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“Take The Talented Mr. Ripley, cross it with Suspiria, add a dash of La La Land and mix... and this arty psychological stalker novel is what might result.” —The New York Times Book ReviewNamed a Best Book of the Summer by The New York Times, O Magazine, Elle, Town & Country, Tatler, and Publishers Weekly and one of “5 books not to miss” by USA TodayIn small-town Michigan, Abby Graven leads a solitary life. Once a bright student on the cusp of a promising art career, she now languishes in her childhood home, trudging to and from her job as a supermarket cashier. Each day she is taunted from the magazine racks by the success of her former best friend Elise, a rising Hollywood starlet whose life in pictures Abby obsessively scrapbooks. At night, Abby escapes through the films of her favorite director, Auguste Perren, a cult figure known for his creative institute the Rhizome. Inspired by Perren, Abby draws fantastical storyboards based on her often premonitory dreams, a visionary gift she keeps hidden. When Abby encounters Elise again at their high school reunion, she's surprised and warmed that Elise still considers her not only a friend but a brilliant storyteller and true artist. Elise's unexpected faith in Abby reignites in her a dormant hunger, and when Elise offhandedly tells Abby to look her up if she's ever in LA, Abby soon arrives on her doorstep. There, Abby discovers that while Elise is flourishing professionally, she is lonely and disillusioned behind her glossy magazine veneer. Ever the supportive friend, Abby becomes enmeshed in Elise's world, even as she guards her own dark secret and burning desire for greatness. As she edges closer to Elise, the Rhizome, and her own artistic ambitions, the dynamic shifts between the two friends—until Abby can see only one way to grasp the future that awaits her.An electrifying novel by the author of The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp is a knife-edge story of dark friendship and twisted ambition against the backdrop of contemporary Hollywood.“[A] page turner... a stunning portrait of a fixated woman and an addictive, modern commentary on an eternal theme of obsession... Lauren Acampora gives us a soul trip/head trip/rarefied LA trip replete with surrealism and social commentary.” —Caroline Kepnes, author of You

It begins with an envelope. Twenty years old, maybe more, with the dust of the dead-letter office still clinging to the stained, fraying paper. It arrives in the mailbox of Lucy with the address of a vacant neighborhood lot barely legible on the front. Inside she finds only a photograph of a man she does not recognize, but whose face captivates her instantly. She hunts for him, feeling for blind answers in the boroughs of her soul and city. The details of her world — of a neighborhood decaying and maimed in daylight, yet pulsing with some hidden life in dark; the shaded, shifting menace of shadow on the night sidewalk — blur together through the fogged lens of her favorite plastic camera, and the casual banter of summer afternoons evaporates into the hiss of something missing, leading Lucy across the darkened city, from the canal slicing through her neighborhood over the rivers at the city limits, its mystery resolving into vivid, caustic focus in the book's concluding scenes. Follow Me Down owns moments both wondrous in their sympathy and wild in their desolation, as Stark culls from the crumbling city setting characters mercurial and impassable, joyous and redemptive.

The tragicomic tale of a frustrated writer angry at the world: “Scathingly funny.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Living on a diet of fried Spam, vodka, sardines, cupcakes, and Southern Comfort, Andrew Whittaker is slowly being sucked into the morass of middle age. A negligent landlord, small-time literary journal editor, and aspiring novelist, he is—quite literally—authoring his own downfall. From his letters, diary entries, and fragments of fiction, to grocery lists and posted signs, this novel is a collection of everything Whittaker commits to paper over the course of four critical months. Beginning in July, during the economic hardships of the Nixon era, we witness our hero hounded by tenants and creditors, harassed by a loathsome local arts group, and tormented by his ex-wife. Determined to redeem his failures and eviscerate his enemies, Whittaker hatches a grand plan. But as winter nears, his difficulties accumulate, and the disorder of his life threatens to overwhelm him. As his hold on reality weakens and his schemes grow wilder, his self-image as a placid and slow-moving sloth evolves into that of a bizarre and frantic creature driven mad by solitude... “Most of the novel consists of Whittaker's hilarious rejection letters to wannabe authors. Savage works page after page of delightful variations on this theme.” —The Guardian

Published in 1900, eleven years prior to her masterpiece Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton's novella The Touchstone explores the emotional complexities of love and betrayal. Penniless and unable to marry the woman he loves, the financially struggling lawyer Stephen Glennard discovers a way out of his predicaments by selling love letters written to him by deceased author Margaret Aubyn. Glennard's psychological anguish as he grapples with his guilt and the repercussions of his actions presents a poignant narrative of human conscience and morality.

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.

An'engrossing, affecting, and singular'(Publishers Weekly) debut novel about love, family, queerness, and losing your mind in the modern world.While god is sending her signs through Instagram and Spotify demanding she break up with her girlfriend, Norma meets with a new therapist for one reason: she really needs to write again. With only one chapter missing in her manuscript, Norma is desperate to know if she needs to leave her girlfriend in order to write The Last Story. The new therapist diagnoses Norma with Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder, but Norma isn't having it. It's just Oblivion. Haunted by SSRI side effects and life becoming less hazily fictional by the day, Norma has never felt crazier. Does anyone else see the world's poorly crafted plotline? Like, who even wrote this story? Norma begins sharing her manuscript with her therapist, hoping to connect the dissociative dots once and for all—or at least enough so that Google ads stop giving her panic attacks. But soon Norma is questioning everything she's ever believed about life, writing, and love. And then there's Norma's girlfriend, the one with a crack of light in her eyes. Could she be Oblivion's antagonist, the manuscript's savior? Or is she just a human? Told alternately through Norma's barely fictional fiction and her crackling stream of consciousness, Please Stop Trying To Leave Me is an honest, comedic, horrifying, and heart-wrenching story about existing in today's world, challenging all we've been taught about the distance between fiction and reality, sanity and insanity, mental illness and healing.

