Search

'Intelligent, spooky, original, and fall-down funny, The Head runs in dark layers from page one.'- Jason Emde, author of Little Bit Die A surreal and penetrating tale of academia, work life, and surviving trauma. On the morning of her thirtieth birthday, Dr. Trish Russo, a math professor at Cascadia University, discovers a disembodied but living infant head on her dresser. Attached to nothing, somehow it still manages to wail and produce tears. Unsure what else to do, she takes it with her to work, if only to keep her neighbours from complaining about the head's terrible cries. At the university, her colleagues are mortified, not of the head itself, but that Trish has brought it into the office with her. She is soon put on leave and hopes that visiting her parents might provide some solace and advice on what she should do with the head. But no matter where she turns, Trish finds no help and is instead vilified for not knowing what to do with this impossible thing that has happened to her. The Head is a bizarre journey through trauma, bad relationships, and toxic workplace culture.

The narrator of this spare novella is a collage artist trying to piece together a life. Her husband is a composer who is unable to talk. Even so, she keeps asking him questions, trying to figure out what he can remember, what he did, what he wants, what he means. But then she, in turn, is interrogated by the authorities, who want to know what happened here. Everyone waits for answers. How to compensate for this disaster? What are the chances of survival? Is there solace in converting life into language? What to believe? In prose that is sometimes suspenseful, sometimes meditative, sometimes provocative, LIFE / INSURANCE is a portrait of an artist confronting the problems of existence, knowledge, language, and New York City.

When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about their past in this haunting, propulsive, psychologically keen story about class, trauma, and family secrets from “huge literary talent” (Karl Ove Knausgaard). FINALIST FOR THE FALLON BOOK CLUB SELECTION It's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the'peasants'-- ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star seems set to rise when he stumbles across a sensational scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents beloved across the neighborhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and “bad apples”: the Greens. At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there's nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

International bestseller The Break is the first in Katherena Vermette's heart-rending, utterly immersive Indigenous family saga that includes The Strangers and The Circle.When Stella, a young Mé tis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break — a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house — she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime. But when they arrive, no one is there; scuff marks in the compacted snow are the only sign anything may have happened.In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim — police, family, and friends — tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend. Cheryl, an artist, mourns the premature death of her sister Rain. Paulina, a single mother, struggles to trust her new partner. Phoenix, a homeless teenager, is released from a youth detention centre. Officer Scott, a Mé tis policeman, feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city. Through their various perspectives a larger, more comprehensive story about lives of the residents in Winnipeg's North End is exposed.

Sixteen-year-old Frieder's plans for the summer are shattered when he fails two subjects. To be able to move up to the next year in the Autumn, he needs to resit his exams. So instead of going on holiday with his family, he now faces the daunting and boring prospect of staying at his grandparents'house, studying with his strict and formal step-grandfather.On the bright side, he'll spend time with his grandmother Nana, his sister Alma and his best friend Johann. And he meets Beate, the girl in the beautiful green swimsuit... The next few weeks will bring friendship, fear and first love - one grand summer that will change and shape his entire life.A number-one bestseller in Germany and winner of the German Booksellers Prize, One Grand Summer is a moving, beautiful and profound novel about relationships and respect that captures those exquisite and painful moments that make us who we are...

It's time. Mary, an ex cop, and her husband, retired librarian Pete, have decided to move into a retirement village. They aren't falling apart, but they're watching each other – Pete with his tachcychardia and bad hip, Mary with her ankle and knee.Selling their beloved house should be a clean break, but it's as if the people they have lost keep returning to ask new things of them. A local detective calls with new information about the case of their son, Will, who was killed in an accident forty years before. Mary finds herself drawn to consider her older sister's shortened life. Pete is increasingly haunted by memories of his late mother, who developed delirium and never recovered.An emotionally powerful novel about families and ageing, Delirious dramatises the questions we will all face, if we're lucky, or unlucky, enough. How to care for others? How to meet the new versions of ourselves who might arrive? How to cope? Delirious is also about the surprising ways second chances come around.

••Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel••••Longlisted for the Believer Book Award, the Northern California'Golden Poppy'Book Award & the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award••••A Best Book of the Year for Vulture, Buzzfeed, Entropy & Thrillist•• The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday – school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents – with the surreal – rivers of thighs, men for sale, and fields of throats – Cassie's realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty. From the author Ripe comes a surreal exploration of one woman's life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks and bad men. Perfect for fans of Rouge by Mona Awad, Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.'I loved every page of this gorgeous, grotesque, heartbreaking novel'- Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties'The Book of X traverses the mundane and the surreal - from grocery lists to blooming meat, menstrual blood to a jealousy removal shop - laying bare the absurdities of womanhood. A truly original writer, Etter continues to push the boundaries of her imagination... and ours'- Melissa Broder, author of Death Valley'Utterly unique and remarkable... Sarah Rose Etter takes the surreal and expertly shapes it into a portrait that is as beautiful and compelling as it is horrifying and unbearable... Etter brilliantly, viciously lays bare what it means to be a woman in the world, what it means to hurt, to need, to want, so much it consumes everything'- Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist'Sarah Rose Etter is a visionary. Perfectly paced, structurally audacious, and endlessly inventive, The Book of X is our new Revelation'- Scott McCLanahan, author of The Sarah Book

Elizabeth Fane is on the cusp of 50, but instead of celebrating with her family, she is on a plane to Italy alone, leaving behind her husband, three adult sons, and the profound rift between them. In Italy Liz plans to prune olive trees at a convent, explore the city of Florence, and visit its ancient cathedrals. There she meets four women—five if you count the large painting of the Virgin Mary—with whom she converses regularly. While at first these conversations with the painting are ironic (and are always one-sided), eventually they turn to become another way for Liz to consider the rift between her and her family. Liz gradually reveals why she left home and sorts out what it will take for her to return. Renaissance is a story about a woman of a certain age — a novel about the end of motherhood as Liz steps out of longstanding domestic roles to find her own place in the world.

