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A Contemporary Classics hardcover edition of the groundbreaking classic novel of the Black experience in America that is still remarkably relevant more than a century later.First published anonymously in 1912, this resolutely unsentimental novel gave many white readers their first glimpse of the double standards—and double consciousness—experienced by Black people in modern America. Republished in 1927, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man became a pioneering document of African-American culture and an eloquent model for later novelists ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Narrated by a man whose light skin enables him to'pass'for white, the novel describes a journey through the strata of Black society at the turn of the century—from a cigar factory in Jacksonville to an elite gambling club in New York, from genteel aristocrats to the musicians who hammered out the rhythms of ragtime. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a complex and moving examination of the question of race and an unsparing look at what it meant to forge an identity as a man in a culture that recognized nothing but color. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and'greatly gifted and highly original artist'comes a masterful collection of stories about the timeless universal struggle to connect (New York Times).Joanna Scott, the critically acclaimed author of ten novels and two collections, turns her “incandescent imagination” (Publishers Weekly) back to the craft of the short story, with breathtaking results. Ranging across history from the distant past to the future, Scott tours the many forms our stories can take, from cave wall paintings to radio banter to digitized archives, and the far-reaching consequences of our communications.In Venice in the Late Middle Ages, a painter's apprentice finds a way to make his mark on canvases that will survive for centuries. In the near future, after the literary canon has been preserved only on the cloud and then lost, a scholar tries to piece together a little-known school of writers committed to using actual paper. In present day New England, a radio host invites his electrician to stay for dinner, opening up new narrative possibilities for both men.Written in prose so naturally elegant, smooth, and precise that it becomes invisible, Excuse Me While I Disappear asks what remains of our stories—as individuals and civilizations—after we are gone.

From the author of the'wrenching and exhilarating'All Things Cease to Appear comes a gripping literary thriller about a man reckoning with the mysterious death of his former roommate (Wall Street Journal). Julian Ladd and Rye Adler cross paths as photography students in the exclusive Brodsky Workshop. When Rye needs a roommate, Julian moves in, and a quiet, compulsive envy takes root, assuring, at least in his own mind, that he will never achieve Rye's certain success. Both men are fascinated with their beautiful and talented classmate, Magda, whose captivating images of her Polish neighborhood set her apart, and each will come to know her intimately – a woman neither can possess and only one can love. Twenty years later, long after their paths diverge, Rye is at the top of his field, famous for his photographs of celebrities and far removed from the downtrodden and disenfranchised subjects who'd secured his reputation as the eye of his generation. When Magda reenters his life, asking for help only he can give, Rye finds himself in a broken landscape of street people and addicts, forcing him to reckon with the artist he once was, until his search for a missing boy becomes his own desperate fight to survive. Months later, when Julian discovers Rye's obituary, the paper makes it sound like a suicide. Despite himself, Julian attends the funeral, where there is no casket and no body. This sudden reentry into a world he thought he left behind forces Julian to question not only Rye's death, but the very foundations of his life. In this eerie and evocative novel, Elizabeth Brundage establishes herself as one of the premiere authors of literary fiction at work today.

'Perhaps the luminous novel is this thing that I started writing today; just now. Maybe these sheets of paper are a warm-up exercise. […] But it's quite possible that if I go on writing – as I usually do – with no plan; although this time I know very well what I want to say; things will start to take shape; to come together. I can feel the familiar taste of a literary adventure in my throat. I'll take that as confirmation; then; and start describing what I think was the beginning of my spiritual awakening – though nobody should expect religious sermons at this point; they'll come later. It all began with some ruminations prompted by a dog.'A writer attempts to complete the novel for which he has been awarded a big fat Guggenheim grant; though for a long time he succeeds mainly in procrastinating – getting an electrician to rewire his living room so he can reposition his computer; buying an armchair; or rather; two:'In one; you can't possibly read: it's uncomfortable and your back ends up crooked and sore. In the other; you can't possibly relax: the hard backrest means you have to sit up straight and pay attention; which makes it ideal if you want to read.'Insomniacs; romantics and anyone who's ever written (or failed to write) will fall in love with this compelling masterpiece told by a true original; with all his infuriating faults; charming wit and intriguing musings.

A shipwrecked sailor disturbs the life of a journalist in a late nineteenth-century English seaside town in this reimagining of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea. After a ferocious storm shipwrecks young Norwegian sailor Hans Lyngstrand in the English Channel near Dengate, aspiring journalist Martin Bridges takes a job at the local newspaper. When Hans moves into Martin's boardinghouse to convalesce and Martin interviews the young sailor for the paper, it upends Martin's otherwise uneventful world. Hans tells him of the shipwreck—and of his encounter with a vicious sailor vowing to seek revenge, who Hans believes may still be alive. So begins a complex friendship between the two young men that will cause Martin to reexamine his relationships with everyone around him. In The Stranger from the Sea, the backstories Paul Binding creates for the characters of Ibsen's classic The Lady from the Sea unfold in tandem with the secret romances, rivalries, and heartaches of a seemingly unremarkable town. The result is a lyrical and quietly captivating novel that will mesmerize readers from its opening pages.“A sensitive depiction of youthful sexuality, the anguish of failed relationships, and the rights of women in a male-dominated world,” —TLS

Arvin Kraft loves his complicated family, but they talk about him: how slow he is, how they need to share the burden of caring for him, how tired they all are. He hides in the walls of the family's old house in Boston and listens to their laments. And he also discovers there a lead box of old papers. Slowly he reads them and finds they are the original manuscript of Melville's Moby-Dick, long thought to have been lost in an 1850s fire at his publisher. The manuscript is valuable enough to save the family's failing construction business if marketed properly. But Arvin wants more and Professor Thorne is the Melville expert who can help. Arvin and the professor take turns telling this tale with its lyric resonances of Moby-Dick, the specter of the curse of Ahab and strange deaths, and the scramble of greed as the manuscript becomes more valuable by the hour.