Once a fêted literary figure, the former lover of B-list movie star Lucida, but now derelict, incontinent, asexual, ageing poet Harold Lime turns his back on material modernity, withdrawing to a basement in the university town of Cambridge, England. But human connections will prove difficult to sever completely, and he is drawn out of himself by a fox hunt saboteur (“the sab woman”), with whom he forms a poignant, uneasy relationship and who acts as his mutual confessor. In the isolation of his basement, Harold Lime obsessively listens to Mahler, whose nine symphonies, unfinished tenth, and Earth Songs, each corresponding to a separate chapter of this innovative poetic novel, will reawaken the sensitivities he has tried to erase, taking him back to his Australian childhood and youth, fostering a growing awareness of intertwined body and soul, of commitment and connectedness, of the ecology of rootedness and unrootedness in an unjust world.

A fictional return to the unsettling world of Franz Kafka's iconic unfinished novel, The Castle

Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature Tonight is the opening night. There are birds perched everywhere, on the power lines, the guy ropes, the strings of light that festoon the tent... when I think of all those little bodies suspended between earth and sky, it makes me smile to remind myself that for some of them, their first flight begins with a fall. Nathalie arrives at the circus in Vladivostok, Russia, fresh out of fashion school in Geneva. She is there to design the costumes for a trio of artists who are due to perform one of the most dangerous acts of all: the Russian Bar. As winter approaches, the season at Vladivostok is winding down, leaving the windy port city empty as the performers rush off to catch trains, boats and buses home; all except the Russian bar trio and their manager. They are scheduled to perform at a festival in Ulan Ude, just before Christmas. What ensues is an intimate and beguiling account of four people learning to work with and trust one another. This is a book about the delicate balance that must be achieved when flirting with death in such spectacular fashion, set against the backdrop of a cloudy ocean and immersing the reader into Dusapin's trademark dreamlike prose. Translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins

An exciting and “inventive” (HuffPost) debut novel about a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or companion of any kind—who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? The father to your child? In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, Five-Star Stranger follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app as he navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients. But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life. “A sharp page-turner about our culture's commodification of everything” (Debutiful), Five-Star Stranger is a strikingly vivid novel about isolation in a hyperconnected world, and “what it means to love and be loved” (Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans).

It was an exciting time for young women of the 1920s as they embraced liberation from the pre–World War I traditions of their mothers. In the mild Mediterranean climate of the Italian Riviera, a rebellious young Sydney Warren cautiously tested her newfound freedom, developing an intimate relationship with the charming middle-aged widow Mrs. Kerr that caused rumors and speculation to stir among the wealthy British guests of a luxurious seaside hotel. A sapphic affair simmers beneath the surface of Elizabeth Bowen's captivating first novel, published in 1927. With its masterful storytelling, combined with Bowen's keen observations and elegant prose, The Hotel beautifully illuminates the contrast between the tranquil Italian setting and the underlying tensions among the privileged characters. The novel is a thoughtful exploration of social norms, personal identity, and the subtle dynamics of group interaction, resulting in a rich story that often relies on what is left unsaid as much as what is written on the page.

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZEFINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARDWINNER OF THE WHITING AWARDWINNER OF THE SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITINGWINNTER OF THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARDWINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARDA PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEARThe first novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Trust, an exquisite and blisteringly intelligent story of a young Swedish boy, separated from his brother, who becomes a legend and an outlawA young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing west. Driven back again and again, he meets criminals, naturalists, religious fanatics, swindlers, American Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.

A New York TimesBook Review Editors'ChoiceA Shelf Awareness Best Book of the YearHudson Booksellers Book of the YearOne of the New York Post's Best Books of the SummerOne of The Millions's Most Anticipated Books of the YearIndieNext PickA Time Magazine “What to Read Now” SelectionA wry novel set at the edge of the earth about the courage it takes to band together, even as everything around you falls apart Unmoored by a recent family tragedy, Cooper Gosling is adrift at thirty and on the verge of ruining her career. So when the opportunity arises to join the National Science Foundation's Artists & Writers Program in Antarctica, she jumps at the chance—and finds herself in the company of others who are just abnormal enough for Polar life, a group of eccentrics motivated by desires as ambiguous as her own. When they are joined by a fringe scientist who claims climate change is a hoax, the Polies'already-imbalanced community is rattled, bringing them to the center of a global controversy and threatening the ancient ice chip they call home.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait and Hamnet comes an intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love, with all the frisson and psychological intensity of Rebecca.When Lily moves into new boyfriend Marcus's apartment and plunges headlong into their relationship, she must contend with an intangible, hostile presence—Marcus's ex-girlfriend, Sinead. As Lily and Marcus become more deeply involved, Lily becomes obsessed with Sinead's fate and thinks she sees her everywhere. She must question not only her sanity, but whether the man she loves is someone she can, or should, be with at all.