Winner of the Award of Merit of the 2023 Christianity Today Book Awards — Fiction!'Profound and compulsively readable.'—Silas House, author of SouthernmostNew from a fresh voice in literary fiction comes this riveting deep-dive into one woman's experience with bipolar disorder and God. Her mind has never failed her—until an ill-fated dinner party. Meet Dr. Susan Huffman: wife to chancery court judge Samuel Ellison, mother to adorable Ian, and college professor on track for tenure. She's a woman who has always lived by her mind, with a plan and a purpose. But then new-in-town Lorraine Davis accepts an invitation to Susan and Samuel's home, and the mysterious visions begin. Is God warning Susan about this newcomer? And if so, how can she protect her circle of friends, her family, and her life as she knows it? The Book of Susan is the spare and sympathetic recounting of a journey—from derailment, to diagnosis, to the discovery of a lifetime.

tk

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant WritingShortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel PrizePriyanka Champaneri's transcendent, prize-winning debut novel brings us inside India's holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go.As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Banaras on the banks of the Ganges, Pramesh Prasad administers to dying Hindu pilgrims who hope to be released from earthly reincarnation. He lives and works contentedly with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant Mohan, and the constant flow of families with their dying kin. But one day the past arrives in the form of a body pulled from the river—a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh.Called “twins” in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar are inseparable until Pramesh leaves to see the outside world and Sagar stays to tend the land. After Pramesh marries Shobha, defying his family's wishes, a rift opens between the cousins that he has willed himself to forget. Yet for Shobha, Sagar's reemergence casts a shadow over the life she's built for her family. Soon, an unwelcome guest takes up residence in the death hostel, the dying mysteriously continue to live, and Pramesh is forced to confront his own ideas about death, rebirth, and redemption.Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of characters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the living and the dead.

In exiled Iranian author Javad Djavahery's captivating English debut, a youthful betrayal during a summer on the Caspian sea has far-reaching consequences for a group of friends as their lives are irrevocably altered by the Revolution.For our unnamed confessor, the summer months spent on the Caspian Sea during the 1970s are a magically transformative experience. There, he is not the “poor relative from the North,” but a welcome guest at his wealthy cousin Nilou's home and the gatekeeper of her affections. He revels in the power of orchestrating the attentions of her many admirers, granting and denying access to her would-be lovers. But in a moment of jealousy and youthful bravado, he betrays and humiliates an unlikely suitor, setting into motion a series of events that will have drastic repercussions for all of them as the country is forever transformed by the Iranian Revolution a few short years later.Over the next twenty years, the lingering effects of that betrayal set the friends on radically different paths in the wake of political, religious, and cultural upheaval. Their surprising final reunion reveals the consequences of revenge and self-preservation as they each must decide whether and how to forget the past. Urgent and gorgeously written, My Part of Her captures the innocence of youth, the folly of love, and the capriciousness of fate as these friends find themselves on opposing sides of the seismic rifts of history.

It is 2058, and the glaciers are gone. A catastrophic drought has hit the prairies. Willa Van Bruggen is desperately trying to keep her family goat farm afloat, hoping against hope that the new water pipeline arrives before the bill collectors do. Willa's son, Daniel, goes to work for the pipeline corporation instead of returning to help the family business. When Daniel reveals long-concealed secrets about his grandfather's death, Willa's world truly shatters. She's losing everything she values most: her farm, her son, her understanding of the past — and even her grip on reality itself. Vividly illustrating the human cost of climate change, Watershed is a page-turner of a novel about forgiveness, adaptation, and family bonds.

Based on the true, still-unfolding story of the expelled Chagossians'fight for their homeland, Silence of the Chagos is a powerful exploration of cultural identity, the concept of home, and above all the neverending desire for justice.Every afternoon a woman in a red headscarf walks to the end of the quay and looks out over the water, fixing her gaze “back there”—to Diego Garcia, one of the small islands forming the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean. With no explanation, no forewarning, and only an hour to pack their belongings, the entire population of Diego Garcia was forced on a boat headed to Mauritius. Government officials told Charlesia that the island was “closed;” there was no going back for any of them. Charlesia longs for life on Diego Garcia, where she spent her days harvesting coconuts and her nights dancing to sega music. As she struggles to come to terms with the injustice of her new reality, Charlesia crosses paths with Désiré, a young man born on the one-way journey to Mauritius. Désiré has never set foot on Diego Garcia, but as Charlesia unfolds the dramatic story of their people, he learns of the home he never knew and of the life he might have had.With the Chagos'sovereignty currently being adjudicated by the United Nations Silence of the Chagos is an important and humanizing exploration of the rights of individuals and a reckoning with displacement on a global scale