A collection of three novels by the author who transformed the scope and style of twentieth-century American literature—including the landmark classic The GroupIn Mary McCarthy's most famous novel, The Group (1963), she depicts the lives of eight Vassar College graduates during the 1930s as they grapple with sex, sexism, money, motherhood, and family. McCarthy's final two novels—Birds of America (1971), a coming of age tale of 19-year-old Peter Levi, who travels to Europe during the 1960s, and Cannibals and Missionaries (1979), a thriller about a group of passengers taken hostage on an airplane by militant hijackers—are both concerned with the state of modern society, from the cross-currents of radical social change to the psychology of terrorism. As a special feature, this second volume contains McCarthy's 1979 essay'The Novels that Got Away,'on her unfinished fiction.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Four distinct voices weave together the tale of a dysfunctional Montreal family obsessed with climbing the Kabbalah's Tree of Life. This literary debut by Jewish Daily Forward editor Sigal Samuel is reminiscent of Nicole Krauss's The History of Love and Myla Goldberg's Bee Season. The Meyer family lives in Mile End, home to a mashup of hipsters and Hasidic Jews, where down the street crazy Mr. Katz is building a tree out of plucked leaves, toilet paper rolls, and dental floss. When David, a skeptical professor of religion, is diagnosed with an unusual heart murmur, he becomes convinced that his heart is whispering divine secrets. But when David's frenzied attempts to ascend the Tree of Life lead to tragedy, his daughter Samara, who abruptly abandoned religion years earlier, believes it is up to her to finish what she started. As Samara's brother documents her increasingly strange behaviour, it falls to next-door neighbour and Holocaust survivor Chaim Glassman to shatter the silence that divides the members of the Meyer family. But can he break through to them in time? Long-held family secrets square off against faith and secularity in this remarkable debut novel, written with extraordinary heart and intelligence.

A book of stories, or'narrations,'by the finest Catalan writer of his generation. In this beautiful work, translated into English for the first time, Pla transcribes his witnessings of basic truths: the waves of the sea, the hardness of rolled tobacco. The reader feels tangibly the pleasure with which Pla puts the sensual and real on paper.

Set in Dublin's Liberties, Estelle Birdy's explosively original debut Ravelling channels the energies and agonies of young men let loose in the city, their city, navigating the tumultuous trajectory of youth and young manhood, where they balance their hopes with the harsh realities of their present. Hurtling between friendships, feuds, drug-deals, family and brushes with the law, this is modern Dublin as never before portrayed. Ravelling follows Deano, a weed-smoking hurling star, living with his aunt in an about-to-be-demolished flat; Hamza, a Pakistani Muslim atheist and precocious academic, who sells his ADHD drugs to the kids in a private school; Oisín, empathetic and iron-willed, who has begun to see his dead brother at the end of his bed; Congolese nature lover, Benit, who just wants to relax and hurl with the lads; Karl, a maybe-gay fashionista, dreaming of something better while immersing himself in his art. Bound by friendship, place and the memories of those who've died too soon, these young men grapple with race, class, sex, parties, poverty, violence and Garda harassment, all while wondering what it means to be a man in twenty-first century Ireland. Ravelling's diverse, captivating cast of characters, rendered in pin-sharp dialogue reminiscent of Roddy Doyle, leaves the reader with an immersive sense of multi-cultural Ireland. Fast-paced, funny and eye-popping, it descends from Trainspotting, White Teeth and Milkman in its portrayal of urban life in the twenty-first century. Ravelling has been optioned by Sleeper Films for a major TV series.

Told through the alternating perspectives of five childhood friends from the same housing estate in England, I See Buildings Fall like Lightning is a story about friendship, place, loss, addiction and the ways in which lives, minds, and bodies can be limited by material conditions; it also speaks powerfully to the ways in which humor, loyalty, and family can bestow meaning and life even in the toughest circumstances. Only Rian has made it out of the estate and moved away to another city, but his money doesn't stop him from clinging to a vision of the past that is quickly slipping away. Oli is fading by the day, drinking and snorting his way through the endless boredom. Things are looking up for Conor, but he is never too far away from chaos. Patrick and Shiv are as in love as ever, always the calm in the eye of the storm, but even they are rocked when old secrets begin to open new wounds. Bold, ambitious, and stylistically striking, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning lays bare the economic, psychological, and spiritual impact of poverty, explores the redeeming and transforming beauty of friendship and examines the true limits of hope and forgiveness.

Que s'apartin Aristòfanes i Menandre, Antònia Carré-Pons és la reina de la comèdia gerontològica. Després dels vells al natural de Com s'esbrava la mala llet, arriben la Paula i l'Ernestina, una parella de velles que ha sobreviscut a la covid i es nega a enxampar un virus igualment infecciós: el tedi postjubilació. El joc que s'empesquen per aconseguir-ho consisteix a llogar l'habitació de convidats —gangues del mercat immobiliari. Comencen les entrevistes per triar company de pis i, amb cada nou candidat, un nou sainet i una nova disfressa. És un diàleg en viu, i dos mons que xoquen i es riuen l'un de l'altre sense pietat. Això és El càsting: quan de les manies i els costums excèntrics de dues jubilades no en un surt una sitcom com Plats bruts, sinó un llibre.

