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Mixing satire, farce, and dystopia, the stories in John Kessel's The Presidential Papers deconstruct the character and politics of five imagined presidents, some of whom bear striking resemblance to individuals who have occupied the Oval Office over the last thirty years. Who are these men and what makes them so funny, when they are not terrifying? How damaged does a person need to be to seek such power, why do we vote for them, and what do they think about the 1959 Washington Senators? In'The Franchise,'aging career minor leaguer George H.W. Bush faces ace New York Giants pitcher Fidel Castro in the 1959 World Series.'The Last American'outlines the career of the final president of the United States and his thirty-three years in office. Can the megalomaniac President of the Solar System evade the consequences of his moronic rule in the original play'A Brief History of the War with Venus'? In our Outspoken Interview we learn about crossing Mary Shelley with Jane Austen, about having classic SF writer James Gunn as a mentor, about being a spy in the English department, and about industrial capitalism, immigrants, and Buffalo, New York.

Maximilian Sacheverell Hollingsworth is a counterfeiter, sculptor, filmmaker, sound artist, mystic, and terminal recluse, and over the course of fifty years, making use of a vast stockpile of illegitimate currency, he funds a great range of secret, large-scale art projects throughout London—from explorations of the far reaches of the imagination to more civic-minded schemes of an equally radical nature. At once a strikingly original satire of the ways in which art and currency conspire to favor certain voices and forms over others, and a story of surreal anti-capitalist machinations reminiscent of the works of B. S. Johnson and Georges Perec, The Currency of Paper announces the arrival of a great new voice in contemporary fiction.

Charles Dickens'first published novel, The Pickwick Papers, has delighted readers for over 170 years. Follow the colourful characters that make up the Pickwick Club as they travel the country finding quaint and curious phenomena of life to report them to the Club.

Modern-Day Beijing. Mei Wang, 31, lives and works as a private detective in China's capital city. After her resignation from the Ministry for Public Security, Mei saw her status drop swiftly in the eyes of her former colleagues, her TV-star sister, and even her mother. But sharp, intuitive Mei has taken her valuable experience and her insider knowledge of the police and city politics and set herself up as a successful private investigator. Now, with her own car, her own business, even a male receptionist to reflect her well-to-do status, Mei Wang is ensconced in her own little corner of the biggest city in China. When Mei receives a call from the chief executive at Guanghua Record Company, she learns that one of Mr. Peng's top starlets -- the beautiful pop star Kaili -- has been missing for four days. Mei must find the starlet while keeping up the record company's façade that nothing is amiss. Though Kaili is a piece of Mr. Peng's moneymaking machine, Mei learns that she is also a troubled, mysterious young woman whom no one really knows. The discovery of a secret stash of letters in Kaili's apartment sets Mei on an investigation that will take her back to a troubled past that belongs not only to Kaili, but to the entire nation. Meanwhile, in Gansu Province, a work camp laborer named Lin is finally released from eight years of forced labor on the outskirts of civilization. He angrily remembers the betrayal that cost him his youth and his sweetheart, who was torn from his life when he was sent to the work camp. As Mei tries to retrace Kaili's steps, so does Lin retrace his own past...and he carries a secret to the case that no one would ever expect. Paper Butterfly, the second mystery featuring private detective Mei Wang, is as beautiful and lyrical as it is eye-opening.

The name on the computer screen is James Barbour Matlock, college professor and Vietnam veteran. He's Washington's choice to stop a far-reaching conspiracy in an undercover assignment destined to put his neck against the razor's edge of danger. But the faceless men behind the scenes don't care if it means savaging the woman he loves or trapping him in a maze of unrelenting terror. They just care about one thing: Matlock is the perfect man for the job—and the reason why is disturbing, explosive, and extremely deadly. Praise for Robert Ludlum and The Matlock Paper “A sure winner... fast paced, suspenseful, and bound to keep you turning the pages.”—The Denver Post “A 110% story all in overdrive... Ludlum writes better and better.”—Kirkus Reviews “Suspense, violence, and total readability.”—Chicago Tribune BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity.

