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From the imagination of one of the most brilliant writers of our time and bestselling author of The Life of Thomas More, a novel that playfully imagines how the'modern'era might appear to a thinker seventeen centuries hence.At the turn of the 38th century, London's greatest orator, Plato, is known for his lectures on the long, tumultuous history of his now tranquil city. Plato focuses on the obscure and confusing era that began in A.D. 1500, the Age of Mouldwarp. His subjects include Sigmund Freud's comic masterpiece'Jokes and Their Relation to the Subconscious,'and Charles D.'s greatest novel,'The Origin of Species.'He explores the rituals of Mouldwarp, and the later cult of webs and nets that enslaved the population. By the end of his lecture series, however, Plato has been drawn closer to the subject of his fascination than he could ever have anticipated. At once funny and erudite, The Plato Papers is a smart and entertaining look at how the future is imagined, the present absorbed, and the past misrepresented.

The first novel in ten years from the author of the beloved New York Times bestseller The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake, a luminous, poignant tale of a mother, a daughter, mental illness, and the fluctuating barrier between the mind and the worldOn the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents -- her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact -- she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her own place in the world. As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality. The scenes set in Francie's past glow with the intensity of childhood perception, how physical objects can take on an otherworldly power. The question for Francie is, What do these events signify? And does this power survive childhood?Told in the lush, lilting prose that led the San Francisco Chronicle to say Aimee Bender is'a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language,'The Butterfly Lampshade is a heartfelt and heartbreaking examination of the sometimes overwhelming power of the material world, and a broken love between mother and child.

Eva Trout, Elizabeth Bowen's last novel, epitomizes her bold exploration of the territory between the comedy of manners and cutting social commentary.Orphaned at a young age, Eva has found a home of sorts in Worcestershire with her former schoolteacher, Iseult Arbles, and Iseult's husband, Eric. From a safe distance in London, her legal guardian, Constantine, assumes that all's well. But Eva's flighty, romantic nature hasn't entirely clicked with the Arbles household, and Eva is plotting to escape. When she sets out to hock her Jaguar and disappear without a trace, she unwittingly leaves a paper trail for her various custodians–and all kinds of trouble–to follow.

It's 1868 and Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., arch-cad, amorist, cold-headed soldier, and reluctant hero, is back! Fleeing a chain of vengeful pursuers that includes Mexican bandits, the French Foreign Legion, and the relatives of an infatuated Austrian beauty, Flashy is desperate for somewhere to take cover. So desperate, in fact, that he embarks on a perilous secret intelligence-gathering mission to help free a group of Britons being held captive by a tyrannical Abyssinian king. Along the way, of course, are nightmare castles, brigands, massacres, rebellions, orgies, and the loveliest and most lethal women in Africa, all of which will test the limits of the great bounder's talents for knavery, amorous intrigue, and survival.Flashman on the March—the twelfth book in George MacDonald Fraser's ever-beloved, always scandalous Flashman Papers series--is Flashman and Fraser at their best.

A gang of adolescent terrorists, a spelling bee, and a terrible plan masquerading as a science project: This is Operation Havoc. Pygmy is one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the US disguised as exchange students. Living with American families to blend in, they are planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this indoctrinated little killer in a cunning double-edged satire of American xenophobia.

From the author of Chatterton and Shakespeare: A Biography comes a gripping novel set in London that re-imagines an infamous 19th-century Shakespeare forgery. Charles and Mary Lamb, who will in time achieve lasting fame as the authors of Tales from Shakespeare for Children, are still living at home, caring for their dotty and maddening parents. Reading Shakespeare is the siblings'favorite reprieve, and they are delighted when an ambitious young bookseller comes into their lives claiming to possess a ‘lost'Shakespearea play. Soon all of London is eagerly anticipating opening night of a star-studded production of the play not knowing that they have all been duped by charlatan and a fraud.

Ali Smith's'beautifully written, precise, poetic'(The Observer) debut that follows the briefly intertwined lives of two young womenWhen we meet Amy Shone, she is a young parent struggling to raise Kate, a precocious eight-year-old. Amy is an enigma-a brilliant scholar who has forgotten how to read. She is estranged from her wealthy English parents and lives a nomadic life in Scotland, dragging Kate from one school to the next, barely scraping by.And then there is Ash, a fiery Scottish actresss who cannot shake her demons-chief among them an unrequited passion for Amy that has obsessed her ever since they met as teenagers. Like is the story of two parallel lives that intersect briefly, then diverge. It is also a timeless evocation of adolescence and its agonizing anticipations, its contradictory yearnings for freedom and safety, its blind quest for mastery over pleasure and pain. Deftly constructed, passionately imagined, Like is a remarkable debut from a powerful talent.