Shortlisted for the Crook's Corner Book Prize • Shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • Shortlisted for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Debut AuthorA Washington Post Noteworthy Book for September • A Good Morning America Spectacular Book of the Month • A Christian Science Monitor Good Summer Reading Pick • A The Root Books By Black Authors We Can't Wait to Read • A The Millions Most Anticipated Book • A Tertulia Best Indie Publisher Book of 2023 • A Debutiful Debut Books to Read in September • A Chicago Tribune Top Pick for Reading Season • A Boston Herald Top Pick for Fall 2023Coleman Hill is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations.In 1916, during the early days of the Great Migration, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post–Civil War South for the “Promised Land” of Vauxhall, New Jersey. But the North possesses its own challenges and bigotries that will shape the fates of the women and their families over the next seventy years. Told through the voices of nine family members—their perspectives at once harmonious and contradictory—Coleman Hill is a penetrating multigenerational debut. Within ten years of arriving in Vauxhall, both Celia and Lucy's husbands are dead, and they turn to one another for support in raising their children far from home. Lucy's gentleness sets Celia at ease, and Celia lends Lucy her fire when her friend wants to cower. Encouraged by their mothers'friendship, their children's lives become enmeshed as well. As the children grow into adolescence, two are caught in an impulsive act of impropriety, and Celia and Lucy find themselves at irreconcilable odds over who's to blame. The ensuing fallout has dire consequences that reverberate through the next two generations of their families. A stunning biomythography—a word coined by the late great writer Audre Lorde—Coleman Hill draws from the author's own family legend, historical record, and fervent imagination to create an unforgettable new history. The result is a kaleidoscopic novel whose intergenerational arc emerges through a series of miniatures that contain worlds.“Once in a while, a writer comes along with a brilliance that stops the breath. Kim Coleman Foote is that writer.” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning author of Red at the Bone“A masterpiece. Brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking, epic, beautiful, raw and true... This is the American story.” ―Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less Is Lost“Kim Coleman Foote has the rare talent of completely immersing you in time and place... A sweeping yet intimate family saga.” —Sarah Jessica Parker

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

In April 2020, at the height of the pandemic in New York City, Andrew, the assistant director of a funeral home one mile from Elmhurst Hospital, the “epicenter of the epicenter,” meets a legendary Coney Island witch doctor (Lelya Dorche), who makes him an offer that could better his chances of keeping his COVID-positive elderly parents and his severely asthmatic 13-year-old son, Miro, off the ever-expanding list of virus mortalities. To keep up his end of the bargain, Andrew will have to find his way to Bulgaria (no small task considering that there's a ban on passenger flights to Europe) to secure 10 liters of a rare Macedonian pine sap, a key ingredient of Lelya Dorche's proven remedy.

Foreword INDIES - 2023 Finalist Science FictionSomething is happening to Green. He is an ordinary guy, time-jumping forward at a startling, uncontainable rate. He is grappling to understand his present; his relationship is wholly tattered; his ultimate destination is a colossal question mark. Zada is a scientist in the future. She is mindful of Green's conundrum and seeks to unravel it by going backwards in time. Can she stop him from jumping to infinity? Their point of intersection is fleeting but memorable, each one's travel impacting the other's past or future. And one of them doesn't even know it yet. Secondhand Daylight is a reverse story in alternate timelines between two protagonists whose lives must one day intersect. A titillating offering from World Fantasy Award-finalist Eugen Bacon, an Otherwise Fellowships honouree for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction'. In collaboration with three-time British Fantasy Society Award-winner Andrew Hook.

Emer Martin's is a radical, vital voice in Irish writing, as she challenges the history of silence, institutional lies, evasion and the mistreatment of women across mid-to-late twentieth-century Ireland. Two families inhabit this immersive polyvocal work, an intergenerational saga announced with The Cruelty Men (2018) and continued here as punk rockers and Magdalene laundries spiral into a post-colonial Ireland still haunted by its tribal undertow. Scenes surface from Ireland's mythological past, Tudor plantations, workhouses and industrial schools, the Troubles laid bare, the transformative pre-digital decades playing out in this propulsive narrative. Thirsty Ghosts is epic in scope while intimate in focus. The Lyons, professionals in a newly independent state, are attacked by paramilitaries in their family home in Tyrone. The eccentric O Conaills of Kerry, traumatized by displacement, find themselves in leafy Dublin 4. We encounter a servant who meets Henry VIII, a Lithuanian Jewish family who become part of the fabric of Dublin, and a wild young girl who escapes the laundry only to stumble into a psycho pimp. Related with dark humour, verve and high literary style, Thirsty Ghosts is a revelatory exploration of Ireland combining themes of power, class, fertility, violence and deep love, forces as universal as the old stories that permeate and illuminate each character's life.

An enthralling debut, Above the Fire crystallizes the relationship between a father and son as they survive a winter of isolation. Perfect for fans of The Dog Stars by Peter Heller and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.Laboring under a shared loss, Doug and his young son, Tim, set out on a late-season backpacking trip through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They find beauty and solidarity in the outdoors, making friends along the trail and falling into the rhythms of an expedition. But when reports of warfare and social collapse reach the ranger station, Doug—seeking to protect the only family he has left—withdraws even further into the backcountry.The alpine winter presents its own dangers, as father and son must endure the elements, the solitude, and the ever-present threat of outsiders. As their isolation intensifies, and the nature of the country's disorder becomes more unsettling, their bond with each other grows more fierce. But as spring approaches, they must decide whether—and how—to confront the perils of a changed world.

