious, independent, skeptical and, since her stepfather murdered her mother several months ago, an orphan. Unlike most of her companions, she doesn?t dream of getting out the tough housing project where they live. Her dreams are different: she wants to write a novel about her mother; and she wants to end the life of Vadim, the man who murdered her.

What strikes the reader most in this exceptional novel is Sacha?s voice: candid, self-confident, mature and childlike at the same time: a voice so like the voices of many of her generation with its characteristic mix of worldliness and innocence, skepticism and enthusiasm. This is Sacha?s story and it is as touching as any in recent literature.

Germany?s Freundin Magazine called Broken Glass Park?a ruthless, entertaining portrayal of life on the margins of society.? But Sacha?s story does not remain on the margins; it goes straight to the heart of what it means to be seventeen in these the first years of the new century.

Lying in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay are the bodies of a middle-aged couple. Celice and Joseph, in their mid-50s and married for more than 30 years, are returning to the seacoast where they met as students. Instead, they are battered to death by a thief with a chunk of granite. Their corpses lie undiscovered and rotting for a week, prey to sand crabs, flies, and gulls. Yet there remains something touching about the scene, with Joseph's hand curving lightly around his wife's leg, "quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet."

""Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell-just look at them-that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet.""

From that moment forward, "Being Dead" becomes less about murder and more about death. Alternating chapters move back in time from the murder in hourly and two-hourly increments. As the narrative moves backward, we see Celice and Joseph make the small decisions about their day that will lead them inexorably towards their own deaths. In other chapters the narrative moves forward. Celice and Joseph are on vacation and nobody misses them until they do not return. Thus, it is six days before their bodies are found. Crace describes in minute detail their gradual return to the land with the help of crabs, birds, and the numerous insects that attack the body and gently and not so gently prepare it for the dust-to-dust phase of death.

The Battlecruiser — in their time this class of ships was considered one of the great triumphs of the Royal Navy, as swift as a destroyer but packing a deadly firepower equal to any ship afloat. But the ships had one fatal flaw: their armour could be pierced by a single enemy shell. The Battle of Jutland exposed this Achilles' heel, then further disasters followed in the next world war with the tragic sinkings of the Hood and Repulse.

1943 — Of all her class, HMS *Reliant *and one other have survived. Reliant has the reputation of a lucky ship but when Captain Guy Sherbrooke joins her he knows he could be her last captain. As Britain prepares to invade occupied Europe, Reliant will be thrown head first into the conflagration. All those who sail in her know that there can be no half measures: only death or glory awaits HMS Reliant.

In their various locales-from Montreal (where a prosthetic leg casts a furious spell on its beholders) to New Mexico (where a Soviet-era exchange student redefines home for his hosts)-the characters in Babylon are coming to terms with life's epiphanies, for good or ill.

They range from the very young who, confronted with their parents' limitations, discover their own resolve, to those facing middle age and its particular indignities, no less determined to assert themselves and shape their destinies. Babylon and Other Stories showcases the wit, humor, and insight that have made Alix Ohlin one of the most admired young writers working today.

Nearly sixty of Egypt’s past leaders — from the time of the Pharoahs to the twentieth century — are summoned to judgment in the Court of Osiris in the Afterlife, in this extraordinary novel by Nobel Prize — winning author Naguib Mahfouz.

Before the Throne calls forth a parade of those who have shaped the modern nation of Egypt — from the ruler who first unified Egypt in 3000 BC to Anwar Sadat, the president assassinated by religious extremists in 1981, and including figures as various as the famous pharaoh Ramesses II and the medieval vizier Qaraqush. As they defend their decisions under questioning by Osiris, Isis, and Horus, those who acted for the nation’s good are honored with immortality in paradise while those who failed to protect it are condemned either to the inferno or to “the place of insignificance.” Full of Mahfouz’s unique insight into his country’s timeless qualities, this provocative work skillfully traces five thousand years of Egypt’s past as it flows into the turbulent present.

Siem Sigerius is a beloved, brilliant professor of mathematics with a promising future in politics. His family — including a loving wife, two gorgeous, intelligent stepdaughters and a successful future son-in-law — and carefully appointed home in the bucolic countryside complete the portrait of a comfortable, morally upright household. But there are elements of Siem's past that threaten to upend the peace and stability that he has achieved, and when he stumbles upon a deception that’s painfully close to home, things begin to fall apart. A cataclysmic explosion in a fireworks factory, the advent of internet pornography, and the reappearances of a discarded, dangerous son all play a terrible role in the spectacular fragmentation of the Sigerius clan.

A riveting portrait of a family in crisis and the ways that even the smallest twists of fate can forever change our lives, Bonita Avenue is an incendiary, unpredictable debut of relationships torn asunder by lies, and minds destroyed by madness.

While in Japan to observe the filming of one of her novels, Pearl Buck was informed that her husband had died. This book is the deeply affecting story of the period that immediately followed — the grief, fears, doubts, and readjustments that a woman must make before crossing the bridge that spans marriage and widowhood.

This is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It’s also about Mozart and Mendelssohn, the piano and the violin, and how we made it to Carnegie Hall.

This was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones.

But instead, it’s about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how I was humbled by a thirteen-year-old.

From Publishers Weekly

Chua (Day of Empire) imparts the secret behind the stereotypical Asian child’s phenomenal success: the Chinese mother. Chua promotes what has traditionally worked very well in raising children: strict, Old World, uncompromising values-and the parents don’t have to be Chinese. What they are, however, are different from what she sees as indulgent and permissive Western parents: stressing academic performance above all, never accepting a mediocre grade, insisting on drilling and practice, and instilling respect for authority. Chua and her Jewish husband (both are professors at Yale Law) raised two girls, and her account of their formative years achieving amazing success in school and music performance proves both a model and a cautionary tale. Sophia, the eldest, was dutiful and diligent, leapfrogging over her peers in academics and as a Suzuki piano student; Lulu was also gifted, but defiant, who excelled at the violin but eventually balked at her mother’s pushing. Chua’s efforts “not to raise a soft, entitled child” will strike American readers as a little scary-removing her children from school for extra practice, public shaming and insults, equating Western parenting with failure-but the results, she claims somewhat glibly in this frank, unapologetic report card, “were hard to quarrel with.”

(Jan.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Chua’s stated intent is to present the differences between Western and Chinese parenting styles by sharing experiences with her own children (now teenagers). As the daughter of Chinese immigrants, she is poised to contrast the two disparate styles, even as she points out that being a “Chinese Mother” can cross ethnic lines: it is more a state of mind than a genetic trait. Yet this is a deeply personal story about her two daughters and how their lives are shaped by such demands as Chua’s relentless insistence on straight A’s and daily hours of mandatory music practice, even while vacationing with grandparents. Readers may be stunned by Chua’s explanations of her hard-line style, and her meant-to-be humorous depictions of screaming matches intended to force greatness from her girls. She insists that Western children are no happier than Chinese ones, and that her daughters are the envy of neighbors and friends, because of their poise and musical, athletic, and academic accomplishments. Ironically, this may be read as a cautionary tale that asks just what price should be paid for achievement.

—Colleen Mondor

A collection of four short stories: "El Dia de las Madres", "Estos Fueron losPalacios", "Las Mananitas", and "El Hijo de Andres Aparicio".

Selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Science Fiction Books of Summer 2014 and listed on Buzzfeed's 15 Highly Anticipated Books of 2014, Bald New World asks the question:

What if everyone in the world lost their hair?

Nick Guan and his friend Larry Chao are a pair of eccentric filmmakers who choose to explore the existential angst of their balding world through cinema. Larry is heir to one of the most lucrative wig companies in the world. Nick is a man who’s trying to make sense of the tatters of his American dream. Taking place throughout China and America, the pair set off on a series of misadventures involving North Korean spies, veterans of an African War, and digital cricket fighters. Their journey leads them to discover some of the darkest secrets behind wig-making and hair in a hairless world.

"After my heart gives out and I'm on the operating table for emergency surgery, I will have told my physicians and surgeons to replace my heart with Peter Tieryas Liu's Bald New World, or any of his books really, because that's what I think of when I think of Liu's writing-heart. Similar to the work of Philip K. Dick, this parodic dystopia is steeped in futuristic technology that further bridges the gap between man and machine. Still, whether watching the latest episode of the immensely popular reality show Jesus the General or sparring against an opponent in the blood-sport known as cricket fighting, the humanity of our narrator shines through. Although we humans are capable of doing and creating sad, funny, glorious, devious things, we also persevere and adapt, survive. I wonder what Huxley would think of this, but he's dead. You're not, so read this book, feel alive."

— Jason Jordan, author of Pestilence, editor of decomP

"The boldly imaginative Bald New World follows Nicholas Guan, a military type tasked to digitally touch up scenes of carnage, in his misadventures from Korea to a futuristic California and in his frenzied dash from Gamble Town to China. The novel tells of beautifully flawed characters, the blurring distinction between reality and virtual environments, the comical yet chilling wave of religious fanaticism, and a world battling a strange malady called the Great Baldification, an ingenious symbol of human vanity. Peter Tieryas Liu’s Bald New World is vivid, exhilarating, and wildly entertaining." — Kristine Ong Muslim, author of We Bury the Landscape and Grim Series

"Bald New World is a hypnotic, surreal, and insightful novel, blending Blade Runner and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to create a dark, funny, and captivating story. One of the best books I've read this year." — Richard Thomas, Staring Into the Abyss

When Dad Lewis is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he and his wife must work together, along with their daughter, to make his final days as comfortable as possible, despite the bitter absence of their estranged son. Next door, a young girl moves in with her grandmother and contends with the memories that Dad’s condition stirs up of her own mother’s death. A newly arrived preacher attempts to mend his strained relationships with his wife and son, and soon faces the disdain of his congregation when he offers more than they are used to getting on Sunday mornings. And throughout, an elderly widow and her middle-aged daughter do all they can to ease the pain of their friends and neighbors.

A book about violence and redemption, Joy Williams' new fiction tells the story of two drifters who break into Florida vacation homes while their owners are away, live there a while, then move on.

College students, recent graduates, and their parents work at Denny's, volunteer at a public library in suburban Florida, attend satanic ska/punk concerts, eat Chinese food with the homeless of New York City, and go to the same Japanese restaurant in Manhattan three times in two sleepless days, all while yearning constantly for love, a better kind of love, or something better than love, things which-much like the Loch Ness Monster-they know probably do not exist, but are rumored to exist and therefore "good enough."

Nada is no stranger to protest. She is five years old when her French mother takes her to visit her Egyptian father, a political activist with a passing resemblance to President Nasser, in prison. When he returns home five years later, a changed man, their little family begins to fracture and eventually Nada’s mother moves back to Paris. Through her teenage years Nada is surrounded by the language of protest — ‘anarchism’, ‘Trotskyism’, ‘communism’ — and, one summer in Paris, she discovers the ’68 movement and her first love. And how to slam doors in anger.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Through student sit-ins, imprisonments, passionate arguments, accidental alliances, fallen friends, joys and regrets, Nada’s story grows into the story of Egypt’s many celebrated activists such as Arwa and Siham. Moving, uplifting and deeply human, Radwa Ashour’s masterpiece is the story of Egypt in the second half of the twentieth century and a paean to all…

A trade paperback reissue of National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior — powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human connection.

Now a classic: Bad Behavior made critical waves when it first published, heralding Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it “Pinteresque,” saying, “Ms. Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail, that she is able to make even the most extreme situations seem real… her reportorial candor, uncompromised by sentimentality or voyeuristic charm…underscores the strength of her debut.”

Sherman Alexie’s stature as a writer of stories, poems, and novels has soared over the course of his twenty-book, twenty-year career. His wide-ranging, acclaimed stories from the last two decades, from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven to his most recent PEN/Faulkner award-winning War Dances, have established him as a star in modern literature.

A bold and irreverent observer of life among Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, the daring, versatile, funny, and outrageous Alexie showcases all his talents in his newest collection, Blasphemy, where he unites fifteen beloved classics with fifteen new stories in one sweeping anthology for devoted fans and first-time readers.

Included here are some of his most esteemed tales, including "What You Pawn I Will Redeem," "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” "The Toughest Indian in the World,” and "War Dances.” Alexie’s new stories are fresh and quintessential — about donkey basketball leagues, lethal wind turbines, the reservation, marriage, and all species of contemporary American warriors.

An indispensable collection of new and classic stories, Blasphemy reminds us, on every thrilling page, why Sherman Alexie is one of our greatest contemporary writers and a true master of the short story.

Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk is a razor-sharp satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq. It explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad.

Ben Fountain’s remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.

Originally published in 1932 and banned by the Nazis one year later, Blood Brothers follows a gang of young boys bound together by unwritten rules and mutual loyalty.

Blood Brothers is the only known novel by German social worker and journalist Ernst Haffner, of whom nearly all traces were lost during the course of World War II. Told in stark, unsparing detail, Haffner’s story delves into the illicit underworld of Berlin on the eve of Hitler’s rise to power, describing how these blood brothers move from one petty crime to the next, spending their nights in underground bars and makeshift hostels, struggling together to survive the harsh realities of gang life, and finding in one another the legitimacy denied them by society.

In Butterflies in November, internationally best-selling author Auur Ava lafsdttir crafts a "funny, moving, and occasionally bizarre exploration of life's upheavals and reversals" (Financial Times).

After a day of being dumped — twice — and accidentally killing a goose, a young woman yearns for a tropical vacation far away from the chaos of her life. Instead, her plans are thrown off course by her best friend's four-year-old deaf-mute son, thrust into her reluctant care. But when the boy chooses the winning numbers for a lottery ticket, the two of them set off on a road trip across Iceland with a glove compartment stuffed full of their jackpot earnings. Along the way, they encounter black sand beaches, cucumber farms, lava fields, flocks of sheep, an Estonian choir, a falconer, a hitchhiker, and both of her exes desperate for another chance. As she and the boy grow closer, what began as a spontaneous adventure unexpectedly and profoundly changes the way she views her past and charts her future.