The prestigious annual story anthology includes prize-winning stories by Jamil Jan Kochai, David Ryan, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Lisa Taddeo, Ling Ma, Catherine Lacey, and Cristina Rivera Garza.“[A] standout collection.... Dazzling performances from some of today's most exciting writers.... This is one of the best fiction anthologies in years.” —Publishers Weekly starred review Continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest editor Lauren Groff has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices and including several stories in translation. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Groff, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction. AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL. THE WINNING STORIES: “Office Hours,” by Ling Ma “Man Mountain,” by Catherine Lacey “Me, Rory and Aurora,” by Jonas Eika, translated from the Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg “The Complete,” by Gabriel Smith “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak,'by Jamil Jan Kochai “Wisconsin,” by Lisa Taddeo “Ira & the Whale,” by Rachel B. Glaser “The Commander's Teeth,” by Naomi Shuyama-Gómez “The Mad People of Paris,” Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead “Snake & Submarine,” by Shelby Kinney-Lang “The Mother,” by Jacob M'hango “The Hollow,” by'Pemi Aguda “Dream Man,” by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from the Spanish by Francisca González-Arias “The Locksmith,” by Grey Wolfe LaJoie “After Hours at the Acacia Park Pool,” by Kirstin Valdez Quade “Happy Is a Doing Word,” by Arinze Ifeakandu “Elision,” by David Ryan “Xífù,” by K-Ming Chang “Temporary Housing,” by Kathleen Alcott “The Blackhills,” by Eamon McGuinness

It's 1868 and Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., arch-cad, amorist, cold-headed soldier, and reluctant hero, is back! Fleeing a chain of vengeful pursuers that includes Mexican bandits, the French Foreign Legion, and the relatives of an infatuated Austrian beauty, Flashy is desperate for somewhere to take cover. So desperate, in fact, that he embarks on a perilous secret intelligence-gathering mission to help free a group of Britons being held captive by a tyrannical Abyssinian king. Along the way, of course, are nightmare castles, brigands, massacres, rebellions, orgies, and the loveliest and most lethal women in Africa, all of which will test the limits of the great bounder's talents for knavery, amorous intrigue, and survival.Flashman on the March—the twelfth book in George MacDonald Fraser's ever-beloved, always scandalous Flashman Papers series--is Flashman and Fraser at their best.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning author of Life after Life transports us to a restless London in the wake of the Great War—a city bursting with money, glamour, and corruption—in this spellbinding tale of seduction and betrayal.A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE GUARDIAN, BOOKLIST'Set during Jazz Age London, in all its fizzy madness and desperation.... As dark as [Atkinson's] stories can get, within them always shines a beacon of humanity.” —Gillian Flynn, bestselling author of Dark Places1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. The notorious queen of this glittering world is Nellie Coker, ruthless but also ambitious to advance her six children, including the enigmatic eldest, Niven, whose character has been forged in the crucible of the Somme. But success breeds enemies, and Nellie's empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho's gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost. With her unique Dickensian flair, Kate Atkinson gives us a window in a vanished world. Slyly funny, brilliantly observant, and ingeniously plotted, Shrines of Gaiety showcases the myriad talents that have made Atkinson one of the most lauded writers of our time.

From the award-winning author of Bubblegum and The Instructions, a daring new novel about the irony, the humor, and the heartbreak of survivorship.'Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest.'–George Saunders, bestselling, award-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo A one-in-ten-billion natural disaster devastates Chicago. A Jewish comedian, his most devoted fan, and the city's mayor must struggle to move forward while the world—quite literally—caves beneath their feet. With this polyphonic tale of Chicago-style politics and political correctness, stand-up comedy and Jewish identity, celebrity, drugs, and animal psychology, Levin has constructed a monument to laughter, love, art, and resilience in an age of spectacular loss.

From the National Book Award-winning, bestselling author of Three Junes comes'an engrossing, richly drawn and exquisitely told story of small-town residents grappling with the difficulties of changing times'(People).“Full of secrets and surprises...A must-read.” —J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and StrangersWhen two unexpected visitors arrive in an insular coastal village, they threaten the equilibrium of a community already confronting climate instability, political violence, and domestic upheavals.A decade from now, in the historic town of Vigil Harbor, there is a rash of divorces among the yacht-club set, a marine biologist despairs at the state of the world, a spurned wife is bent on revenge, and the renowned architect Austin Kepner pursues a passion for building homes designed to withstand the escalating fury of relentless storms. Austin's stepson, Brecht, has dropped out of college in New York and returned home after narrowly escaping one of the terrorist acts that, like hurricanes, have become increasingly common.Then two strangers arrive: a stranded traveler with subversive charms and a widow seeking clues about a past lover with ties to Austin—a woman who may have been more than merely human. These strangers and their hidden motives come together unexpectedly in an incident that endangers lives—including Brecht's—with dramatic repercussions for the entire town.Vigil Harbor reveals Julia Glass in all her virtuosity, braiding multiple voices and dazzling strands of plot into a story where mortal longings and fears intersect with immortal mysteries of the deep as well as of the heart.