“Sell Us the Rope is original, adept and confident, with the spry sardonic voice of the new historical fiction: it is entertaining and in the end, deeply moving.” -Hilary Mantel“A deeply satisfying novel. Incisive, inventive, frequently very funny.” -The Guardian In London in 1907, a decade before the revolution, young Stalin has yet to achieve the power, nor acted on the ruthlessness, that will define his legacy. Instead Koba, as he is known, arrives in London for the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Part where he-and many of his fellow Bolsheviks-are only allowed to remain as a nonvoting witness. But his inability to vote does not limit his ability to act, and Stalin quickly begins forging alliances with the likes of Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg-and a vivacious Finnish activist named Elli Vuokko. As the Congress progresses, Koba begins to take daring risks-with the young Finnish idealist, with his past relationships to the Russian government, and with his future in the party. But as he manipulates those loyal to him and seeks to discover who he will remain loyal to in return, we see a great political mind in the works, and witness the development of a dictator.

“Heartfelt, bizarre, and unexpected.... At once a novel about family and love, a creepy tale that questions what it means to be human, and a celebration of queer stories, Monstrilio is as shocking as it is profound, and as humorous as it is thoughtful.” —Gabino Iglesias, The Boston GlobeA “wholly unique” and “uncompromising” literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes (Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes)Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago's lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family's communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life. A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.

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

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by VOGUE and VOX. The Free Press's August Book Club pick. A'very funny, very good'(B. J. Novak) debut novel about a graduate student who follows her disgraced mentor to a university that gives safe harbor to scholars of ill repute, igniting a crisis of work and a test of her conscience (and marriage) Helen is one of the brightest minds of her generation: a young physicist on a path to solve high-temperature superconductivity (which could save the planet). When she discovers that her brilliant adviser is involved in a sex scandal, Helen is torn: should she give up on her work with him? Or should she accompany him to a controversial university, founded by a provocateur billionaire, that hosts academics other schools have thrown out? Helen decides she must go—her work is too important. She brings along her partner, Hew, who is much less sanguine about living on an island where the disgraced and deplorable get to operate with impunity. On campus, Helen finds herself drawn to an iconoclastic older novelist, while Hew stews in an increasingly radical protest movement. Their rift deepens until both confront choices that will reshape their lives—and maybe the world. Irreverent, generous, anchored in character, and provocative without being polemical, How I Won a Nobel Prize illuminates the compromises we'll make for progress, what it means to be a good person, and how to win a Nobel Prize. Turns out all of it would be simple—if you could run the numbers.

Winner of the 2022 Mary McCarthy Prize in Poetry, judged by Susan Minot.Set amid wholly unique and fabulist worlds, the stories of The Book of Disbelieving present a cast of characters tangled in challenges of faith, whether in god, in nature, in memory, or even in reality. These are stories of villages built atop fish, of holidays designed to encourage literal leaps of faith, of widows left to make sense of memories both real and imagined. Steeped in the existential crises of our era, The Book of Disbelieving is a modern book of fables and lore. Behold this book with wonder.

Perfect for fans of Marie Benedict and Renée Rosen, Daughter Dalloway is both an homage to the Virginia Woolf classic and a brilliant spin-off—the empowering, rebellious coming-of-age story of Mrs. Dalloway's only child, Elizabeth.London, 1952: Forty-six-year-old Elizabeth Dalloway feels she has failed at most everything in life, especially living up to her mother, the elegant Mrs. Dalloway, an ideal socialite and model of perfection until she disappeared in the summer of 1923—and hasn't been heard from since.When Elizabeth is handed a medal with a mysterious inscription from her mother to a soldier named Septimus Warren Smith, she's certain it contains a clue from the past. As she sets out, determined to deliver the medal to its rightful owner, Elizabeth begins to piece together memories of that fateful summer.London, 1923: At seventeen, Elizabeth carouses with the Prince of Wales and sons of American iron barons and decides to join the Bright Young People—a group of bohemians whose antics often land in the tabloids. She is a girl who rebels against the staid social rules of the time, a girl determined to do it all differently than her mother. A girl who doesn't yet feel like a failure.That summer, Octavia Smith braves the journey from the countryside to London, determined to track down her older brother Septimus who returned from the war but never came home. She falls in with a group of clever city boys who have learned to survive on the streets. When one starts to steal her heart, she must discover whether he is a friend or foe—and whether she can make it in the city on her own.Elizabeth and Octavia are destined to cross paths, and when they do, the truths they unearth will shatter their understanding of the people they love most.

Obsessive friendships lead to tragedy in this early-twentieth-century novel about a charismatic schoolmistress, a naïve new teacher, and an impressionable student—with an afterword by Melissa Broder, author of Milk Fed and The Pisces.Clare Hartill is a brilliant, commanding educator at a private all-girls boarding school: the undisputed queen of her own small kingdom. But her tightly controlled world is disrupted when she meets Alwynne Durand, a nineteen-year-old teacher with no formal training. Alwynne's innocence and openness endear her to the secretive Clare. Alwynne is drawn to Clare's intelligence and sophistication. The two women fall headlong into an all-consuming friendship and begin planning a life together.But their relationship is tested when an exceptionally gifted student named Louise enters their orbit. Louise will do anything to win Clare's approval. Meanwhile, Clare's jealous and manipulative nature slowly pulls Alwynne away from her friends, her students, and her family—anyone, in fact, who is not Clare Hartill.Written in the early twentieth century by Winifred Ashton (under the pseudonym Clemence Dane), Regiment of Women is a complex tale of love and power that asks: How well do we truly see the people we love? And what are we willing to sacrifice for them?The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.