Butterflies in November is a blackly comic, charming, and uplifting tale of friends and lovers, motherhood, and self-discovery.

The stories collected in Bear and His Daughter span nearly thirty years — 1969 to the present — and they explore, acutely and powerfully, the humanity that unites us. In "Miserere," a widowed librarian with an unspeakable secret undertakes an unusual and grisly role in the anti-abortion crusade. "Under the Pitons" is the harrowing story of a reluctant participant in a drug-running scheme and the grim and unexpected consequences of his involvement. The title story is a riveting account of the tangled lines that weave together the relationship of a father and his grown daughter.

A new novel from an American master, Bay of Souls is a gripping tale of romantic obsession set against the backdrop of an island revolution. Michael Ahearn is a midwestern English professor who abandons his comfortable life when he becomes obsessed with a new colleague from the Caribbean, Lara Purcell. When Lara claims a vodoun spirit has taken possession of her soul, Michael follows her to her native St. Trinity, only to find himself in a whirlpool of Third World corruption. A finely wrought tale of one man's moral dissolution, Bay of Souls showcases Robert Stone at his most provocative and psychologically acute.

With this magnificently assured new novel, John McGahern reminds us why he has been called the Irish Chekhov, as he guides readers into a village in rural Ireland and deftly, compassionately traces its natural rhythms and the inner lives of its people. Here are the Ruttledges, who have forsaken the glitter of London to raise sheep and cattle, gentle Jamesie Murphy, whose appetite for gossip both charms and intimidates his neighbors, handsome John Quinn, perennially on the look-out for a new wife, and the town’s richest man, a gruff, self-made magnate known as “the Shah.”

Following his characters through the course of a year, through lambing and haying seasons, market days and family visits, McGahern lays bare their passions and regrets, their uneasy relationship with the modern world, their ancient intimacy with death.

Felix is a quitter, with a poor track record behind him. Until the day the opportunity presents itself to make half a million dollars tax-free — by nurturing 390 acres of cannabis in the lonely hills of northern California.

A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

Mick is on his way to the Smoke from the provinces. He's got six guys to find with only their names to go on and no more help than the phone book and an A-Z. Stuart is determined to walk each of the capital's roads, streets and alleyways. But what will he do when there's nothing left of his A-Z but blacked out pages? Judy is set on creating her own unique map of each of the metropolis' boroughs…an A-Z of sex in the city. Three strangers in search of London's heart and soul, mapping out their stories from Acton to Hackney, Chelsea Harbour to Woolwich, in a comic dance of sex and death.

Border Crossing is Pat Barker's unflinching novel of darkness, evil and society. When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions — questions he thinks only Tom can answer. Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world — a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tim become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own — and in crossing it, can he ever go back? 'Brilliantly crafted. Unflinching yet sensitive, this is a dark story expertly told' Daily Mail 'A tremendous piece of writing, sad and terrifying. It keeps you reading, exhausted and blurry-eyed, until 2am' Independent on Sunday 'Resolutely unsensational but disquieting. . Barker probes not only the mysteries of 'evil' but society's horrified and incoherent response to it' Guardian 'Rich, challenging, surprising, breathtaking' The Times Pat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been filmed, The Eye in the Door, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize. The trilogy featured the Observer's 2012 list of the ten best historical novels. She is also the author of the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class, and Toby's Room. She lives in Durham.

In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty — the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman.

A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold.

Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.

Bruce Pike, or 'Pikelet', has lived all his short life in a tiny sawmilling town from where the thundering sea can be heard at night. He longs to be down there on the beach, amidst the pounding waves, but for some reason his parents forbid him. It's only when he befriends Loonie, the local wild boy, that he finally defies them.

Intoxicated by the treacherous power of the sea and by their own youthful endurance, the two boys spurn all limits and rules, and fall into the company of adult mentors whose own addictions to risk take them to places they could never have imagined. Caught up in love and friendship and an erotic current he cannot resist, Pikelet faces challenges whose effects will far outlast his adolescence.

"Breath" is the story of lost youth recollected: its attractions, its compulsions, its moments of heartbreak and of madness. A young man learns what it is to be extraordinary, how to push himself, mind and body, to the limit in terrible fear and exhilaration, and how to mask the emptiness of leaving such intensity — in love and in life — behind.

Told with the immediacy and grace so characteristic of Tim Winton, " Breath" is a mesmeric novel by a writer at the height of his powers.

From the author of the acclaimed memoir When Skateboards Will Be Free comes a fiercely original and unforgettable collection of linked short stories, several of which appeared originally in The New Yorker.

An unnamed American city feeling the effects of a war waged far away and suffering from bad weather is the backdrop for this startling work of fiction. The protagonists are aimless young men going from one blue collar job to the next, or in a few cases, aspiring to middle management. Their everyday struggles-with women, with the morning commute, with a series of cruel bosses-are somehow transformed into storytelling that is both universally resonant and wonderfully uncanny. That is the unsettling, funny, and ultimately heartfelt originality of Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's short fiction, to be at home in a world not quite our own but with many, many lessons to offer us.

Buttocks Man is down on his uppers. His girlfriend, Original Colour, has cleared out of their Paris studio and run off to the Congo with a vertically challenged drummer known as The Mongrel. She's taken their daughter with her. Meanwhile, a racist neighbour spies on him something wicked, accusing him of 'digging a hole in the Dole'. And his drinking buddies at Jips, the Afro-Cuban bar in Les Halles, pour scorn on Black Bazaar, the journal he keeps to log his sorrows. There are days when only the Arab in the corner shop has a kind word; while at night his dreams are stalked by the cannibal pygmies of Gabon. Then again, Buttocks Man wears no ordinary uppers. He has style, bags of it (suitcases of crocodile and anaconda Westons, to be precise). He's a dandy from the Bacongo district of Brazzaville — AKA a sapeur or member of the Society of Ambience-makers and People of Elegance. But is flaunting sartorial chic against tough times enough for Buttocks Man to cut it in the City of Light?

The breakthrough novel from one of the greatest comic writers in the language — one of the twenty selected by Granta as the Best of Young British Writers 2003.

Some people follow the stars. Some people follow the soaps. Some people follow rare birds, or obscure bands, or the form, or the football.

Wesley prefers not to follow. He thinks that to follow anything too assiduously is a sign of weakness. Wesley is a prankster, a maverick, a charismatic manipulator, an accidental murderer who longs to live his life anonymously. But he can't. It is his awful destiny to be hotly pursued — secretly stalked, obsessively hunted — by a disparate group of oddballs he calls The Behindlings. Their motivations? Love, boredom, hatred, revenge.

From the award-winning author of Darkmans comes a comic epistolary novel of startling originality and wit.

Reading other people’s letters is always a guilty pleasure. But for two West Yorkshire policemen — contemplating a cache of 26 undelivered missives, retrieved from a back alley behind the hairdresser's in Skipton — it's also a job of work. The quaint moorside village of Burley Cross has been plunged into turmoil by the theft of the contents of its postbox, and when PC Roger Topping takes over the case, which his higher-ranking schoolmate Sergeant Laurence Everill has so far failed to crack, his expectations of success are not high.Yet Topping's investigation into the curtain-twitching lives of Jeremy Baverstock, Baxter Thorndyke, the Jonty Weiss-Quinns, Mrs Tirza Parry (widow), and a splendid array of other weird and wonderful characters, will not only uncover the dark underbelly of his scenic beat, but also the fundamental strengths of his own character.The denizens of Burley Cross inhabit a world where everyone’s secrets are worn on their sleeves, pettiness becomes epic, little is writ large. From complaints about dog shit to passive-aggressive fanmail, from biblical amateur dramatics to an Auction of Promises that goes staggeringly, horribly wrong, Nicola Barker’s epistolary novel is a work of immense comic range. It is also unlike anything she has written before. Brazenly mischievous and irresistibly readable, Burley Cross Postbox Theft is a Cranford for today, albeit with a decent dose of Tamiflu, some dodgy sex-therapy and a whiff of cheap-smelling vodka.

A rowdy reel of a novel that spans a hundred years and one family’s far flung roots by the internationally acclaimed author of Fault Lines.

Screenwriter Milo Noirlac is dying. As he lies in his hospital bed, voices from his past and present — real and imagined — come to him in the dark, each taking on the rhythm of his favorite Brazilian fight-dance, the capoeira. Seated next to him, Milo’s partner, bumptious director Paul Schwartz, coaxes Milo through his life story; from the abuse he suffered as a foster child, to his lost heritage, his beloved grandfather’s priceless library. As Milo narrates, his story becomes the pair’s final screenplay, the movie that will be their masterpiece.

With Milo’s imagination in full flight, several generations of Noirlac ancestors — voices in French and English, German and Dutch, Cree and Gaelic — come to life. There’s Neil Kerrigan his Irish grandfather, classmate of “Jimmy” Joyce, would-be poet and aspiring activist in the fight against British occupation, crushed by his exile in Quebec; Awinita, Milo’s biological mother, an Indian teen prostitute; Eugénio, a Brazilian street child whom Milo finds and fosters; and Marie-Thérèse, Milo’s tough-as-nails aunt. As each voice cascades through Milo’s memory, a fragment of family, and world, history falls into place.

Already a critically-acclaimed bestseller in France, Nancy Huston’s Black Dance is a rich portrait of one man’s life and death; a swirling, sensual dance of a novel, from an exceptional and rare literary voice.

“As musical as a Bach prelude.”—Elle (France)

“A magnificently structured novel, one that captivates us with its grace and power …memorable.” —Madame Figaro

Dai Wei lies in his bedroom, a prisoner in his body, after he was shot in the head at the Tiananmen Square protest ten years earlier and left in a coma. As his mother tends to him, and his friends bring news of their lives in an almost unrecognisable China, Dai Wei escapes into his memories, weaving together the events that took him from his harsh childhood in the last years of the Cultural Revolution to his time as a microbiology student at Beijing University.

As the minute-by-minute chronicling of the lead-up to his shooting becomes ever more intense, the reader is caught in a gripping, emotional journey where the boundaries between life and death are increasingly blurred.

The enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the world’s most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. This tech mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication.

Insider tech exposé, leaked memoir-in-progress, international thriller, family drama, sex comedy, and biblical allegory, Book of Numbers renders the full range of modern experience both online and off. Embodying the Internet in its language, it finds the humanity underlying the virtual.

Burial in the Clouds is the first English language translation of Hiroyuki Agawa’s classic novel of World War II, Kumo No Bohyo.

A powerful novel, it takes the form of the war-time diary of a young Japanese college student inducted into the Imperial Navy at the height of World War II. Trained as a combat pilot, he is transferred to one of the new "special attack" or "kamikaze" units when the tide of the war turns against Japan.

Like many young men of his generation, Jiro Yoshino, once a scholar of the humanities immersed in the study of poetry and philosophy, will offer everything he has to his country—his body, mind, and soul. By the age of twenty-five, Yoshino understands that his life, and those of his friends, will almost certainly be forfeit to the machinery of war.

This wonderful translation brings to life the harsh realities of war as it explores the personal stories of these young soldiers.

Burial in the Clouds is the first English language translation of Hiroyuki Agawa’s classic novel of World War II, Kumo No Bohyo.

A powerful novel, it takes the form of the war-time diary of a young Japanese college student inducted into the Imperial Navy at the height of World War II. Trained as a combat pilot, he is transferred to one of the new "special attack" or "kamikaze" units when the tide of the war turns against Japan.

Like many young men of his generation, Jiro Yoshino, once a scholar of the humanities immersed in the study of poetry and philosophy, will offer everything he has to his country—his body, mind, and soul. By the age of twenty-five, Yoshino understands that his life, and those of his friends, will almost certainly be forfeit to the machinery of war.

This wonderful translation brings to life the harsh realities of war as it explores the personal stories of these young soldiers.

THE BIG MONEY completes John Dos Passos's three-volume "fable of America's materialistic success and moral decline" (American Heritage) and marks the end of "one of the most ambitious projects that an American novelist has ever undertaken" (Time). Here we come back to America after the war and find a nation on the upswing. Industrialism booms. The stock market surges. Lindbergh takes his solo flight. Henry Ford makes automobiles. From New York to Hollywood, love affairs to business deals, it is a country taking the turns too fast, speeding toward the crash of 1929.

Ultimately, whether the novels are read together or separately, they paint a sweeping portrait of collective America and showcase the brilliance and bravery of one of its most enduring and admired writers.

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered that she had turned into the wrong person." So Anne Tyler opens this irresistible new novel.

The woman is Rebecca Davitch, a fifty-three-year-old grandmother. Is she an impostor in her own life? she asks herself. Is it indeed her own life? Or is it someone else's?

On the surface, Beck, as she is known to the Davitch clan, is outgoing, joyous, a natural celebrator. Giving parties is, after all, her vocation-something she slipped into even before finishing college, when Joe Davitch spotted her at an engagement party in his family's crumbling nineteenth-century Baltimore row house, where giving parties was the family business. What caught his fancy was that she seemed to be having such a wonderful time. Soon this large-spirited older man, divorced with three little girls, swept her into his orbit, and before she knew it she was embracing his extended family plus a child of their own, and hosting endless parties in the ornate, high-ceilinged rooms of The Open Arms.

Now, some thirty years later, after presiding over a disastrous family picnic, Rebecca is caught un-awares by the question of who she really is. How she answers it-how she tries to recover her girlhood self, that dignified grownup she had once been-is the story told in this beguiling, funny, and deeply moving novel.

As always with Anne Tyler's novels, once we enter her world it is hard to leave. But in Back When We Were Grownups she so sharpens our perceptions and awakens so many untapped feelings that we come away not only refreshed and delighted, but also infinitely wiser.