Ožujak 1945., kraj rata. U bitki za mali mađarski grad privremeno pobjeđuju Nijemci, a teško ranjeni bugarski vojnik k svijesti dolazi u podrumu mađarske udovice. Unuk tog vojnika kreće na put od gotovo cijelog stoljeća i tisuća kilometara, od prašnjave sajamske arene s kavezom u kojem tavori dječak-Minotaur, preko Juliette, koja cijeli život pred kinom iščekuje Alaina Delona, sve do podrumskog arhiva s bilježnicama u kojima su zapisani znaci starenja i smrti. Izvanrednu knjigu Georgija Gospodinova Fizika tuge teško je sažeti u malo riječi, no nedvojbeno je riječ o fascinantnoj kronici našeg prostora i bivšeg vremena. Premda u nazivu ima tugu, u njoj je bogatstvo puno veće od samo jedne emocije: nostalgična, puna duha, zahvaća u najdublje čovjekove strahove i budi naša kolektivna sjećanja. Iako je dobitnica više međunarodnih nagrada, Fiziku tuge ipak najbolje možemo razumjeti mi koji živimo na istim geografskim prostorima, tek jednu vremensku zonu zapadnije.

In this “thrilling, seductive, and utterly absorbing” (Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author) historical suspense novel in the tradition of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile and Ruth Ware's The Woman in Cabin 10, pre-war tension and forbidden romance abound, and not everyone will survive the journey…The ship has been like a world within itself, a vast floating city outside of normal rules. But the longer the journey continues, the more confined it is starting to feel, deck upon deck, passenger upon passenger, all of them churning around each other without anywhere to go... 1939: Europe is on the brink of war when young Lily Shepherd boards an ocean liner in England, bound for Australia. She is ready to start anew, leaving behind the shadows of her past. The passage proves magical, complete with live music, cocktails, and fancy-dress balls. With stops at exotic locations along the way—Naples, Cairo, Ceylon—the voyage shows Lily places she's only ever dreamed of and enables her to make friends with those above her social station, people who would not ordinarily mingle with her. She even allows herself to hope that a man she couldn't possibly have a future with outside the cocoon of the ship might return her feelings. But Lily soon realizes that she's not the only one hiding secrets. Her newfound friends—the toxic wealthy couple Eliza and Max; Cambridge graduate Edward; Jewish refugee Maria; fascist George—are also running away from their pasts. As the glamour of the voyage fades, the stage is set for something sinister to occur. By the time the ship docks, two passengers are dead, war has been declared, and Lily's life is irrevocably changed. “A vividly descriptive ride” (Marie Claire) with a “jaw-dropping ending” (RT Book Reviews, Top Pick), Dangerous Crossing is a transporting and “gorgeously atmospheric” (Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author) story for the ages.

'Diane DeSanders's genius lies in her ability to capture the intimate interiority of a very particular childhood while at the same time interrogating larger questions of class, race, and religion. Hap and Hazard and the End of the World is a gorgeous, profoundly original novel.'—Dawn Raffel, author of Carrying the Body and The Secret Life of Objects'Rollicking, tilted, and transporting. As the young narrator tries to manage her fraying family—war-wounded father, suffering mother, misbehaving relatives galore—DeSanders takes us deeper, always with such tenderness and beautiful observation into the ways we shape a narrative that keeps us whole.'—Victoria Redel, author of Loverboy and Before EverythingFor Dick and Jane, Dallas after World War II is a place of promise and prosperity: the first home air conditioners are making summertime bearable and Dick's position at his father's business, the Cadillac dealership, is assured. Jane has help with the house and the children, and garden parties and holiday celebrations are spirited social affairs. For the oldest of their three daughters, however, life is full of frustrating mysteries. The stories the adults tell her don't make sense. Too curious for comfort, she finds her questions only seem to annoy them. Why won't they tell the truth about Santa? What is that Holy Spirit business, and what is the difference between an angel and a ghost? Why is her mother often so tense and sad? And why does her father keep flying into violent rages?Hap and Hazard and the End of the World is an intimate, finely crafted novel about the innocence and vulnerability of childhood and the dangers posed by adults who cannot cope with life's complexities. It is also about the ingenuity born of loneliness and neglect, and the surprising, strange beauty of the world.A fifth-generation Texan, Diane DeSanders is a history buff, theater lover, poet, mother, and grandmother. Between careers as a history teacher and antiques dealer, she has worked in regional theater in almost every capacity. She now writes, gardens, and sings in Brooklyn, New York. This is her first novel.

‘Pitch perfect. Subtly powerful stories that ring hauntingly true.'- Steven Carroll, Winner of the Miles Franklin Award In this luminous book of new stories, John Kinsella drops us seamlessly into the worlds of men, women and children at pivotal moments in their lives. In the title story, a husband who has lost his wife plans to destroy the old-growth bush she loved and escape to the city, with alarming consequences. Elsewhere, racism at a small town supermarket is resisted through friendship; in an act of kindness a frightening stranger turns up in a family's woodshed; a home-made telephone transmits a dark truth; a theatre director is seduced into the world of an obsessive rabbit trapper; and two sisters find their lives thrown out of kilter by a charismatic junkie. This is a book of city and country, of challenge and threat, of sobriety and loss of control, but also of hope and beauty. Wandoos hold ‘the sunset cold and warm at once in their powdery barks'as Kinsella captures the intensity of place, and the complexities and strangeness of human behaviour with wonder and pathos.