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER • A lusty young woman seeks out experience on a remote Alaskan homestead in this erotic and darkly humorous novel'Rukeyser weaves a dreamlike spell—'Twin Peaks'by way of ‘Northern Exposure.''—LA Times'Fantastic.” —The New York TimesMira is a loner, a drop out, an obsessive fascinated by the concept of sleaze. She wants two things: to move to Alaska and find the tattooed fisherman that's the object of her desire. Her single-mindedness takes her to the remote Kodiak Archipelago, where she finds work at a homestead-turned-tourist-lodge offering a carousel of meticulously scripted Alaskan experiences.But the lodge is failing and, as life on Lavender Island becomes increasingly claustrophobic and strange, Mira's plans for her future become more elaborate and perverse.Part meditation on unhinged longing, part biting commentary on eco-tourism and the mythology of the American West, and part yearning portrayal of people at the end of their tether, The Seaplane on Final Approach is wholly original, “a perfect blend of deep, dark humor, sadness, and (of course), adolescent horniness (Literary Hub).”

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The prestigious annual story anthology includes prize-winning stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lorrie Moore, Olga Tokarczuk, Joseph O'Neill, and Samanta Schweblin.'Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction.'—The Atlantic MonthlyContinuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest editor Valeria Luiselli has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices and including stories in translation from Bengali, Greek, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Luiselli, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction. AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL.THE WINNING STORIES:“Screen Time,” by Alejandro Zambra,translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell“The Wolves of Circassia,” by Daniel Mason“Mercedes's Special Talent,” by Tere Dávila,translated from the Spanish by Rebecca Hanssens-Reed“Rainbows,” by Joseph O'Neill“A Way with Bea,” by Shanteka Sigers“Seams,” by Olga Tokarczuk,translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft “The Little Widow from the Capital,” by Yohanca Delgado“Lemonade,” by Eshkol Nevo,translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston “Breastmilk,” by ‘Pemi Aguda“The Old Man of Kusumpur,” by Amar Mitra,translated from the Bengali by Anish Gupta“Where They Always Meet,” by Christos Ikonomou,translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich“Fish Stories,” by Janika Oza“Horse Soup,” by Vladimir Sorokin,translated from the Russian by Max Lawton“Clean Teen,” by Francisco González“Dengue Boy,” by Michel Nieva,translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer“Zikora,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie“Apples,” by Gunnhild Øyehaug,translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson “Warp and Weft,” by David Ryan“Face Time,” by Lorrie Moore“An Unlucky Man,” by Samanta Schweblin,translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut is a masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling—a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.'Roots the reader in [Trinidad's] traditions and rituals [and]... in the glorious matriarchy by which lineage is upheld. The result is a depiction of ordinary life that's full and breathtaking.'—The New York Times Book ReviewIn the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide's mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city's souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother's neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out. Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life his mother built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past, and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger. Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both.

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE • A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK • A gripping novel set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles. •'Beautiful...Howrey, a former dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, proves herself a talented choreographer in her own right...[A] finger-trap puzzle of a plot.'—New York Times Book Review“They're Going to Love You is my idea of a perfect book. It is about art, life, death, love, and family and it is beautifully and sharply written. I cried several times while reading it, and was sorry to let it go when I was done. I cannot recommend it enough.” —Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins and All This Could Be YoursThroughout her childhood, Carlisle Martin got to see her father, Robert, for only a few precious weeks a year when she visited the brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village he shared with his partner, James. Brilliant but troubled, James gave Carlisle an education in all that he held dear in life—literature, music, and, most of all, dance.Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and hoping to follow in the footsteps of her mother—a former Balanchine ballerina—Carlisle's aspiration to become a professional ballet dancer bloomed. But above all else, she longed to be asked to stay at the house on Bank Street, to be a part of Robert and James's sophisticated world, even as the AIDS crisis brings devastation to their community. Instead, a passionate love affair created a rift between the family, with shattering consequences that reverberated for decades to come. Nineteen years later, when Carlisle receives a phone call that unravels the events of that fateful summer, she sees with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she's become. They're Going to Love You is a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel'(San Francisco Chronicle).'Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked...'To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the'Waldorf of Harlem'—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.Look for Colson Whitehead's new novel, Crook Manifesto!

From the Man Booker Prize finalist: Seasonal Quartet is a series of four stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, which, when taken together, give us something more—all four united by the passing of time, the timing of narrative, and the endless familiarity yet renewal that the cycle of the seasons is. Grounded in current politics, in the work of artists Pauline Boty, Barbara Hepworth, Katherine Mansfield, and Loretta Mazzetti, and in Shakespeare's four final romances The Tempest, Cymbeline, Pericles, and A Winter's Tale, the Seasonal Quartet is'one of modern fiction's most elusive and most important undertakings'(Charles Finch, The Boston Globe).