It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven! But this is not the only sin upon us. We have committed a greater crime, and for this crime there is no name. What punishment awaits us if it be discovered we know not, for no such crime has come in the memory of men and there are no laws to provide for it. It is dark here. The flame of the candle stands still in the air. Nothing moves in this tunnel save our hand on the paper. We are alone here under the earth. It is a fearful word, alone. The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the great transgression and the root of all evil. But we have broken many laws. And now there is nothing here save our one body, and it is strange to see only two legs stretched on the ground, and on the wall before us the shadow of our one head. The walls are cracked and water runs upon them in thin threads without sound, black and glistening as blood. We stole the candle from the larder of the Home of the Street Sweepers. We shall be sentenced to ten years in the Palace of Corrective Detention if it be discovered. But this matters not. It matters only that the light is precious and we should not waste it to write when we need it for that work which is our crime. Nothing matters save the work, our secret, our evil, our precious work. Still, we must also write, for—may the Council have mercy upon us!—we wish to speak for once to no ears but our own. Our name is Equality 7-2521, as it is written on the iron bracelet which all men wear on their left wrists with their names upon it. We are twenty-one years old. We are six feet tall, and this is a burden, for there are not many men who are six feet tall. Ever have the Teachers and the Leaders pointed to us and frowned and said:'There is evil in your bones, Equality 7-2521, for your body has grown beyond the bodies of your brothers.'But we cannot change our bones nor our body. We were born with a curse. It has always driven us to thoughts which are forbidden. It has always given us wishes which men may not wish. We know that we are evil, but there is no will in us and no power to resist it. This is our wonder and our secret fear, that we know and do not resist. We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike. Over the portals of the Palace of the World Council, there are words cut in the marble, which we repeat to ourselves whenever we are tempted.

Rediscover the sensational 1967 literary thriller that captures the bitter struggles of postwar Black intellectuals and artistsWith a foreword by Ishmael Reed and a new introduction by Merve Emre about how this explosive novel laid bare America's racial fault linesMax Reddick, a novelist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter, has spent his career struggling against the riptide of race in America. Now terminally ill, he has nothing left to lose. An expat for many years, Max returns to Europe one last time to settle an old debt with his estranged Dutch wife, Margrit, and to attend the Paris funeral of his friend, rival, and mentor Harry Ames, a character loosely modelled on Richard Wright.In Amsterdam, among Harry's papers, Max uncovers explosive secret government documents outlining “King Alfred,” a plan to be implemented in the event of widespread racial unrest and aiming “to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society.” Realizing that Harry has been assassinated, Max must risk everything to get the documents to the one man who can help.Greeted as a masterpiece when it was published in 1967, The Man Who Cried I Am stakes out a range of experience rarely seen in American fiction: from the life of a Black GI to the ferment of postcolonial Africa to an insider's view of Washington politics in the era of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, including fictionalized portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. John A. Williams and his lost classic are overdue for rediscovery.Few novels have so deliberately blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality as The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), and many of its early readers assumed the King Alfred plan was real. In her introduction, Merve Emre examines the gonzo marketing plan behind the novel that fueled this confusion and prompted an FBI investigation. This deluxe paperback also includes a new foreword by novelist Ishmael Reed.“It is a blockbuster, a hydrogen bomb.... This is a book white people are not ready to read yet, neither are most black people who read. But [it] is the milestone produced since Native Son. Besides which, and where I should begin, it is a damn beautifully written book.” —Chester Himes“Magnificent... obviously in the Baldwin and Ellison class.” —John Fowles“If The Man Who Cried I Am were a painting it would be done by Brueghel or Bosch. The madness and the dance is never-ending display of humanity trying to creep past inevitable Fate.” —Walter Mosely

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ERBD LITERATURE PRIZE 2024 A BEST NEW BOOK OF 2023 (THE NEW ARAB) A NOTABLE AFRICAN BOOK OF 2023 (BRITTLE PAPER) An unforgettable and eviscerating novel of human frailty, brutality, and resistance as told through the first-person prison narratives of a man and a womanHistory of Ash is a fictional prison account narrated by Mouline and Leila, who have been imprisoned for their political activities during the so-called Lead Years of the 1970s and 1980s in Morocco, a period that was characterized by heavy state repression. Moving between past and present, between experiences lived inside the prison cell and outside it, in the torture chamber and the judicial system, and the challenges they faced upon their release, Mouline and Leila describe their strategies for survival and resistance in lucid, often searing detail, and reassess their political engagements and the movements in which they are involved. Written with compassion and insight, History of Ash speaks to human brutality, resilience, and the power of the human spirit. It succeeds in both documenting the prison experience and humanizing it, while ultimately holding out the promise of redemption through a new generation.

