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A wild, fragmented portrait of the late 70s and the punk scene with a rich and diverse cast of characters including an idealistic editor of a political rag, a pony-riding Boston Brahmin intent on finding herself and shedding her husband, an up-and-coming punkster who fancies evenings at the Knights of Columbus Ladies Auxiliary, an editorial assistant named Topsy Otaka, and more.

Blood Heir by M.A. AmruJester McNichol manages to escape the conflict that befell the castle-city as the Calhron soldiers cause ruin and despair in nearly every corner. Before the Jester left, under the guidance of the D'ua caste caster, the Jester retrieved a magical sword from the Eastern Library. He intends to reach the Genesis Battalion and help them in this dreadful conflict by finding the sword of Oman the Blasphemy. Soon he finds himself fighting between magic and technology as well as good and evil. However, prophecies will remain as prophecies. Nothing will go the way it should be and this will become the greatest dejection for Jester McNichol.Yesterday Forgotten by Rani JayakumarA woman who cannot remember her recent past struggles to connect with a husband and children she has never known. As she tries to come to terms with her present, she finds that the tragic events of her past may be the key to fully embracing her future.Desiré e by Ken GoldmanDON'T KISS DESIREE CHAPPELLE!Yes, Desiré e is beyond beautiful. Seductive even as a child, she seems every man's erotic dream, a fantasy woman possessing charms that no man can resist. And therein lies the problem.Because if you are a young man with bubbling testosterone you had better resist her. In fact, you should run like hell.Whether it's an innocent kids'game of Spin The Bottle or a grope fest in the back of an old van, you would be wise to keep repeating... DON'T KISS DESIREE CHAPPELLE!But someone is wise to Desiré e. Someone who knows her secrets and who has a very personal reason to uncover the truth no matter what it will take, no matter what it will cost.Someone who knows she has to destroy her...Hector and Achilles: An Aegean Love Story by Benjamin TocheThe Trojan War erupts as expected, as we've all heard the story: Paris kidnaps Helen, the wife of King Menelaus, and all hell breaks loose. But all of that covers up the real love story of this war, the passionate tryst between the conflict's two biggest heroes: the Trojan prince Hector and the Greek warrior Achilles. In this modern re-telling of the events of the Trojan war, we see Zeus give up on the mortals out of boredom and disinterest, while his godly offspring throw 21st century slurs (and menstrual blood) at each other, as they meddle in mortal affairs. Meanwhile, the mortals discuss their affairs over breakfast at the local Waffle House or pull tabs at the corner bar. And of course, a love affair gone wrong is the driving force behind it all, as told in true Greek style by the universal voice of the Lyceum Janitor.

In the sweltering heat of 1947 Los Angeles, the'Raptor,'a serial murderer, prowls, casting a shadow of fear over aspiring starlets. Drawn by the allure of the city's glitz and glamor, May arrives, her heart heavy with loss, seeking a purpose. But the city's veneer of brightness conceals a darkness that envelopes her when Lilly, an enigmatic actress, ushers May into a world of opulence and intrigue. As acquaintances begin to disappear, May finds herself ensnared in a perilous game of cat and mouse, desperately piecing together fragments of truth while Agnes Crandall, an unyielding crime reporter, unearths a tangled web of deception and whispers of the occult within the city's elite circles. With each passing day, as the body count rises, May and Agnes race against time, their fates intertwined in a dangerous dance with the Raptor. Will they discover the truth before one of them becomes the next victim? In a riveting blend of literary thriller and feminist noir, THE CITY BENEATH HER delivers an electrifying tale of suspense that will leave readers on the edge of their seats.

The Adirondack Foothills, 1801. Hugh's venture to blast open the wilderness is failing. Is it the uncommon wet season, his crew on the verge of mutiny, or a mysterious stranger intent upon sabotage? Desperate to escape their loveless marriage, his wife Georgie is trapped in the unnavigable woods and rivers. As she broods on her troubles, their willful and stout-hearted daughter befriends the stranger, an entity consumed with the landscape and the ghosts of waylaid soldiers of a nearby battlefield. He is willing to trade the secret to keeping black powder dry. But Hugh won't listen and Georgie is preoccupied with the survival of her small family, and with that of Black Vy, the family cook and a former enslaved woman with whom she has forged a cautious bond. When Black Vy's freedom is again threatened, the two women devise a daring plan of escape through a rugged, untamed wilderness, fleeing the dangerous prejudice of unscrupulous men as well as the stranger that haunts them all.

Deva, a Brazilian nightclub singer, accepts a mysterious invitation to become the companion to a wealthy recluse living in a London penthouse. Known only as Harry, he suffers from a traumatic brain injury where he rises each morning, having forgotten all that has transpired the day before. One cryptic clue offers a glimpse into Harry's past— a photograph of a man in a field, picking a daffodil. Endeavoring to identify the man, Deva discovers that her own turbulent past intertwines not only with Harry's but with the unnamed man in the photograph, and that all of their movements are being monitored, even orchestrated, by the doctor and housekeeper in Harry's employ, who have ties to British intelligence and a dark purpose of their own. Harry's past memories are the key— but remembering the past might just destroy them all.

