Search

In this classic 1888 novella, an anonymous narrator relates his obsessive quest to acquire some letters and other private documents that once belonged to the deceased Romantic poet Jeffrey Aspern. Attempting to gain access to the papers, the property of Aspern's former mistress, he rents a room in a decaying Venetian villa where the woman lives with her aging niece. Led by his zeal into increasingly unscrupulous behavior, the narrator is faced in the end with relinquishing his heart's desire or attaining it an an overwhelming price. Inspired by an actual incident involving Claire Clairmont, once the mistress of Lord Byron, this masterfully written tale incorporates all those elements expected from James: psychological subtlety, deft plotting, the clash of cultures, and profoundly nuanced representation of scene, mood, and character. This volume also contains James's celebrated Preface from the New York edition of his collected works.

People think that if they go far away they ll leave the parts of themselves behind. But it doesn t work like that.'Stevie moves to Galway to pursue her PhD and takes refuge in the city, and in her relationship with Joe Kavanagh, a charismatic but dispirited artist. Both are looking for something more, but struggle to navigate their way free from the claustrophobia of their lives, the limited circle of acquaintances and the lack of ambition. Escape is the only option, but the surface level of friendliness surrounding them masks a deeper hinterland of jealousy, secrets and violence that can break out at any time. Exploring the chaos and confusion faced by those in their late twenties with humour, pathos and insightful sensitivity, Skin, Paper, Stone is the acclaimed first novel by Máire T. Robinson, an exciting new voice in Irish writing.

REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEROVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE THE PAPER PALACE IS: “Filled with secrets, love, lies and a summer beach house. What more could you ask?”—Parade “A deeply emotional love story…the unraveling of secrets, lies and a very complex love triangle.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club July'21 Pick)'Nail-biting.'—Town & Country “A magnificent page-turner.” —Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author“[An] irresistible placement of a complicated family in a bewitching place.” —The New York Times A story of summer, secrets, love, and lies: in the course of a singular day on Cape Cod, one woman must make a life-changing decision that has been brewing for decades.“This house, this place, knows all my secrets.” It is a perfect August morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace”—the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives. As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

Willa Sibert Cather was born on 7th December, 1873 on her grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia. After several years and moves the family eventually settled in Red Cloud, Nebraska and for the first time Cather could now attend school. In Red Cloud Cather had her earliest writings published in the local Red Cloud Chief newspaper. Her time in the mid-West created a vivid tranche of experiences for the young woman. It was still, for the most part, the frontier; a landscape of dramatic environment and weather, the vastness of the Nebraska prairie, as well as the many diverse cultures of the local families. Attending the University of Nebraska she published a well received essay on Thomas Carlyle in the Nebraska State Journal and thereafter became a regular contributor to its offerings. After being hired to write for the Home Monthly, in 1896, Cather moved to Pittsburgh. Within a year she became a telegraph editor and drama critic for the Pittsburgh Leader as well as contributing poetry and short fiction to The Library, another local publication. Her first collection of short stories,'The Troll Garden', was published in 1905 and contains several of her most famous including'A Wagner Matinee,''The Sculptor's Funeral,'and'Paul's Case.'As a writer Cather was now taking immense strides forward. By 1912 she had finished her first novel'Alexander's Bridge'which was serialized in McClure's to favourable reviews. Cather now began her Prairie Trilogy:'O Pioneers!'(1913),'The Song of the Lark'(1915), and'My Ántonia'(1918). All three were popular and critical successes nationwide. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Cather continued to establish herself as a major American writer and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for her novel'One of Ours'. A determinedly private person, Cather destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will would also restrict the ability of scholars to quote from personal papers that remained. In 1932, Cather published her final collection of short stories,'Obscure Destinies'which contained the highly regarded'Neighbour Rosicky.'She now began work on'Lucy Gayheart', a novel that was rather darker than those before it. With her career settled as one of America's greatest writers honours began to flow. In 1943 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The following year, 1944, Cather received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. However time was about to settle scores with her. On April 24th, 1947, Willa Siebert Cather died of a cerebral haemorrhage at her home at 570 Park Avenue in Manhattan. She was 73.

A whirlwind romance between an eccentric archivist and a grieving widow explores what it means to be at home in your own body in this clever, humorous, and heartfelt novel.When archivist Sol meets Elsie, the larger than life widow of a moderately famous television writer who's come to donate her wife's papers, there's an instant spark. But Sol has a secret: he suffers from an illness called vampirism, and hides from the sun by living in his basement office. On their way to falling in love, the two traverse grief, delve into the Internet fandom they once unknowingly shared, and navigate the realities of transphobia and the stigmas of carrying the'vampire disease.'Then, when strange things start happening at the collection, Sol must embrace even more of the unknown to save himself and his job. DEAD COLLECTIONS is a wry novel full of heart and empathy, that celebrates the journey, the difficulties and joys, in finding love and comfort within our own bodies.

From the Irish bestselling author of Nine Folds Make a Paper Swancomes a short story about modern love, old-fashioned values and a new-born calf. ____________________________ While the country gears up for a referendum, a man sits waiting with a ring in his pocket... He has known his girlfriend since they were children, though they have become quite different adults. He lives in the city, she works on a farm. She's voting YES, he doesn't know what he's doing; what exactly it is he believes. But he does know that he makes her laugh and that their connection feels natural, most of the time. So surely there's a decent chance she will say YES to him too?