Carry Nation is on the loose again, breaking up discos, smashing topless bars, radicalizing women as she preaches clean living to men more intent on booze and babes. As for Mrs. Gulliver, her patience with her long-voyaging Lemuel is wearing thin: money is short and the kids can't even remember what their dad looks like. And what of Tonto, the ever-faithful companion, turning forty without so much as a birthday phone call from that masked man? In fifteen short fictions, Karen Joy Fowler turns accepted norms inside out and fairy tales upside down, pushing us to reconsider all our unquestioned verities and proving once more that she is among our most subversive writers of fiction. Filled with imaginative virtuosity, replete with wicked insights and cunning conceits, Black Glass delivers everything readers have come to expect of her fiction.

“xTx is the complete young literary god. Billie the Bull is mind-bogglingly and intricately superb down to its tiniest punctuation marks. To me, she’s about as great as it can get. Seriously, I’m awestruck.” —Dennis Cooper

A Children's Book About Beer?

Yes, believe it or not — but B Is for Beer is also a book for adults, and bear in mind that it's the work of maverick bestselling novelist Tom Robbins, inter-nationally known for his ability to both seriously illuminate and comically entertain.

Once upon a time (right about now) there was a planet (how about this one?) whose inhabitants consumed thirty-six billion gallons of beer each year (it's a fact, you can Google it). Among those affected, each in his or her own way, by all the bubbles, burps, and foam, was a smart, wide-eyed, adventurous kindergartner named Gracie; her distracted mommy; her insensitive dad; her non-conformist uncle; and a magical, butt-kicking intruder from a world within our world.

Populated by the aforementioned characters — and as charming as it may be subversive—B Is for Beer involves readers, young and old, in a surprising, far-reaching investigation into the limits of reality, the transformative powers of children, and, of course, the ultimate meaning of a tall, cold brewski.

A narcotics detective wages war against a deadly new stimulant.

The drug is called Lingo, and it’s the most powerful narcotic Lenore has ever seen. This cheaply manufactured pill races straight for the brain’s language center, supercharging it so that even a dimwitted person can speak and read at 1,500 words per minute. It induces giddiness, confidence, and sexual euphoria — with a side effect of murderous rage. The drug has come to Quinsigamond, a fading industrial center in the heart of Massachusetts, and it’s going to tear this town apart. Lenore believes she can stop that from happening. A narcotics detective with a few addictions of her own — amphetamines and heavy metal, to name a couple — she loves nothing more than her gun, until she meets Dr. Frederick Woo, the linguist assisting her on the case. Together they can stop the drug — if it doesn’t take hold of them first.

The now-classic, utterly unique voice of Ann Beattie is so dry it throws off sparks, her eye endowed with the emotional equivalent of X-ray vision. Her characters are young men and women discovering what it means to be a grown-up in a country that promised them they'd stay young forever. And here, in shapely, penetrating stories, Beattie confirms why she is one of the most widely imitated — yet surely inimitable — literary stylists of her generation.

In The Burning House, Beattie's characters go from dealing drugs to taking care of a bereaved friend. They watch their marriages fail not with a bang but with a wisecrack. And afterward, they may find themselves trading confidences with their spouses' new lovers. The Burning House proves that Beattie has no peer when it comes to revealing the hidden shapes of our relationships, or the depths of tenderness, grief, and anger that lie beneath the surfaces of our daily lives.

In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these 21 vintage selected stories and 13 scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.

“Markus has a remarkable ability to strip life down to its basics, to the point where the metaphors we manufacture as the looking-glass for our existence end up standing in for existence itself. Fish, mud, night and river come to stand in place of family connections as fathers and sons, by giving themselves to fishing give themselves over to a lone search and to loss.”—Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain.

Peter Markus has published three story collections and lives in Michigan.

David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. The series of stories from which this exuberantly acclaimed book takes its title is a sequence of imagined interviews with men on the subject of their relations with women. These portraits of men at their most self-justifying, loquacious, and benighted explore poignantly and hilariously the agonies of sexual connections.

In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of resistance. Now entering middle age, an orphan recalls the fleeting moments that have never left him — a scorching day in a blossoming orchard with a woman who loves another; a furtive, desperate affair in a Black Sea resort; the bunch of snowdrops a crippled childhood friend gave him to give to his lover.

Winner of the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.

The characters in Big Picture, Percival Everett’s darkly comic collection of stories, are often driven to explosive, life-changing action. Everett delves into those moments when outside forces bring us to the brink of insanity or liberation.

The catalysts in Everett’s tales are surprising: a stuffed boar’s head, mounted on the wall of a diner, becomes an object of intense, inexplicable desire; a painter is driven to the point of suicide by a mute who returns day after day to mow the artist’s lawn; the loss of a pair of dentures sparks a turn toward revelation. The characters respond to their dilemmas in ways that are both unpredictable and memorable.

Everett’s highly original voice propels the reader into unfamiliar, yet unforgettable terrain: a landscape full of excitement, astonishment, and self-discovery.

"In 1986 Pakistan's greatest poet was found brutally murdered, beaten to death by government thugs. Two years later his lover, fearless activist Samina Akram, disappeared. Her daughter, Aasmani has always assumed her mother simply abandoned her — since she had left so many times before, following the Poet into exile." But now, working at Pakistan's first independent TV station, Aasmani runs into an old friend of her mother's who hands her a letter written — recently — in the Poet and Samina's secret code. As more letters arrive, Aasmani becomes certain that will lead her to Samina. Despite menacing signs, the disbelief of her family, and the worries of her new lover, Aasmani decodes the letters and searches for their source. But if she manages to locate it, will she find what she's looking for?

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

A collection of classic, yet shockingly contemporary, short stories set in the vibrant world of mid-century Bombay, from one of India’s greatest writers.

Arriving in 1930s Bombay, Saadat Hasan Manto discovered a city like no other. A metropolis for all, and an exhilarating hub of license and liberty, bursting with both creative energy and helpless despondency. A journalist, screenwriter, and editor, Manto is best known as a master of the short story, and Bombay was his lifelong muse. Vividly bringing to life the city’s seedy underbelly — the prostitutes, pimps, and gangsters that filled its streets — as well as the aspiring writers and actors who arrived looking for fame, here are all of Manto’s Bombay-based stories, together in English for the very first time. By turns humorous and fantastical, Manto’s tales are the provocative and unflinching lives of those forgotten by humanity.

The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism; the chaotic struggle for independence; the 1965 mass murders of perhaps a million "Communists," followed by three decades of Suharto's despotic rule.

Beauty Is a Wound astonishes from its opening line: "One afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years…" Drawing on local sources — folk tales and the all-night shadow puppet plays, with their bawdy wit and epic scope — and inspired by Melville and Gogol, Kurniawan's distinctive voice brings something luscious yet astringent to contemporary literature.

On the heels of Boyd's Costa (formerly Whitbread) Award winner, Restless, an erudite and entertaining collection of essays and opinions from one of our generation's most talented writers.

"Plant one bamboo shoot-cut bamboo for the rest of your life." William Boyd's prolific, fruitful career is a testament to this old Chinese saying. Boyd penned his first book review in 1978-the proverbial bamboo shoot-and we've been reaping the rewards ever since. Beginning with the Whitbread Award-winning A Good Man in Africa, William Boyd has written consistently artful, intelligent fiction and firmly established himself as an international man of letters. He has done nearly thirty years of research and writing for projects as diverse as a novel about an ecologist studying chimpanzees (Brazzaville Beach), an adapted screenplay about the emotional lives of soldiers (The Trench, which he also directed), and a fictional biography of an American painter (Nat Tate). All the while, Boyd has been accruing facts and wisdom-and publishing it in the form of articles, essays, and reviews.

Now available for the first time in the United States, Bamboo gathers together Boyd's writing on literature, art, the movie business, television, people he has met, places he has visited and autobiographical reflections on his African childhood, his years at boarding school, and the profession of novelist. From Pablo Picasso to the Cannes Film Festival, from Charles Dickens to Catherine Deneuve, from mini-cabs to Cecil Rhodes, this collection is a fascinating and surprisingly revealing companion to the work of one of Britain's leading novelists.

В книге собраны тексты, связанные с малоизвестным в России эпизодом из истории контактов западной авангардной литературы с советским литературно-политическим процессом. Публикуются избранные главы из романа «Эйми, или Я Есмь» — экспериментального текста-травелога о Советской России, опубликованного в 1933 году крупнейшим поэтом американского авангарда Э. Э. Каммингсом (1894–1962).

Из поденных записей странствующего в советской преисподней поэта рождается эпического размаха одиссея о судьбе личности в тираническом обществе насилия и принуждения. На страницах книги появляются Л. Арагон и Э. Триоле, Вс. Мейерхольд и 3. Райх, Л. Брик и В. Маяковский, Н. Гончарова и М. Ларионов, И. Эренбург и Б. Пастернак, Дж. Джойс и Э. Паунд. Впервые русский читатель узнает о замалчиваемом долгие десятилетия образце испепеляющей сатиры на советское общество, автором которой был радикальный американский поэт-авангардист. Издание снабжено обстоятельной вступительной статьей и комментариями. Книгу сопровождают 100 иллюстраций, позволяющих точнее передать атмосферу увиденного Каммингсом в советской Марксландии.

Beginning in the middle of crisis, then accelerating through plots that grow stranger by the page, Naja Marie Aidt’s stories have a feel all their own. Though they are built around the common themes of sex, love, desire, and gender, Aidt pushes them into her own desperate, frantic realm. In one, a whore shows up unannounced at a man’s apartment, roosts in his living room, and then violently threatens him when he tries to make her leave. In another, a wife takes her husband to a city where it is women, not men, who are the dominant sex — but was it all a hallucination when she finds herself tied to a board and dragged back to his car? And in the unforgettable “Blackcurrant,” two young women who have turned away from men and toward lesbianism abscond to a farm, where they discover that their neighbor’s son is experimenting with his own kind of sexuality. The first book from the widely lauded Aidt to reach the English language, Baboon delivers audacious writing that careens toward bizarre, yet utterly truthful, realizations.

Fourteen-year-old Daniel Kelly is special. Despite his upbringing in working-class Melbourne, he knows that his astonishing ability in the swimming pool has the potential to transform his life, silence the rich boys at the private school to which he has won a sports scholarship, and take him far beyond his neighborhood, possibly to international stardom and an Olympic medal. Everything Danny has ever done, every sacrifice his family has ever made, has been in pursuit of this dream-but what happens when the talent that makes you special fails you? When the goal that you’ve been pursuing for as long as you can remember ends in humiliation and loss?

Twenty years later, Dan is in Scotland, terrified to tell his partner about his past, afraid that revealing what he has done will make him unlovable. When he is called upon to return home to his family, the moment of violence in the wake of his defeat that changed his life forever comes back to him in terrifying detail, and he struggles to believe that he’ll be able to make amends. Haunted by shame, Dan relives the intervening years he spent in prison, where the optimism of his childhood was completely foreign.

Tender, savage, and blazingly brilliant, Barracuda is a novel about dreams and disillusionment, friendship and family, class, identity, and the cost of success. As Daniel loses everything, he learns what it means to be a good person-and what it takes to become one.

At thirteen, Felice Muir ranaway from home to punish herself for some horrible thing she had done leaving ahole in the hearts of her pastry-chef mother, her real estate attorney father, and her foodie-entrepreneurial brother. After five years of scrounging forfood, drugs, and shelter on Miami Beach, Felice is now turning eighteen, andshe and the family she left behind must reckon with the consequences of heractions and make life-affirming choices about what matters to them most, nowand in the future.

The stories in Black Vodka, by acclaimed author Deborah Levy, are perfectly formed worlds unto themselves, written in elegant yet economical prose. She is a master of the short story, exploring loneliness and belonging; violence and tenderness; the ephemeral and the solid; the grotesque and the beautiful; love and infidelity; and fluid identities national, cultural, and personal.

In "Shining a Light," a woman's lost luggage is juxtaposed with far more serious losses. An icy woman seduces a broken man in "Vienna," and a man's empathy threatens to destroy him in "Stardust Nation." "Cave Girl" features a girl who wants to be a different kind of woman — she succeeds in a shocking way. A deformed man seeks beauty amid his angst in the title story.

These are twenty-first century lives dissected with razor-sharp humor and curiosity. Published simultaneously with Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing, Levy's stories will send you tumbling into a rabbit hole, and you won't be able to scramble out until long after you've turned the last page.

"Deborah Levy showed she is a top-hitting novelist with a Man Booker Prize shortlist place for Swimming Home. Can she conquer the genre which demands she fashion perfect jewels?. . Yes, Levy can do macro- and microcosm. These tales of unconventional love reinforce her reputation as a major contemporary writer who never pulls her punches." — The Independent

A darkly comic debut novel about advertising, truth, single malt, Scottish hospitality — or lack thereof — and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Ray Welter, who was until recently a highflying advertising executive in Chicago, has left the world of newspeak behind. He decamps to the isolated Scottish Isle of Jura in order to spend a few months in the cottage where George Orwell wrote most of his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray is miserable, and quite prepared to make his troubles go away with the help of copious quantities of excellent scotch.

But a few of the local islanders take a decidedly shallow view of a foreigner coming to visit in order to sort himself out, and Ray quickly finds himself having to deal with not only his own issues but also a community whose eccentricities are at times amusing and at others downright dangerous. Also, the locals believe — or claim to believe — that there’s a werewolf about, and against his better judgment, Ray’s misadventures build to the night of a traditional, boozy werewolf hunt on the Isle of Jura on the summer solstice.

This is a novel about the persistence of longing in which the twin lives of the title character blur and overlap. Bird puts her child on the bus for school and passes the day with her baby. Interwoven into the passage of the day are phone calls from a promiscuous, unmarried friend, and Bird’s recollection of the feral, reckless love she knew as a young woman. It’s a day infused with fear and longing, an exploration of the ways the past shapes and dislodges the present.