From the award-winning and #1 bestselling author of The Break and The Strangers comes the final instalment in this heart-rending, utterly immersive Indigenous family saga, with a series tie-in cover.The day that Cedar-Sage Stranger has been both dreading and longing for has finally come: her sister Phoenix is getting out of prison. The effect of Phoenix's release cascades through the community. M, the young girl whom she assaulted, is triggered by the news. Her mother, Paulina, is worried and her cousin is angry — all feel the threat of Phoenix's release. When Phoenix is seen lingering outside the school to catch a glimpse of her son, Sparrow, the police get a call to file a report — but the next thing they know, she has disappeared.Told from various perspectives, with an unforgettable voice for each chapter, the novel is masterfully structured as a Restorative Justice Circle where all gather — both the victimized and the accused — to take account of a crime that has altered the course of their lives. The Circle considers what it means to be abandoned by the very systems that claim to offer support, how it feels to gain a sense of belonging, and the unanticipated cost of protecting those you love most.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A series of dreamy, complex, poignant stories with language that is by turns gauzy-poetic and pinpoint-precise but unfailingly inventive.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The dynamic characters in Kingdom of the Young are searching: for adventure, work, love, absolution, better chances elsewhere. A fanatical child army loses faith in its commander as he ages unforgivably into his thirties. A woman possessed with wanderlust and a small inheritance seeks love among the cave-dwelling Roma in Granada. Traumatized war veterans run local rackets; smarmy bureaucrats rise through the ranks of repressive regimes; civilians attempt to escape the stranglehold of life under dictatorships. From the honeycombed caves outside the Alhambra to the streets of Havana, from hospital wards to quinceañera parties, these stories—along with the collection's illuminating nonfiction coda—testify to the vast imaginative range of an author who has won a Kafka and a Whiting Award among other literary prizes. “Ambitious, original, deliciously philosophical. Kingdom of the Young invites comparison to the crônicas of Clarice Lispector and the fabulas of Italo Calvino.” —Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

“IN A LIFE FULL OF LIES, HE FINALLY SETTLED FOR THE TRUTH.”No one in Mattingly ever believed Bobby Barnes would live to see old age. Drink would either rot Bobby from the inside out or dull his senses just enough to send his truck off the mountain on one of his nightly rides. Although Bobby believes such an end possible—and even likely—it doesn't stop him from taking his twin sons Matthew and Mark into the mountains one Saturday night. A sharp curve, blinding headlights, metal on metal, his sons'screams. Bobby's final thought as he sinks into blackness is a curious one—There will be stars.Yet it is not death that greets him beyond the veil. Instead, he returns to the day he has just lived and finds he is not alone in this strange new world. Six others are trapped with him.Bobby soon discovers that this supposed place of peace is actually a place of secrets and hidden dangers. Along with three others, he seeks to escape, even as the world around him begins to crumble. The escape will lead some to greater life, others to endless death... and Bobby Barnes to understand the deepest nature of love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impetuous is not a word you'd use to describe Claire Bramany. She's steady and reliable--until an accident, in Brooklyn, in 1995, takes the life of her lover, Jessie Friedman. Claire's world implodes. Things get even worse when--while cleaning out Jessie's desk--Claire finds journals that tell long-buried secrets of Jessie's western girlhood. Jessie's account of Tulsa in 1944 appears innocent and playful. Jessie's days are peopled with quirky characters--especially Uncle Jimmy, an honest-to-goodness teenage hero back from war-torn Europe. He's Jessie's favorite--until he makes his move on his nine-year-old niece. No secrets. Secrets kill. This was the promise Claire and Jessie had made to each other long ago. But Claire has never heard of any Uncle Jimmy, much less any sexual violation. Shattered, yearning to reconnect with the Jessie she thought she knew, Claire heads out to Oklahoma. Are the journals true? If so, has Claire any other course than to avenge Jimmy's hideous crimes…?

In pursuit of the lives wrecked by disease and wracked by cough, How the Days of Love & Diphtheria follows one son who accidentally replaces another, until the family can no longer tell the dead from the living, and the mounds of bodies continue to swell.

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

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

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

The story of a young Brahmin growth into a guru--traveling with him from the time of his youth, through life in a monastery and up to becoming a mentor to another young boy.

A group of survivors arrive in Virginia from the demolished Manhattan, planning to establish an outpost, find oil, and exploit the Indians controlling the area. Plans go awry however in both violent and humorous manners. At the heart of the story is Pocahontas, who speaks Valley Girl, Ebonics, Old English, and Algonquin—sometimes all in the same sentence. And she pursues a heated romance with settler Johnny Rolfe via text messaging, instant messaging, and, ultimately, telepathy.Deadly serious and seriously funny, Matthew Sharpe's fictional retelling of one of America's original myths is a history of violence, a cross-cultural love story, and a tragicomic commentary on America's past and present.