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

From one of Italy's most electrifying voices, a fearless story of queer love and obsession set against the glassy surfaces of Shanghai.'Blue Hunger is irresistible, evocative, dripping with desire, and brilliantly written-Viola Di Grado is a genius.'-Jami AttenbergAfter her twin's death, a solitary young woman leaves Rome for Shanghai, the city where her brother Ruben had long dreamed of opening a restaurant. Teaching Italian to Chinese students, she meets a mysterious girl named Xu, who is also running from a turbulent past: a violent father, an absent mother, and an extended family who wishes she'd been a boy. Xu's house is dingy and full of rotting food, like a museum of decomposing organic matter. In the gloom of abandoned textile factories and dilapidated slaughterhouses, the two discover an extreme dimension where biting, swallowing, and taking each other in are part of the erotic ritual. Rooted in an experience of cultural limbo, Blue Hunger takes the reader on a visually stunning, taboo-demolishing journey into the depths of the psyche, from mourning to falling in lust-all in a city of potent dreams, stories, and stimulations.

A Bustle Most-Anticipated Book of the Month Set in the punk-rock scene of the early 2000s and vibrating with the intense ache of bad choices and deep longing, a needle-sharp portrait of a young woman and how far she'll go to find acceptance Kat is dying to be accepted by the North Carolina punks; she is totally desperate to seem cool. At a punk show, she ends up backstage with a rock star and gets noticed by a photojournalist. And then—a dream come true for Kat—her reputation as a groupie icon skyrockets. But to maintain this notoriety, Kat makes a series of devastating choices, and soon enough, she becomes unrecognizable to herself and others. Tea Hacic-Vlahovic's A Cigarette Lit Backwards is a sometimes funny, often brutally honest novel about ambition and self-discovery and how a world of glamour and cool exerts its bold and breathless pull. In prose that seduces, glitters, and exhilarates, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic has written a novel that is both a wild party and a somber reckoning, consolidating her status as a thrilling and essential new voice for our time.

'Hey, Upper East Siders. Gossip Girl here. And I have the biggest news ever.'Every episode starts like this. We're Upper East Siders; Gossip Girl tells us we are. But also, we aren't and never will be. All we can do is look inside. Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella follows Gossip Girl, an anonymous blog, and the prep school students she reports on, who snitch on each other for likes. They include: Nate, beautiful transgender himbo, Bernie Madoff's son; Serena (It Girl); Dan (vengeful alt nerd). Meanwhile, in the year 2030, Gordon (former TV protege) starts writing for Gossip Girl 3: the Reboot. Will he self-sabotage? Or...? Gossip Girl began as a YA book series; it was first published in 2002, one year into America's War on Terror. Soon adapted for TV, Gossip Girl premiered on the CW network in 2007, swerving through the Financial Crash, and ending in 2012, midway through the Obama years. Interlaced with essays on transsexuality, clones, dissociating, American Apparel, and affect theorist Lauren Berlant, Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella is a parasocial eulogy for the aughts.I love a book which invents its own genre. Which is why I love Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella. It's some kind of auto(fan)fiction. Markbreiter uses the conventions of fanfiction as a dissociated way of writing about trans-ness. But it's also a perfect form for his writing about social media, its effects on language, on style, on love, on attachment, on intellectual and emotional labor, on whatever the ruling class has become in this century. XOXO--McKenzie WarkCharlie Markbreiter's writing has been published in venues such as Bookforum, Art in America, and The New Inquiry, where he serves as the Managing Editor. A PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, he is also a mod of the Death Panel Discord, a free school/health justice forum. He is not a Gossip Girl character, or that's what you think. He lives in New York. Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella is his first book.

'A barnstorming epic of the'80s British Left'Hari Kunzru, author of Red Pill Paul, ex-tube driver and drinking partner of legendary Union leader Bob Crowe turns up at Essex University in the early 1980s haunted by the death of his colleague on the tracks. Thrown into the radical mix of Student Union life and the academic intoxication of post-modern theory taught by the likes of Ernesto Laclau, Jacques Derrida and a very young Slavoj Zizek, Paul befriends the novel's unnamed narrator. What follows is a riotous attempt to put the 20th Century to bed, as seen through the eyes of the foot soldiers of British history. From Miners strikes to IRA collection buckets, ANC demonstrations and some very dodgy handling of Soviet money, Our Struggle climaxes with a devastating denouement in modern day Kurdistan. Holloway's epic tale asks the big questions, does what we think, what we say and what we do ever match up? Or are we destined to fall short of the ideals we think we cherish?

Dark, profane, and hilarious, yet ultimately humane, these ten stories are the latest and best of Robin McLean's reports from the eternal battlefront that is the United States. Ranging across the continent, from Alaska to Missouri, from the flatlands to the mountains, each tale is a snapshot of the political, racial, and sexual undercurrents roiling contemporary life, and each finds a way into the nerves and blood that pulse beneath the question of how to live a decent life. Here you'll find stolen children living life to the fullest on the run and on the road, soldiers guarding empty frontiers, and rugged individualists brought low by an uncaring nature. You'll find prehistoric beasts rubbing talons with hustlers as well as death machines lurking beneath the bucolic countryside. Here you'll find hatred, friendship, and pitch-black humor all seething in the same stew. Get'em Young, Treat'em Tough, Tell'em Nothing marries the sardonic moral and political explorations of a Flannery O'Connor to the surreal, scuzzy wit of a Denis Johnson. It is a brazen State of the Union for a nation on the edge.