A group of sixth formers vandalize an exclusive Georgetown club on the day of their school leaving, coincidentally also the day of their country's independence. Several of their parents think a lesson is in order and the semblance of a trial is organized. The sentences they are given are suspended provided that they fulfil the task set by their English teacher, who has interceded on their behalf. Each must write a short story that says something about the newly independent Guyana. Years later, Mark McWatt, one of the group, is handed the papers of his old school friend, Victor Nunes, who has disappeared, feared drowned, in the Guyanese interior. The papers contain some of the stories, written before the project collapsed when the group realized the trial was a hoax. As a tribute to Victor Nunes, McWatt decides to collect the rest of the stories from his friends.'Suspended Sentences'is a tour-de-force of invention. The stories, entertaining in their own right, whether supposedly written by eighteen year olds or in later adult life, work not only like Chaucerian tales to reveal their teller, but have an affectionately satirical take on the nature of Guyanese fiction making. By ranging across Guyanese ethnicities, gender and time in the purported authorship of these stories, McWatt creates a richly dialogic work of fiction. And when McWatt apparently slips some of his own biography into a brilliantly comic story of betrayal (that ends in the victim's suicide), but told by another member of the group, the implications of the collection's subtitle,'Fictions of atonement'become teasingly ambiguous.

2021 CRIME FICTION PICK OF THE YEAR—DIVERSE VOICES BOOK REVIEW NAMED ONE OF CRIMEREADS''MOST ANTICIPATED CRIME BOOKS OF 2021'When your past comes back to haunt you, you are forced to see who you really are. Mariam is pregnant and fleeing an abusive marriage as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait begins. Leaving her husband Tareq for dead, she crosses the border and is evacuated with the help of Raj, who she meets at a refugee camp and suggests she assume the identity of his dead wife so she can be issued Indian papers. Twenty-five years later, Mariam is still living under the identity of Raj's Indian wife in the US. In an attempt to put her past to rest, she attends an event commemorating the anniversary of the invasion at the Kuwaiti embassy. Also in attendance is Tareq, miraculously still alive, who had assumed his wife was killed in the invasion decades before. Angry and obsessed, he begins planning his revenge. The confrontation that follows forces Mariam to confront her past as a victim and decide who she really is, once and for all.

Don't miss OPERATION BLACK KEY, the latest breathless, edge-of-your-seat thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author and bomb disposal expert, Kim Hughes GC. Available to order now. ‘A terrific start to a new series... Light the blue touch paper and retire to a comfortable chair'The Times ‘A taut thriller that seizes your attention from the first page'Daily Express ‘A powerful tale from an author who knows his stuff. Addictively compelling, you'll be reading into the small hours'Alan McDermott, author of Fight to SurviveHE THOUGHT HE'D LEFT THE WAR BEHIND. BUT IT'S COME HOME WITH HIM. A bomb explodes in a newly designed shopping complex, ripping through the lives of everyone in its wake. Confirmed as a targeted terrorist attack, special units are quickly brought in to lock down the area. For bomb-disposal expert, Staff Sergeant Dominic Riley, Afghanistan never feels far away and that's especially true on the morning of the bombing. And it's only just beginning. The bomb-maker has bigger plans in place, designed for maximum destruction. Plans that are personal to Riley - and his family. And he has no qualms about how many innocent bystanders are caught in the firestorm. But our fate is in the hands of a man who has his own demons to face. And they might just push him over the edge...Perfect for fans of Ollie Ollerton, Andy McNab and Mark'Billy'Billingham?LONGLISTED FOR THE WILBUR SMITH ADVENTURE WRITING PRIZE 2021Praise for Kim's memoir Painting the Sand:'Breathtaking. Kim Hughes is the man who stands between us and oblivion'Andy McNab (author of Bravo Two Zero)'An uplifting and enlightening account of the personal courage and dedication required to do a very lonely job in the most extreme of conditions'John Nichol (The Mail On Sunday)

A National Book Award-winning satire about the unchecked power of American capitalism, written more than three decades before the 2008 financial crisis.At the center of J R is J R Vansant, a very average sixth grader from Long Island with torn sneakers, a runny nose, and a juvenile fascination with junk-mail get-rich-quick offers. Responding to one, he sees a small return; soon, he is running a paper empire out of a phone booth in the school hallway. Everyone from the school staff to the municipal government to the squabbling heirs of a player-piano company to the titans of Wall Street and the politicians in Washington will be caught up in the endlessly ballooning bubble of the J R Family of Companies.First published in 1975 and winner of the National Book Award in 1976, J R is an appallingly funny and all-too-prophetic depiction of America's romance with finance. It is also a book about suburban development and urban decay, divorce proceedings and disputed wills, the crumbling facade of Western civilization and the impossible demands of love and art, with characters ranging from the earnest young composer Edward Bast to the berserk publicist Davidoff. Told almost entirely through dialogue, William Gaddis's novel is both a literary tour de force and an unsurpassed reckoning with the way we live now.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERLONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA AND THE PRIX MEDICISSHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSBORO BOOKS GLASS BELL AWARDWINNER OF THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRES ETRANGERWINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2020 BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, i PAPER, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SCOTSMAN, IRISH TIMES, BBC.COM, WATERSTONES.COM'A wondrous book. It left me hopeful; this is its gift'Elizabeth Strout'An empathy engine... It is, itself, an agent of change'New York Times Book Review'A quite extraordinary novel'Kamila Shamsie______________________How do we continue living once we have lost our reason to live?Rami and Bassam live in the city of Jerusalem – but exist worlds apart, divided by an age-old conflict. And yet they have one thing in common. Both are fathers; both are fathers of daughters – and both daughters are now lost.When Rami and Bassam meet, and tell one another the story of their grief, the most unexpected thing of all happens: they become best of friends. And their stories become one story, a story with the power to heal – and the power to change the world.______________________'The book goes anywhere and everywhere. It is a delirious and thrilling improvisation, a jazz solo spun out of that meeting … A spectacular structure of stories about everything'Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