Cody Granor is a kid with spunk. He thrives on adventure and relishes challenges, like playing hoop games with the older kids at the community basketball courts. Even having cancer doesn't quell his spirit. He makes friends with a vegetable stand vendor he calls'Tomato Man,'and shows off when he rides to school on the back of Tomato Man's large, loud motorcycle. When the town's real estate magnate has Tomato Man's stand torn down to make room for a fancy hotel, Cody bravely defends his new friend. When Cody's cancer puts him back into the hospital, Tomato Man camps out in Cody's hospital room. Eventually, the pair are designated the town's honorable Watch Keepers by the real estate magnate, and they become a longed-for sight as they make fresh produce deliveries on Tomato Man's impressive bike.

Billy Flynn always wanted to fly. An attractive young man, a patriot, he is also an artist with pencil and paint and has an abiding affinity for nature. It's 1970 and he cannot resist the call to serve in Vietnam. A year later he is the only survivor when his helicopter is shot down. A wounded Billy returns home to his family in upstate New York, especially to Nell, his adoring younger sister. In his absence, the woman he loves has mysteriously disappeared. His wounds have crippled his ability to even hold a pencil and his hearing loss has cut him off from the natural world. Nell, a brilliant student headed for a career in science, will do all that's possible to save him. A Catalog of Birds is the story of a family and a community confronted with a loss of innocence and wounds that may never heal. The legacy of war and its destruction of nature is seared onto the memories of a small American town. Laura Harrington has written a tale of forgiveness, of ourselves, and those we love. Illuminated by heartbreak and promise, the novel is alive with spirit and wonder and hope for the future.

The story is about a disgraced young American widow who moves to Ireland for a fresh start. She opens The Cobblestones guesthouse, makes friends with the locals, and hires a teen with Down syndrome. He vows to protect her like John Wayne, which leads him to confront a stalker with a stun gun. The story has surprises and a lot of humor—because the Irish can't open their “gobs” without spewing something funny!

Osawatomie comprises three interwoven stories centered in the small Kansas town beginning in 1854 with a young woman's choices, choices that reverberate more than a century later. The story begins in the early days of Bloody Kansas, when the Kansas Territory hosted two governments, two armies, and the first true battles of what would become the Civil War six years later. Spanning 100 years from the small town's settlement to its centennial celebration and to the early Sixties and the election of President Kennedy, a family's history set in motion in the 19th century changes lives a century later.

What does it mean to start over at age twenty-seven, to move beyond failure and disappointment and begin life again? In returning to his hometown, a historic city perched on the snow-covered shores of Lake Superior, Tom Johnson never suspects that he is being led to a young woman on the cusp of an irrevocable change. Funny and smart, evocative and heart-breaking…

Jane Gardam, author of the Old Filth Trilogy, delivers another modern classic in The Flight of the Maidens. With her characteristic wit, Gardam captures a moment in time for three young women on the cusp of adulthood. With keen perception the novel charts the course of this trio as they boldly face their uncertain futures. It is Yorkshire, 1946. The end of the war has changed the world again, and emboldened by this new dawning Hetty Fallows, Una Vane, and Lisolette Klein seize the opportunities with enthusiasm. Hetty, desperate to escape the grasp of her critical mother, books a solo holiday to the Lake District under the pretext of completing her Oxford summer coursework. Una, the daughter of a disconcertingly cheery hairdresser, entertains a romantically inclined young man from the wrong side of the tracks and the left-side of politics. Meanwhile, Lisolette Klein, the mysterious Jewish refugee from Germany, leaves the Quaker family who had rescued her, to test herself in London. Although strikingly different from one another, these young women share the common goal of adventure and release from their middle class surroundings through romance and education.Gardam demonstrates her talent for creating fully realized characters in these venturesome, intelligent young women whose stories are told with delight and understanding. This reissue of The Flight of the Maidens will appeal to a wide range of adult and young adult readers.

The Followers is a compassionate and suspenseful story of the dissolution of a family. Judith has been visiting her mother, Stephanie, in prison once a month for the last eight years. She still can't bring herself to talk with her mother about what brought them here--or about Nathaniel, the man whose religious cult almost cost them their lives. When Stephanie first meets him, she is a struggling single mother and Nathaniel is a charismatic outsider, unlike anyone she's ever known. In deciding to join the small religious cult he has founded, Stephanie thinks she is doing the best thing for her daughter: a new home, a new purpose. Judith and Stephanie are initiated into a secret society whose'followers'must obey the will of a zealous prophet. As Stephanie immerses herself in her new life, Judith slowly realizes the moral implications of the strict lifestyle Nathaniel preaches. Tensions deepen, faith and doubt collide, and a horrifying act of violence changes everything. In the shattering aftermath, it seems that no one is safe. Powerful, gripping, and impossible to forget, The Followers is a novel about love, hope, and identity that asks timely questions: Are we still responsible for our actions if we remake ourselves in someone else's image? And can there be a way back?