A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A bighearted novel with technicolor characters, plenty of Texas swagger, and a powder keg of a plot in which marriages struggle, rivalries flare, and secrets explode, all with a clever wink toward classical mythology.For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe:'The Iliad meets Friday Night Lights in this muscular, captivating debut'(Oprah Daily). The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down. An expansive tour de force, Olympus, Texas cleverly weaves elements of classical mythology into a thoroughly modern family saga, rich in drama and psychological complexity. After all, at some point, don't we all wonder: What good is this destructive force we call love?

'It's just the real inexplicable gorgeous brilliant thing this book. I love it in a way I usually reserve for people.'--Max PorterA dazzling, prizewinning short story collection that showcases a bold new talentEley Williams has been a literary sensation ever since this collection of experimental short fiction was published in the UK. Lauded as'elegant'(The Guardian) and'exhilarating'(Vanity Fair), Attrib. and Other Stories won the James Tait Black Prize, was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named a best book of the year by The Guardian.Attrib. presents a cast of unforgettable characters standing at the precipice of emotional events (a disastrous breakup, a successful date, an unexpected arrival) and finding it fiendishly impossible to express themselves. With intimate, irreverent, and playful prose, Eley Williams rejoices in both the possibilities and limitations of language, as well as the very human need to be known and understood--despite our own best efforts.Original and inventive in the vein of Lydia Davis, Deborah Eisenberg, and Amy Hempel, these stories are'emotionally delicate and tenderly introspective'(New Statesman) and'an absolute must-read'(The London Magazine).

A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! • A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF. •'An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.'—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company's internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it's an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald's productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from... wherever he says he is. Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. Meanwhile, Gerald's colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that's allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can't everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean? In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity... and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.

From the author of the international bestseller Papa Hemingway, based on his own experiences: the story of a man struggling to overcome a rare syndrome that causes terrifying hallucinations, who eventually, despite the odds, finds love.Chet Tremaine is living his best life. A successful lawyer with a loyal best friend, the arts and culture of New York City at his doorstep, and a peaceful retreat in Connecticut, Chet has it figured out. Even when a freak tennis accident leaves him blind in one eye, Chet is confident he'll be able to bounce back. But then he starts hallucinating: unknown children playing in his living room, pine needles seasoning his salad, wire grids barring access to his bathroom. His doctor allays his worst fears, only to deliver an even more shocking diagnosis: Chet's eye injury has left him with Charles Bonnet syndrome, and this rare disease is incurable. Chet is going to be plagued by these hallucinations for the rest of his life.His social life impaired, his job in jeopardy, Chet is close to becoming a recluse when he helps a woman who's collapsed on a Manhattan street corner. She turns out to be Emma Vicky, a warm and witty British actress who suffers from Ménière's disease, a condition that causes severe vertigo. Like Chet, she feels restrained by her chronic illness and terribly isolated--until their meeting renews her desire to open up, let another person in. But Chet can't make the same leap. Instead, he decides to make a final Hail Mary attempt to find a cure, embarking on a spiritual quest that will take him all the way to the mountains of Nepal. By turns funny, harrowing, and inspirational, Kissing the Wind is A. E. Hotchner's final, and finest, achievement. AN ANCHOR ORIGINAL.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “You wouldn't expect a comic novel about a dictionary to be a thriller too, but this one is. In fact, [it] is also a mystery, love story (two of them) and cliffhanging melodrama.” —The New York Times Book ReviewAn award-winning novel that chronicles the charming misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later to root out his misdeeds while confronting questions of her own sexuality and place in the world.Mountweazel n. the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement.In the final year of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby's multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. But his disaffection with his colleagues compels him to assert some individual purpose and artistic freedom, and he begins inserting unauthorized, fictitious entries. In the present day, Mallory, the publisher's young intern, starts to uncover these mountweazels in the process of digitization and through them senses their creator's motivations, hopes, and desires. More pressingly, she's also been contending with a threatening, anonymous caller who wants Swansby's staff to “burn in hell.” As these two narratives coalesce, Winceworth and Mallory, separated by one hundred years, must discover how to negotiate the complexities of life's often untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path. An exhilarating, laugh-out-loud debut, The Liar's Dictionary celebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language while peering into questions of identity and finding one's place in the world.

Nominated for a 34th annual Lambda Literary Award • An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative from a thrilling new voice, Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing.'The kind of novel you never knew you were waiting for.'—Marlon JamesIn the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country. At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity, and turns to sex work, music and art to create his own notions of love, masculinity and spirituality. A wholly original novel as tender as it is visceral, Rainbow Milk is a bold reckoning with race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures.