Pre-order THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal and redemption, coming November 2024.••• If you read The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul and enjoyed The Beekeeper of Aleppo, you will love The Stationery Shop of Tehran ••• 1953, Tehran. In a small shop in a country on the brink of unrest, two people meet for the very first time. Roya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the stationery shop run by Mr Fakhri. The store, stocked with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick wads of writing paper, also carries translations of literature from all over the world. Bahman, with his burning passion for justice, is like no one else she has ever met. But all around them, as their relationship blossoms, life in Tehran is changing. Suddenly, shockingly, violence erupts: a coup d'etat that forever changes their country's future, as well as their own.Marjan Kamali's beautiful novel explores themes of love and loss, and delivers and unforgettable ending. ‘An enchanting romance'MY WEEKLY ‘Simultaneously briskly paced and deeply moving, this will appeal to fans of Khaled Hosseini and should find a wide audience'BOOKLIST ‘Evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful… This book broke my heart again and again'Whitney Scharer, author of THE AGE OF LIGHT ‘What a pleasure — a novel that is all at once masterfully plotted, beautifully written, and populated by characters who are arresting, lovable and so real'Elinor Lipman, author of TURPENTINE LANE ‘A beautiful and sensitive novel that I loved from the first page'Alyson Richman, international bestselling author of THE LOST WIFE ‘A beautifully immersive tale … brings to life a lost and complex world and the captivating characters who once called it home'Jasmin Darznik, New York Times bestselling author of THE GOOD DAUGHTER and SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD ‘A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love'KIRKUS REVIEWS ‘The unfurling stories… will stun readers… For those who enjoy getting caught up in romance while discovering unfamiliar history of another country'LIBRARY JOURNAL ‘Grab your tissues'BOSTON MAGAZINE ‘A tender story of enduring love.'MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE ‘I! Am! Obsessed! With! This! Book!'COSMOPOLITAN.COM

Shadow Play is a powerful novel of subterfuge, betrayal, and deep bonds of friendship formed during a time of struggle while a new nation, determined to rise, faces intense obstacles. When confronted with his call-up papers for the apartheid army, Matthew flees to Europe. In Amsterdam, he reconnects with his friend Oliver, and falls into a different rhythm of life, but the pull of his homeland never leaves. When he receives an unexpected call from a former activist comrade, he makes a decision that will risk everything. And when he meets Mandla for the first time, he knows there will be no going back. Despite the heady freedom of Matthew's new cosmopolitan city, the reality of living as a refugee and an immigrant begins to intrude, and with it a new understanding of protest politics. For Mandla, directions to a liberated country—once clear and untainted by the seduction of power—become blurred and increasingly uncomfortable. Both men have to search deep in their hearts when asked to make choices that challenge them morally, personally, and politically.

The story takes up immediately after the events of Looking Backward with the main characters from the first novel, Julian West, Doctor Leete, and his daughter Edith. West tells his nightmare of return to the 19th century to Edith, who is sympathetic. West's citizenship in the new America is recognised, and he goes to the bank to obtain his own account, or'credit card,'from which he can draw his equal share of the national product. He learns that Edith and her mother do not normally wear the long skirts he has seen them in (they had been wearing them so as not to offend his 19th century sensibilities): when Julian tells Edith that he would not be shocked to see them dressed in the modern fashion, Edith immediately runs into the house and comes out dressed in a pants suit. Clothing has revolutionised and is now made of strengthened paper, recycled when dirty, and replaced at very little cost (shoes and dishes are made of variations on the same substance). (Wikipedia)

A novel about journalism and one man's moral choices, “evoking the rhythms of Ernest Hemingway's early fiction... A quietly affecting, mournful achievement” (Richmond Times-Dispatch). Ned Ayres has never wanted anything but a newspaper career. His defining moment comes early, when Ned is city editor of his hometown paper. One of his beat reporters fields a tip: William Grant, the town haberdasher, married to the bank president's daughter and the father of two children, once served six years in Joliet. The story runs—Ned offers no resistance to his publisher's argument that the public has a right to know. The consequences, swift and shocking, haunt him throughout a long career—until eventually, as the editor of a major newspaper in post-Kennedy Washington, DC, Ned has reason to return to the question of privacy and its many violations.