Još koji trenutak i Nelly Senff i njezino dvoje djece dospjet će s druge strane Zida, na Zapad. Na Istoku više nemaju ništa: prije tri godine Nellyin si je muž oduzeo život, ili su joj tako barem rekli – ne može biti sigurna, nisu joj dopustili vidjeti tijelo. Jedino što sada želi jest otići, zaboraviti, započeti život iznova. Ali sedamdesetih godina prošloga stoljeća za Nelly Senff i tisuće onih poput nje iza Zida ne počinje Zapad – ondje su nepovjerljivost, hladnoća i prihvatni centar Marienfelde. I baš tu, u Čistilištu, između onoga što nije bilo Pakao i onoga što neće biti Raj, briljantna njemačka spisateljica Julia Franck pronalazi svoje junakinje i junake, rastavlja kompas predrasuda i u potrazi za ljudskošću nanovo uspostavlja strane svijeta. Lijepa udovica Nelly Senff, poljska violončelistica Krystyna, izmučeni glumac Hans i John, tamnoputi agent CIA-e, susrest će se i dotaknuti u ograđenom perimetru Zapada, a ono što će iz njihovih dodira nastati potresna je i moćna priča o hrabrosti, roditeljskoj ljubavi i čovječnosti koja opstaje ili nestaje pod udarcima teškog čekića povijesti.

Four incredible women from vastly different time periods have one thing in common—a fervent desire to overcome the misogyny that surrounds them. Between 1874 and the present, the world looks different. From world wars to unprecedented technological advances, it would seem that nothing remains unchanged. That assumption, however, is entirely wrong. Misogyny remains a woman's greatest challenge. Perfect Clarity chronicles the lives of four unique women who thrive while fighting different aspects of misogyny as society corrects one problem only to have misogyny later appear in another form.

Based in part on the triangular relationship between Johannes Brahms and Clara and Robert Schumann, this sixth book in the Your Winding Daybreak Ways series opens as a nervous but relieved graduate student, Sam, races down the marble staircase and exits Redman Hall. The first interview with his graduate school mentor has gone so much better than he could have ever expected. They have so much in common. The same hometown; the same public school; the same classical instruction; and even one of the professor's old classmates and Sam share a last name. After a painful breakup with a married woman whom he meets on campus, Sam discovers the love of his life, Danielle, a young Iberian novelist, who is purportedly the daughter of the late Portuguese poet, Bianca. As the pair reconstructs the story of Bianca's time in America, Sam and Danielle discover a secret, which could keep them apart forever.

Maitland Sutterfield is a San Francisco journalist who has just been through an exhausting divorce. He takes a writer's holiday, accepting an assignment as a reporter in Guatemala. In full flight from his personal demons, Sutterfield seeks peace in a beautiful land unlike his own - but this is Guatemala of the 1980s, and there is a brutal civil war underway. Instead of peace, Sutterfield finds the perils of love in a time of revolution, not to mention the moral quandaries of a country that is descending into madness. Maitland's main contact in Guatemala is Sofia Mendez, who takes him to a small Catholic mission in the highlands run by a Spanish-trained Jesuit priest. Maitland volunteers at the mission, convinced that the priest's ministry is a vivid example of the Liberation Theology movement about which he hopes to write the definitive book-length analysis. But complications abound when Sofia becomes Maitland's lover, before either he or Sofia have a chance to discuss the real nature of her previous vocation. Maitland is oppressively aware of the subtle but inevitable exploitation of third-world sources by first-world media, but the tables are turned as he finds himself trapped in a dangerous dilemma in which Sofia's needs dictate both their futures.

Student Wendy Goldberg spends a year in Jerusalem questioning the lives of American Jews who “return” both to Israel itself and to traditional religious practices. Are they sincere? Are they happier? The unexpected answers and her experiences (a bus bombing, a funeral, an unexpected suicide, a love affair, a law suit),lead her to reconsider her own true identity.

MOVIEOLA! is a collection of linked short stories that delights and exploits the language and paraphernalia of industrial Hollywood. The collection delves into a night at the movies, featuring all the familiar types—the rom-com, the action-adventure, the superhero and the spy—but the narratives are still under construction, and every storyline is an opportunity for the unimaginable twist. Motive and identity are constantly shifting in these short stories that offer both narrative and anti-narrative, while the stunted shoptalk of the movie business struggles to keep up.With the wit of Steve Erickson's Zeroville and the inventive spirit of Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, John Domini offers a collection at once comical and moving, carefully suspended between a game of language and a celebration of American film.

In 1971, as a civil war rages in Pakistan, two girls are born in the city_of Lahore; Nadira to a Sunni family, and Hameeda to a Shia family. At_age six, an outspoken, lively Nadira and her beautiful, shy classmate,_Hameeda, are drawn to each other, and they become the closest of_friends. In the beginning, their religious differences mean very little._But as the years pass and their society fragments, their lives and their_relationship are torn apart by a horrific, sectarian tragedy. Separated,_they must experience their sorrows, hardships and joys without the_support and companionship they once provided each other. Years_later when fate brings them back together again, they have to choose_whether they will let the past keep them apart, or reclaim their dreams_and the friendship they once cherished.

