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••'Animals'– included in A Kind of Madness – is shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing 2024 ••••An Oprah Daily and Brittle Paper Most Anticipated Book of 2024•• A searing, unflinching collection of stories set in Nigeria that explores community expectations, familial strife and the struggle for survival. A one-eyed chicken, a chimpanzee forgotten in a cage, a tormented daughter searching for a link to past lives. Everday madness and monsters are explored against the backdrop of an indifferent Lagos in Uche Okonkwo's dynamic debut collection. Across ten evocative stories, A Kind of Madness dips in and out of the lives of Nigerians, weaving through their lunacy and longing, unravelling the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, best friends, siblings and more. Brimming with vitality, these bites of mundane madness mark the arrival of an extraordinary new talent in fiction and will leave you hungering for more. Perfect for fans of Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and Nearly All the Men in Lagos are Mad by Damilare Kuku.'Steady-handed and gut-punching. I'm in awe of this mad collection, this necessary writer'- NoViolet Bulawayo, author of Glory'Uche Okonkwo's voice is absorbing. I was immersed in the familiar world of these tender, playfully haunting, darkly funny stories. Okonkwo is a writer to watch'- Chinelo Okparanta, author of Under the Udala Trees'To read A Kind of Madness is to have an experience: of complex characters grappling with life's many troubles, of a robust culture, of history, of the battle between the domestic and the public, and all the big themes of life woven together. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, Okonkwo's mastery of the form is as rich as some of the short story's best practitioners and deserves every recognition it is sure to get'- Chigozie Obioma, author of An Orchestra of Minorities'Touched my heart. Uche Okonkwo's stories are among the very best'- Sidik Fofana, author of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs'Hilarious and heartbreaking... A delightful debut'- Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, author of A Girl is a Body of Water'Okonkwo has a Chekhovian eye for the tangle of internal motivations and assumptions that steer her characters... Readers will be eager for more of Okonkwo's artful writing'- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)'Surprising, illuminating, and deeply human'- Booklist'Vivid... Striking a perfect balance between humor and heartbreak, A Kind of Madness shows incredible wiseness on the complexity and at times maddening nature of loving our family, our friends, and our home'- Chicago Review of Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

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

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

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

“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.

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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?

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.

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

Carlo Reinhart returns home from service in occupied Germany and finds the postwar US a different world: housing developments, gadget technology, a physical and spiritual malaise that boom times evoke.Good-hearted and intelligent, sympathetic but cynical, Reinhart is a participant who nevertheless remains a spectator. This gives the story its piquancy. Imagine going full throttle for success, simultaneously riding the brakes in apprehension.

Part fable and part rhapsodic exploration of desire and loss, Half a Look of Cain bears Goyen's unmistakable artistic signature on every page. Told as a series of nested episodes, the novel is narrated alternately by a male nurse, his patient, and a lighthouse keeper. As boundaries blur and connections between the men emerge, Half a Look of Cain becomes a meditation on communion and alienation, and an exploration of emotional and physical longing. The novel is both a rediscovered cry against the conformity and suppressed emotions of the 1950s and a celebration of passion. Reginald Gibbons has edited the novel from the author's multiple manuscripts and has contributed a wonderful afterword.

Goyen's fifth novel is a fable of sexuality, Texas country life in the first half of the twentieth century, religious revivalism, and the money madness and ecological destruction caused by the oil boom. The narrative is composed of the brief linked episodes and tales that are Goyen's trademark, and is written with an ear for the rhythms of regional speech that was his particular gift.

Once again, Thomas Berger brings a satiric and irreverent perspective to the human experience, evoking a world that most dare not even imagine and effectively dismantling all existing definitions of sex and gender.

Pastor Kate Gussey, with her husband Ned, provides a home for the homeless, helps build houses for the needy, and turns a willing hand and sturdy good humor wherever there is a need. But when her ex-husband moves into her small town, then into her home, the townspeople begin to question the kind of person she really is.

In Who Is Teddy Villanova?, Mr. Berger turns for the first time to the private-eye thriller, as practiced by the masters Hammett and Chandler. The seedy office... the down-at-heel detective... and more.In Who Is Teddy Villanova?, the cast of characters would seem taken from the roster of known sex offenders maintained by the police of every major American city—the giant sadist Gus Bakewell; Donald Washburn II, perhaps the scion of a wealthy family, certainly an exhibitionist; quaint slumlord Sam Polidor; sleek, blonde Natalie Novotny, surely more than the airline stewardess she pretends to be; pneumatic Peggy Tumulty, who hails from Queens; Russel Wren, reluctant hero and garrulous narrator of the tale (in a rococo style reminiscent by turns of Thomas DeQuincey, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and Sir Thomas Malory, but nothing like that of Thomas Berger's previous work); a covey of depraved school girls; and a styful of undercover cops, to name only some of the principals. But over them all falls the evil shadow of the elusive Teddy Villanova, master criminal, underwear fetishist, archenemy of social meliorism, and, though presumably a foreigner, a habitué of a diseased Manhattan that Mr. Berger (who felt thoroughly at home there) drew from the living model before rusticating himself on an island in Maine.

Changing the Past plays on the horror of having your wishes come true. It is a black comedy of the finest kind.PRAISE“Berger begins his latest novel by stating, “Not even God can change the past.” But Berger the novelist can and does as he takes Walter Hunsicker, a mild-mannered copy editor, through several possible pasts for the newly invented Jack Kellog. Hunsicker/Kellog explores life as a real estate tycoon, a stand-up comedian, a popular author, and even a radio psychologist whose wife is elected president of the United States. These alternative lives, however, prove unsatisfactory. After desperately seeking to escape life, Hunsicker finally decides that it is best to accept his lot, even though it means watching his son die of AIDS. Berger has a real gift for using absurdity to reveal the core of our humanity. Those willing to spend a few hours in his Twilight Zone will come away the richer. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal

With the humor, irony, and veteran storytelling that have made him one of America's most respected novelists, Thomas Berger has written a modern-day Robinson Crusoe.PRAISE“Mr. Berger possesses the defining gift of a major novelist: he creates a unique fictional world while being flavorsomely idiosyncratic in style, tone, and point of view.” —The New Republic