In the present moment, Bird dutifully cares for her husband, infant, older child. But at the same time Bird inhabits this rehabilitated domestic life, she re-lives an unshakable passion: Mickey, the lover she returns to with what feels like a migratory impulse, Mickey, whose movements and current lovers she still tracks. With Mickey, she slummed and wandered — part-time junkie, tourist of the low-life — a life of tantalizing peril. "This can’t last", Bird thought, and it was true.

Noy Holland’s writing is lyrical, fired by a heightened eroticism in which every sight and auditory sensation is charged with arousal. The writing in this book — Noy Holland’s first novel — is fearless in its depiction of sexual appetite and obsessive love. It sheds light on the terror of abandonment and the terrible knowledge that we are helpless to protect not only ourselves but the people we most love.

A searing, surreal novel that bleeds fantasy and reality — and Beatles fandom — from one of literature's most striking contemporary voices, author of the international sensation City of Bohane.

It is 1978, and John Lennon has escaped New York City to try to find the island off the west coast of Ireland he bought nine years prior. Leaving behind domesticity, his approaching forties, his inability to create, and his memories of his parents, he sets off to find calm in the comfortable silence of isolation. But when he puts himself in the hands of a shape-shifting driver full of Irish charm and dark whimsy, what ensues can only be termed a magical mystery tour.

Beatlebone is a tour de force of language and literary imagination that marries the most improbable element to the most striking effect.

This brilliant memoir brings to life an entire era through the sensibility of one of America's finest authors. Recollecting fifty years of love, desire and friendship, Burning the Days traces the life of a singular man, who starts out in Manhattan and comes of age in the skies over Korea, before reinventing himself as a writer in the New York of the 1960s.

It features — in Salter's uniquely beautiful style — some of the most evocative pages about flying ever written, together with portraits of the actors, directors and authors who influenced him. This is a book that through its sheer sensual force not only recollects the past, but reclaims it.

A fresh, honest, and darkly funny debut collection about family, friends, and lovers, and the flaws that make us most human.

Fearless, candid, and incredibly funny, Lauren Holmes is a newcomer who writes like a master. She tackles eros and intimacy with a deceptively light touch, a keen awareness of how their nervous systems tangle and sometimes short-circuit, and a genius for revealing our most vulnerable, spirited selves.

In “Desert Hearts,” a woman takes a job selling sex toys in San Francisco rather than embark on the law career she pursued only for the sake of her father. In “Pearl and the Swiss Guy Fall in Love,” a woman realizes she much prefers the company of her pit bull — and herself — to the neurotic foreign fling who won’t decamp from her apartment. In “How Am I Supposed to Talk to You?” a daughter hauls a suitcase of lingerie to Mexico for her flighty, estranged mother to resell there, wondering whether her personal mission — to come out — is worth the same effort. And in “Barbara the Slut,” a young woman with an autistic brother, a Princeton acceptance letter, and a love of sex navigates her high school’s toxic, slut-shaming culture with open eyes.

With heart, sass, and pitch-perfect characters, Barbara the Slut is a head-turning debut from a writer with a limitless career before her.

From the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Rea Award for the Short Story: a gorgeously rendered, passionate account of a relationship threatened by secrets, set against the backdrop of national tragedy.

When Natasha, a talented young artist working as a congressional aide, meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. Although he is nearly two decades older, they discover in each other the happy yearning and exhilaration of lovers, and within months they are engaged. Shortly before their wedding, while Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York attending the wedding of a family friend, the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the tranquillity of the nation’s summer. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha makes an error in judgment that leads to a private trauma of her own on the Caribbean shore. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day and Natasha’s inability to speak of it inexorably divide their relationship into “before” and “after.” They move to Memphis and begin their new life together, but their marriage quickly descends into repression, anxiety, and suspicion.

In prose that is direct, exact, and lyrical, Richard Bausch plumbs the complexities of public and personal trauma, and the courage with which we learn to face them. Above all, Before, During, After is a love story, offering a penetrating and exquisite portrait of intimacy, of spiritual and physical longing, and of the secrets we convince ourselves to keep even as they threaten to destroy us. An unforgettable tour de force from one of America’s most distinguished storytellers.

A scary, funny novel — a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination.

It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense.

Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad — and is poised to make a fortune on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game aimed at teenagers. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her brother, and in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz with vague fantasies of violence.

Through a gallery of vivid characters — heroic, ignoble, or desperate — Mark Costello's hilarious novel limns the strategies, both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily life.

Spanning 1940s to 2020s America, a Pynchon-esque saga about rock music, art, politics, and the elusive nature of love.

Meet everyman Moses Teumer, whose recent diagnosis of an aggressive form of leukemia has sent him in search of a donor. When he discovers that the woman who raised him is not his biological mother, he must hunt down his birth parents and unspool the intertwined destinies of the Teumer and Savant families.

Salome Savant, Moses’s birth mother, is an avant-garde artist who has spent her life in and out of a mental health facility. Her son and Moses’s half-brother, Alchemy Savant, the mercurial front man of the world-renowned rock band The Insatiables, abandons music to launch a political campaign to revolutionize 2020s America. And then there’s Ambitious Mindswallow, aka Ricky McFinn, who journeys from juvenile delinquency in Queens to being The Insatiables’ bassist and Alchemy’s Sancho Panza. Bauman skillfully weaves the threads that intertwine these characters and the histories that divide them, creating a postmodern vision of America that is at once sweeping, irreverent, and heartbreaking.

From Brazil’s most acclaimed young novelist, the mesmerizing story of how a troubled young man’s restorative journey to the seaside becomes a violent struggle with his family’s past

— So why did they kill him?

— I’m getting there. Patience, tchê. I wanted to give you the context. Because it’s a good story, isn’t it?

A young man’s father, close to death, reveals to his son the true story of his grandfather’s death, or at least the truth as he knows it. The mean old gaucho was murdered by some fellow villagers in Garopaba, a sleepy town on the Atlantic now famous for its surfing and fishing. It was almost an execution, vigilante style. Or so the story goes.

It is almost as if his father has given the young man a deathbed challenge. He has no strong ties to home, he is ready for a change, and he loves the seaside and is a great ocean swimmer, so he strikes out for Garopaba, without even being quite sure why. He finds an apartment by the water and builds a simple new life, taking his father’s old dog as a companion. He swims in the sea every day, makes a few friends, enters into a relationship, begins to make inquiries.

But information doesn’t come easily. A rare neurological condition means that he doesn’t recognize the faces of people he’s met, leading frequently to awkwardness and occasionally to hostility. And the people who know about his grandfather seem fearful, even haunted. Life becomes complicated in Garopaba until it becomes downright dangerous.

Steeped in a very special atmosphere, both languid and tense, and soaked in the sultry allure of south Brazil, Daniel Galera’s masterfully spare and powerful prose unfolds a story of discovery that feels almost archetypal — a display of storytelling sorcery that builds with oceanic force and announces one of Brazil’s greatest young writers to the English-speaking world.

Jed-young, gay, black, out of rehab and out of prospects in his hometown of Chicago-flees to the city of his fantasies, a museum of modernism and decadence: Berlin. The paradise that tyranny created, the subsidized city isolated behind the Berlin Wall, is where he's chosen to become the figure that he so admires, the black American expatriate. Newly sober and nostalgic for the Weimar days of Isherwood and Auden, Jed arrives to chase boys and to escape from what it means to be a black male in America.

But history, both personal and political, can't be avoided with time or distance. Whether it's the judgment of the cousin he grew up with and her husband's bourgeois German family, the lure of white wine in a down-and-out bar, a gang of racists looking for a brawl, or the ravaged visage of Rock Hudson flashing behind the face of every white boy he desperately longs for, the past never stays past even in faraway Berlin. In the age of Reagan and AIDS in a city on the verge of tearing down its walls, he clambers toward some semblance of adulthood amid the outcasts and expats, intellectuals and artists, queers and misfits. And, on occasion, the city keeps its Isherwood promises and the boy he kisses, incredibly, kisses him back.

An intoxicating, provocative novel of appetite, identity, and self-construction, Darryl Pinckney's Black Deutschland tells the story of an outsider, trapped between a painful past and a tenebrous future, in Europe's brightest and darkest city.

Exploring the way our choices and relationships are shaped by the menace and beauty of the natural world, Megan Mayhew Bergman’s powerful and heartwarming collection captures the surprising moments when the pull of our biology becomes evident, when love or fear collides with good sense, or when our attachment to an animal or wild place can’t be denied.

In “Housewifely Arts,” a single mother and her son drive hours to track down an African gray parrot that can mimic her deceased mother’s voice. A population-control activist faces the conflict between her loyalty to the environment and her maternal desire in “Yesterday’s Whales.” And in the title story, a lonely naturalist allows an attractive stranger to lead her and her aging father on a hunt for an elusive woodpecker.

As intelligent as they are moving, the stories in Birds of a Lesser Paradise are alive with emotion, wit, and insight into the impressive power that nature has over all of us. This extraordinary collection introduces a young writer of remarkable talent.

Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, awakes the morning before a job interview to find that he's been transformed into a white man. In this condition he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. With his red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, it seems he's been completely changed. Well, almost. There is the matter of his family, his accent, his name. Oh, and his black ass. Furo must quickly learn to navigate a world made unfamiliar and deal with those who would use him for their own purposes. Taken in by a young woman called Syreeta and pursued by a writer named Igoni, Furo lands his first-ever job, adopts a new name, and soon finds himself evolving in unanticipated ways.

A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass is a fierce comic satire that touches on everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look. As he did in Love Is Power, or Something Like That, Barrett brilliantly depicts life in contemporary Nigeria and details the double-dealing and code-switching that are implicit in everyday business. But it's Furo's search for an identity-one deeper than skin-that leads to the final unraveling of his own carefully constructed story.

Because She Never Asked is a story reminiscent of that reached by the travelers in Patricia Highsmith's Stranger on a Train. The author first writes a piece for the artist Sophie Calle to live out: a young, aspiring, French artist travels to Lisbon and the Azores in pursuit of an older artist whose work she’s in love with. The second part of the story tells what happens between the author and Calle. She eludes, him; he becomes blocked, and suffers physical collapse.

“Something strange happened along the way,” Vila-Matas wrote. “Normally, writers try to pass a work of fiction off as being real. But in Because She Never Asked, the opposite occurred: in order to give meaning to the story of my life, I found that I needed to present it as fiction.”

Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies — of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss — that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

The novel is told in a kaleidoscope of seamlessly woven voices and centers around an incendiary romance that consumes everyone in its path: Myra Lamb, a wild young girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain; her grandmother Byrdie Lamb, who protects Myra fiercely and passes down “the touch” that bewitches people and animals alike; the neighbor boy who longs for Myra yet is destined never to have her; the twin children Myra is forced to abandon but who never forget their mother’s deep love; and John Odom, the man who tries to tame Myra and meets with shocking, violent disaster. Against the backdrop of a beautiful but often unforgiving country, these lives come together — only to be torn apart — as a dark, riveting mystery unfolds.

With grace and unflinching verisimilitude, Amy Greene brings her native Appalachia — and the faith and fury of its people — to rich and vivid life. Here is a spellbinding tour de force that announces a dazzlingly fresh, natural-born storyteller in our midst.

“Fans of Jim Harrison’s Legends of the Fall will enjoy the plot; Willa Cather enthusiasts will relish the setting; and Theodore Dreiser readers will savor the gritty characterizations.”—Library Journal (starred)

At once intimate and sweeping, Bottomland—the anticipated second novel from Michelle Hoover — follows the Hess family in the years after World War I as they attempt to rid themselves of the Anti-German sentiment that left a stain on their name. But when the youngest two daughters vanish in the middle of the night, the family must piece together what happened while struggling to maintain their life on the unforgiving Iowa plains.

In the weeks after Esther and Myrle’s disappearance, their siblings desperately search for the sisters, combing the stark farmlands, their neighbors’ houses, and the unfamiliar world of far-off Chicago. Have the girls run away to another farm? Have they gone to the city to seek a new life? Or were they abducted? Ostracized, misunderstood, and increasingly isolated in their tightly-knit small town in the wake of the war, the Hesses fear the worst. Told in the voices of the family patriarch and his children, this is a haunting literary mystery that spans decades before its resolution. Hoover deftly examines the intrepid ways a person can forge a life of their own despite the dangerous obstacles of prejudice and oppression.

Abel Jackson's boyhood belongs to a vanishing world. On an idyllic stretch of coast whose waters teem with fish, he lives a simple, tough existence. It's just him and his mother in the house at Longboat Bay, but Abel has friends in the sea, particularly the magnificent old groper he meets when diving. As the years pass, things change, but one thing seems to remain constant: the greed of humans. When the modern world comes to his patch of sea, Abel wonders what can stand in its way.

Blueback is a deceptively simple allegory about a boy who matures through fortitude, and finds wisdom through living in harmony with all forms of life. It is a beautiful distillation of Winton's art and concerns.

'In true fable style, this is a simple story, but one so beautiful, poignant and moving it is impossible to ignore.' Daily Telegraph

'Winton. . convince[s] us of the preciousness of our oceans not through lectures but through his characters' steady wonder.' New York Times

By Night The Mountain Burns recounts the narrator’s childhood on a remote island off the West African coast, living with his mysterious grandfather, several mothers and no fathers. We learn of a dark chapter in the island’s history: a bush fire destroys the crops, then hundreds perish in a cholera outbreak. Superstition dominates: now the islanders must sacrifice their possessions to the enraged ocean god. What of their lives will they manage to save?

Whitmanesque in its lyrical evocation of the island, Ávila Laurel’s writing builds quietly, through the oral rhythms of traditional storytelling, into gripping drama worthy of an Achebe or a García Márquez.