Chosen as one of New York Post's Best Books of 2022 People were forever telling her how lucky she was. But what did people know?'Dublin 1966. When Joan Quinn, a factory girl from the Cranmore Estate, marries Martin Egan, it looks like her dreams have come true. But Joan lives in the shadow of a secret – the couple's decision to give up their first daughter for adoption only months before. Then one day in 1996, a letter arrives from their eldest daughter. Emma needs her birth parents'help; it's a matter of life and death. And the fragile facade of Joan's life finally begins to crack. Spanning the nineties and the sixties, with Dublin as its backdrop, The Making of Her is the tender and page-turning story of marriage, motherhood, a culture that would not allow a woman to find true happiness—and her journey to finally claim it.

'Tender and unsparing, this is a novel to hold onto.'—Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me“A masterfully written novel, alive and lyrical, a hypnotic rendering of the mess and the tenderness of family life.”—Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had A novel about family secrets and a volatile relationship between a mother and her daughters.When Anna's sister calls with an urgent message, Anna doesn't return the call. She knows it's about their mother.Growing up in working class Boston in an Italian American family, Anna's childhood was sparse but comfortable—filled with homemade pasta sauce and a close-knit neighborhood. Anna and her sisters are devoted to their mother, orbiting her like the sun, trying to keep up with her loving but mercurial nature as she bounces between tenderness and bitterness. When their father gets a new job outside the city, the family is tossed unceremoniously into a middle-class suburban existence. Anna's mother is suddenly adrift, and the darkness lurking inside her expands until it threatens to explode. Her daughters, trapped with her in the new house, isolated, must do everything they can to keep her from unraveling. Alternating between childhood and Anna's twenties, when she receives a shattering call about her mother that threatens to blow up her own precariously constructed life in New York, Mother in the Dark asks whether we can ever really go back home when the idea of home is so unstable. Whether we can escape that instability or accept that our personalities are built around the defenses we put up. Maiuri is a master at revealing the fragile horrors of domestic family life and how the traumas of the past shape the present and generations of women. A story about sisterhood, the complications of class, and the chains of inheritance between mothers and daughters, Mother in the Dark delivers an unvarnished portrayal of a young woman consumed by her past and a family teetering on the edge of a knife.

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

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good House, the “harrowing, gripping, and beautiful” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author) story of two friends, raised in the same orphanage, whose loyalty is put to the ultimate test when they meet years later at an institution—based on a shocking and little-known piece of American history.It's 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She's immediately in awe of her employer—brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women's suffrage. Now, at age forty, Dr. Vogel runs one of the largest and most self-sufficient public asylums for women in the country. Mary deeply admires how dedicated the doctor is to the poor and vulnerable women under her care. Soon after she's hired, Mary learns that a girl from her childhood orphanage is one of the inmates. Mary remembers Lillian as a beautiful free spirit with a sometimes-tempestuous side. Could she be mentally disabled? When Lillian begs Mary to help her escape, alleging the asylum is not what it seems, Mary is faced with a terrible choice. Should she trust her troubled friend with whom she shares a dark childhood secret? Mary's decision triggers a hair-raising sequence of events with life-altering consequences for all. Inspired by a true story about the author's grandmother, The Foundling is compelling, unsettling, and “a stunning reminder that not much time has passed since everyone claimed to know what was best for a woman—everyone except the woman herself” (Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author).

Jeanphi, a young man from the fictional West African city Ouabany, has one obsession that will determine the fate of his life – migration. He scrapes together money to take the illegal route across the Sahara, making it as far as Morocco before being repatriated. Increasingly desperate, Jeanphi meets an elegant French widower who for his part is despairing at the insurmountable bureaucratic hurdles for his charitable endeavour in Jeanphi's country. A window opens to opportunity – but it will also bring tragedy. Burkinabé author Monique Ilboudo's novel offers a compelling and complex portrait of migration, one of the defining global concerns of the twenty-first century, and a sharp critique of both the NGO-isation of African countries and the currents of shame that divide communities and families. Yarri Kamara has rendered Ilboudo's text in an idiom that conveys the sharp humour, lucid descriptions and urgency of the original.

¿Y si el matrimonio fuera una forma radical y transgresora de decirse Te quiero? «Este libro es la película romántica que desearía leer en el sofá, llorando, comiendo chocolate, menstruando. Antes era Mujercitas, ahora es El matrimonio anarquista.» Sabina Urraca «Yendo de la escritura privada a la pública, Begoña Méndez y Nadal Suau demuestran que un matrimonio, el suyo por ejemplo, puede ser muchas cosas: una sociedad, el retrato de una generación, un refugio excepcionalmente sólido en su fragilidad, una clase, un país, literatura.» Patricio Pron «Si tuviera que romper una lanza por la monogamia una vez en la vida sería por este matrimonio.» Gabriela Wiener «El matrimonio anarquista posee la magia de una conversación secreta en la que uno decide guardarse lo mejor del otro como una ofrenda íntima. Pero es un libro volcado hacia su tiempo, tan alérgico al solipsismo como a las fórmulas que simplifican una unión.» Carlos Pardo Monogamia y poliamor; medusas y erizos; Pynchon, Winona y Foster Wallace; tatuajes, literatura y deseo. Ilustración de portada: Bara / Tattoo

Something long dormant in the reluctant hearts of two downcast London women sparks to life... When four women leave their drab lives behind to go on holiday in Italy, their lives are changed forever by the Mediterranean. Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins, while part of the same ladies'club, have never spoken. Lady Caroline Dester and the elderly Mrs. Fisher join their holiday so as to mitigate expenses. As these women come together and learn more about themselves than they ever thought possible, they reveal their true personalities and the backdrops of their lives that tend to hinder them. Inspired by the author's own month-long trip to the Italian Riviera, this novel is noted as her most widely-read work.