'A captivating exploration into the psychology of lying, and a high-stakes, dark-academia thriller full of twists and secrets.'—New York Times bestselling author Megan MirandaRiley Sager meets If We Were Villains in a compelling new psychological thriller following a cohort of graduate students studying the psychology of lying—until one of them is discovered dead. But how do you catch a killer who may be an expert in the science of deception?Campus is empty, a winter storm is blowing in, and someone is lurking in the shadows, waiting for their chance to kill again.Forest, North Carolina. Under the instruction of enigmatic Professor Joe Lyons, five graduate students are studying the tedious science behind the acts of lying. But discovering the secrets of deception isn't making any of the student's more honest though. Instead, it's making it easier for them to guard their own secrets – and they all have something to hide. When a test goes awry and one of them is found dead, the students find themselves trapped by a snowstorm on an abandoned campus with a local detective on the case. As harbored secrets begin to break the surface, the graduates must find out who's lying, who isn't, and who may have been capable of committing murder. It turns out deception is even more dangerous than they thought… A foreboding new dark academia thriller of deception and suspense, This is How We End Things follows the unraveling of a close group of students as they contend with what it means to lie, and be lied to.

For readers of Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone and David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, C. B. Bernard's debut novel shows a father and a daughter fighting toward hope through a traumatic past.In the town of Disappointment, Oregon, washed-up boxer Lewis Yaw makes ends meet as a fishing guide. He's lived a life of violence, but doesn't understand real strength until he meets Janey, who can see good in even the most damaged things—including him. When she gives birth to their daughter, Grayling, Lewis worries that he'll mess her up as badly as his father did him. But he also sees a chance to right the wrongs of the past.By high school, Gray has become his apprentice guide, his sparring partner, and his pride and joy. Life in their small town is nothing short of challenging—there's a marauding bear roaming the streets, a rival guide trying to kill Lewis, and a poacher littering deer carcasses along the river—but he is closer to happiness than he ever thought possible. When tragedy strikes, Lewis can't break free of his past, leaving Gray to fight to save the only thing she has left: her family.

This provocative, fiercely imaginative debut follows a woman trying to slip the shackles of society by controlling her body and mind in extreme ways, by one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.“Chrysalis is a thrilling look at how we spin silk around ourselves by watching the world on our screens.”—The New York Times Book ReviewIt was hard to be in the present, she said, but if her body were heavier and more in control, then her thoughts would clear and her mind would recover its power.What happens when a woman dares to take up space? An enigmatic young woman drastically transforms her body, working to become bigger, stronger, and stiller in the wake of a trauma. We see her through the eyes of three people, each differently mesmerized by her, as they reckon with the consequences of her bizarre metamorphosis. Each of them leaves us with a puzzle piece of who she was before she became someone else.Elliot, a recluse who notices her at the gym, witnesses her physical evolution and becomes her first acolyte. Bella, her mother, worries about the intense effect her daughter's new way of life is beginning to have on others, and she reflects on their relationship, a close cocoon from which her daughter has broken free. Susie, her ex-colleague and best friend, offers her sanctuary and support as she makes the transition to self-created online phenomenon, posting viral meditation videos that encourage her followers to join her in achieving self-sufficiency by isolating themselves from everyone else in their lives.Uncanny, alluring, and intimate, Chrysalis raises vital questions about selfhood and solitude. This daring novel asks if it is possible for a woman to have agency over her body while remaining part of society, and then offers its own explosive answer.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND TIMEFrom the author Sally Rooney called “bold, irreverent, and agonizingly funny,” a wildly original coming-of-age novel about a teenage girl working at Andy Warhol's Factory in 1960s New York.New York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a rundown apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother's sometimes-boyfriend, Mikey. She is turned off by the petty girls at her high school, and the sleazy men she typically meets. When she drops out, she is presented with a job offer that will remake her world entirely: she is hired as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol.Warhol is composing an unconventional novel by recording the conversations and experiences of his many famous and alluring friends. Tasked with transcribing these tapes alongside several other girls, Mae quickly befriends Shelley and the two of them embark on a surreal adventure at the fringes of the countercultural movement. Going to parties together, exploring their womanhood and sexuality, this should be the most enlivening experience of Mae's life. But as she grows increasingly obsessed with the tapes and numb to her own reality, Mae must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism and determine how she can remain her own person as the tide of the sixties sweeps over her. For readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Mary Gaitskill, this blistering, mordantly funny debut novel brilliantly interrogates the nature of friendship and independence and the construction of art and identity. Nothing Special is a whip-smart coming-of-age story that brings to life the experience of young girls in this iconic and turbulent American moment.

“Astonishingly timely and clever, utterly gripping.” —Lucy Foley, #1 New York Times bestselling author “Sarah Vaughan has done it again. Superb.” —Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author The bestselling author of Anatomy of a Scandal—now a hit Netflix series—returns with a psychological thriller about a politician whose less-than-perfect personal life is thrust into the spotlight when a body is discovered in her home.As a politician, Emma has sacrificed a great deal for her career—including her marriage and her relationship with her daughter, Flora. The glare of the spotlight is unnerving for Emma, particularly when it leads to countless insults, threats, and trolling as she tries to work in the public eye. As a woman, she knows her reputation is worth its weight in gold but as a politician, she discovers it only takes one slip-up to destroy it completely. Fourteen-year-old Flora is learning the same hard lessons at school as she encounters heartless bullying. When another teenager takes her own life, Emma lobbies for a new law to protect women and girls from the effects of online abuse. Now, Emma and Flora find their personal lives uncomfortably intersected…but then the unthinkable happens. A man is found dead in Emma's home. A man she had every reason to be afraid of and to want gone. Fighting to protect her reputation and determined to protect her family at all costs, Emma is pushed to the limits as the worst happens and her life is torn apart. Another breathless and twisty novel from an absolute “master of suspense” (CrimeReads), Reputation brilliantly illustrates that it isn't who you are that matters…it's who people think you are.