In this autobiographical debut novel from one of America’s most acclaimed poets, a writer’s sentimental journey across the Atlantic becomes a crucible of heartbreak and mental anguish.William Demarest settles into his room, checks his pockets for his seasickness pills, and wanders onto the deck of the ship that will be his home for the next few days. The lights of New York City are still faintly visible, but Demarest’s mind is on London, where he hopes to be reunited with the woman he adores. He has spent countless nights pining for her and is finally ready to declare his love.

In a state of feverish anticipation, Demarest steals onto the first-class section of the ship. There, to his surprise, he discovers the woman he is traveling thousands of miles to see, only for her to dismiss him with devastating coldness. For the rest of the voyage, Demarest must wrestle with golden memories turned to dust and long-cherished fantasies that will never come to pass.

A brilliant novel of psychological insight and formal experimentation reminiscent of the stories of James Joyce, Blue Voyage is a bold work of art from a winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

“It begins with a child. .” So opens Jane Mendelsohn’s powerful, riveting new novel. A classic family tale colliding with the twenty-first century, Burning Down the House tells the story of two girls. Neva, from the mountains of Russia, was sold into the sex trade at the age of ten; Poppy is the adopted daughter of Steve, the patriarch of a successful New York real estate clan, the Zanes. She is his sister’s orphaned child. One of these young women will unwittingly help bring down this grand household with the inexorability of Greek tragedy, and the other will summon everything she’s learned and all her strength to try to save its members from themselves.

In cinematic, dazzlingly described scenes, we enter the lavish universe of the Zane family, from a wedding in an English manor house to the trans-global world of luxury hotels and restaurants — from New York to Rome, Istanbul to Laos. As we meet them all — Steve’s second wife, his children from his first marriage, the twins from the second, their friends and household staff — we enter with visceral immediacy an emotional world filled with a dynamic family’s loves, jealousies, and yearnings. In lush, exact prose, Mendelsohn transforms their private stories into a panoramic drama about a family’s struggles to face the challenges of internal rivalry, a tragic love, and a shifting empire. Set against the backdrop of financial crisis, globalization, and human trafficking, the novel finds inextricable connections between the personal and the political.

Dramatic, compassionate, and psychologically complex, Burning Down the House is both wrenching and unputdownable, an unforgettable portrayal of a single family caught up in the earthquake that is our contemporary world.

"Brilliant writing — lively and heartbreaking at every turn.”—Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life.

In this debut novel, 33-year-old Addie Lockwood bears and surrenders for adoption a son, her only child, without telling his father, little imagining how the secret will shape their lives. Told through letters and spare, precisely observed vignettes, Byrd is an unforgettable story about making and living with the most difficult, intimate, and far-reaching of choices.

Kim Church’s stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Painted Bride Quarterly, Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has received fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband, artist Anthony Ulinski. Byrd is her first novel.

The second novel in William Kennedy’s much-loved Albany cycle depicts Billy Phelan, a slightly tarnished poker player, pool hustler, and small-time bookie. A resourceful man full of Irish pluck, Billy works the fringes of the Albany sporting life with his own particular style and private code of honor, until he finds himself in the dangerous position of potential go-between in the kidnapping of a political boss’s son.

One Saturday night in Las Vegas, twelve-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesn't come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her son's room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boy's father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy.

As the Ewings navigate the mystery of what's become of their son, the circumstances surrounding Newell's vanishing and other events on that same night reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected strangers: a comic book illustrator in town for a weekend of debauchery; a painfully shy and possibly disturbed young artist; a stripper who imagines moments from her life as if they were movie scenes; a bubbly teenage wiccan anarchist; a dangerous and scheming gutter punk; a band of misfit runaways. The people of Beautiful Children are urban nomads; each with a past to hide and a pain to nurture, every one of them searching for salvation and barreling toward destruction, weaving their way through a neon underworld of sex, drugs, and the spinning wheels of chance.

In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption; heralding the arrival of a major new writer.

Karim Chammas returns to Lebanon, his family, and his past after ten years of establishing a new life in France. Back in Beirut, Karim reacquaints himself with his brother Nassim, now married to his former love Hind, and old friends from the leftist political circles within which he once roamed under the nom de guerre Sinalcol. By the end of his six-month stay, he has been reintroduced to the chaos of cultural, religious and political battles that continue to rage in Lebanon. Overwhelmed by the experiences of his return, Karim is forced to contemplate his identity and his place in Lebanon's history. The story of Karim and his family is born of other stories that intertwine to form an imposing fresco of Lebanese society over the past fifty years. Broken Mirrors examines the roots of an endemic civil war and a country's unsettled past.

The young Dutch geologist Alfred Issendorf is determined to win fame for making a great discovery. To this end he joins a small geological expedition, which travels to the far North of Norway, where he hopes to prove a series of craters were caused by meteorites, but ultimately realizes he's more likely to drown in a fjord or be eaten by parasites. Unable to procure crucial aerial photographs, and beset by mosquitoes and insomnia in his freezing leaky tent, Alfred becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid. Haunted by the ghost of his scientist father, unable to escape the looming influence of his mother, and anxious to complete the thesis that will make his name, he moves toward the final act of vanity which will trigger a catastrophe. A deadpan comedy often subtly calling up the works of Heller or Vonnegut at their best, Beyond Sleep is a unique and illuminating examination of how hard it is to be a true pioneer in the modern world. Beyond Sleep is a masterpiece.

A compelling tale of mystery, passion and spiritual exploration Seventy-year-old Shastri; a reciter of Harikatha, encounters an Ayyappa pilgrim on a train. Around the pilgrim's neck is a Sri Chakra amulet which looks like one that belonged to Saroja, Shastri's first wife. But Shastri thought he had killed Saroja years before, believing she was pregnant by another man. If the amulet is Saroja's, then she might have survived, and the pilgrim (Dinakar, a television star) could be Shastri's son. A similar story is revealed when Dinakar visits his old friend Narayan: either could be the father of Prasad, a young man destined for spiritual attainment. The interwoven lives of three generations play out variations on the same themes. Whose son am I? Whose father am I? Where are my roots? These mysteries of the past and present are explored, but there are no clear answers. And while significant in daily???being', such questions lose urgency in the flux of???becoming' (???bhava' means both being and becoming). So we are led to consider that samsara??"the world of illusion and embodiment??"may not be very different from sunya, the emptiness from which everything arises. At times a drama of cruelty and lust, at times a lyrical meditation on love and transformation, Bhava is an exceptional novel by one of India's most celebrated writers.

Ustad Ramzi was once the greatest wrestler in Pakistan, famed for his enormous strength and unmatched technique. Young apprentices flocked to his akhara to learn his craft, fans adored him, and rival wrestling clans feared his resolve that would never admit defeat. The courtesan, Gohar Jan, was just as renowned. Celebrated throughout the country for her beauty, and the power and melodiousness of her singing, her kotha was thronged by nobles, rich men, and infatuated admirers.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s new novel opens with a glimpse of these extraordinary characters in the twilight of their lives. Their once formidable skills are no longer so: new challengers have arisen; their followers have melted away; and the adoring crowds are long gone. An immense catastrophe has laid waste to the country, and its new inheritors and rulers have no time for the old ways. Stripped of their former resources and traditionally captivating powers, Ustad Ramzi and Gohar Jan must face their greatest challenge yet.

Grande admiratrice du philosophe, Sibylle Lewitscharoff, dans ce roman qui multiplie les allusions a Lions, evoque surtout le penseur dans son cabinet de travail. On pourrait parler en l'occurrence de portrait moral d'un saint moderne qui, tel saint Jerome (la comparaison est explicite), a voue son existence a l'etude dans la solitude de sa retraite. Dans le roman, la metaphore devient realite, le lion de la legende de Jerome se concretise dans son bureau, devient donc present mais tout en restant, comme la realite, impossible a atteindre. Les 5 chapitres intitules Le lion (numerotes de I a V) constituent, avec les chapitres Coca-cola et Egypte, une biographie intellectuelle de Blumenberg et un bel hommage a un maitre venere. Parallelement a ce portrait, dans des chapitres qui en sont presque independants, l'auteur a voulu construire une sorte de conte philosophique et moral, a propos du rapport d'un individu avec un maitre (illustre par 5 exemples). Dans la petite ville de Munster, dans les annees 80, quatre etudiants suivent les cours brillants — decisifs pour le destin de chacun d'eux — du celebre philosophe. Le premier (et le seul des quatre a avoir un bref entretien avec le professeur), Gerhard (chap. Optatus, Dimanche, L'ange annonce et Heilbronn), studieux et brillant, deviendra lui-meme professeur de philosophie. Sa petite amie, Isa, inquiete et passablement exaltee, est tourmentee en secret par une passion morbide pour le maitre, ce qui la conduira au suicide (chap. Optatus, Dimanche et N 255431800). Leur ami, Richard, reve du maitre comme d'un sauveur et, decu, va poursuivre en Amazonie son reve infantile de salut (un recit d'une sombre beaute, en 3 chapitres consecutifs, Richard, etc.). Hansi, quant a lui, transforme en delire l'enseignement du maitre et s'enfonce lentement dans la folie (chap. Hansi et Addenda). Un cinquieme personnage au caractere bien trempe, la religieuse Mehliss (chap. Souci universel), reconnait aussi la superiorite de Blumenberg, mais intuitivement (elle est la seule a voir le lion), sans rien savoir du philosophe. Tout le roman tient dans le recit de l'existence de ces differents personnages (aux destins contrastes mais independants, obeissant uniquement a une logique interne a chaque personnage) depuis le jour de leur rencontre avec le philosophe jusqu'a leur mort… et meme encore plus loin, dans un au-dela explicitement inspire de Beckett ou le dernier chapitre les reunit tous, en compagnie de Blumenberg. Ne en avril 1954, Sibylle Lewitscharoff est l'auteur d'une oeuvre riche et reconnue en Allemagne. Ce titre, pour lequel il lui a ete decerne plusieurs prix est le son premier ouvrage a etre traduit en francais.

Einst sind der Vater und die Brüder gemeinsam fischen gegangen, das Rauschen des Wehrs hinter der Gaststätte in der Eifel, in der sie gelebt haben, hat die Kindheit der Brüder mit Ahnungen und Phantasien belebt. Aber der Vater, der beim Angeln immer auf der Suche nach einem riesigen, mythischen Urfisch war, ist schon lange tot. Und der ältere Bruder Hermann ist abgeholt worden, musste in die Klinik, er hat den Verstand verloren, sein Schicksal ist ungewiss.

Der jüngere Bruder, der Ich-Erzähler, ist zurückgekehrt an den Ort der Kindheit, um der Familie zu helfen, steht im Fluss, angelt und lässt das Leben des Bruders, sein eigenes, das der Familie Revue passieren. Die Kindheit am Fluss, die erste Liebe, die kauzigen Gäste der elterlichen Gastwirtschaft, die Ausbruchsversuche des Bruders, der Niedergang der Kneipe, der Fluss und die Fische, der Tod der holländischen Gelegenheitsgeliebten des Bruders und die ungeklärte Frage nach dem eigenen leiblichen Vater — erschöpft und doch überwach versucht der Erzähler, aus den Erinnerungen und Gesprächen, Ereignissen und Beobachtungen einen Zusammenhang herzustellen, eine Erklärung zu finden.

Norbert Scheuers neuer Roman „Überm Rauschen“ entwickelt mit seiner genauen und poetischen Sprache einen enormen Sog. Trauer und Schönheit einer ganzen Welt entstehen durch diese suggestive Geschichte, deren Protagonisten mit ihrer Suche nach dem großen mythischen Fisch zugleich auf der Suche nach dem Glück sind. Und das Glück ist da, im Rauschen, in der wehmütigen Kraft des Erzählens.

Westberlin im Jahr 1987: Soja, gelernte Setzerin, Republikflüchtling, Aushilfsblumenhändlerin mit weitem Herzen, trifft Harry, groß, frei, still-entschlossen, abgründige Vergangenheit, düstere Zukunft. Und fortan bestimmt sein Schicksal ihr Leben.

Two years ago-at twenty-two-John McManus captivated writers and critics with his first story collection and became the youngest recipient of the Whiting Writers Award. Now McManus returns with a collection of stories equally piercing and visionary: stories about the young and old, compromised by circumstance and curiosity, and undergoing startling transformations. In "Eastbound," a car driven by two elderly sisters breaks down on an elevated highway: Beneath them lies the lost country of the South, overrun with concrete and shopping centers but still possessing the spectres and secrets of the past. In "Brood," a plucky young heroine moves with her mother into the home of the mother's online boyfriend: She will use the Audubon Guide to Birds, and her own wits to survive the advances of the boyfriend's teenaged son. In "Cowry," two backpackers in New Zealand race to witness the first sunrise of the twenty-first century.

Ball is the thrilling and emotionally provocative debut collection of short fiction by the acclaimed author of the novels Rockaway and A Child Out of Alcatraz and the essay collection Reeling through Life.

Ball explores the darker edges of love and sex and death, how they are intimately and often violently connected, with bright, vivid stories set mostly in contemporary Los Angeles. In “Cactus,” a young girl comes to fear the outside world following the freakish, accidental death of her adventure-seeking, naturalist boyfriend in the California desert; in “Wig,” a woman must help her best friend face life-threatening cancer while covering up an unseemly affair with her friend’s husband; in “Fish,” the narrator sits watch over a dying uncle, trying to pay for past sins while administering to his final needs, but distracted by the ravenous fish in the Koi pond near the hospital; and in the collection’s stunning title story, the bonds of friendship and pet ownership collide in the most startling and unexpected ways.

With a keen insight into the edges of human behavior and an assured literary hand, Ball is the new book by one of the West’s most provocative stylists.

Losing her son in a lorry accident, a woman abandons her lover and her life on the Mexican border and becomes a domestic servant in Madrid; following an awkward ménage-à-trois, a timber agent is blackmailed into introducing his lover's boyfriend to his best client; a depressed, misfit French teacher rejects the overtures of students and would-be lovers; all the while sharp-eyed young Araceli watches over everything from her decrepit apartment.