The highly acclaimed author of Landslide delivers “[an] intricate, delicate-as-rice-paper novel'(O, The Oprah Magazine) about an ex-pat in China who embarks on a journey that takes her into the darkest corners of addiction, marriage, and motherhood. When Elsey's husband, Lukas, hands her a brochure for a weeklong mountain retreat, she knows he is really giving her an ultimatum: Go, or we're done. Once a successful painter, Elsey set down roots in China after falling in love with Lukas. Now, with two young daughters and unable to find a balance between her identities as artist, mother, and wife, Elsey fills her days worrying, drinking, and descending into boredom and unhappiness. So she agrees to go. There, she meets a group of men and women who will forever alter the way she understands herself and her marriage. Written in a voice at once wry, sensual, blunt, and hypnotic, Elsey Come Home is a modern odyssey and a quietly dynamic portrait of contemporary womanhood.

George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent. By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero.In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. On release he decided to start over. In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell. His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static. Something had to change. And it did. By 1884 The Unclassed was published. Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250. Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience. Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

Rudyard Kipling: A great Victorian, a great writer of Empire, a great man.Rudyard Kipling was one of the most popular writers of prose and poetry in the late 19th and 20th Century and awarded the Noble Prize for Literature in 1907.Born in Bombay on 30th December 1865, as was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the couple who they boarded with in Portsmouth, Kipling himself suggested, contributed to the onset of his literary life. This was further enhanced by his return to India at age 16 to work on a local paper, as not only did this result in him writing constantly but also made him explore issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work.Whilst he is best remembered for his classic children's stories and his popular poem ‘If..'. He is also regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story and of course the novels and other works that have seen him acknowledged as a writer of the first rank.

Newly widowed woman seeks fresh start and village scandals. Lycra wearing cyclists need not apply. Poppy Shilling may have fantasized about her boring husband slipping on ice on his way to get the paper or contracting malaria from a mosquito bite, but she never imagined Phil would leave her so suddenly. When a freak cycling accident takes out her Lycra-wearing husband, Poppy can't help but feel relieved rather than distraught.But when a mysterious visitor arrives after the funeral bearing secrets about her husband, Poppy quickly learns that Phil was not exactly the man she thought he was—and she might not be the woman she thought she was, either.International bestselling author Catherine Alliott crafts an endearing and quirky'what if'story that will make your heart sing as you follow Poppy on her unforgettable journey.Praise for Catherine Alliott:'Compulsively readable and highly entertaining.'—Daily Mail'Possibly my favorite writer.'—Marian Keyes''A rip–roaring read.'—Sun'Catherine Alliott has got it, that addictive blend of wit, frivolity, and madcap romance.'—Time Out

This Library of America volume brings together one of Henry James's most unusual experiments and one of his most beloved masterpiecesWriting to his friend William Dean Howells, Henry James characterized his experimental novel, The Sacred Fount, as the only one of his novels to be told in the first person, as “a fine flight into the high fantastic.” While traveling to the country house of Newmarch for a weekend party, the nameless narrator becomes obsessed with the idea that a person may become younger or cleverer by tapping the “sacred fount” of another person. Convinced that Grace Brissenden has become younger by drawing upon her husband, Guy, the narrator seeks to discover the source of the newfound wit of Gilbert Long, previously “a fine piece of human furniture.” His perplexing and ambiguous quest, and the varying reactions it provokes from the other guests, calls into question the imaginative inquiry central to James's art of the novel.James described the essential idea of The Wings of the Dove as “a young person conscious of a great capacity for life, but early stricken and doomed, condemned to die under short respite, while also enamoured of the world.” The heroine, a wealthy young American heiress, Milly Theale (inspired by James's beloved cousin Minny Temple), is slowly drawn into a trap set for her by the English adventuress Kate Croy and her lover, the journalist Morton Densher. The unexpected outcome of their mercenary scheme provides the resolution to a tragic story of love and betrayal, innocence and experience that has long been acknowledged as one of James's supreme achievements as a novelist. This volume prints the New York Edition text of The Wings of the Dove, and includes the illuminating preface James wrote for that edition.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

In a funny, poignant, wonderfully original debut novel, the author of the acclaimed short-story collection Trouble with Girls weaves a beguiling tale of fathers and sons, sons and lovers…and one unforgettable summer in a young man's life–somewhere between a past he doesn't understand and a future he's not ready to live…. ALTERNATIVE ATLANTAFor thirty-year-old Gerald Brinkman, life in Atlanta in the year 1996–the summer of the Olympics–doesn't feel half bad. Writing reviews of basement rock bands for an alternative paper, Gerald has carefully avoided getting a real job, while watching his old friends from grad school start careers, marriages, and affairs–often with each other. But in this one life-changing summer, something is about to happen that will shake Gerald out of his complacency forever. Gerald's father, his brilliant, vagabond, and utterly unhelpful father, wants to come and stay with him “for a while.” Ever since childhood, Gerald has tried to bury his relationship with his father under a life of carefully crafted wrong turns. And now Paul Brinkman has shown up with trash bags full of belongings, a medical crisis, and an unbearable confession to make. But Gerald knows one thing for sure: He doesn't want to hear it. Try as he might to stop it, the future is bearing down on him. A job is being dangled in New York. A secret from his past is waiting to be revealed. An ex-girlfriend is suddenly sending mixed signals. And in one moment in one summer in the city of Atlanta, everything is about to change forever. When it does, Gerald is going to have a whole new vision of who he is, who his father and friends are, and what he must do next.An exhilarating and touching novel about family and flirtations, growing up and letting go, Alternative Atlanta brilliantly captures a time of life when everything seems possible and impossible at the same time. It is a work of dazzling storytelling from a writer of immense gifts.