Named One of the Best Thrillers by the Washington Post“Possibly my favorite of Pinborough's yet, and that's saying something. It's an absolute rollercoaster of a ride: twist upon twist, expertly handled. I actually gasped out loud several times. So atmospheric and sexy… A triumph!'— Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author, on Dead to HerIn this mind-bending thriller from the bestselling author of Behind Her Eyes, Emma Averell worries that her sudden insomnia is a sign that she's slowly going insane—like the mother she's worked so hard to leave in her past, soon to be a series on Paramount+In the dead of night, madness lies...Emma Averell loves her life—her high-powered legal career, her two beautiful children, and her wonderful stay-at-home husband—but it wasn't always so perfect. When she was just five years old, Emma and her older sister went into foster care because of a deeply disturbing incident with their mother. Her sister can remember a time when their mother was loving and “normal,” but Emma can only remember her as one thing—a monster. And that monster emerged right around their mother's fortieth birthday, the same milestone Emma is approaching now.Emma desperately wants to keep her childhood trauma in the past, but as she stops being able to sleep, she also can't stop thinking about what happened all those years ago. Is the madness in her blood? Could she end up hurting her family in her foggy, half-awake state, just like her mother? Or is there another explanation for the strange things that keep happening around her? Emma must unravel the dark strands of her past to protect the people she loves… or risk losing it all, including her sanity.Unsettling and utterly addicting, Insomnia is a heart-pounding thriller that will have you up all night.

Two sisters unite to survive a traumatic upbringing—from absentee parents to a wilderness camp for troubled teens—in this “relentless and spooky” (Joy Williams) debut novel from an essential new voice.“A story that's so weird, it has to be true.... Keeps our attention in a chokehold.”—The New York TimesONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Good Housekeeping“When the Juvenile Transportation Services come for you in the night in a preordained kidnapping, complete with an unmarked van and husky guardsmen you can't outmatch, you have been sold for a promise.”A young woman thinks she has escaped her past only to discover that she's been hovering on its edges all along: She and her younger sister bide their time in a dilapidated warehouse in a desolate town north of New York City; their parents settled there with dreams of starting an art commune. But after the girls'father vanishes, all traces of stability disappear for the family, and the girls retreat into strange worlds of their own mythmaking and isolation.As the sisters both try to survive their increasingly dark and dangerous adolescences, they break apart and reunite repeatedly, orbiting each other like planets. Both endure stints at the Veld Center, a wilderness camp where troubled teenage girls are sent as a last resort, and both emerge more deeply warped by the harsh outdoor survival experiences they must endure and the attempts by staff to break them down psychologically.With a mesmerizing voice and uncanny storytelling style, this is a remarkable debut about two women who must struggle to understand the bonds that link them and how their traumatic history will shape who they choose to become as adults.

One of The Millions''Most Anticipated Books of 2022'One of PureWow's'10 Books We Can't Wait to Read in January'One of BookShop.org's'Notable New Releases'One of The New York Times Book Review's'16 New Books Coming in January'One of Poets & Writers''New and Noteworthy Books”'David Sanchez's first novel—brilliant, lyrical, hilarious, heartbreaking—is the definitive handbook to hell and back... A stunning debut.'—Cristina García, author of Dreaming in CubanFor fans of Denis Johnson and Ocean Vuong: A captivating, searing, and ultimately redemptive debut novel about coming of age on Florida's drug-riddled Gulf Coast and the enigmatic connection between memory and self. David has a mind that never stops running. He reads Dante and Moby Dick, he sinks into Hemingway and battles with Milton. But on Florida's Gulf Coast, one can slip into deep water unconsciously; at the age of fourteen, David runs away from home to pursue a girl and, on his journey, tries crack cocaine for the first time. He's hooked instantly. Over the course of the next decade, he fights his way out of jail and rehab, trying to make sense of the world around him—a sunken world where faith in anything is a privilege. He makes his way to a tenuous sobriety, but it isn't until he takes a literature class at a community college that something within him ignites.All Day is a Long Time is a spectacular, raw account of growing up and managing, against every expectation, to carve out a place for hope. We see what it means, and what it takes, to come back from a place of little control—to map ourselves on the world around, and beyond, us. David Sanchez's debut resounds with real force and demonstrates the redemptive power of the written word.

“Exquisite” (Lisa Barr, New York Times best-selling author of Woman on Fire) and “utterly engrossing” (Katherine Gray, cohost of the Netflix series Blown Away), The Color of Ice will wrap you in its spell, all the way to its unforgettable ending. Set among the glaciers and thermal lagoons of Iceland, and framed by the magical art of glassblowing, The Color of Ice is the breathtaking story of a woman's awakening to passion, beauty, and the redemptive power of unconditional love. The stunning new novel by the author of award-winning novels Queen of the Owls and The Sound Between the Notes... Cathryn McAllister, a freelance photographer, travels to Iceland for a photo shoot with an enigmatic artist who wants to capture the country's iconic blue icebergs in glass. Her plan is to head out, when the job is done, on a carefully curated “best of Iceland” solo vacation. Widowed young, Cathryn has raised two children while achieving professional success. If the price of that efficiency has been the dimming of her fire—well, she hasn't let herself think about it. Until now.Bit by bit, Cathryn abandons her itinerary to remain with Mack, the glassblower, who awakens a hunger for all the things she's told herself she doesn't need anymore. Passion. Vulnerability. Risk. Cathryn finds herself torn between the life—and self—she's come to know and the new world Mack offers. Commitments await her back in America. But if she walks away, she'll lose this chance to feel deeply again. Just when her path seems clear, she's faced with a shocking discovery—and a devastating choice that shows her what love really is.

Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel of feminism, existentialism, and self-realization is an essential read for all lovers of classic literature.Virginia Woolf's classic novel centers around Clarissa Dalloway, a married high-society woman in post–World War I London who is preparing for a party at her home in the evening. Acutely aware of her standing among other members of her elite social class but yearning to find her true self, Clarissa embodies the internal and external conflicts of women in the early twentieth century. As she makes her way about London, Clarissa's stream of consciousness is constantly interrupted by memories of her past, giving the reader a keen insight into the mind of a woman undergoing an existential crisis. Beloved by generations of readers, Mrs. Dalloway is a landmark novel that explores themes of feminism, mental illness, and self-realization.

A stunning deluxe edition of the stand-alone novella from Proust's masterpiece—an intoxicatingly witty story of infatuation and jealousy—delivers the most memorable reading experienceA new translation commemorating a century since the monumental masterpiece was first published in English—and since Proust died—Swann in Love is a sublimely witty and poignant story of the illusions of love and desire. Full of the rich social satire and penetrating insight that distinguish Proust's style, it is the perfect introduction to one of the world's great novelists. When Charles Swann first lays eyes on Odette de Crécy, her beauty leaves him indifferent. Their paths continue to cross in the drawing rooms and theatres of Parisian high society, and the seeds of desire in Swann begin to flourish. What follows is a journey through self-delusion, jealousy and delirious fantasy, which will take Swann far from the sedate comfort of his society life.

Set amid California's wildfire season, a vivid and magical novel following a family in crisis thrust on a collision course with the world around them that has an outcome beyond their wildest imaginings... When Lu and George Barnes drop their only daughter, Pippa, off at college, they return to their Sonoma home to find that their paths have diverged. Confronted with an empty nest, Lu's increasing dissatisfaction with their materialistic lives becomes impossible to ignore. She is most content outdoors, finding the animals in her backyard far superior company to her pretentious neighbors. In contrast, George is eager to throw himself into his business, a local winery with an elite clientele, as well as his art collection. He cannot for the life of him understand his wife's discontent. Meanwhile, Pippa feels completely adrift at school in the bustle of LA—its unfamiliar noises, its unfriendly atmosphere. She finds comfort only in the beloved family cat she's brought with her and in her zoology class, which makes the world seem just a bit brighter. As Lu, George, and Pippa struggle to adapt, growing apart in the process, tensions outside the family are mounting as well; women have been disappearing across the country with no worldly explanation, all while California's wildfire season is swiftly approaching, bringing with it a reckoning that none of the Barneses can avoid. At once a grounded story about love and family, and a transcendent tale about the power of nature, Unleashed is a stunning look at what matters in an all too chaotic world, the things that sustain us when we are on the verge of losing it all, and how we might find ourselves in the most unexpected of ways.

An NPR, Washington Post, Time, People, Vulture, Guardian, Vox, Kirkus Reviews, Newsweek, LitHub, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year • “Delightful…cathartic, devious, and terrifically entertaining.” —The New York Times • “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny.” —People (Book of the Week) • One of Shondaland's 13 Best College-Set Novels of All Time A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own... “When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our narrator who's “a work of art in herself” (The Washington Post): a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir—a celebrated, married young novelist who's just arrived on campus—their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny” (People), Vladimir takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. This edgy, uncommonly assured debut perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.

Love and tragedy converge in a seaside town in The High Road, a newly reissued novel from Edna O'Brien, the author of Girl and “one of the most celebrated writers in the English language” (NPR's Weekend Edition)This richly peopled, compellingly readable novel explores the many lives of women—as mystic, mother, daughter, and lover. There is Iris, with her “winsome wonsome” ways, no longer young; there is Charlotte, a troubled debutante who has fled from society; and there is the narrator, Anna, who feels that her emotional life has folded until she meets a young Spanish girl named Catalina.Set in a seaside enclave on the Mediterranean coast, The High Road is a passionate account of lost love and the return to loving, where currents of regret and loneliness clash with a fiery instinct for survival.

From award-winning author Giles Paley-Phillips, this haunting verse novel follows Hobs, a young man struggling to navigate his own mind and the increasingly mysterious affairs he encounters in his supposedly idyllic suburban home town.When Jenni, the girl of his dreams, suddenly disappears, Hobs finds himself on the trail of Mike Bilk, a charismatic businessman-turned-politician whose alleged role in a local tragedy points to greater questions of political greed and corruption.As time begins to lose its shape, Hobs is left to piece together his fragmented memories while battling the disorienting anguish of adolescent love and infatuation. With reality crumbling around him, Hobs must confront the possibility that there's no one left he can trust – least of all himself.

Winner of the 2023 Spur AwardJames Wade, whose first two novels were praised as “rhapsodic” and “haunting,” delivers his most powerful work to date—a chilling parable about the impossible demands of hate and love, trauma and goodness, vividly set in the landscapes of Texas and Louisiana.Beasts of the Earth tells the story of Harlen LeBlanc, a dependable if quiet employee of the Carter Hills High School's grounds department whose carefully maintained routine is overthrown by an act of violence. As the town searches for answers, LeBlanc strikes out on his own to exonerate a friend while drawing the eyes of the law to himself and fending off unwelcome voices that call for a sterner form of justice.Twenty years earlier, young Michael Fischer dreads the return of his father from prison. He spends his days stealing from trap lines in the Louisiana bayou to feed his fanatically religious mother and his cherished younger sister, Doreen. When his father eventually returns, an evil arrives in Michael's life that sends him running from everything he has ever known. He is rescued by a dying poet and his lover, who extract from him a promise: to be a good man, whatever that may require.Beasts of the Earth deftly intertwines these stories, exploring themes of time, fate, and free will, to produce a revelatory conclusion that is both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Ann Josephson is a twenty-five-year-old sociopath whose compulsive kleptomania manifests itself in the most unlikely of places: the community center where she works out every day. The walls of the community center insulate her from the terrors of the outside world, which include her freelance work as a graphic artist; her socialite parents, who pay the better part of her living expenses; her therapist, who devotedly punches the clock; and the dark void of romantic relationships. As Ann battles the inner demons that plague her millennial psyche, she must also battle the fiends that plague her at the gym: the loudly grunting beefcake who can't be bothered to drop his weights at a reasonable volume, the naked old lady in the locker room using a towel as butt floss, the housewife in yoga pants that obviate the need for yoga wheeling her double stroller up and down the indoor track. Set in suburban Kansas City in the early 2010s, Community Klepto—a droll combination of Bridget Jones'Diary and Choke—makes incarnate the characters and shenanigans that go on in every gym in the world.