Nesting stories within stories, setting Bret Easton Ellis among his fellow mutts and enigmatic, love-hungry, dying Alba Cambó among her several lovers, Lina Wolff can really throw her readers a sucker punch.

Upstairs/downstairs distinctions blur as Wolff's adroit and subtle novel turns the tables, allowing servants and subordinates to dominate their masters. With a Bolaño-esque humor Wolff asks, what chance does love have in this dog-eat-dog world?

Tuesday night: vodka and dancing at the Hungry Duck. Wednesday morning: posing as an expert on Pushkin at the university. Thursday night: more vodka and girl-chasing at Propaganda. Friday morning: a hungover tour of Gorky's house.

Martin came to Moscow at the turn of the millennium hoping to discover the country of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and his beloved Chekhov. Instead he found a city turned on its head, where the grimmest vestiges of Soviet life exist side by side with the nonstop hedonism of the newly rich. Along with his hard-living expat friends, Martin spends less and less time on his studies, choosing to learn about the Mysterious Russian Soul from the city's unhinged nightlife scene. But as Martin's research becomes a quest for existential meaning, love affairs and literature lead to the same hard-won lessons. Russians know: There is more to life than happiness.

Back to Moscow is an enthralling story of debauchery, discovery, and the Russian classics. In prose recalling the neurotic openheartedness of Ben Lerner and the whiskey-sour satire of Bret Easton Ellis, Guillermo Erades has crafted an unforgettable coming-of-age story and a complex portrait of a radically changing city.

"Irreducible to any single literary genre, the Volodinian cosmos is skillfully crafted, fusing elements of science fiction with magical realism and political commentary." — Nicholas Hauck, Music & Literature

One of Volodine's funniest books, Bardo or Not Bardo takes place in his universe of failed revolutions, radical shamanism, and off-kilter nomenclature.

In each of these seven vignettes, someone dies and has to make his way through the Tibetan afterlife, also known as the Bardo. In the Bardo, souls wander for forty-nine days before being reborn, helped along on their journey by the teachings of the Book of the Dead.

Unfortunately, Volodine's characters bungle their chances at enlightenment, with the recently dead choosing to waste away their afterlife sleeping, or choosing to be reborn as an insignificant spider. The still-living aren't much better off, making a mess of things in their own ways, such as erroneously reciting a Tibetan cookbook to a lost comrade instead of the holy book.

Once again, Volodine has demonstrated his range and ambition, crafting a moving, hysterical work about transformations and the power of the book.

Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French writer who has published twenty books under this name, several of which are available in English translation, such as Minor Angels, and Writers. He also publishes under the names Lutz Bassmann and Manuela Draeger.

J. T. Mahany is a graduate of the Master of Arts in Literary Translation Studies program at the University of Rochester and is currently studying for his MFA at the University of Arkansas.

With wry humour and a deft touch, Butterfly Fish, the outstanding first novel by a stunning new writer, is a work of elegant and captivating storytelling. A dual narrative set in contemporary London and 18th century Benin in Africa, the book traverses the realms of magic realism with luminous style and graceful, effortless prose.

From Annie Proulx — the Pulitzer Prize — and National Book Award-winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.

In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years — their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions — the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.

Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid — in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope — that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.

Government warnings about radiation levels in her hometown (a stone’s throw from Chernobyl) be damned! Baba Dunja is going home. And she’s taking a motley bunch of her former neighbors with her. With strangely misshapen forest fruits to spare and the town largely to themselves, they have pretty much everything they need and they plan to start anew.

The terminally ill Petrov passes the time reading love poems in his hammock; Marja takes up with the almost 100-year-old Sidorow; Baba Dunja whiles away her days writing letters to her daughter. Life is beautiful. That is until one day a stranger turns up in the village and once again the little idyllic settlement faces annihilation.

From the prodigiously talented Alina Bronsky, this is a return to the iron-willed and infuriatingly misguided older female protagonist that she made famous with her unforgettable Russian matriarch, Rosa Achmetowna, in The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine. Here she tells the story of a post-meltdown settlement, and of an unusual woman, Baba Dunja, who, late in life, finds her version of paradise.

These stories, set in both real and unreal locales, arouse more faraway yearnings. All sooner or later come round to the subject of love, but none finds it anywhere we might ordinarily have expected. Bedlam lurks everywhere, from the streets to the afterlife,and every point of view is nagged by glimpses of every other. Thank god for a resilient lyricism, a hint of better music playing not too far off. This electronic edition includes two published pieces that didn't appear in the original edition and a new introduction by the author.

"One of the most beautiful love stories ever written." — Paris Match

Shortly after Albert Cohen left France for London to escape the Nazis, he received news of his mother's death in Marseille. Unable to mourn her, he expressed his grief in a series of moving pieces for La France libre, which later grew into Book of My Mother. Achingly honest, intimate, moving, it is a tribute to all mothers.

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) is the author of Solal (1930); Mangeclous (1938); Belle du Seigneur (1968), which was awarded the French Academy's Grand Prix du Roman; and Les Valereux (1969).

Someone has opened the doors to the Village Archive, but what drives the sleepless out of their houses is not that which was stolen, but that which has escaped. Old stories, myths, and fairy tales are wandering about the streets with the people. They

come together in a novel about a long night, a mosaic of village life, in which the long-established and newcomers, the dead and the living, craftsmen, pensioners, and noble robbers in football shirts bump into each other. They all want to bring something to a close, in this night before the feast.

Booksellers love BEFORE THE FEAST!

“Before the Feast is a big book in every sense: it's vibrant, compassionate, and knowing. Stanišić channels an almost reckless energy into a novel that's at once sprawling and controlled.” — Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books on the Park

“Stanišic’s work is seamless, rhythmic, and captivating. Anthea Bell makes for a dream translator, perfectly capturing his whimsy and idiosyncrasies. This is not a book to consume once and leave on the shelf to collect dust. Like your favorite fairy tales, Before the Feast is a story to experience again and again, whose charms will enchant you every time it is read.” — Rachel Kaplan, Avid Bookshop

"A dead ferryman; a solitary oak in a fallow field; a night that illuminates a troubled past like a bolt of lightning splitting the dark. Furstenfeld is an isolated-one may even say xenophobic town bordering a lake in eastern Germany-the former GDR. However, those ancient, timeless fairy tales swirl about the present more than that recent history. Sasa Stanisic has written a stunning modern fable in that grand tradition. The reader is immediately unsettled as if trying to peer through the mistbefore dawn. You try to stitch the various images into a coherent whole, never quite certain if the "reality" you perceive actually exists. Stanisic, a genuine heir to the Grimm tradition, gives no quarter, and the reader is all the more grateful for it. He does this all while writing such beautiful prose, sentences that can take your breath away."

— Shawn Wathen Chapter One Bookstore

"Every single thing in this book is alive. Everything speaks, and some of it you can hear.

It’s like someone with a gorgeous voice stops you. He’s talking fast, very fast — talking and talking and he won’t shut up. There you are, you can’t help listening, but then, worst of all, his story becomes so strange and heartfelt that you can’t STOP listening. You’re all caught up and you can’t stop listening and then when he’s done (it’s been a while but anyway it’s too soon), he goes away, but you — you still hear the gorgeous voice talking in your head, like it’s coming from everything, everywhere, maybe for days on end.

You want to never stop hearing it."

— Pepper from Vintage Books

The New York Times bestselling author David Duchovny is back

Ted Fullilove, aka Mr. Peanut, is not like other Ivy League grads. He shares an apartment with Goldberg, his beloved battery-operated fish, sleeps on a bed littered with yellow legal pads penned with what he hopes will be the next great American Novel, and spends the waning days of the Carter administration at Yankee Stadium, waxing poetic while slinging peanuts to pay the rent.

When Ted hears the news that his estranged father, Marty, is dying of lung cancer, he immediately moves back into his childhood home, where a whirlwind of revelations ensues. The browbeating absentee father of Ted's youth tries to make up for lost time, but his health dips drastically whenever his beloved Red Sox lose. And so, with help from Mariana – the Nuyorican grief counselor with whom Ted promptly falls in love – and a crew of neighborhood old-timers, Ted orchestrates the illusion of a Boston winning streak, enabling Marty and the Red Sox to reverse the Curse of the Bambino and cruise their way to World Series victory. Well, sort of.

David Duchovny's richly drawn Bucky F*cking Dent explores the bonds between fathers and sons and the age-old rivalry between Yankee fans and the Fenway faithful, and grapples with our urgent need to persevere – and risk everything – in the name of love. Culminating in that fateful moment in October of '78 when the mighty Bucky Dent hit his way into baseball history with the unlikeliest of home runs, this tender, insightful, and hilarious novel demonstrates how life truly belongs to the losers, and that the long shots are the ones worth betting on.

Bucky F*ckingDent is a singular tale that brims with the mirth, poignancy, and profound solitude of modern life.

An irreverent and deeply moving comedy about friendship, fertility, and fighting for one’s sanity in a toxic workplace.

Jen has reached her early thirties and has all but abandoned a once-promising painting career when, spurred by the 2008 economic crisis, she takes a poorly defined job at a feminist nonprofit. The foundation’s ostensible aim is to empower women, but staffers spend all their time devising acronyms for imaginary programs, ruthlessly undermining one another, and stroking the ego of their boss, the larger-than-life celebrity philanthropist Leora Infinitas. Jen’s complicity in this passive-aggressive hellscape only intensifies her feelings of inferiority compared to her two best friends — one a wealthy attorney with a picture-perfect family, the other a passionately committed artist — and so does Jen’s apparent inability to have a baby, a source of existential panic that begins to affect her marriage and her already precarious status at the office. As Break in Case of Emergency unfolds, a fateful art exhibition, a surreal boondoggle adventure in Belize, and a devastating personal loss conspire to force Jen to reckon with some hard truths about herself and the people she loves most.

Jessica Winter’s ferociously intelligent debut novel is a wry satire of celebrity do-goodism as well as an exploration of the difficulty of navigating friendships as they shift to accommodate marriage and family, and the unspoken tensions that can strain even the strongest bonds.

Tahar Ben Jelloun’s By Fire, the first fictional account published on the Arab Spring, reimagines the true-life self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, an event that has been credited with setting off the Tunisian revolt. The novella depicts the days leading up to Bouazizi’s self-immolation. Ben Jelloun’s deliberate ambiguity about the location of the story, set in an unnamed Islamic country, allows the reader to imagine the experiences and frustrations of other young men who have endured physical violence and persecution in places beyond Tunisia. The tale begins and ends in fire, and the imagery of burning frames the political accounts in The Spark, Ben Jelloun’s nonfiction writings on the Tunisian events that provide insight into the despotic regimes that drove Bouazizi to such despair. Rita S. Nezami’s elegant translations and critical introduction provide the reader with multiple strategies for approaching these potent texts.

The stunning new novel from the prize-winning author of The Wake.

'Come to a place like this. . and you will understand soon enough that this world is a great animal, alive and breathing.'

Beast plunges you into the world of Edward Buckmaster, a man alone on a west-country moor. What he has left behind we don't yet know; what he faces is an existential battle with himself, the elements and with something he begins to see in the margins of his vision: some creature that is tracking him, the pursuit of which will become an obsession.

This is a vivid exploration of isolation, courage and the search for truth. Short, shocking and exhilarating, it confirms Paul Kingsnorth as one of our most daring and rewarding contemporary writers.

"Linguistically explosive. . one of the most interesting American writers around." — The Nation

"Ducornet — surrealist, absurdist, pure anarchist at times — is one of our most accomplished writers, adept at seizing on the perfect details and writing with emotion and cool detachment simultaneously. I love her style because it is penetrating and precise but also sensual without being overwrought. You experience a Ducornet novel with all of your senses." — Jeff Vandermeer

A feral boy comes of age on a campus decadent with starched sheets, sweating cocktails, and homemade jams. Stub is the cause of that missing sweater, the pie that disappeared off the cooling rack. Then Stub meets Billy, who takes him in, and Asthma, who enchants him, and all is found, then lost. A fragrant, voluptuous novel of imposture, misplaced affection, and emotional deformity.

An artist and writer, Rikki Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover, Jorge Luis Borges, Forrest Gander, and Joanna Howard. Her paintings have been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Salvador Allende Museum in Santiago, Chile..

Murder is committed for its own sake in the three fictional episodes of The Book of Destruction. In ‘The Gardener’, the narrator learns from the thug Seshadri that he has been selected for assassination for no reason but the pure purpose of killing. A discotheque is bombed out of existence in ‘The Hotelier and the Traveler’. In the third episode, leading the narrator to an elaborately staged orgy and sacrifice, stitched clothes escape from a tailor’s shop and soar down the streets to take over bodies.

The cruelty of killers and the wretchedness of victims are shifted to the margins as the novel focuses on the act of murder. In his inimitable style, Anand takes the mesmerized reader on a journey of three stages — the practice of killing, the sacrifice of the victim and the sacrifice of the sacrificer — before bringing the story of destruction to its finale.

Tracy Chevalier captivated readers when Dutton published The Girl with a Pearl Earring in December 1999. Since then, she has written two New York Times bestsellers, Falling Angels and The Lady and the Unicorn.

Now, three years after the publication of her last book, Chevalier is at the top of her form in the breathtaking novel Burning Bright.

After his father is arrested for dissent, Andrés moves from Barcelona to his grandparents' cottage in the mountains of Catalonia. As he transitions to the pastoral life of his ancestors, he's awakened to the beauty of their history — and the injustice of Franco's occupation. Upon news of his father's death in prison, anger spurs action, and Andrés's life is changed forever.

Born in 1933, Emili Teixidor's first novel, Retrato de un asesino de pájaros, was published to tremendous acclaim in 1988, followed by several more which established him as one of Spain's greatest contemporary authors.