Written by iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, this classic of love, desire, and family breakdown smashed through taboos when first published in Arabic and continues to captivate audiences todayIt is 1950s Cairo and 16-year-old Amina is engaged to a much older man. Despite all the excitement of the wedding preparations, Amina is not looking forward to her nuptials. And it is not because of the age gap or because of the fact that she does not love, or even really know, her fiancé. No, it is because she is involved with another man.This other man is Dr Hashim Abdel-Latif, and while he is Amina's first love, she is certainly not his. Also many years her senior, Hashim is well-known in polite circles for his adventures with women. A Nose and Three Eyes tells the story of Amina's love affair with Hashim, and that of two other young women: Nagwa and Rihab.A Nose and Three Eyes is a story of female desire and sexual awakening, of love and infatuation, and of exploitation and despair. It quietly critiques the strictures put upon women by conservative social norms and expectations, while a subtle undercurrent of political censure was carefully aimed at the then Nasser regime. As such, it was both deeply controversial and wildly popular when first published in the 1960s. Still a household name, this novel, and its author, have stood the test of time and remain relevant and highly readable today.

An Indie Next PickIn this hilariously savage, poignant novel by acclaimed author Katherine Min, a grieving daughter's revenge on the man who caused her mother's death sets off a series of unexpected reckonings.On a cold, gloomy night, twenty-three-year-old Kyoko stands in the rain with a knife in her hoodie's pocket. Her target is Daniel, who seduced Kyoko's mother then callously dropped her, leading to her death. But tonight, there will be repercussions. Following the unsuspecting Daniel home, Kyoko manages to get a rash kidnapping plot off the ground... and then nothing goes as planned.The Fetishist is the story of three people—Kyoko, a Japanese American punk-rock singer full of rage and grief; Daniel, a philandering violinist forced to confront the wreckage of his past; and Alma, the love of Daniel's life, a Korean American cello prodigy long adored for her beauty, passion, and talent, but who spends her final days examining if she was ever, truly, loved.An exuberant, provocative story that confronts race, complicity, visibility, and ideals of femininity, The Fetishist was written before the celebrated author's untimely death in 2019. Startlingly prescient, as wise and powerful as it is utterly delightful, this novel cements Katherine Min's legacy as a writer with a singular voice for our times.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS'CHOICE • A mesmerizing new novel from the author of Evening: the story of a woman swept into a love affair at mid-life • A luminous story about erotic obsession, the hunger for intimacy, communication, and oblivion that will appeal to readers of Miranda July's All Fours “Minot exquisitely explores desire and denial, intimacy and illusion in a ravishing, haunting, and insightful tale of sexual ecstasy and emotional torment, integrity and creativity, self and motherhood.” —Booklist (starred review)'Minot's writing is like a diamond knife on ice.” —Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize winning authorIvy Cooper is 52 years old when Ansel Fleming first walks into her life. Twenty years her junior, a musician newly released from prison on a minor drug charge, Ansel's beguiling good looks and quiet intensity instantly seduce her. Despite the gulf between their ages and experience the physical chemistry between them is overpowering, and over the heady weeks and months that follow Ivy finds her life bifurcated by his presence: On the surface she is a responsible mother, managing the demands of friends, an ex-husband, home; but emotionally, psychologically, sexually, she is consumed by desire and increasingly alive only in the stolen moments-out-of-time, with Ansel in her bed.Don't Be a Stranger is a gripping, sensual, and provocative work from one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary fiction.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the celebrated author of Disappearing Earth comes a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods—“a mesmerizing story about hope, sisterhood, and survival with a truly shocking twist at the end” (People, Book of the Week).NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS'CHOICE • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK!“Thrilling and propulsive, glorious and terrifying. Julia Phillips is a brilliant writer.”—Ann Patchett“Beautiful and haunting... this is brilliant.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.Sam and Elena dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can't earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it's time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the desire to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us—and within us—Bear is a propulsive, mythical, richly imagined novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • From the best-selling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both“Like Nora Ephron, with a British twist….Delivers the most delightful aspects of classic romantic comedy—snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, humorous meet-cutes and misunderstandings—and leaves behind the clichéd gender roles and traditional marriage plot.” —The New York TimesAndy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped.Now he is...Without a homeWaiting for his stand-up career to take offWondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't lookingSet adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.

In this “brilliant... and darkly funny” (Sarah Dunn) novel, Dolores O'Shea's marriage collapsed when she discovers her husband's AI sex doll in the garage—but after moving “Zoey” into the house, they become oddly bonded, opening the door to a lifetime of repressed feelings and memories. 43-year-old Dolores O'Shea is logical, organized, and prepared to handle whatever comes her way. She keeps up with her job and housework, takes care of her mentally declining mother, and remains close with her old friends and her younger sister who's moved to New York. Though her marriage with David, an anesthesiologist, isn't what is used to be, nothing can quite prepare her for Zoey, the $8,000 AI sex doll that David has secretly purchased and stuffed away in the garage. At first, Zoey sparks an uncharacteristically strong violence in Dolores, whose entire life is suddenly cast in doubt. But then, Dolores and Zoey start to talk...and what surfaces runs deeper than Dolores could have ever expected, with consequences for all of the relationships in her life, especially her relationship to herself. Provocative, brilliant, and tender, Hey, Zoey is an electrifying new novel about the painful truths of modern-day connection and the complicated and unexpected forms that love can take in a lifetime.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE AND THE GILLER PRIZE • A breathtaking and ineffable new novel from the author of the international best sellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault—a novel of love and loyalty across generations, at once sweeping and intimate1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night.1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand.So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and reignite as the century unfolds. In radiant moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.Held is affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom, and compassion, a novel by a writer at the height of her powers.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a “stunner” (People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world. “Tell Me Everything hits like a bucolic fable.... A novel of moods, how they govern our personal lives and public spaces, reflected in Strout's shimmering technique.”—The Washington PostA TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEARWith her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone's life mean?”It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