A rich, bighearted debut that takes us from working-class Staten Island in the wake of the September 11th attacks to moneyed London a decade later, revealing a story of loss, motherhood, and love.'A wise, bighearted, triumphant story.'—Emily Giffin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lies That BindAs the Twin Towers collapse, Gigi Stanislawski flees her office building and escapes lower Manhattan on the Staten Island Ferry. Among the crying, ash-covered, and shoeless passengers, Gigi, unbelievably, finds someone she recognizes--Harry Harrison, a British man and a regular at her favorite coffee shop. Gigi brings Harry to her parents'house, where they watch the television replay the planes crashing for hours, and she waits for the phone call that will never come: the call from Frankie, her younger brother. Ten years later, Gigi, now a single mother consumed with bills and unfulfilled ambitions, meets Harry, again by chance, and they fall deeply, headlong in love. But their move to London and their new baby--which Gigi hoped would finally release her from the past--leave her feeling isolated, raw, and alone with her grief. As Gigi comes face-to-face with the anguish of her brother's death and her rage at the unspoken pain of motherhood, she must somehow find the light amid all the darkness. Startlingly honest and shot through with unexpected humor, When I Ran Away is an unforgettable first novel about love--for our partners, our children, our mothers, and ourselves--pushed to its outer limits.

A collection of short stories of rural Ireland in the classic Irish mode: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today—from the author of the wildly acclaimed Night Boat to Tangier.With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today.

Twenty prizewinning stories selected from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year—continuing the O. Henry Prize's century-long tradition of literary excellence.'Widely regarded as the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction.'—The Atlantic Monthly.Now entering its second century, the prestigious annual story anthology has a new title, a new look, and a new guest editor. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and young emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Adichie, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.Featured in this collection: Daphne Palasi Andreades • David Means • Sindya Bhanoo • Crystal Wilkinson • Alice Jolly • David Rabe • Karina Sainz Borgo (translator, Elizabeth Bryer) • Jamel Brinkley • Tessa Hadley • Adachioma Ezeano • Anthony Doerr • Tiphanie Yanique • Joan Silber • Jowhor Ile • Emma Cline • Asali Solomon • Ben Hinshaw • Caroline Albertine Minor (translator, Caroline Waight) • Jianan Qian • Sally Rooney

Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due—a quest that has a tendency to go hilariously astray.This time Professor Dr Dr von Igelfeld will have to take on a dangerous newcomer—Deputy Librarian Dr Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler. Swept in on a wave of progressive enthusiasm, she seems determined to drag the department into the modern age. At first this is a minor nuisance, but when Dr Schreiber-Ziegler attempts to remove twenty-one of the twenty-two copies of Professor Dr Dr von Igelfeld's seminal work, the thousand-page Portuguese Irregular Verbs... Well, things have gone a bit too far. As a result, von Igelfeld mounts a campaign for the exalted position of director of the Institute against none other than the upstart Dr Schreiber-Ziegler herself. But the politicking will have to wait; von Igelfeld has been offered a visiting fellowship among the ivory towers of Oxford, where he will have to stave off an MI6 recruitment attempt and the effusive attention of a young American scholar. Still, von Igelfeld has always heeded the clarion call of duty, especially when it comes with a larger office.

The acclaimed and now-classic biographical novel of Walter Benjamin's last days--adapted into screenplay by Jay Parini. It is 1940. For the past decade, Walter Benjamin--the German-Jewish critic and philosopher--has been writing his masterpiece in a library in Paris, a city he loves. Now Nazi tanks have overrun the suburbs, and Benjamin is forced to flee. With a battered briefcase that contains his precious manuscript of a thousand handwritten pages, he sets off for the border and is led by chance to a young anti-Nazi who is taking Jews and other refugees over the Pyrenees into Spain, where they may (with luck) make their way to freedom in Portugal or South America. Beloved biographical novelist Jay Parini's thrilling tale of escape is beautifully interwoven with vignettes of Benjamin's complex, cosmopolitan past: his privileged childhood in Berlin, his years with the German Youth Movement, his university days. His close friendship with Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, and many other well-known artists and intellectuals who were part of Benjamin's intimate circle between the two world wars. Part tragedy, part dark comedy, this sharply realized historical novel tells one of the great and most moving peripheral stories of the Holocaust.

William Melvin Kelley's final work, a Joycean, Rabelaisian romp in which he brings back some of his most memorable characters in a novel of three intertwining stories.Ride on out with Rab and Turt, two o'New Afriqueque's toughfast, ruefast Texnosass Arangers, as they battle Chief Pugmichillo and ricecure Mr. Charcarl Walker-Rider.Cut in on Carlyle Bedlowe, wrecker of marriage, saver of souls.Or just along with Chig Dunford, product of Harlem and private schools, on the circular voyage of self-discovery that takes him from Europe's Cafe of One Hand to Harlem's Jack O'Gee's Golden Grouse Bar & Restaurant.Beginning on an August Sunday in one of Europe's strangest cities, Dunfords Travels Everywheres but always returns back to the same point--the'Begending'--where Mr. Charcarl's dream becomes Chig Dunford's reality (the'Ivy League Negro'in the world outside the Ivory Tower).