Set in South Africa in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties, this is the story of Ruth, youngest of three daughters in the flamboyant, theatrical Frank family. Brash, clear-eyed and passionate, Ruth moves through a decade of drama on every front —the family, the servants, the theatre, and the country at large—wondering always how she will escape into the “real world” at last.'For protagonist Ruth Frank, home ground is a small town in South Africa in the 1950s, in the thick of a feuding theatrical family, where her parents play at'Happy Families'with the same fervor and artifice they bring to their professional productions. Freed is at her best when evoking Sarah and Roger Frank's powerful self-delusion and Ruth's painful realization that her parents are'deaf and blind'to their alienation as a family, as Jews in British colonial society and as whites on a turbulent black continent. The author's ear for dialogue is perceptive, as is her depiction of the Franks'pathetic, uneducated, white lower-class neighbors and the desperate squalor and rage of their black servants. Ruth's coming of agefrom eight to 18serves as the framework for the novel, but the narrative is too insubstantial to sustain the 10-year time span. And the underdeveloped motivation for the vicious sibling rivalry between Ruth and her sisters is less than satisfying.'Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.—Library Journal'This first person coming-of-age novel takes Ruth Frank, a Jew growing up in South Africa in the 1950sfrom a brash 8-year-old to a plump, pimply adolescent to a head-turning 18-year-old with her first lover. Ruth, the youngest of three daughters of theatrical parents who play at'Happy Families'at home, worries about, among other things, her future, sex, her parents, money (the Frank family wealth also is illusory), and violent black revolution. Looking for the truth about her family, which values appearance above all, and about her segregated country, she is nurtured by the family's black cook, encouraged by a noted British actress, and supported by an Indian friend and her close-knit family. In this warm, well-constructed novel, the South African locale adds depth to Ruth's universal concerns about growing up.'Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.—Library Journal

In 1975, Ruth Frank, married and living in the United States, returns to South Africa to visit her aging parents. There she resumes an old liaison with Hugh Stillington, liberal man of Africa, who lives in a bungalow overlooking the Indian Ocean. Hugh's world is a South Africa Ruth has never known — lush, wild, comfortably dilapidated, socially and politically courageous. Intoxicated, she begins to feel at home there, setting herself beyond the pale of her own society, and in the way of danger.'Ruth Frank, the child-narrator of Freed's critically acclaimed Home Ground, has grown up in this appealing novel. Having married and settled in America, she returns to South Africa after her father suffers a heart attack. There, she resumes her youthful romance with Hugh Stillington, a reform-minded landowner from a prosperous family of sugar barons. Both a member of the South African diaspora with unshakeable ties to her homeland and a Jew, Ruth is an outsider belonging neither in America nor in the country of her birth. Only in Hugh's bungalow does she experience the'keen sense of being in the right place.'But when Hugh is murdered, leaving her pregnant, Ruth is forced to confront her sense of displacement. Ruth is a compelling heroine whose experiences shed light on white South Africa and its assumptions about race, class and belonging. And while the political turmoil of that country occasionally surfaces in a passing reference to Sharpeville or when an Indian writer is imprisoned for his views, the real story--like that of the biblical Ruth--is one of personal alienation and belonging. Though Freed's prose tends toward the heavy-handed, her main character's placelessness is powerfully rendered and profoundly felt.'—Library Journal

Notable Book of the Year, New York Times Book ReviewThis is the story of Agnes La Grange, a beautiful young woman who emigrates as a housekeeper to South Africa in 1920. With a determination to make a future of her own and a love of men that does not leave her in desperate need of them, Agnes constructs a life beyond the conventions of colonial society. Written in her own fresh and unguarded voice, The Mirror is a fictional memoir, telling the story of the essential female, what she must do to survive, and how little the cost has changed over time.

A TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE CHARTS A HIGH-RISK,_UNCONVENTIONAL PATH WHILE GRIEVING THE LOSS OF HIS SONDan Underlight, a divorced, workaholic technology executive, suffers lingering grief over_the death of his ten-year-old son, Zack. When Dan__s longtime friend and boss fires Dan from RadioRadio, the company that he helped create, he crashes_and isolates himself. Willow, a poet and domestic violence survivor, helps Dan regain his footing. With_her support, Dan ventures on a pilgrimage of sorts, visiting Fortune 500 companies to_flesh out a software start-up idea. He then recruits three former RadioRadio colleagues and starts Conversationworks, a_company he believes will be at the vanguard of social change. Guided by Dan__s leadership, Conversationworks enjoys some early successes,_but its existence is soon threatened on multiple fronts. Will Dan survive the ensuing_corporate battles and realize the potential of his company? Or will he be defeated by his_enemies and consumed by his grief?

An aimless twenty-something struggles to make sense of reality after he moves to Los Angeles to live with his sister.

The last bushrangers in Australian history, James and Patrick Kenniff, were at the height at their horse thieving operation at turn of the 20th century. In One, troops cannot pull the Kenniff Gang out of the ranges and plains of Western Queensland – the brothers know the terrain too well, and the locals are sympathetic to their escapades. When a policeman and a station manager go out on patrol from tiny Upper Warrego Station and disappear, Sergeant Nixon makes it his mission to pursue the gang, especially, Jim Kenniff, who becomes for him an emblem of the violence that resides in the heart of the country. From the award-winning author of The Mary Smokes Boys, One is a novel of minimalist lyrical beauty that traverses the intersections between violence and love. It asks what right one man has to impose his will on another, and whether the written law can ever answer the law of the heart?