Winner of the Westport Prize for LiteratureA multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a rebel who commits a youthful betrayal receives a late-life chance at redemption and a new life: “a tour de force” from “the new master” (Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene). In 1964, Stanislavo, a zealous young man devoted to his ideals, turns his back on his privilege to join the leftist movement in the jungles of Venezuela. There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their romance is upended by a decision with consequences that will echo down through the generations. Almost forty years later, in a poor barrio of Caracas, María, a single mother, ekes out a precarious existence as a housekeeper, pouring her love into Eloy, her young son. Her devotion will not be enough, however, to keep them from disaster. On the eve of the attempted coup against President Chávez, Eloy is wounded by a stray bullet, fracturing her world. Amid the chaos at the hospital, María encounters Stanislavo, now a newspaper editor. Even as the country itself is convulsed by waves of unrest, this twist of fate forces a belated reckoning for Stanislavo, who may yet earn a chance to atone for old missteps before it's too late. With its epic scope, gripping narrative, and unflinching intimacy, Freedom Is a Feast announces a major new talent. Alejandro Puyana has delivered a wise and moving debut about sticking to one's beliefs at the expense of pain and chaos, about the way others can suffer for our misdeeds even when we have the best of intentions, and about the possibility for redemption when love persists across time.

A captivating feminist classic about a woman's struggle for independence in fascist Italy, from the author of Forbidden Notebook - with an afterword by Elena Ferrante __________'Reading Alba de Céspedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere'Annie Ernaux'One of Italy's most cosmopolitan, incendiary, insightful, and overlooked writers'Jhumpa Lahiri'Alba de Céspedes wrote novels in the 1940s and 1950s that were radically contemporary, both then and now... A courageous novel, beautifully imagined and written'Washington Post __________ Alessandra has always wanted more than life offered her. Growing up in a crowded apartment block in 1930s Rome, she watches as her mother's dreams of becoming a concert pianist are stifled by an unsatisfying marriage. When her father's traditional family try to make Alessandra marry at a young age, she rebels against the future they imagine for her. Soon she falls passionately in love with Francesco, an anti-fascist professor, and a new world seems to open up. Working for the underground resistance, she tastes the independence that she has yearned for. But what will it take for her to break free from society's expectations, and live on her own terms? Drawing on Alba de Céspedes's own experiences in Italy's wartime uprising, Her Side of the Story is a feminist chronicle of fierce and unforgettable power.

An “eviscerating” (The New York Times) novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars of us all—from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments“Is divorce the new marriage plot?... [Liars] pulses with a rare kind of anger, making it a compulsive, unforgettable read. Love stories, it seems, are out. Divorce as liberation? Very much in.”—Vogue“A tour de force... Liars makes an old story fresh.”—NPR“A bracing story of a woman on the verge.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I'd always known that. But I'd never suspected how easily I'd fall into one anyway. When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it's not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John's ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.As Jane's career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.

Patricia Highsmith meets White Lotus in this surprising and suspenseful modern gothic story following a couple running from both secretive pasts and very present dangers while honeymooning on a Greek island. “Fantastically gripping…this is fiction roaring on all cylinders.” —The Guardian “A work of peculiar gonzo genius…Thomas takes a glamorous late-capitalist setting, with rosé and catamarans…and warps it into a story that is surprising, humane and political to its bones.” —The New York TimesStill reeling from the chaos of their wedding, Evelyn and Richard arrive on a tiny Greek island for their honeymoon. It's the end of the season and a storm is imminent. Determined to make the best of it, they check into the sun-soaked rooms of Villa Rosa. Already feeling insecure after seeing the “beautiful people,” the seemingly endless number of young models and musicians lounging along the Mediterranean, Evelyn is wary of the hotel's owner, Isabella, who seems to only have eyes for Richard. Isabella ostensibly disapproves of every request Evelyn makes, seemingly annoyed at the fact that they are there at all. Isabella is also preoccupied with her chance to enthrall the only other guests—an American producer named Marcus and his partner Debbie—with the story of “the sleepwalkers,” a couple who had stayed at the hotel recently and drowned. Everyone seems to want to talk about the sleepwalkers, save for Hamza, a young Turkish man Evelyn had seen with some of the “beautiful people,” as well as the “dapper little man”—the strange yet fashionable owner of the island's lone antiques and gift shop she sees everywhere. But what at first seemed eccentric, decorative, or simply ridiculous, becomes a living nightmare. Evelyn and Richard are separated the night of the storm and forced to face dark truths, but it's their confessions around the origins of their relationship and the years leading up to their marriage that might save them. “Vibey, dark, and weird” (Allie Rowbottom, author of Aesthetica), and also very funny, The Sleepwalkers asks urgent questions about relationships, sexuality, and the darkest elements of contemporary society—where our most terrible secrets are hidden in plain sight.