"A short but intense novel. Big, believe me." — Joan Josep Isern, Avui

"A little masterpiece." — Giancarlo Montalbini, Lettera

"A refined book. One of those books one should add to one's book collection, that one should re-read when looking for emotions in the silent world of writing." — Matteo Chiavarone, Ghigliottina

Brandes, a painter living in the Nazi-occupied Paris, will have to make a tough decision: Goering has taken away all his work and asked him to hand him over his Lucas Cranach painting, a family relic. If he does so, he will retrieve them, if he refuses to do it, he will never get them back.

"A heir to Javier Marías. . An outstanding stylistic narrative. A joyful discovery." — J. M. Pozuelo Yvancos, ABC Cultural

After both their marriages collapse, two old friends take to sharing their life again as they used to. They go out for drinks, have long conversations and, all in all, try to hide way from the world. One day, one of them is stabbed to death in his apartment. His friend will then seek out the truth.

Carlos Castán is considered one of the best short-story writers in Spain. Bad Light is his first novel. He lives in Zaragoza, Spain.

Jay McInerney's first novel since the best-selling The Good Life a sexy, vibrant, cross-generational New York story — a literary and commercial read of the highest order.

Russell and Corrine Calloway seem to be living the New York dream: book parties one night and high-society charity events the next; jobs they care about (and actually enjoy); twin children, a boy and a girl whose birth was truly miraculous; a loft in TriBeCa and summers in the Hamptons. But all of this comes at a high cost. Russell, an independent publisher, has cultural clout but minimal cash; as he navigates an industry that requires, beyond astute literary taste, constant financial improvisation, he encounters an audacious, expensive and potentially ruinous opportunity. Meanwhile, instead of seeking personal profit in this incredibly wealthy city, Corrine is devoted to feeding its hungry poor, and they soon discover they're being priced out of their now fashionable neighborhood.

Then Corrine's world is turned upside down when the man with whom she'd had an ill-fated affair in the wake of 9/11 suddenly reappears. As the novel unfolds across a period of stupendous change-including Obama's historic election and the global economic collapse he inherited — the Calloways will find themselves and their marriage tested more severely than they ever could have anticipated.

Quel rapport entre la mort en 1967 des musiciens du groupe de rock Pearl Harbor et un SDF renversé par une voiture à Bruxelles en 2010 ? Lorsque l’homme se réveille sur un lit d’hôpital, il est victime du Locked-in Syndrome, incapable de bouger et de communiquer. Pour comprendre ce qui lui est arrivé, il tente de reconstituer le puzzle de sa vie. Des caves enfumées de Paris, Londres et Berlin, où se croisent les Beatles, les Stones, Clapton et les Who, à l’enfer du Vietnam, il se souvient de l’effervescence et de la folie des années 1960, quand tout a commencé…

Biographie de l'auteur

Paul Colize est né en 1953 et vit près de Bruxelles. Quand il n'écrit pas, il est consultant, amateur de badminton et joue du piano.

Julia Franck's German-Book-Prize-winning novel, The Blindness of the Heart, was an international phenomenon, selling 850,000 copies in Germany alone and being published in thirty-five countries. Her newest work, Back to Back echoes the themes of The Blindness of the Heart, telling a moving personal story set against the tragedies of twentieth-century Germany.

Back to Back begins in 1954, and centers around a single family living in Berlin in the socialist East. The mother, Käthe, is a sculptor of Jewish heritage, who has been leveraging her party connections in order to get more important and significant commissions. Devoted entirely to becoming a success in the socialist state, she is a cruel and completely unaffectionate mother, putting the party above her children, who she treats as if they were adults — there is no bourgeois mollycoddling in her household. Thomas and Ella's father emigrated to West Germany after World War II, and they deeply long to see him again and dream of a life where they could be allowed to have the kind of childhood that other children enjoy. But Käthe's hard-nosed brutality — a reflection of the materialistic, unsentimental state in which she lives — means Thomas and Ella are unable to live the lives they want to — instead of his dream of becoming a writer, Thomas is forced to study geology, and do hard labor at a quarry as the practical part of his education. And Ella, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly introverted and strange — not least because the Stasi lodger the government has billetted in their home is beginning to abuse her…

Heartbreaking and shocking, Back to Back is a dark fairytale of East Germany, the story of a single family tragedy that reflects the greater tragedies of totalitarianism.

A powerful and timely story of marriage, class, race and the pursuit of the American Dream. Behold the Dreamers is a dazzling debut novel about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — and of what we’re prepared to sacrifice to hold on to each of them.

‘We all do what we gotta do to become American, abi?’

New York, 2007: a city of dreamers and strivers, where the newly-arrived and the long-established jostle alike for a place on the ladder of success. And Jende Jonga, who has come from Cameroon, has just set his foot on the first rung.

Clark Edwards is a senior partner at Lehman Brothers bank. In need of a discrete and reliable chauffeur, he is too preoccupied to closely check the paperwork of his latest employee.

Jende’s new job draws him, his wife Neni and their young son into the privileged orbit of the city’s financial elite. And when Clark’s wife Cindy offers Neni work and takes her into her confidence, the couple begin to believe that the land of opportunity might finally be opening up for them.

But there are troubling cracks in their employers’ facades, and when the deep fault lines running beneath the financial world are exposed, the Edwards’ secrets threaten to spill out into the Jonga’s lives.

Faced with the loss of all they have worked for, each couple must decide how far they will go in pursuit of their dreams — and what they are prepared to sacrifice along the way.

Each of Lara Vapnyar's six stories invites us into a world where food and love intersect, along with the overlapping pleasures and frustrations of Vapnyar's uniquely captivating characters. Meet Nina, a recent arrival from Russia, for whom colorful vegetables represent her own fresh hopes and dreams. . Luda and Milena, who battle over a widower in their English class with competing recipes for cheese puffs, spinach pies, and meatballs. . and Sergey, who finds more comfort in the borscht made by a paid female companion than in her sexual ministrations. They all crave the taste and smell of home, wherever — and with whomever — that may turn out to be. A roundup of recipes are the final taste of this delicious collection.

“Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology.”

“But what does she have to do with a writer’s journey to Bulgaria in 2007 on behalf of her mother?”

“Or with a trio of women who decide in their old age to spend a week together at a hotel spa?”

By the end of Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel, the answers are revealed. Her story is shot through with spellbinding, magic, involving a gambling triumph, sudden death on the golf course, a long-lost grandchild, an invasion of starlings, and wartime flight, the consequences of which are revealed only decades later.

“Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology.”

“But what does she have to do with a writer’s journey to Bulgaria in 2007 on behalf of her mother?”

“Or with a trio of women who decide in their old age to spend a week together at a hotel spa?”

By the end of Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel, the answers are revealed. Her story is shot through with spellbinding, magic, involving a gambling triumph, sudden death on the golf course, a long-lost grandchild, an invasion of starlings, and wartime flight, the consequences of which are revealed only decades later.

Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle heads south for LA. But soon it's officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird.

While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a sprawling and meta-textual exploration to complement her promises of maturity and responsibility. But as she tries to make queer love and art without succumbing to self-destructive vice, the boundaries between storytelling and everyday living begin to blur, and Michelle wonders how much she'll have to compromise her artistic process if she's going to properly ride out doomsday.

A nihilistic wit reminiscent of Samuel Beckett.?Independent on Sunday

The cast-offs of modern urban society are driven out onto the edges of the city and left to make a life there for themselves. They are not, however, in any natural wilderness, but in a world of refuse and useless junk?a place which denies any form of sustainable life. Here, the unemployed, the homeless, the old and the bereft struggle to build shelters out of old tin cans, scavenge for food and fight against insuperable odds.

And yet somehow they survive: it seems that society thrives on the garbage hills because it has always been built on one. In this dark fairy tale full of scenes taken from what has increasingly become a way of life for many inhabitants on this planet, Latife Tekin has written a grim parable of human destiny.

A major best seller in her native Turkey, Latife Tekin maintains a politically active presence and has written a number of literary works.

Saliha Paker translates Turkish poetry and is a member of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham. Ruth Christie is a translator of Turkish poetry and prose.

"A provocative and enjoyable work."?Times Literary Supplement

"A small masterpiece of beauty."?Women's Review of Books

With results both liberating and disastrous, the characters of Bad Faith flee the trappings of contemporary domestic life. A father visits a college friend in El Salvador rather than face difficulties with the birth of his third child; a boy comes to terms with his fractured family and the disabled father responsible for his care after his mom is stationed overseas; a biracial man journeys across Nebraska for the funeral of his white mother and strikes up an improbable if dishonest relationship with a centenarian Irish woman; and in the title story, the running narrative of a pathetic yet compelling ladies man culminates in an unexpected and deadly confrontation. In Theodore Wheeler's collection of prize-winning stories, the herd can't always outpace the predator.

Bulibasha is the title given to the King of the Gypsies, and on the East Coast of New Zealand two patriarchs fight to be proclaimed the king. Tamihana is the leader of the great Mahana family of shearers and sportsmen and women. Rupeni Poata is his arch enemy. The two families clash constantly, in sport, in cultural contests and, finally, in the Golden Fleece competition to find the greatest shearing gang in New Zealand. Caught in the middle of this struggle is the teenager Simeon, grandson of the patriarch and of his grandmother Ramona, struggling with his own feelings and loyalties as the battles rage on many levels.This award-winning novel is being reissued to tie in with the release of Mahana, the stunning film adaptation of the novel.

Burning Daylight is a novel by Jack London, published in 1910, which was one of the best-selling books of that year and it was London's best-selling book in his lifetime. The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, nicknamed "Burning Daylight" was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush. The story of the main character was partially based upon the life of Oakland entrepreneur "Borax" Smith.

Edgar Awards Best First Novel

"A remarkably assured debut novel. Rich and evocative, Lori Roy's voice is a welcome addition to American fiction." – Dennis Lehane

For twenty years, Celia Scott has watched her husband, Arthur, hide from the secrets surrounding his sister Eve's death. As a young man, Arthur fled his small Kansas hometown, moved to Detroit, married Celia, and never looked back. But when the 1967 riots frighten him even more than his past, he convinces Celia to pack up their family and return to the road he grew up on, Bent Road, and that same small town where Eve mysteriously died.

While Arthur and their oldest daughter slip easily into rural life, Celia and the two younger children struggle to fit in. Daniel, the only son, is counting on Kansas to make a man of him since Detroit damn sure didn't. Eve-ee, the youngest and small for her age, hopes that in Kansas she will finally grow. Celia grapples with loneliness and the brutality of life and death on a farm.

And then a local girl disappears, catapulting the family headlong into a dead man's curve…

On Bent Road, a battered red truck cruises ominously along the prairie; a lonely little girl dresses in her dead aunt's clothes; a boy hefts his father's rifle in search of a target; a mother realizes she no longer knows how to protect her children. It is a place where people learn: Sometimes killing is the kindest way.

« Tout le monde riait. Les Manoscrivi riaient. C’est l’image d’eux qui est restée. Jean-Lino, en chemise parme, avec ses nouvelles lunettes jaunes semi-rondes, debout derrière le canapé, empourpré par le champagne ou par l’excitation d’être en société, toutes dents exposées. Lydie, assise en dessous, jupe déployée de part et d’autre, visage penché vers la gauche et riant aux éclats. Riant sans doute du dernier rire de sa vie. Un rire que je scrute à l’infini. Un rire sans malice, sans coquetterie, que j’entends encore résonner avec son fond bêta, un rire que rien ne menace, qui ne devine rien, ne sait rien. Nous ne sommes pas prévenus de l’irrémédiable. »

Romancière et dramaturge de renommée mondiale, Yasmina Reza a publié chez Flammarion L’Aube, le soir ou la nuit, Comment vous racontez la partie, Heureux les heureux (prix littéraire Le Monde 2013) et Bella Figura.

Der Brief an den Vater ist ein 1919 verfasster, jedoch niemals abgeschickter Brief Franz Kafkas an seinen Vater. Er wurde postum veröffentlicht und ist ein bevorzugter Text für psychoanalytische und biographische Studien über Kafka.

Nachdem Kafka im Januar 1919 bei einem Kuraufenthalt in Schelesen (Böhmen) Julie Wohryzeck kennen gelernt hatte und sich einige Monate später mit ihr verlobte, reagierte sein Vater ungehalten auf seine neuen und unstandesgemäßen Heiratspläne. Es wird angenommen, dass dies der Auslöser für die Verfassung des Briefes zwischen dem 10. und 13. November 1919 war. Die Hochzeit war ursprünglich für den November geplant, fand jedoch nicht statt. Der vordergründige Anlass war eine vergebliche Wohnungssuche.

Der Brief besteht im Original aus mehr als hundert handschriftlichen Seiten, auf denen Kafka versucht, seinen Vaterkonflikt schreibend zu bewältigen. Viele seiner Lebensschwierigkeiten schreibt er der Wesensunvereinbarkeit zwischen sich und dem Vater zu. Der Brief endet mit der Hoffnung, dass durch ihn sich beide ein wenig beruhigen werden und Leben und Sterben leichter gemacht werden kann.

« C'est en s'oubliant qu'on parvient à être soi-même. »

F. Dard

S'oublier. Totalement. Ses préjugés aussi. Surtout ceux qui empêchent l'humilité. Un regard croisé avec cette femme. Peut-être déjà un sentiment d'une femme ? Plus vraiment, puisque l'honneur est bafoué. Son crâne rasé d'avoir aimé l'ennemi. Alors oublier, oui, et recommencer différemment ; pour elle. Passer à autre chose, chercher refuge dans un travail difficile, éprouvant : la route. La retrouver enfin, elle qui m'attend. Mais retrouver aussi le plus terrible des secrets, de ceux qui rongent une éternité, assombrissent vos jours, dévorent vos nuits, parce qu'il vit à vos côtés, indissociable et omniprésent. Pourtant, j'ai pris le parti d'oublier.