Set against a background of monsoons and heat waves shanty towns and expensive bungalows rich old women and angry young men love and tradition lives will change forever. As an only child Simi a well born Hindu young woman grew up with comforts and certainties. Then suddenly many things change. Her country is convulsed by the riots that have periodically gripped India since Britain’s abrupt withdrawal and the bloody Partition of 1947 tearing society apart along lines of religion caste and community. To the horror of her grandmother and the outrage of their friends Simi falls deeply in love with Muslim doctor…‘Mohini Kent explores the effects of Partition and the social unrest resentment and religious conflicts in 1947 India. This is an important and provocative novel’ (Mark Tully) ‘Black Taj takes forbidden unbiddable love the staple of romantic fiction and uses it to tell a much deeper and terrible tale of communal hatred still burning and destroying lives and hopes in India today. We are carried away by the love story between two strong characters and also pulled down into the depths of hell by the author who wants us to know to feel the agonies of a tragically divided land. The novel is both deeply pessimistic and highly optimistic’ (Yasmin AlibhaiBrown) ‘This is a beautifully realised story for the new Indian century’. (Andy Marino) ‘A riveting read set against an intricate tapestry of love and religion in postIndependence India’ (Anita Raghavan author of The Billionaire's Apprentice) ‘Mohini Kent’s novel sensitively explores the effects of the partition and the social unrest resentment and religious conflict of 1947 India. She writes with care honesty and commitment that this important subject deserves. This book is a valuable addition to the growing literature of the partition’ (Sudeep Sen author) ‘A deeply moving and sensitively written novel exploring the intercommunal violence in India a subject often ignored or poorly examined. It adds greatly to our understanding of how human relations are structured and identities composed’(Lord Bhikhu Parekh) ‘Fascinating poignant thrilling – a brilliant read! Provides an excellent and moving insight into social history’. (Royina Grewal author of Babur Conqueror of Hindustan). ‘Mohini Kent is a gripping storyteller Before you know where you are you are deep into her novel’. (Amit Roy Telegraph India and Eastern Eye UK).‘Brilliantly dramatises. This is no period romance but an ambitious and brilliantly realised attempt to trace through the tangled and compromised net of religious and social relationships the trajectory of India itself since Independence. This is a beautifully realised story for the new Indian century’. (Andy Marino biographer of Narendra Modi).‘A thundery tale told with all the brilliance force and fury of a Monsoon rainstrom as it pelts down towards its torrential climax. To be in bondage to the past as so many Indians still are is only one of many curses that some as yet unknown god needs to free us from’. (Roshan Seth)‘Gripping humorous and ultimately a profoundly humane story about human frailty and prejudice. Mohini Kent creates marvellous characters that inhabit a broad canvas which elegantly chronicles relationships in India where the past can eclipse the future. A must read for anyone interested in understanding the mind of modern India’. (Shomit Mitter).

“Mami, Dadi, I'm dead! I'm dead!” yells Jesus “Gato” Cárdenas, running across the street to George and Alexia Demas. Then Gato shows them the letter from Social Security: “We are sorry to learn that JESUS CÁRDENDAS... died July 30, 2002.” Such begins the entanglement of George and Alexia Demas and Jesus Cárdenas, sometimes-homeless, always living by his wits, Cuban immigrant. George finds out why Gato was pronounced dead and gets his check reinstated. The Demases let him stay in their home until he receives his back pay; George becomes Gato's payee, receiving his monthly check, paying his rent, trying to get his ID. Gato claims to be a Vietnam veteran and US citizen, yet both assertions prove difficult to verify. Is he a refugee of the Castro regime, or one of Castro's undesirables released to the US during an early'80s boatlift? In their search for truth, the Demases discover how entwined their lives are with this mysterious, down-but-not-out character.

Notable Book of the Year, New York Times Book ReviewHouse of Women is the story of three unusual women – seventeen-year-old Thea, her mother Nalia, an opera singer and Holocaust survivor, and Maude, their dour and religious housekeeper. It is the story of how the world changes for each of them when a man comes to take Thea away.“The rule is this: says Thea, I am to pretend that my other life does not exist. And yet pretending, it seems to be true.” Stark, philosophical and surprising, House of Women is a tale of passion, love, secrets, and bonds that cannot be broken, even in death…'Secrets twine around secrets in this haunting, intimate novel about the power of desire and the stifling force of isolation. Born to a wealthy womanizer and a vain opera singer, Theadora grows up on an estate with her mother, Nalia, at the southern tip of Africa. She is both spoiled and sheltered, never allowed to leave home unescorted. When Nalia goes inland for weekend sessions with her therapist, Katzenbogen, the maid, Maude, is left in charge. No man, not even Thea's father, is allowed up to the house. Later, it is clear why the gate is always padlocked; unbeknownst to her, 17-year-old Thea has been promised to her father's middle-aged cousin, a Syrian. He takes advantage of Thea's eagerness to see the world beyond her front yard, not to mention her yearning for male attention, and lures her from her haven. They quickly marry aboard a ship'And so it is done. I am to be married to a man whose name I do not know'and speed off to his nameless island home. Only there does Thea realize that this adventure might have serious consequences and question why the Syrian wanted her. The truth hardens her resolve to escape and see her mother again. Like a Jean Rhys antiheroine, Theadora strikes out fiercely against the world, but is helpless in the face of male desire. And like Rhys, Freed (The Mirror) imagines a world in which major events are only ambiguously described, but domestic details are sensuously immediate. This otherworldly tale philosophizes smartly on what it is to crave love and to sacrifice clarity for passion.'—Publishers Weekly'The author of four previous novels, South African-born Freed (The Mirror) here presents a surreal tale. Her heroine innocent, convent-educated Thea describes her abduction and marriage to her natural father's wealthy cousin. Thea does not know her husband's name or the name of the island where he makes her a prisoner in his home. As she recounts her struggles to come to terms with her new life, she writes never-answered letters to her mother, a Holocaust survivor, and muses on her previous life. Until she was 17, she lived an isolated life somewhere near'the bottom of Africa'with her mother and Maude, a native live-in servant. After the birth of twin girls, she convinces her husband to allow her to return to visit her mother, only to learn that her mother is dying. Nearly 20, Thea reads her mother's notebook and finally learns her secrets. Freed's matter-of-fact writing style draws the reader into Thea's strange and isolated world. While the novel may find an audience in large public libraries, the book's focus on psychological and gender issues recommends it to academic libraries.'—Cheryl L. Conway, Univ. of Arkansas Lib., Fayetteville, Library Journal'At the heart of this affecting story, written in the style of a Greek tragedy (with elements of mystery, deceit, torment, love, and longing), is the deep, complex relationship between Nalia and her daughter, Thea. Nalia is a Holocaust survivor who escaped with her family's money to another continent, where she had a relationship with a handsome, womanizing man that turned from love to hate. Thea is the result of this relationship. Nalia is determined to protect Thea from the world, and her father wants to keep her as a virtual prisoner in the house and closed off fr