• “Mesmerizing.” —Town & Country • “Twisty and unsettling.” —People • “Ancient Greece meets Succession by way of Emma Cline…deliciously dark.” —Ruth Gilligan • A “superb…refreshing” (The New York Times Book Review) reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set on a lush private island, exploring themes of addiction and sex, family, independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld.Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother's disappointment, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced, and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells herself she's in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help that only she can hear. Alternating between the two women's perspectives, Fruit of the Dead incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a tale that explores love, control, obliteration, and America's late-capitalist mythos. Lyon's reinvention of Persephone and Demeter's story makes for a haunting, electric novel that readers will not soon forget.

“An insightful, riveting study of marriage.” —People From the bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes, a masterful and “absorbing” (The New York Times) novel about a couple in a small town navigating the complexities of marriage, family, and longing.Malcolm Gephardt, handsome and gregarious longtime bartender at the Half Moon, has always dreamed of owning a bar. When his boss finally retires, Malcolm stretches to buy the place. He sees unquantifiable magic and potential in the Half Moon and hopes to transform it into a bigger success, but struggles to stay afloat. His smart and confident wife, Jess, has devoted herself to her law career. After years of trying for a baby, she is facing the idea that motherhood may not be in the cards for her. Like Malcolm, she feels her youth beginning to slip away and wonders how to reshape her future. “A quick and impactful read that will stay with you long after you finish it” (theSkimm), The Half Moon takes place over the course of one week when Malcolm learns shocking news about Jess, a patron of the bar goes missing, and a blizzard hits the town of Gillam, trapping everyone in place. With a deft eye and generous spirit, Mary Beth Keane explores the disappointments and unexpected consolations of midlife, the many forms forgiveness can take, the complicated intimacy of small-town living, and what it means to be a family.

In The Wild Palms, subsequently titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, William Faulkner interweaves two stories. In the story Wild Palms, it's New Orleans 1937. A man and a woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respectability. In the story Old Man, the setting is Mississippi ten years earlier where a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his own chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman. The two interwoven separate stories are presented so that they each climax with their final chapter, one with a happy ending and one with a sad ending.

A GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST 2023'Hallucinogenic, electric and sharp.'JESSICA ANDREWS'Will make most readers howl with laughter and/or shut their eyes in horror.'GUARDIAN'A carnival funhouse ride: terrifying, feverish, hilarious.'JULIA ARMFIELD Irina is in a rut. She obsessively takes explicit photographs of average-looking men she scouts from the streets of Newcastle while her dead-end bar job slips away; she's more interested in drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. When she's offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery which promises to revive her career in the art world, it should feel like an escape. But the news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, drawing in her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention... BOY PARTS is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboos of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.'Smart, stylish, and very funny.'LARA WILLIAMS'Boundaries are for breaking and if anyone can crash through and reinterpret the fear of our time, Eliza Clark can.'MSLEXIA WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:'A dark, funny, nasty book. Brilliantly written, annoyingly good.'5• reader review'I am obsessed.'5• reader review'Both shocking and darkly funny, this razor-sharp debut is unlike anything I've read before.'5• reader review'I loved this, properly loved it!!'5• reader review'Left me both in awe and totally disturbed. Wow.'5• reader review

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner comes a warmhearted and empowering new novel about love, family, friendship, secrets, and a life-changing journey.Thirty-three-year-old Abby Stern has made it to a happy place. True, she still has gig jobs instead of a career, and the apartment where she's lived since college still looks like she's just moved in. But she's got good friends, her bike, and her bicycling club in Philadelphia. She's at peace with her plus-size body—at least, most of the time—and she's on track to marry Mark Medoff, her childhood sweetheart, a man she met at the weight-loss camp that her perpetually dieting mother forced her to attend. Fifteen years after her final summer at Camp Golden Hills, when Abby reconnects with a half-his-size Mark, it feels like the happy ending she's always wanted. Yet Abby can't escape the feeling that something isn't right...or the memories of one thrilling night she spent with a man named Sebastian two years previously. When Abby gets a last-minute invitation to lead a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, she's happy to have time away from Mark, a chance to reflect and make up her mind. But things get complicated fast. First, Abby spots a familiar face in the group—Sebastian, the one-night stand she thought she'd never see again. Sebastian is a serial dater who lives a hundred miles away. In spite of their undeniable chemistry, Abby is determined to keep her distance. Then there's a surprise last-minute addition to the trip: her mother, Eileen, the woman Abby blames for a lifetime of body shaming and insecurities she's still trying to undo. Over two weeks and more than seven hundred miles, strangers become friends, hidden truths come to light, a teenage girl with a secret unites the riders in unexpected ways...and Abby is forced to reconsider everything she believes about herself, her mother, and the nature of love.

From a New York Times bestselling author Lauren Grodstein, a story inspired by a little-known piece of history in the lives of Jewish occupants of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II. Called a'masterpiece', and as seen on The Today Show with Jenna pick (Madeline Miller). On a November day in 1940, Adam Paskow becomes a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jews of the city are cut off from their former lives and held captive by Nazi guards to await an uncertain fate. Weeks later, he is approached by a mysterious figure with a surprising request: Would he join a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls? Adam agrees and begins taking testimonies from his students, friends, and neighbors. One of the people Adam interviews is his flatmate Sala Wiskoff, who is stoic, determined, and funny—and married with two children. Over the months of their confinement, in the presence of her family, they fall in love. But when Adam discovers a possible escape from the Ghetto, he is faced with an unbearable choice: whom can he save, and at what cost? Inspired by the testimony-gathering project with the code name Oneg Shabbat, and told with immediacy and heart, We Must Not Think of Ourselves is a piercing story of love, determination, and sacrifice.