The first and only short story collection by William Melvin Kelley, author of A Different Drummer, and the source from which he drew inspiration for his subsequent novels.Originally published in 1964, this collection of sixteen stories includes two linked sets of stories about the Bedlow and Dunford families. They represent the earliest work of William Melvin Kelley and provided a rich source of stories and characters who were to fill out his later novels. Spanning generations from the Deep South during Reconstruction to New York City in the 1960s, these insightful stories depict African American families--their struggles, their heartbreak, and their love.

One of the great jazz novels of any era, A Drop of Patience tells the story of a blind horn player's journey through the themes of race, blindness, and music.At the age of five, Ludlow Washington is given up by his parents to a brutal white-run state institution for blind African American children, where everyone is taught music--the only trade by which they are expected to make a living. Ludlow is a prodigy on the horn and at fifteen is'purchased'out of the Home by a bandleader in the fictive Southern town of New Marsails. By eighteen he is married with a baby daughter, but as his reputation spreads he seeks to grow musically, leaving his budding family for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in New York City. Navigating the worlds of music and race and women, Ludlow's career follows an arc towards collapse, a nervous breakdown, recovery, a long-delayed public recognition, only for him to finally abandon the spotlight and return to his roots and find solace in the black church. A Drop of Patience is a brilliant portrayal of a jazz musician. It stands apart as an exemplary parable of African American history, of racial politics, and of musical creative genius.

Winner of the PEN/Open Book AwardWinner of The Story Prize Spotlight AwardA kaleidoscopic portrait of five generations scattered across Asia and the United States, Inheritors is a heartbreakingly beautiful and brutal exploration of a Japanese family fragmented by the Pacific side of World War II. A retired doctor is forced to confront the moral consequences of his wartime actions. His brother's wife, compelled to speak of a fifty-year-old murder, reveals the shattering realities of life in Occupied Japan. Half a century later, her estranged American granddaughter winds her way back East, pursuing her absent father's secrets. Decades into the future, two siblings face the consequences of their great-grandparents'war as the world shimmers on the brink of an even more pervasive violence. Grappling with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war, Inheritors offers an intricate tapestry of stories illuminating the complex ways in which we live, interpret, and pass on our tangled histories.

Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s to San Francisco in 2016, The Bad Muslim Discount is an inclusive, comic novel about Muslim immigrants finding their way in modern America.“Masood's novel presents a stereoscopic, three-dimensional view of contemporary Muslim America: the way historical conflict in the Middle East lingers in individual lives, the way gossip travels in a close-knit immigrant community.” —The New York Times Book ReviewIt is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalism takes root within the social order and the zealots next door attempt to make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. Ironically, Anvar's deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother adjust easily to life in America, while his fun-loving father can't find anyone he relates to. For his part, Anvar fully commits to being a bad Muslim.At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl living in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. When Anvar and Safwa's worlds collide as two remarkable, strong-willed adults, their contradictory, intertwined fates will rock their community, and families, to their core. The Bad Muslim Discount is an irreverent, poignant, and often hysterically funny debut novel by an amazing new voice. With deep insight, warmth, and an irreverent sense of humor, Syed M. Masood examines universal questions of identity, faith (or lack thereof), and belonging through the lens of Muslim Americans.

Elizabeth Bowen's first novel brilliantly captures the inflammatory mixture of passion and repression among well-heeled British tourists on the Italian Riviera. Their luxurious seaside hotel seems a closed and comfortable world, marked by dramas no more momentous than tennis games, picnics, and idle gossip. But for the young women of the 1920s, facing a dearth of young men after the first World War, it is a battleground for the clash of tradition and modernity. As rebellious young Sydney Warren tests the boundaries of her incomplete freedom—and becomes obsessed with a clever and charming older woman—she increasingly bewilders her suitors, her handlers, and herself. With the psychological precision and command of atmosphere that marks Bowen's most famous novels, The Hotel depicts a collection of privileged men and women in determined denial of a world that is falling apart around them.

Quin Archer is the revenge-loving queen of the reality TV show Payback, and has dedicated her life to confronting and outing the guilty. But long before she was a star, Quin was an angry teenage student at a private New England girls'school, whose closest confidant was her art teacher, Agnes. But when Quin (then known as Heidi) turned to Agnes for help in a moment of desperate need, Agnes's stunned response devastated them both. Payback is a powerful tale of #MeToo misunderstanding, from a time before there was language to contain it, and of the reverberations of our actions across the years. It is a remarkable book about the precise weight of our words and deeds from a writer whose moral vision is deeply rewarding in its subtlety.

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALIST • An audacious and wryly funny coming-of-age story about a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers. Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial. She's grieving the death of her father, avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled-covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.