Saint-Chef en Dauphiné, où repose Frédéric Dard, rebaptisé ici Saint-Theudère, sert de cadre à ce roman. C'est là qu'Hélène, sœur du milicien Petit Louis, dont l'auteur nous raconte l'exécution sommaire de façon si poignante, trouve refuge auprès du narrateur, un jeune résistant lyonnais. Celui-ci s'éprend de cette victime de l'épuration qu'il aimerait pouvoir soustraire définitivement à l'ardeur vengeresse des FFI.

Publié en 1949 aux Éditions Dumas à Saint-Étienne, ce roman est inspiré d'un voyage effectué par l'auteur avec les gens de la route. Cette même année 1949 fut par ailleurs prolifique et prémonitoire : c'est elle, en effet, qui vit la parution du premier livre d'où découlera, servie par un hasard singulier, la célèbre série du commissaire SAN-ANTONIO.

The long-anticipated sequel to Alan Sillitoe’s bestselling classic 1950s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Arthur and Brian Seaton are heading back to their hometown, Nottingham, some forty-odd years after the close of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. The brothers plan to surprise Brian’s first love, Jenny Tuxford, on her seventieth birthday. Arthur, the notorious lothario, still has some of his old spark, but it has been hampered by domestic life and his wife’s recent cancer diagnosis. Meanwhile, Brian, now a failed novelist but successful television writer living in London, is struggling with dissatisfaction and emotional regrets. He and Jenny had fooled around in their teenage years — a lot of heavy petting through complicated clothing on her parents’ settee — but Jenny ended up marrying someone else. Now that Jenny’s husband has passed away, will sparks fly between her and Brian again?

It is clear that the Nottingham…

Set in post-WWII Africa, Polynesia, and Hollywood, the three novellas that make up Based on a True Story reveal the roots of contemporary life in a world at war with itself. These novellas are reminiscent of work by Steve Stern and Philip Roth.

Hesh Kestin is a recovering foreign correspondent who reported on local wars, global business, and exotic mayhem in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for publications such as Forbes, Newsday, and The Jerusalem Post, and US magazines as diverse as Playboy and Inc. Cited by Media Guide for best foreign correspondence, his work has won many awards.

“Markus has a remarkable ability to strip life down to its basics, to the point where the metaphors we manufacture as the looking-glass for our existence end up standing in for existence itself. Fish, mud, night and river come to stand in place of family connections as fathers and sons, by giving themselves to fishing give themselves over to a lone search and to loss.”

— Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain

Peter Markus has published three story collections and lives in Michigan.

The closest he will ever come to happiness is when he’s hurting her. Will she let him? A beautiful and twisted story of first love and innocence lost — written when the author was just eighteen.

Sphinxie and Cadence. Promised to each other in childhood. Drawn together again as teens. Sphinxie is sweet, compassionate, and plain. Cadence is brilliant, charismatic. Damaged. And diseased. When they were kids, he scarred her with a knife. Now, as his illness progresses, he becomes increasingly demanding. She wants to be loyal — but fears for her life. Only the ultimate sacrifice will give this love an ending.

An epic novel of love and revolution.

Russia, 1907. The revolution has failed. Leon Trotsky is one of a group of political prisoners being escorted by armed police, in a convoy of horse-drawn sleighs, to a secret location in the icy north of the country. Here they will be exiled as political prisoners. If, that is, they survive the journey.

Meanwhile, in the small Siberian town of Berezovo, the doctor’s assistant is terrified of mis-stepping as he attempts to manage his developing admiration of his boss’s wife. The police and the Town Council are now awaiting with interest and horror the arrival of the exiles, and in the dark passageways of the Jewish Quarter, whispered arguments are rife over how best to receive their once-admired leaders.

As the convoy nears its destination, the lives of the prisoners and townsfolk are on a collision course that will make history.

Berezovo contains the three previously published novels A Small Town in Siberia, The Rising Storm, and Journey’s End.

Stalingrad, November 1942.

Lieutenant Breuer dreams of returning home for Christmas. Since August, the Germans have been fighting the Soviets for control of the city on the Volga. Next spring, when battle resumes, the struggle will surely be decided in Germany’s favour. Between 19 and 23 November, however, a Soviet counterattack encircles the Sixth Army. Some 300,000 German troops will endure a hellish winter on the freezing steppe, decimated by Soviet incursions, disease and starvation. When Field Marshal Paulus surrenders on 2 February 1943, just 91,000 German soldiers remain alive.

A remarkable portrayal of the horrors of war, Breakout at Stalingrad also has an extraordinary story behind it. Its author, Heinrich Gerlach, fought at Stalingrad and was imprisoned by the Soviets. In captivity, he wrote a novel based on his experiences, which the Soviets confiscated before releasing him. Gerlach resorted to hypnosis to remember his narrative, and in 1957 it was published as The Forsaken Army. Fifty-five years later Carsten Gansel, an academic, came across the original manuscript of Gerlach’s novel in a Moscow archive. This first translation into English of Breakout at Stalingrad includes the story of Gansel’s sensational discovery.

Written when the battle was fresh in its author’s mind, Breakout at Stalingrad offers a raw and unvarnished portrayal of humanity in extremis, allied to a sympathetic depiction of soldierly comradeship. After seventy years, a classic of twentieth-century war literature can at last be enjoyed in its original version.

Stalingrad, November 1942.

Lieutenant Breuer dreams of returning home for Christmas. Since August, the Germans have been fighting the Soviets for control of the city on the Volga. Next spring, when battle resumes, the struggle will surely be decided in Germany’s favour. Between 19 and 23 November, however, a Soviet counterattack encircles the Sixth Army. Some 300,000 German troops will endure a hellish winter on the freezing steppe, decimated by Soviet incursions, disease and starvation. When Field Marshal Paulus surrenders on 2 February 1943, just 91,000 German soldiers remain alive.

A remarkable portrayal of the horrors of war, Breakout at Stalingrad also has an extraordinary story behind it. Its author, Heinrich Gerlach, fought at Stalingrad and was imprisoned by the Soviets. In captivity, he wrote a novel based on his experiences, which the Soviets confiscated before releasing him. Gerlach resorted to hypnosis to remember his narrative, and in 1957 it was published as The Forsaken Army. Fifty-five years later Carsten Gansel, an academic, came across the original manuscript of Gerlach’s novel in a Moscow archive. This first translation into English of Breakout at Stalingrad includes the story of Gansel’s sensational discovery.

Written when the battle was fresh in its author’s mind, Breakout at Stalingrad offers a raw and unvarnished portrayal of humanity in extremis, allied to a sympathetic depiction of soldierly comradeship. After seventy years, a classic of twentieth-century war literature can at last be enjoyed in its original version.

In this riveting and emotionally powerful historical drama, an ex-FBI agent plunges into the darkest shadows of 1930s Europe, where everything he loves is on the line…

International consultant Prescott Sweet’s mission is to bring justice to countries suffering from America’s imperialistic interventions. With his outspoken artist wife, Loretta, and their two children, he lives a life of equality and continental elegance amid Europe’s glittering capitals—beyond anything he ever dared hope for.

But he is still a man in hiding, from his past with the Bureau, from British Intelligence—and from his own tempting, dangerous skill at high-level espionage. So when he has the opportunity to live in Moscow and work at the American Embassy, Prescott and his family seize the chance to take refuge and at last put down roots in what they believe is a fair society.

Life in Russia, however, proves to be a beautiful lie. Reduced to bare survival, with his son gravely ill, Prescott calls on all his skills in a last-ditch effort to free his family from the grips of Stalin. But between honor and expediency, salvation and atrocity, he’ll be forced to play an ever more merciless hand and commit unimaginable acts for a future that promises nowhere to run…

“A near-miraculous, brilliant debut.”

—George Saunders, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo

“In one exquisitely crafted story after the next, Will Mackin maps the surreal psychological terrain of soldiers in a perpetual war.”

—Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment

The eleven stories in Will Mackin’s mesmerizing debut collection draw from his many deployments with a special operations task force in Iraq and Afghanistan. They began as notes he jotted on the inside of his forearm in grease pencil and, later, as bullet points on the torn-off flap of an MRE kit. Whenever possible he incorporated those notes into his journals. Years later, he used those journals to write this book.

Together, the stories in Bring Out the Dog offer a remarkable portrait of the absurdity and poetry that define life in the most elite, clandestine circles of modern warfare. It is a world of intense bonds, ancient credos, and surprising compassion—of success, failure, and their elusive definitions. Moving between settings at home and abroad, in vivid language that reflects the wonder and discontent of war, Mackin draws the reader into a series of surreal, unsettling, and deeply human episodes: In “Crossing the River No Name,” a close call suggests that miracles do exist, even if they are in brutally short supply; in “Great Circle Route Westward Through Perpetual Night,” the death of the team’s beloved dog plunges them into a different kind of grief; in “Kattekoppen,” a man struggles to reconcile his commitments as a father and his commitments as a soldier; and in “Baker’s Strong Point,” a man whose job it is to pull things together struggles with a loss of control.

Told without a trace of false bravado and with a keen, Barry Hannah-like sense of the absurd, Bring Out the Dog manages to capture the tragedy and heroism, the degradation and exultation, in the smallest details of war.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Legion of the Damned® novels comes the final volume in the postapocalyptic military science fiction trilogy about America warring with itself and the people trying to keep it together…

The Second Civil War continues to rage as Union president Samuel T. Sloan battles to keep America whole and, more than that, to restore the country to its former greatness.

“Wanted Dead or Alive.” Following a fateful battle between Union Army major Robin “Mac” Macintyre and her sister, the New Confederacy places a price on Mac’s head, and bounty hunters are on her trail.

But there’s work to be done, and Mac is determined to help Sloan reunify the country by freeing hundreds of Union POWs from appalling conditions in Mexico and capturing a strategic oil reserve that lies deep inside Confederate territory.

However, to truly have peace it will be necessary to capture or kill the New Confederacy’s leadership, and that includes Mac’s father, General Bo Macintyre.

Gladiator meets Platoon in this spectacular debut where honour and duty, legions and tribes clash in bloody, heart-breaking glory

‘A blood-soaked page-turner’ Mail on Sunday

Twelve Roman legionnaires have been massacred. A bloodied individual is found among the dead.

He has no idea who he is, or where he’s been. Only that he is a soldier.

Forced to join Governor Varus’s army – fifteen thousand seasoned legionnaires – he heads north to subdue the hostile Germanic tribes. The army marches deep into enemy territory, a densely forested land of deadly traps and merciless foes.

As battle begins, Varus’s army is swiftly destroyed. Trapped in the forest, the soldier must band together with a small group of survivors who neither trust nor believe in him. If they fight together they have a slim chance of staying alive. But which side is the soldier on?

And is it the right one?

In this groundbreaking work of ecstatic criticism, Carole Maso shows why she has risen, over the past fifteen years, as one of the brightest stars in the literary firmament. Ever refusing to be marginalized or categorized by genre, Maso is an incisive, compassionate writer who deems herself daughter of William Carlos Williams, a pioneer in combining poetry and fiction with criticism, journalism, and the visual arts. She is daughter, too, of Allen Ginsberg, who also came from Paterson, New Jersey. Known for her audacity, whether exploring language and memory or the development of the artistic soul, Maso here gives us a form-challenging collection, intelligent, and persuasive.

A novel based on the life story of a remarkable woman, her lifelong relationship with birds and the joy she drew from it

I want to find out how they behave when they’re free.

Len Howard was forty years old when she decided to leave her London life and loves behind, retire to the English countryside and devote the rest of her days to her one true passion: birds.

Moving to a small cottage in Sussex, she wrote two bestselling books, astonishing the world with her observations on the tits, robins, sparrows and other birds that lived nearby, flew freely in and out of her windows, and would even perch on her shoulder as she typed.

This moving novel imagines the story of this remarkable woman’s decision to defy society’s expectations, and the joy she drew from her extraordinary relationship with the natural world.

An airborne operation of German, American, and British paratroopers drop on Berlin in this exciting new episode in the WW2 zombie series, THE FRONT!

While the Battle of the Bulge turns into a bloodbath due to the introduction of a serum designed to create super soldiers but creating flesh-eating zombies, a German paratrooper unit rests in Genoa, Italy after years of hard warfare. They celebrate an announced armistice hours before flying to England to learn the truth: Germany has collapsed due to the spread of these monsters, and they must work with their former enemies to drop on Berlin and recover a pure sample of the Overman serum.

What follows is an inside look at how the elite German paratroopers fought and their bloody homeward mission to recover the Overman serum before all Europe falls.

From bestselling historian Adrian Goldsworthy, a profoundly authentic, action-packed adventure set in Roman Britain.

AD 100: BRITANNIA.

THE EDGE OF THE ROMAN WORLD.

Flavius Ferox is the hardbitten centurion charged with keeping the peace on Britannia’s frontier with the barbarian tribes of the north. Now he’s been summoned to Londinium by the governor, but before he sets out an imperial freedman is found brutally murdered in a latrine at Vindolanda fort – and Ferox must find the killer.

As he follows the trail, the murder leads him to plots against the empire and Rome itself, and an old foe gathering mysterious artefacts in the hope of working a great magic. Bandits, soldiers, and gladiators alike are trying to kill him, old friends turn traitor, and Ferox is lured reluctantly to the sinister haunts of the old druids on the isle of Mona, and the bitter power struggle among the Brigantes, the great tribe of the north…

She waited on tables as usual that day, her twentieth birthday. She always worked Fridays, but if things had gone according to plan on that particular Friday, she would have had the night off.

One rainy Tokyo night, a waitress’s uneventful twentieth birthday takes a strange and fateful turn when she’s asked to deliver dinner to the restaurant’s reclusive owner.

Birthday Girl is a beguiling, exquisitely satisfying taste of master storytelling, published to celebrate Murakami’s 70th birthday.