A novel of one family, a century of war, and the promise of homecoming from Dayton Literary Peace Prize winner and National Book Award finalist Andrew KrivakRooted in the small, mountain town of Dardan, Pennsylvania, where patriarch Jozef Vinich settled after surviving World War I, Like the Appearance of Horses immerses us in the intimate lives of a family whose fierce bonds have been shaped by the great conflicts of the past century.In spare, breathtaking prose, Andrew Krivak delivers a deeply compassionate story about three generations who built a new life in America, participated in the Romani resistance during World War II, survived Vietnamese POW camps, watched their children deploy to Iraq, and did everything they could to heal the wounds of war when the fighting was over.

“Stradal serves up another saga of food and family, hurt and healing, pitched between cliff-hanger moments... that make the pages fly.” —PeopleFrom the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she's been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel's grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed. Ned is also an heir—to a chain of home-style diners—and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation? In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone.

A powerful coming-of-age novel about a twenty-something Black musician living in predominantly white Portland, Oregon, playing in a rock band on the verge of success while struggling with racism, romance, and the legacy of his strict religious upbringing.Julian Strickland is seemingly the lone Black man in the hipster dreamland of Portland, Oregon. To his friends, he's the coolest member of the scene: the soulful drummer from Chicago in an indie rock band that's just about to break through. But to himself, he's a sheltered Christian homeschool kid who used to write book reports on Leviticus. A virgin until the night of his marriage, divorced at twenty-four, he's still in disarray two years later—pretending to fit in, wondering if any of his relationships are real, estranged from his family, and struggling to reconcile his relationship with God. Then he meets Ida Blair, a Black painter at the start of a promising career. They begin a tentative relationship, and Ida seems to offer Julian relief from his confusion. But suddenly she stops responding to his texts. Things only get worse when Julian's best friend mysteriously turns on him, his house burns down, and the band considers breaking up on the eve of their most important show yet. It seems the only thing Julian has left—the only thing he's ever had, really—is the weight he is carrying. Jeff Boyd's beguiling first novel is a piercing exploration of faith, racial identity, love, and friendship—woven of acid humor, disarming vulnerability, and unforgettable poignance.

Caroline Norton's forgotten novel, which has remained unpublished until now, tells of the perils of courtship facing a naïve young girl Alixe, who has been launched onto the London social season. Her encounters with both a worthy and an undesirable suitor open an intriguing window onto the fashionable society of the 1820s in which Love in'the World'takes place. In placing her heroine in these predicaments Norton was able to draw upon her own experiences of the bon ton, as the time in which the novel is set coincides with her first ball in March 1826, when she burst upon the scene with all her beauty and brilliance, later recalling, “I came out […] to find all London at my feet.” She believed that London could be as callous as the metropolitan social scene might prove treacherous, and in alerting the reader to the dangers of fashionable society she makes ample use of her own observations as a debutante at her first London season. In a highly readable and coherent narrative with an indeterminate ending, which throws a spotlight onto her life and times, the plot of Love in'the World'initially follows a pattern broadly representative of her own experience before developing in unexpected and surprising ways.

'A triumph of tone and, ultimately, of the imagination.'Guardian'Strange and hilarious and so, so sharp.'Monica Heisey'When a book reaches out and speaks to a reader so clearly, one can hardly do anything but recommend it in the highest terms.'Spectator A New Statesman, New Yorker and Financial Times Book of the Year. From one of the most celebrated imaginations in American literature, Lorrie Moore's new novel is a magic box of longing and surprise. High up in a New York City hospice, Finn sits with his beloved brother Max, who is slipping from one world into the next. But when a phone call summons Finn back to a troubled old flame, a strange journey begins, opening a trapdoor in reality. It will prompt a questioning of life and death, grief and the past, comedy and tragedy, and the diaphanous separations that lie between them all.'Moore writes with such panache, such extraordinary perception and wit, that not a single sentence is wasted.'Elizabeth Day'Witty, but never merely clever, and tender without sentimentality.'Hilary Mantel

A Maid in Arcady is a novel written by Ralph Henry Barbour set in the early 1900s. The story follows a young woman named Joan Newton, who travels to Arcady, a wealthy vacation community in Maine, to work as a maid for a summer. Joan is determined to save money to attend college, and sees this job as her opportunity. Once in Arcady, Joan befriends a group of young people from wealthy families who are spending the summer there. She becomes particularly close with a young man named Jerry, who is instantly drawn to her intelligence and independence. However, Joan is acutely aware of the class difference between herself and the other residents of Arcady, and struggles to fit in and be accepted. As the summer progresses, Joan becomes more comfortable with her new surroundings and gains the respect of the people she works for. She also develops a close relationship with Jerry, which is complicated by his family's disapproval of their social differences. Through Joan's experiences, Barbour explores themes of social class, independence, and the pursuit of education. The novel also provides a vivid portrait of life in a wealthy vacation community during the early 1900s, including descriptions of lavish parties, horseback riding, and other recreational activities. Overall,'A Maid in Arcady'is a charming and insightful novel that offers a window into a bygone era. Joan's journey towards self-discovery and independence will resonate with readers who are interested in stories of social mobility and the pursuit of personal goals.

Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America's most acclaimed writers, the award-winning, best-selling author of BlondeA brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered; diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community; a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover; a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as “mother.” In the collection's longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with “drafts” of his own suicide.In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates's standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life.

The latest New York Times bestseller from beloved author Alice Hoffman celebrates the enduring magic of books and is a “wonderful story of love and growth” (Stephen King).One June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia's mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her? Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you. As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die? From “the reigning queen of magical realism” (Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author), this is the story of one woman's dream. For a little while it came true.

National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and author of Such Good Work Johannes Lichtman returns with a novel that is strikingly relevant to our times—about an American who takes a job in Ukraine in 2018, only to find that his struggle to understand the customs and culture is eclipsed by a romantic entanglement with deadly consequences.Shortly after his thirtieth birthday, John Turner receives a call from an old college friend who makes him an odd job offer: move to Ukraine to teach customer service agents at a start-up how to sound American. John's never been to Ukraine, doesn't speak Ukrainian, and is supposed to be a journalist, not a consultant. But having just gone through a breakup and still grieving his father's death, it might just be the new start he's been looking for. In Ukraine, John understands very little—the language and social customs are impenetrable to him. At work, his employees are fluent in English but have difficulty grasping the concept of “small talk.” And although he told himself not to get romantically involved while abroad, he can't help but be increasingly drawn to one of his colleagues. Most distressing, however, is the fact that John can hear, through their shared wall, his neighbor beating his wife. Desperate to help, John offers the neighbor 100,000 hryvnias to stop. It's a plan born out of the best intentions, but one that has disastrous repercussions that no amount of money or altruism can solve. “[A] biting comedy” (Vanity Fair) that calls to mind Garth Greenwell's What Belongs to You, Calling Ukraine reimagines the American-abroad novel. Moving effortlessly between the comic and the tragic, Johannes Lichtman deploys his signature wry humor and startling moral insight to illuminate the inevitable complexities of doing right by others.

A Gogolian nightmare from the point of view of a small-town English professor

Nisha,'Azar's beautiful wife,'lives a life surrounded by all the modern luxuries of a wealthy suburban home in Toronto. Her father is a taxi driver, her mother a conservative religious housewife jealously craving a better material life. Tormented by her childhood memories of serial sexual abuse by a family friend, contemptuous of the lies lived by her circle of fake friends, Nisha is unwilling to have a child by her dominant, patronizing husband. She finds escape in mindless shopping sprees and secretly spirals into an addiction to a drug called the'red powder.'In this state one day she meets the mysterious Red One, an archetypal strong man to whom she's instantly and dangerously attracted, who promises her release from her pain. But is he real or a figment of her fervid imagination? In a thrilling denouement to the novel she finds the answer.

Step into the Roaring Twenties with'The Great Gatsby'by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This iconic novel immerses you in the glitz and glamour of the Jazz Age, where mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby hosts extravagant parties in pursuit of lost love, Daisy Buchanan. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, the story unravels, revealing the dark underbelly of wealth and privilege. With lyrical prose, Fitzgerald explores the American Dream, love, and obsession. A timeless classic,'The Great Gatsby'is a vivid portrait of an era that still captivates readers today. Delve into the opulence and tragedy of the Gatsby era in this literary gem.ABOUT THE AUTHORFrancis Scott Fitzgerald, born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on September 24, 1896, was a celebrated American author of the Jazz Age, known for his iconic novel'The Great Gatsby'. His life and work epitomize the spirit and excesses of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and he attended Princeton University, where he began to nurture his passion for writing. His debut novel,'This Side of Paradise,'published in 1920, brought him immediate success, making him a literary sensation. However, it was'The Great Gatsby', published in 1925, that solidified his reputation as one of America's greatest novelists. Set in the opulent world of Long Island's elite, the novel explores themes of wealth, love, and the American Dream. Today, it is considered one of the greatest American novels ever written. Fitzgerald's writing was characterized by its vivid portrayal of the era's excesses and its sharp social commentary. He and his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, became iconic figures of the Jazz Age, known for their extravagant lifestyle. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald's personal life was marred by struggles with alcoholism and financial difficulties. His later works, like'Tender Is the Night', also received critical acclaim but didn't achieve the same level of success as'The Great Gatsby.'Tragically, F. Scott Fitzgerald passed away on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44. While he didn't live to witness the full extent of his literary legacy, his works continue to be celebrated for their exploration of the American experience, making him a timeless figure in American literature.

From the prize-winning fiction writer Richard Bausch (“A master of the novel as well as the story... Effortlessly engaging” —Sven Birkerts, The New York Times), a sharp, affecting, masterly new novel about a close-knit theater community in Memphis and one turbulent, transformative production of King Lear.As renovations begin at the Shakespeare Theater of Memphis, life for the core members of the company seems to be falling into disarray. Their trusted director has just retired, and theater manager Thaddeus Deerforth—staring down forty and sensing a rift growing slowly between himself and his wife, Gina—dreads the arrival of an imperious, inscrutable visiting director. Claudette, struggling to make ends meet as an actor and destabilized by family troubles, is getting frequent calls from her ex-boyfriend—and also the narcissistic, lecherous television actor who has been recruited to play King Lear in their fall production.Also invited to the cast is Malcolm Ruark, a disgraced TV anchor muddling through the fallout of a scandal involving his underaged niece—and suddenly in an even more precarious situation when the same niece, now eighteen, is cast to play Cordelia. As tensions onstage and off build toward a breaking point, the bonds among the intimately drawn characters are put to extraordinary tests—and the fate of the theater itself may even be on the line.Deftly weaving together the points of view of Thaddeus, Claudette, and Malcolm, and utterly original in its incorporation of Shakespeare's timeless drama, Playhouse is an unforgettable story of men and women, human frailty, art, and redemption—a work of inimitable imaginative prowess by one of our most renowned storytellers.