'These immersive linked stories grapple with Ukrainian history through the waning years of the USSR and birth pangs of democracy... Reva's characters spark off the page as they confront a brutal bureaucratic past with the only tool they possess—hope.'—O, The Oprah MagazineA brilliant and bitingly funny collection of stories united around a single crumbling apartment building in Ukraine, inspired by the author and her family's own experiences.A bureaucratic glitch omits an entire building, along with its residents, from municipal records. So begins Reva's'darkly hilarious'(Anthony Doerr) intertwined narratives, nine stories that span the chaotic years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. But even as the benighted denizens of 1933 Ivansk Street weather the official neglect of the increasingly powerless authorities, they devise ingenious ways to survive. In'Bone Music,'an agoraphobic recluse survives by selling contraband LPs, mapping the vinyl grooves of illegal Western records into stolen X-ray film. A delusional secret service agent in'Letter of Apology'becomes convinced he's being covertly recruited to guard Lenin's tomb, just as his parents, not seen since he was a small child, supposedly were. Weaving the narratives together is the unforgettable, chameleon-like Zaya: a cleft-lipped orphan in'Little Rabbit,'a beauty-pageant crasher in'Miss USSR,'a sadist-for-hire to the Eastern Bloc's newly minted oligarchs in'Homecoming.'Good Citizens Need Not Fear tacks from moments of intense paranoia to surprising tenderness and back again, exploring what it is to be an individual amid the roiling forces of history. Reva brings the black absurdism of early Shteyngart and the sly interconnectedness of Anthony Marra's Tsar of Love and Techno to a'bang-on brilliant'(Miriam Toews) collection that is'fearless and thrilling'(Bret Anthony Johnston), and as clever as it is heartfelt.

The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations.In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

A searing, provocative satire by one of the most important African-American novelists of the twentieth century that lays bare the abiding racism and the legacy of slavery on the psyche of white America.Mitchell Pierce is a well-off New York ad executive whose marriage is falling apart. He no longer feels any passion for his pregnant wife, Tam, and his toddler son, Jake, has become a disappointment. He feels trapped in an unrewarding and loveless life and though domestic violence is not in Mitchell's character, it is never very far away. Mitchell withdraws to a fantasy world where he can act out his unfulfilled sexual desires. Mitchell's life will irrevocably change one day, though, when a young man appears at his apartment door to pick up the family's black maid, Opal, for a date. Cooley it turns out is not a stranger to the household. The twins that Tam is carrying are a result of superfecundation--the fertilization of two separate ova by two different males. So when one child is born black and the other white, Mitchell goes on a quest to find Cooley and make him take his baby. In the tradition of Brer Rabbit trickster tales, dem enacts a modern-day fable of the turning the tables on the white oppressor and inverting the history of miscegenation and subjugation of African Americans.

Elizabeth Bowen's deceptively simple novel opens with the weddings of two quietly conventional sisters: Laurel to Edward, and Janet to Rodney. Ten years later, one intense week is all it takes to unravel the couples'peaceful lives as a long-concealed secret explodes to the surface. The repercussions ripple through four different families connected by the two marriages, hinging on the comic interventions of such vivid characters as Edward's mother, the glamorous and scandal-ridden Lady Elfrida; Rodney's notorious rake of an uncle; and a stridently awkward teenager, Theodora, who is keen to insert herself into the drama. Humor and pain abound in Friends and Relations, as Bowen weaves the barest hints of menace and the subtlest nuances of emotion into this devastating tale of the tangled web of human relationships.

The fourth novel in the Seasonal Quartet by Man Booker Prize Finalist Ali Smith is “a prose poem in praise of memory, forgiveness, getting the joke, and seizing the moment” (The New York Times).In the present, Sacha knows the world's in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile, the world's in meltdown­—and the real meltdown hasn't even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they're living on borrowed time.This is a story about people on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers. So: Where does family begin? And what do people who think they've got nothing in common have in common?Summer.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in Paris in this'feel-good escape” (The New York Times).Paras, short for'Perestroika,'is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and—she's a curious filly—wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.

'Pachico's The Anthill is superb'--KELLY LINKA wildly original blend of social horror and razor sharp satire, The Anthill is a searing exploration of privilege, racism, and redemption in the Instagram age.In the end, it's much easier to not look at the screaming feeling. To not examine it. Better to just keep on rushing on... Lina has come home to the country of her childhood. Sent away from Colombia to England after her mother's death twenty years before, she's searching for the one person who can tell her about their shared past. She's never forgotten Matty - her childhood friend and protector who now runs The Anthill, a day care refuge for the street kids of Medellín. Lina begins volunteering there, but her reunion with Matty is not what she hoped for. She no longer recognizes Medellin, now rebranded as a tourist destination, nor the person Matty has become: a guarded man uninterested in reliving the past she thought they both cherished. As Lina begins to confront her memories and the country's traumatic history, strange happenings start taking place at The Anthill: something is violently scratching at the inside of the closet door, the kids are drawing unsettling pictures, and there are mysterious sightings of a small, dirty boy with pointy teeth. Is this a vision of the boy Lina once knew, or something more sinister? Did she bring these disturbances with her? And what will her search for atonement cost Matty?A visceral, hallucinatory ride by an author who has been called'blunt, fresh, and unsentimental'(The New York Times Book Review) and'remarkably inventive'(The Atlantic), The Anthill is a ghost story unlike any other, a meditation on healing--for both a person and a country--in the wake of horror.

'Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion.'--New York Times Book ReviewA gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny, What's Left of Me Is Yours charts a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life--and her murder.In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the'wakaresaseya'(literally'breaker-upper'), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō's job is to do exactly that--until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitarō fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter's life.Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, Stephanie Scott exquisitely renders the affair and its intricate repercussions. As Rina's daughter, Sumiko, fills in the gaps of her mother's story and her own memory, Scott probes the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.

'Adam Levin is one of our wildest writers and our funniest, and Bubblegum is a dazzling accomplishment of wit and inventiveness.'—George Saunders'Levin's brains may have earned him a cult...but here he swells to a democratic reach. Give him a try sometime. His gate's wide open.” —Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times Book ReviewThe astonishing new novel by the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award-winning author of The Instructions.Bubblegum is set in an alternate present-day world in which the Internet does not exist, and has never existed. Rather, a wholly different species of interactive technology--a'flesh-and-bone robot'called the Curio--has dominated both the market and the cultural imagination since the late 1980s. Belt Magnet, who as a boy in greater Chicago became one of the lucky first adopters of a Curio, is now writing his memoir, and through it we follow a singular man out of sync with the harsh realities of a world he feels alien to, but must find a way to live in. At age thirty-eight, still living at home with his widowed father, Belt insulates himself from the awful and terrifying world outside by spending most of his time with books, his beloved Curio, and the voices in his head, which he isn't entirely sure are in his head. After Belt's father goes on a fishing excursion, a simple trip to the bank escalates into an epic saga that eventually forces Belt to confront the world he fears, as well as his estranged childhood friend Jonboat, the celebrity astronaut and billionaire. In Bubblegum, Adam Levin has crafted a profoundly hilarious, resonant, and monumental narrative about heartbreak, longing, art, and the search for belonging in an incompatible world. Bubblegum is a rare masterwork of provocative social (and self-) awareness and intimate emotional power.

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS'CHOICE • FINALIST FOR THE 2023 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • From the author of the award-winning debut story collection We Show What We Have Learned, an'atoundingly original” (The New York Times Book Review) work of historical fiction with shocking and eerie connections to our own time.At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter, Caroline, promise a groundbreaking education for young women. But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in nineteenth-century New England. When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling. But it's not long before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. One by one, they sicken. Fearing ruin for the school, Samuel overrules Caroline's pleas to inform the girls'parents and turns instead to a noted physician, a man whose sinister ministrations—based on a shocking historic treatment—horrify Caroline. As the men around her continue to dictate, disastrously, all terms of the girls'experience, Caroline's own body begins to betray her. To save herself and her young charges, she will have to defy every rule that has governed her life, her mind, her body, and her world.

People Magazine Book of the Week'Extraordinary.'--Wall Street Journal'Gripping.'--Emma Donoghue, author of Room'Dazzling.'--Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek'Fantastic.'--Kevin Powers, author of Yellow Birds and A Shout in the Ruins'Brilliant.'--Ron Rash, author of SerenaFrom prizewinning author Michael Crummey comes a spellbinding story of survival in which a brother and sister confront the limits of human endurance and their own capacity for loyalty and forgiveness.A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them. Muddling though the severe round of the seasons, through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested. The Innocents is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.

From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding. Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he codesigns Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart—and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan's subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human—our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control.Don't miss Ian McEwan's new novel, Lessons.

Now celebrating its centenary, this prestigious annual anthology gathers the twenty best new short stories published in the previous year. An Anchor Books Original.The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019--continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence--contains twenty prize-winning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. The winning writers are an impressive mix of celebrated names and new, emerging voices. Their stories evoke lives both near and distant, in settings ranging from Jamaica, Houston, and Hawaii to a Turkish coal mine and a drought-ridden Northwestern farm, and feature an engaging array of characters, including Laotian refugees, a Colombian kidnap victim, an eccentric Irish schoolteacher, a woman haunted by a house that cleans itself, and a strangely long-lived rabbit. The uniformly breathtaking stories are accompanied by essays from the eminent jurors on their favorites, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.List of 2019 winners:Tessa Hadley John Keeble Moira McCavana Rachel Kondo Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Stephanie Reents Alexia Arthurs Valerie O'Riordan Patricia Engel Kenan Orhan Sarah Hall Bryan Washington Isabella Hammad Weike Wang Caoilinn Hughes Souvankham Thammavongsa Liza Ward Doua Thao Alexander MacLeod John Edgar WidemanPrize Jurors 2019: Lynn Freed, Elizabeth Strout, Lara Vapynar