“Bold and ingenious” stories about the dark heart of America by the acclaimed Whiting Award–winning author (The New York Times Book Review). “Feverish, psychotropic, bold, mesmerizing, painful, Fox Tooth Heart is full of stories about people living on the margins of society, characters born into dark circumstances, or... driven there by their own obsessions and addictions” (Huffington Post)—murderers, loners, addicts, neurotics and outcasts stumbling side-by-side with “the down-and-out heroes of George Saunders or John Updike, captured just before their fall” (Vice.com). In this “achingly visceral... masterpiece” McManus ventures from trailers hidden in deep Southern woods to an Arkansas ranch converted into an elephant refuge to a Georgia tent community of sex offenders to a Kentucky band of teenage Satanists (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution). His lost-soul men, women, and children reel precariously between common anxiety and drug-enhanced paranoia, sober reality and fearsome hallucination. “Powered by radiant prose” (Vanity Fair), these nine “eccentric... wildly inventive” (Publishers Weekly) stories of twisted humor and pathos re-establish McManus as one of the most bracing voices of our time.

On St. Helena island in 1821 a mysterious doctor removes Napoleon Bonaparte's penis from his corpse while in the next room his loyal lieutenants brag about their dead emperor's merciless cruelty. Fifty years later the search for this itinerant appendage leads through Victorian London to ante-bellum New York, Amherst, Massachusetts, and finally Colorado Territory, dragging in its path a promiscuous mix of French counts, love-sick poets, dandies, shady antiquarians, utopian dreamers, con men, and a pieced-together homunculus named Bonnie. The French want to re-member their empire, the English relic-seekers wish to recover a valuable prize, and Bonnie wants to complete his diminutive body. Along the way, John Vernon corrects history's mistake by arranging a meeting between the two great American poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. And Whitman's friend, Peter Doyle, the dandified streetcar conductor at the center of it all, saves the lives of a family abducted by Indians with an ingenious use of Napoleon's “dingus,” as he calls it. From the half-completed Brooklyn Bridge to Horace Greeley's Union Colony in Colorado Territory to the Rocky Mountains and the canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers, this sprawling novel creates its own manifest destiny by mixing fact and fiction with shameless joy. Peter Doyle's brand of speculative historical fiction corrects history's minor errors while vividly describing its major ones. Praise“Vernon's great virtue is his style–smart, marvelously specific, insightful both about large issues and small ones. The novel contains a wealth of fine sentences, and a wealth of sharply delineated objects. Reading it is rather like going into the world's best and most fascinating antique store and watching everything, on every shelf, in every drawer, draped over every rack, be made new again. This is not a novel to be devoured, but to be browsed over and savored.” – Jane Smiley, The Boston Globe“Peter Doyle is not just a novel, it's a conjuration–a darkly comic, exciting, can't-put-it-down, joyous chase of a book. Twisting and turning from history to fantasy, from picaresque to romance, from Europe to Colorado, this is a grand old stem-winder told with great zest, invention, and flair.” – Ron Hansen“Vernon is a superb writer, and most of Peter Doyle is a thrill to read. Here is a funhouse-mirror distortion of American dreams, American eccentricities, and American tragedies, offered with sly purpose and cracked wisdom.” – The San Francisco Chronicle“A magical mystery tour of the 1870s and'80s, from a memorably squalid New York to the wide-open spaces of the Colorado Territory.... A furiously bubbling stew of all manner of ingredients, a grab bag stuffed to the bursting point with the real and the invented.” – Angela Carter, The New York Times Book Review

“All this began long before I died,” says the brain in a jar that narrates John Vernon's second novel. The brain once belonged to Charles Cooper, a 55-year-old water engineer in upstate New York, and has been kept alive by a perfusion pump invented by the man who may have been Coop's father–Charles Lindbergh. Then again, maybe not. Coop's suspicion that he is the kidnaped Lindbergh baby who never really died but instead was stolen as a child and raised by gangsters begins when, on a day like any other, while playing basketball with his ne're-do-well stepson, two women approach him, one claiming to be the mother he thought long dead, the other his sister. “As a rule, I'm not a paranoid man,” he says, but these persistent strangers initiate a chain of clues and strange events that open before him like a bottomless pit. His search for an identity locks him inside a labyrinth of memory, historical detective work, deceit and obsession. Is he Lindbergh's son or the victim of an elaborate hoax designed to rob him of his inheritance? And is he deranged or rather is it “reality,” as he says, that “has come down with an illness.”? Lindbergh's Son is a map of a peculiar kind of American megalomania, one whose genealogies are floating, roots shallow, and borders ever shifting. “Franz Kafka, I think, is Mr. Vernon's true master... [His] story, with bits of new and old news falling into contradictory configurations, will excite those who love a mystery. It's a dark dream, told with twin passions for intellectual process and the bizarre required by this particular dark age.” – New York Times Book Review“Striking and original and never dull... Truly novel, truly chancy and subversive.” – St. Petersburg Times“A fascinating book, full of intrigue, verbal luminosity, and mysterious thrills. Vernon's imagination is all over the place with a virtuoso's irreverence for standard procedures. Let the reader beware and be dazzled by this rising and unique voice in American literature.” – John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War and The Sterile Cuckoo“We are soon caught up in the autobiography of this brain–the way it shifts and assimilates facts, exchanges imagination and memory, forgets to remember, anything to justify itself, to keep on going.” – Washington Post Book World

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