Francesca Bodin's near perfect life is upended when a snowmobiling accident lands her, her husband Ben, and their four-year-old daughter in frozen lake. When he gets out, leaving them to die, she realizes her life isn't as perfect as she thought it was.Francesca Bodin has a near-perfect life as an accomplished music teacher and professional flutist living in the Vermont countryside with her husband Ben, and their four-year old daughter, Addie. This ends suddenly when a snowmobiling accident traps the three of them in a frozen lake. Ben, after escaping onto the ice, leaves her and Addie to die. Francesca believes she sees their dog pull Addie from the lake and drag her into the nearby woods. Desperate to help her daughter, she crawls from the icy waters and follows them. Once she enters the forest, however, she finds herself trapped in a sinister, dream-like world where night never ends, where Addie's whereabouts remain hidden from her, and where she encounters a group of women who, like Francesca, have been left to die and now seek to unleash their revenge on those who have harmed them. When they have Ben in their sights, Francesca realizes that if she is ever to escape this nightmare and save her daughter, she must first save the husband who abandoned them. While Francesca's pilgrimage through this bleak landscape is on the surface a desperate attempt to find her daughter and reestablish her life as it was before the accident, it ultimately becomes an allegorical journey that takes her from despair to hope, from grief to acceptance, and from bitterness to forgiveness.

Tessa Cordelia appears to have it all—a loving husband who's just opened a dental practice, a beautiful baby girl, a big house in the suburbs, and a large, supportive family. But when her husband's reckless choices resurrect a trauma from her childhood, she must decide which is more costly: keeping his secrets or revealing them. He manipulates Tessa into believing his career and their happiness depend on her silence. She feels like she's losing her mind. Is her husband's habit so awful? In many ways, he's an ideal husband; should she let him have this one thing? Determined to maintain the lie that she's living the perfect life, Tess lies to everyone she knows—except for CeCe, a woman new to the area whom she's just befriended. But after confiding in her, Tessa learns that CeCe has an explosive secret of her own, and her world is further upended. A gripping, nuanced exploration of the havoc addiction can wreak on a family, A Week of Warm Weather is the story of a woman who has to figure out how much she is willing to lose in order to find herself.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A “magnificent…splendid” novel (The New York Times Book Review) from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral about people living out their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them even risking their lives to change their seemingly irreversible fates.Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman. His is the skeptical, enveloping intelligence that calculates the price that's paid in the struggle to change personal fortune and reshape history, whether in a dentist's office in suburban New Jersey, or in a tradition-bound English Village in Gloucestershire, or in a church in London's West End, or in a tiny desert settlement in Israel's occupied West Bank.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral—and one of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century—”a ferocious, heartfelt book” (The New Yorker) featuring Nathan Zuckerman whose life is about to unravel when he comes down with a mysterious affliction.'Roth has a genius for the comedy of entrapment.... [He] writes America's most raucously funny novels.'—TimeAt forty, the writer Nathan Zuckerman comes down with a terrible pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso, and taking possession of his spirit. Zuckerman, whose work was his life, is unable to write a line. Now his work is trekking from one doctor to another, but none can find a cause for the pain and nobody can assuage it. Zuckerman himself wonders if the pain can have been caused by his own books. And while he is wondering, his dependence on painkillers grows into an addiction to vodka, marijuana, and Percodan.The Anatomy Lesson is a great comedy of illness written in what the English critic Hermione Lee has described as'a manner at once... brash and thoughtful... lyrical and wry, which projects through comic expostulations and confessions...a knowing, humane authority.'The Anatomy Lesson provides some of the funniest scenes in all of Roth's fiction as well as some of the fiercest.

Of all Jane Austen's great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance at true love. Now a Netflix Film. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen she fell in love with—and was engaged to—a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to be persuaded to give him up. Now, eight years later, Wentworth has returned to the neighborhood, a rich man and still unwed. Anne's never-diminished love is muffled by her pride, and he seems cold and unforgiving. What happens as the two are thrown together in the social world of Bath—and as an eager new suitor appears for Anne—is touchingly and wittily told in a masterpiece that is also one of the most entrancing novels in the English language.

Mary Em Phillips has decided to end it all after losing her beloved Mamie, who raised her; her husband, Jack, who has left her for another woman; and her only son, Petey, who has died as a result of a freak bacterial infection. But when Mosely Albright, a black man from Chicago's South Side, comes to her back door one morning needing a drink of water and seeking directions back to the train, her plans are derailed... to the chagrin of Mishigami (so named by the Ojibwe, also known as Lake Michigan), who has been trying to lure Mary Em into his icy depths in the hopes that she will save him. Mary Em wants nothing more than to end her anguish. Mosely is searching for the love he's been missing most of his life. And Mishigami—who fears he is dying from rampant pollution and overfishing—seeks a champion. A story of friendship, survival, connection and the unquestioning power of nature told through three distinct voices, Speed of Dark affirms a love of humanity that transcends all else, including race and background.