Exploring the diverse landscape of American life, the stories in Blues and Trouble: Twelve Stories capture the lives of people caught between circumstance and their own natures or on the run from fate, from a Jewish couple encountering a dealer in Nazi memorabilia to the troubled family of a Gulf Coast fisherman awaiting a hurricane. Tom Piazza's debut short story collection, originally published in 1996, heralded the arrival of a startlingly original and vital presence in American fiction and letters. Set in Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Texas, New York City, and elsewhere, the stories echo voices from Ernest Hemingway to Robert Johnson in their sharp eye for detail and their emotional impact. New to this volume is an introduction written by the author. Drawing themes, forms, and stylistic approaches from blues and country music, these stories present a tough, haunting vision of a landscape where the social and spiritual ground shifts constantly underfoot.

What do you get when you cross a music snob, a football fan, a star-gazer and a tragi-romantic loser-in-love? You get Howie. Howie lives with his brother, Ben, who has autism. Ben is funny and utterly loveable. More than anything, Ben wants a girlfriend. So when the TV show Love is Mental (a dating show for people with disabilities) is aired, Ben decides to participate. And this is where life starts to unhinge for Howie. You see, Howie wants romance too. So when he falls for one of Ben's dates, it sets him off on a rollicking journey into deception that will ultimately reveal to him that he is much more like Ben than he could ever have imagined. So Very Mental is a warm, quirky and inclusive story. It shows us that when it comes to this crazy thing we call life, we're all in it together.

This'absolutely irresistible'historical romance imagines the courtship between Jacqueline Bouvier and the future American president she loved (People).​ In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is “not to be a housewife,” but when she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a Georgetown party, her resolution begins to falter. Soon the two are flirting over secret phone calls, cocktails, and dinner dates, and as Jackie is drawn deeper into the Kennedy orbit, and as Jack himself grows increasingly elusive and absent, she begins to question what life at his side would mean. For answers, she turns to his best friend and confidant, Lem Billings, a closeted gay man who has made the Kennedy family his own, and who has been instructed by them to seal the deal with Jack's new girl. But as he gets to know her, a deep and touching friendship emerges, leaving him with painfully divided alliances and a troubling dilemma: Is this the marriage she deserves? Narrated by an older Lem as he looks back at his own role in a complicated alliance, this is a courtship story full of longing and of suspense, of what-ifs and possible wrong turns. It is a surprising look at Jackie before she was that Jackie. And in best-selling author Louis Bayard's witty and deeply empathetic telling, Jackie & Me is a page-turning story of friendship, love, sacrifice, and betrayal— and a fresh take on two iconic American figures.

Charles Booker is thrilled to start married life in Two Harbors, Minnesota, with his ambitious ornithologist bride, Caroline—but he sabotages his own happiness when, blinded by his desire for a family, he tricks Caroline into a pregnancy she doesn't want.Caroline, bold and unapologetic, follows her own nature and holds Charles to his promise to parent their daughter without her help—an arrangement that allows her to travel the world and follow her birds, wherever they may take her. This uneasy truce results in near tragedy for their daughter, Grace, who comes of age in a household full of toxic resentment on the one side and suffocating love on the other, and increasingly struggles with her mental health as she grows older.Told by all three of the characters involved and set against the backdrop of Lake Superior, Finding Grace is a piercing chronicle of the struggles and eventual insight gained by each over the years, starting with Charles and Caroline's courtship and continuing into Grace's early adulthood—and a poignant coming-of-age journey for both Grace and her parents.

A fictional diary set in interwar Germany and Spain allows us to peek into the life of Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her merchant-class, German-Jewish family. Klara's first visit to Seville in 1925 opens her eyes and her spirit to an era in which Spain's major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, shared deep cultural connections. At the same time, she is made aware of the harsh injustices that persist in Spanish society. By 1930, she has landed a position with the medical school in Madrid. Though she feels compelled to hide her Jewish identity in her predominantly Christian new home, she finds that she feels less “different” in Spain than she did in Germany, especially as she learns new ways of expressing her opinions and desires. And when the Spanish Civil War erupts in 1936, Klara (now “Clara”) enlists in the Fifth Regiment, a step that transports her across the geography of the embattled peninsula and ultimately endangers a promising relationship and even Clara's life itself. A blending of thoroughly researched history and engrossing fiction, Home So Far Away is an epic tale that will sweep readers away.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE Are we free to create our own destinies or are we just part of a system beyond our control? A joyful family saga about free will, forgiveness, and how we are all interconnected. In October 1989, a set of triplets is born, and it is this moment their father chooses to reveal his affair. Pandemonium ensues. Over two decades later, Sebastian is recruited to join a mysterious organisation, the London Institute of Cognitive Science, where he meets Laura Kadinsky, a patient whose inability to see the world in three dimensions is not the only thing about her that intrigues him. Meanwhile, Clara has travelled to Easter Island to join a doomsday cult, and the third triplet, Matilda, is in Sweden, trying to escape from the colour blue. Then something happens that forces the triplets to reunite. Their mother calls with worrying news: their father has gone missing and she has something to tell them, a twenty-five-year secret that will change all their lives …