A PHENOMENAL BOOK CLUB PICK • “A sensitive, sharp-eyed, slyly funny novel of venturing back into the foreign country that is your past—and discovering that you can never really shake the places and people that shaped you.”—Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts A young woman's past and present collide when she brings her white fiancé home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents in this vibrant debut from an exciting new voice in fiction. A HARPER'S BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF THE YEARAudrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she's become, from those she left behind. But returning to Hickory Grove is... complicated. Audrey's relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mother's astronomical expectations and slights. The friends she's shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then there's Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, and being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface. Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey's proximity to her family and to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?

Now an original Netflix film, directed by Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of Killers of the Flower MoonNATIONAL BESTSELLER'One of the best novels in Hispanic literature, and in literature as a whole.” —Jorge Luis BorgesThe highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García MárquezA masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man's quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met—Pedro Páramo—but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso. Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century.

On a windswept island off Cape Cod, Delilah moves into a cottage by the shore. After growing up in precarious circumstances with her Abuela, both of them hiding a terrible secret, all Delilah wants now is a beautiful place of her own – and she's paid a high price for it. The neighbors watch the newcomer and wonder about her. They don't like it when she plants a wild and colorful garden in the front yard, and they like the visits from her married lover even less. Meanwhile, her new cottage shares a driveway with the reclusive Anton, who has a secret of his own. When the two meet, sparks fly – but will the past catch up with them?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, a dazzling collection of short stories that look deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life together'If you consider yourself an Atwood fan and have only read her novels: Get your act together. You've been missing out.” —The New York Times Book Review, Rebecca Makkai, best-selling author of The Great BelieversMargaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood's characteristic insight, wit and intellect. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after.Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.

Shortlisted for the National Book Award A story of forbidden love and fugitive faith in the nineteenth century Arctic Circle'Transports readers deep into an unfamiliar world, yet with familiar conflicts and desires. I was absorbed and changed. Absolutely beautiful'Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders has a dramatic awakening and dedicates his life to the church, his impetuous son, Ivvár, is left to guard their diminishing herd alone. By chance, he meets Mad Lasse's daughter Willa, and their blossoming infatuation grows into something that ultimately crosses borders―of cultures, of beliefs, and of political divides―as Willa follows the herders on their arduous annual migration north to the sea. Gorgeously written and sweeping in scope, Hanna Pylväinen's The End of Drum-Time immerses readers in a world lit by the northern lights, steeped in age-old rituals, and guided by passions that transcend place and time.

Mary Cholmondeley was born in Hodnet near Market Drayton in Shropshire on June 8th 1859, thethird of eight children. Her father was appointed rector in 1874 in succession to his father. Much ofthe first 30 years of her life was taken up with helping her sickly mother run the household and herfather with parish work, and she herself suffered with asthma.Mary began writing with in her teens. She wrote in her journal in 1877,'What a pleasure andinterest it would be to me in life to write books. I must strike out a line of some kind, and if I do notmarry (for at best that is hardly likely, as I possess neither beauty nor charms) I should want somedefinite occupation, besides the home duties.'Mary began by publishing some stories in The Graphic and her first novel ‘The Danvers Jewels'adetective story followed in 1887. It was followed by Sir Charles Danvers (1889), Diana Tempest(1893).After her father retired in 1896, she moved with him and her sister Diana to Condover Hall beforeselling it to move to Albert Gate Mansions in Knightsbridge, London.Mary wrote the best seller ‘Red Pottage'in 1899. It satirised religious hypocrisy and the conceit ofcountry life. It was denounced as immoral. It also explored female sexuality.During the war she did clerical work in the Carlton House Terrace Hospital. The sisters moved in1919 to 4 Argyll Road, Kensington, where Mary died, unmarried, on 15th July 1925.

François-Anatole Thibault was born on the 16th April 1844 in Paris, France, the son of a bookseller and bibliophile.He studied at the Collège Stanislas, a private Catholic school, and after graduating joined his father in the bookstore, which specialised in works on the French Revolution. Several years later he secured a position as cataloguer at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at Lemerre before being appointed librarian for the French Senate in 1876.His literary career had begun as a journalist and as a poet before publishing his novel ‘Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard'in 1881. Praised for its elegant prose, it won him a prestigious prize from the Académie Française, which later elected him to its storied ranks.His works were profound and thoughtful and often couched in surreal and outlandish expressions; whether penguins baptized by a near-blind Abbott transformed themselves into humans or of a guardian angel who becomes an atheist, his stories turned established thought into startling literature.His short stories run in the same vein. The premise may seem plausible but his distinctive style turns them into an individual viewpoint which invokes both discussion and admiration.In his private life his relationships with women were often turbulent. A Socialist, he was a fervent supporter of the Russian Revolution and the early years of the French Communist party.He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 but the following year his entire canon of works was placed on the prohibited list of the Catholic Church, which he thought of as a credit to his name.Anatole France died on the 12th October 1924 in Tours. He was 80.