It is 1925 and India's struggle for independence is in disarray, impeded by factionalism among its leaders and rising incidents of unrest across the country. Meanwhile, having withdrawn himself from active politics, Mahatma Gandhi is in an ashram immersed in what he considers the most important undertaking of his life—the creation of a community that is wholly dedicated to the highest standards of self-discipline, tolerance, and austerity.Into this world comes a young British woman named Madeline, the daughter of a British admiral. Madeline has set her heart on becoming Gandhi's greatest disciple. Madeline's wish to serve him soon becomes an all-consuming desire to be near him at all times. Because her adoration of the great teacher is in direct conflict with his exacting moral and spiritual codes, Gandhi struggles with wanting to distance himself from her, yet wanting not to let go of her love and friendship.Using words preserved in their letters and diaries, and drawing on the reminiscences of others, the author has created a compelling fictional narrative based on the extraordinary friendship that lasted over two decades between these two people.

A story of terror and revenge, death, love, responsibility, the nature of reality--and an individual man. Luke Carr, whose wife and children have been killed in a plane crash, runs from his life, and work assignment, to the woods of New England where he's also running from a series of anonymous letters being sent his way.

Killing Time is a psychological novel about crime. The hero, Joseph Detweiler, is the world's most courteous, sensitive, sincere, and likable killer. He is even innocent of the fact that a crime has been committed.This tough and bizarre story breaks all the rules. It is not a whodunit, because the killer is already known. It is not a detective story or a sociological treatise on crime, because it is told from the point of view of the criminal.PRAISE“Detweiler is one of the most complex characters in modern fiction... the eeriest thing about him is that he is wholly believable, which is to say, of course, that Thomas Berger is a magnificent novelist.” —National Review

Naples is an urban hive that has suffered many an earthquake over the centuries. The next such shakeup provides Domini with his premise. An American family, Jay and Barbara Lulucita and their five children, are something like innocents abroad. In the naive belief that they can help, they come to this crime-riddled and quake-broken city, which in recent years has also suffered another upheaval, namely, the impact of the illegal immigrants pouring in from Africa. There's a child faith-healer, rather a New Age version of the classic Catholic figure. There's an unnerving NATO officer, forever in the same outfit yet forever in disguise.Earthquake I.D. renders an Italy complex and exact.

“Grim Tales is a mythological catalog of the peculiar, a string of strange, often murderous urban myths. It comes on fast and dirty, micro-moments on micro-moments, each wasting no time in lunging at the throat.” —Blake ButlerPRAISE“This is book as turbulence disrupting the smooth sea, as anti-matter breaking bonds that had never before been broken. Throughout, the book defies the physics and metaphysics of our known world even as it pretends to a reaching backward, to drawing forth these tales from some shared past, dissembling not to deceive but to aggress us anew. See the quotation marks which suggest some unavailable subtext but which quote nothing but Lock's own imagination, or else that of his arranging characters, his possible narrator, and you see the layers of interpretation he is willing to risk so as to prevent any easy explanation, any trite truth too cleverly left unconcealed. Better always that the work be mysterious, that the mystery be allowed to work upon us.” —Matt Bell“Grim Tales is populated end to end with the magical and the bizarre: shape-shifting, witchery, underwater cities, indoor rain, beds that contain oceans, murderous objects, all manner of disappearance. Men lose their faces to mirrors, women are smothered by their hair, clouds settle over cities and suck them up... and in the midst of all this looming, Lock has an incredible ability to render compelling imagery and demeanor in minute, super-compressed bursts. Single lines resound in the mind. In the same way that it's hard to stop staring at the Internet's seemingly endless array of weird memes and video databases, Lock's words are both engrossing and slightly haunted. One could spend forever worming through these magicked words, their worlds.” —Blake Butler

The Funnies is a great insider look at the world of the comic-strip industry blended with the mysteries of family dynamics.PRAISE“Irrepressible, energetic, and good-humored.”—Esquire

The Light of Falling Stars is about the crash of an airplane and its aftermath—how do we find those that we love, both before and after death?PRAISE“Welcome back to storytelling.” —Time Out New York