This “disorienting, creepy, paranoia-inducing reimagining of the devil-made-me-do-it tale” (Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World) follows the harrowing downfall of a tortured graduate student arrested for murder.Grayson Hale, the most infamous murderer in Scotland, is better known by a different name: the Devil's Advocate. The twenty-five-year-old American grad student rose to instant notoriety when he confessed to the slaughter of his classmate Liam Stewart, claiming the Devil made him do it. When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell, officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question that's haunted the nation for years: was Hale a lunatic, or had he been telling the truth all along? The first-person narrative reveals an acerbic young atheist, newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to carry on the legacy of his recently deceased father. In need of cash, he takes a job ghostwriting a mysterious book for a dark stranger—but he has misgivings when the project begins to reawaken his satanophobia, a rare condition that causes him to live in terror that the Devil is after him. As he struggles to disentangle fact from fear, Grayson's world is turned upside-down after events force him to confront his growing suspicion that he's working for the one he has feared all this time—and that the book is only the beginning of their partnership. “A modern-day Gothic tale with claws” (Jennifer Fawcett, author of Beneath the Stairs), A History of Fear marries dread-inducing atmosphere with heart-palpitating storytelling.

From the author of A Little Hope—a Read with Jenna Bonus Pick—comes another “heartwarming, character-driven” (Booklist) life-affirming novel about three individuals whose lives intersect in unforeseen ways.Set in a close-knit suburb in the grip of winter, A Quiet Life follows three people grappling with loss and finding a tender wisdom in their grief. Chuck Ayers used to look forward to nothing so much as his annual trip to Hilton Head with his wife, Cat—that yearly taste of relaxation they'd become accustomed to after a lifetime of working and raising two children. Now, just months after Cat's death, Chuck finds that he can't let go of her belongings—her favorite towel, the sketchbooks in her desk drawer—as he struggles to pack for a trip he can't imagine taking without her. Ella Burke delivers morning newspapers and works at a bridal shop to fill her days while she anxiously awaits news—any piece of information—about her missing daughter. Ella adjusts to life in a new apartment and answers every call on her phone, hoping her daughter will reach out. After the sudden death of her father, Kirsten Bonato set aside her veterinary school aspirations, finding comfort in the steady routine of working at an animal shelter. But as time passes, old dreams and new romantic interests begin to surface—and Kirsten finds herself at another crossroads. In this beautiful and profoundly moving novel, three parallel narratives converge in poignant and unexpected ways, as each character bravely presses onward, trying to recover something they have lost. Emotionally riveting and infused with hope, “the soothing tone and warm worldview of this grown-up bedtime story will be good for what ails you” (Kirkus Reviews).

Basil (1852) is a novel by Wilkie Collins. Written in the aftermath of Antonina (1850), his successful debut, Basil finds the author honing the trademark sense of mystery and psychological unease that would make him a household name around the world. Recognized as an important Victorian novelist and pioneer of detective fiction, Wilkie Collins was a writer with a gift for thoughtful entertainment, stories written for a popular audience that continue to resonate with scholars and readers today. Basil, a young heir, is born with the future in his hands. As he reaches adulthood, he begins to question the expectations associated with wealth and social standing. Under enormous pressure from his father to marry a respectable woman, he finds himself drawn to a mysterious beauty, a draper's daughter named Margaret Sherwin. In secret, he arranges a plan with her father to marry Margaret on one condition: they must live separately until she reaches the age of eighteen. As he eagerly awaits the day, Basil reconnects with Mannion, an acquaintance who has just recently returned from abroad. As the story unfolds, Basil's fortunate destiny gives way to jealousy, violence, and a series of shocking revelations. Beyond its sensational plot, Basil is a novel that effectively critiques the institution of marriage and the false morality of the British aristocracy. This edition of Wilkie Collins'Basil is a classic work of English literature reimagined for modern readers. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

'One of the most important works in American literature — and, to many, the great American novel.'— Time.'I want to write something new,'F. Scott Fitzgerald told his editor, Maxwell Perkins,'something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.'A century later, Fitzgerald's little book of big ideas retains its freshness and excitement. The quintessential portrait of Jazz Age America, it reflects the era's postwar exuberance as well as the corruption and immorality lurking behind the glamour of wild parties, dancing, and illegal drinking. Narrator Nick Carraway — a transplant from the Midwest like Fitzgerald himself — observes the wasteful lives of his well-to-do neighbors in this tale of money, love, and the pursuit of the American dream. The unforgettable cast is headed by Jay Gatsby, a self-made man whose determination to realize his fantasies embodies both the glories of imagination and the grimness of reality. Above all, The Great Gatsby is animated by the magic of Fitzgerald's incandescent prose and its timeless exploration of the importance of honesty, the temptations of wealth, and the struggle to escape the past.

Since childhood, Sandra Peters has been fascinated by the small, private island of Lieloh, home to the reclusive silent-film star Valerie Swanson. Having dreamed of going to art college, Sandra is now in her forties and working as a receptionist, but she still harbours artistic ambitions. When she sees an advert for a two-week artists'retreat on Lieloh, Sandra sets out on what might be a life-changing journey.

This bittersweet tale begins when the successful Professor Godfrey St. Peter and his wife move into a comfortable new house. On the eve of the move, Godfrey analyzes his life, family, and friends: his two daughters'marriages have removed them from the home, and the loss of his most outstanding student (and once son-in-law to be) leaves him feeling without purpose. His desire to stay in his old study and cling to what used to be sparks deep introspection in a story that explores a mid-life crisis and family life in a 1920s Midwestern college town.