In this dangerously sexy rom-com that evokes the real-life romance between Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle, a prince who wants to live out of the spotlight falls for a daring American rapper who turns his life, and the palace, upside down.Sexy, driven rapper Danielle “Duchess” Nelson is on the verge of signing a deal that'll make her one of the richest women in hip hop. More importantly, it'll grant her control over her life, something she's craved for years. But an incident with a rising pop star has gone viral, unfairly putting her deal in jeopardy. Concerned about her image, she's instructed to work on generating some positive publicity… or else.A brilliant professor and reclusive royal, Prince Jameson prefers life out of the spotlight, only leaving his ivory tower to attend weddings or funerals. But with the Queen's children involved in one scandal after another, and Parliament questioning the viability of the monarchy, the Queen is desperate. In a quest for good press, she puts Jameson in charge of a tribute concert in her late husband's honor. Out of his depth, and resentful of being called to service, he takes the advice of a student. After all, what's more appropriate for a royal concert than a performer named “Duchess”?Too late, Jameson discovers the American rapper is popular, sexy, raunchy and not what the Queen wanted, although he's having an entirely different reaction. Dani knows this is the good exposure she needs to cement her deal and it doesn't hurt that the royal running things is fine as hell. Thrown together, they give in to the explosive attraction flaring between them. But as the glare of the limelight intensifies and outside forces try to interfere, will the Prince and Duchess be a fairy tale romance for the ages or a disaster of palatial proportions?

A Goodreads Most Anticipated Romance A heartwarming novel about hope after loss as a young widow receives mysterious messages of love from the “must-buy author” (Jodi Picoult) of Eight Perfect Hours.Sparkly and charming Natalie Fincher has it all—a handsome new husband, a fixer-upper cottage of her dreams, and the opportunity to tour with the musical she's spent years writing. But when her husband suddenly dies, all her hopes and dreams instantly disappear. Two and a half years later, Natalie is still lost. She works, sleeps (well, as much as the sexually frustrated village foxes will allow), and sees friends just often enough to allay their worries, but her life is empty. And she can only bring herself to play music at a London train station's public piano where she can be anonymous. She's lost motivation, faith in love, in happiness…in everything. But when someone begins to mysteriously leave the sheet music for her husband's favorite songs at the station's piano, Natalie begins to feel a sense of hope and excitement for the first time. As she investigates just who could be doing this, Natalie finds herself on an unexpected journey toward newfound love for herself, for life, and maybe, for a special someone.

Nonat Ventura, an orphan raised by nuns in Girona, Spain, embarks on a compulsive quest to uncover his origins, with the hope that he is destined for a higher social status. His search leads him from a successful apprenticeship, to factory work in Barcelona, and finally to a band of thieves that seeks to get rich by any means necessary. Nonat's central story frames a series of stories, a kaleidoscopic effect within a One Thousand and One Nights narrative: fictional tropes of orphans, spinsters, maids seduced by masters, crooks, go-getting provincials combined with realist depictions of factory workers, haberdashers, street-porters, corrupt politicians, and Belle Époque high society.Català relishes describing the male proletarian ambience of small factories and capturing the fraught atmosphere, carnival of disguises, and class tensions on the city's streets, in its households, Liceu opera house, and theaters. A rebellious artistic project that was set to shock and discomfort readers and critics, Català contests the prevailing ideas on space, class, language, art, and gender.

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

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

A brilliantly observed story of crises and reconciliations within families and stepfamilies and the conflict between Millennials and their Baby Boomer parents. Funny, dark, yet limned with hope, Tim Lott returns to a family saga – and social commentary – that began with the award-winning White City Blue, continuing with When We Were Rich. It is a story for everyone trying to make sense of a sharply polarised world where the political has become personal and the personal has become a minefield. Brighton, December 2019: a teenage girl is on an early morning run along the seafront. In her mind she is running away from something she hates, towards something she fears. China's home is with her mother Veronica, her pompous stepfather Silas and his dysfunctional son Mason. Her father, Frankie, is in London, but they have little contact, his entrenched views a provocation to her socially conscious ideals, his Brexit-supporting girlfriend a jealous rival. Exhausted by family tensions, when China leaves Brighton, her godfather Nodge, Frankie's best friend, and his husband Owen are her first port of call. But they, too, are beset by domestic conflict. Which leaves only her father to takes her in. They argue, they spar, the fault lines between them grow wider – and then coronavirus strikes. Praise for When We Were Rich ‘A sharp and very funny portrait of a brash era which is also a surprisingly tender take on flawed masculinity'― Sarah Hughes, i paper‘What a terrific novel – wickedly sharp, wildly entertaining – I was gripped from start to finish. With its twisty plots and interwoven characters it paints a vivid portrait of a crucial decade. It's laugh-out-loud funny, too. And with property porn thrown in, what's not to like'― Deborah Moggach‘Wickedly funny and deeply humane. I loved this book'― Sadie Jones‘Tim Lott revisits the years between millennium fever and the financial crisis, and brings this already long-lost era back to life in a novel every bit as evocative and compelling as we would expect from this prodigiously gifted author'― Jonathan Coe‘Lott delivers many hilarious and sad scenes of life in a long-term relationship. He also explores the poignancy and fragility of male friendships, in a manner reminiscent of Graham Swift's Last Orders... [He is,] crucially, careful to linger over moral difficulty and vulnerability rather than evading it'― TLS‘Lott's carefully observed period piece captures the mood of an era that now seems like a lost world'― Daily Mail