After moving to Long Island, New York, narrator Nick Carraway visits his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom. The Buchanans live lives of luxury, contrasting with Carraway's modest lifestyle. Carraway also meets his rich, mysterious neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby throws lavish parties for the well-to-do and famous. Carraway learns that Gatsby has loved Daisy Buchanan for years, and Gatsby hopes his parties will lead to a reunion. First published in 1925, this unabridged edition of The Great Gatsby compares new wealth to generational, inherited wealth and illuminates a cross section of American society in the 1920s.

The classic novel that continues to haunt our understanding of ambition, love, entitlement, and the American Dream—with an exclusive discussion guide and an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Wesley Morris The basis for the Broadway musical starring Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada #2 on the Modern Library's List of the 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century Nick Carraway is an aspiring writer; his cousin, Daisy, is married to the fabulously wealthy Tom Buchanan. Their neighbor, Jay Gatsby, throws extravagant and extraordinary parties in the exclusive and hallowed neighborhood of West Egg. The entanglements between these four characters form the backbone of F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest work.When it was first published in 1925, The Great Gatsby was heralded “a mystical, glamorous story of today” (The New York Times). Since then, the story of Jay Gatsby and his love for the treacherous, effervescent Daisy Buchanan has become a staple in high school and college classrooms as well as a beloved favorite of readers everywhere.

The New York Times Best Thrillers of 2021'Steamily atmospheric... A twisted Gothic tale, emotional in its language and febrile in its atmosphere, and it will appeal to readers who love to hear about obsession, repression... and poetic justice.”—The New York Times Book Review Louisa is the new scholarship student at Temple House, a drafty, imposing cliffside boarding school full of girls as chilly as the mansion itself. There is one other outsider, an intense and compelling student provocateur named Victoria, and the two girls form a fierce bond. But their friendship is soon unsettled by a young art teacher, Mr. Lavelle, whose charismatic presence ignites tension and obsession in the cloistered world of the school. Then one day, Louisa and Mr. Lavelle vanish without a trace, never to be found. Now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disappearance, one journalist—a woman who grew up on the same street as Louisa—delves into the past, determined to uncover the truth. She finds stories of jealousy and revenge, power and class. But might she find Louisa and Mr. Lavelle, too? Told in alternating points of view, The Temple House Vanishing is tense, atmospheric, and page-turning... with a shocking, ingenious conclusion. An Irish Bestseller and finalist for the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year

“My brain was famous, but I was not. Not every gifted child invents a pollutant-free fuel, paints a masterpiece, or finds the cure for cancer,” Jack MacLeod tells us. “Some of us just live out our lives.” Jack died in 1974; now, he's ready to narrate his story from beyond the grave. Jack's prodigious memory, which allows him to memorize books, and his penchant for psychic connections give him unusual insights into the events of his past life and make him fiercely curious about his current state of existence. Jack immerses us in interconnected tales of his childhood participation in a research study on the intellectually gifted, his dual career as a clinical psychologist and university professor, his participation in the unmasking of an unscrupulous colleague, his long-term health issues, his brief but life-changing love affair with a student, his deep friendship with another man, and his eventual acceptance and celebration of the circumstances of his fate. How Jack dies, and how he deals with the murder of someone close to him, mirrors how he has lived and grown, and marks the significance of everyone and everything that ultimately brings him to yet another level of brilliance.

When David Herron—overwhelmed and despairing, his family's business and finances in ruin due to the bursting lending bubble of 2008—takes his own life one chilly spring morning, he has no idea the ripple effect his decision will set into motion. Two years later, his widow, Jules, is now an employee of the bakery she and David used to own—and still full of bitterness over David's lies, perceived cowardice, and ultimate abandonment of her and their now-teenage daughter, Rennie. Rennie, meanwhile, struggles socially at school, resents her work-obsessed mother, and is convinced she's to blame for her father's death. When Denise, the former police detective who worked (and, due to her own personal struggles at the time, mishandled) David's case, catches sight of Rennie at her sons'school, she's struck by the girl's halo of sadness—and becomes obsessed with attempting to right the wrongs she believes she perpetrated two years ago. And as all this unfolds in Boston, Daniel, the guilt-ridden young man who, in his old life as a banker, helped create the circumstances that led to David's suicide, continues to punish himself for his sins by living half a life, working odd jobs and bouncing from one US city to another, never staying long enough to make friends or build something lasting. Ultimately, each of these very different people—all of them tied together by one tragic event—must learn in their own way how to say good-bye to the past and move into a brighter future.

“An extraordinary work of humane imagination... call it magic realism with soul.”—Locus“Finely honed... always engages and frequently surprises.”—New York Times Book ReviewA man risks his soul and his sanity to save his family from malevolent forces in this brilliant novel of horror and the supernatural from the award-winning pioneer of speculative fiction and author of the classic My Soul to Keep. When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake. When Hilton's wife, the only elected African American judge in Dade County, Florida, begins to receive racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, Hilton becomes obsessed with protecting his family. The demons lurking outside are matched by his internal terrors—macabre nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are these bizarre dreams the dark imaginings of a man losing his hold on sanity—or are they harbingers of terrible events to come? As Hilton battles both the sociopath threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep, the line between reality and fantasy dissolves... Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between is the haunting story of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves as he slowly loses himself.

2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR TRANSLATED LITERATUREAs if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman—a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean authorIt's winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North's watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an'authentic'Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows—the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she's pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Dusapin's voice is distinctive and unmistakable.