Spring, 1990. After years of searching in vain, a stranger passes a scrap of paper to Zina. It's from Aziz: the man who vanished the day after their wedding almost two decades ago. It propels Zina on a final quest for a secret desert jail in southern Morocco, where her husband crouches in despair, dreaming of his former life. Youssef Fadel pays powerful testament to a terrible period in Morocco's history, known as ‘the Years of Cinders and Lead,'and masterfully evokes the suffering inflicted on those who supported the failed coup against King Hassan II in 1972.

A scurrilous newspaper has built up a large following by publishing details of political and sexual scandals. It is remarkably well-informed and has therefore created a whole host of enemies. When the editor is killed and the printing press smashed to bits, the Invisible Detectives are hired by the man who financed the production of the paper. He wants the killer brought to justice and the scandal sheet revived. Peter and Paul Skillen find themselves in great danger as they unearth an enormous amount of scandal and corruption before the villains are brought to book.

A researcher sits in the archive of the British Psychoanalytic Society in London, examining fragile pieces of paper, small notebooks, and diaries. A writer in Berlin finds himself haunted by the city's socialist-era buildings, and by their designer. Each begins to sketch the historical figure at the heart of his fixation. Joan Riviere was an early English psychoanalyst and Sigmund Freud's earliest translator. Hermann Henselmann was a German architect, famous for many of the post-war buildings of the German Democratic Republic. The two novellas about their lives form an incomplete history of Europe's 20th century—its wars, its politics and thought.

Harraga. The term means'to burn,'and it refers to those Algerians in exile, who burn their identity papers to seek asylum in Europe. But for Boualem Sansal, whose novels are banned in his own country, there is a kind of internal exile even for those who stay; and for no one is it worse than for the country's women.Lamia is thirty-five years old, a doctor. Having lost most of her family, she is accustomed to living alone, unmarried and contentedly independent when a teenage girl, Chérifa, arrives on her doorstep. Chérifa is pregnant by Lamia's brother in exile -- Lamia's first indication since he left that he is alive -- and she'll surely be killed if she returns to her parents. Lamia grudgingly offers her hospitality; Chérifa ungratefully accepts it. But she is restless and obstinate, and before long she runs away, out into the hostile streets -- leaving Lamia to track her, fearing for the life of the girl she has come, improbably, to love as family.Boualem Sansal creates, in Lamia, an incredible narrator: cultured, caustic, and compassionate, with an ironic contempt for the government, she is utterly convincing. With his deceptively simple story, Sansal delivers a brave indictment of fundamentalism that is also warm and wonderfully humane.

The Silence and the Roar takes place in an unnamed Middle Eastern country resembling Syria. The story follows a day in the life of Fathi Chin, an author banned from publishing because he refuses to write propaganda for the ruling government.On this day, the entire country has mobilized to celebrate the twenty year anniversary of the reigning despot. The heat is oppressive and loudspeakers blare as an endless, unbearably loud parade takes over the streets. Desperate to get away from the noise and the zombie-like masses, Fathi leaves his house to visit his mother, but en route stops to help a student who is being beaten by the police. Fathi's ID papers are confiscated and he is forced to return home and told to report to the police station before night falls.When Fathi turns himself in, he is led from one department to another in an ever-widening bureaucratic labyrinth. His only weapon against the irrationality of the government employees is his sense of irony. The Silence and the Roar is a funny, sexy, scathing novel about the struggle of an individual over tyranny. Tinged with a Kafkaesque sense of the absurd, it explores what it means to be truly free in mind and body, despite the worst efforts of the state to impose its will on its citizens.

Dr. Jessica Croft has avoided the players, the power, and the passions of Washington, DC. But when her estranged sister's suspicious death is classified as natural, Jessie resolves to expose the murderer. As she pursues elite suspects who'd kill to keep their secrets buried, she encounters sexy security consultant Michael Gillette, who knows more about her sister than he'll admit.Michael has a vested interest in Jessie's plight. Her sister died on his watch—while he wasn't watching. His plan to find her murderer becomes complicated when Jessie's father hires him to protect Jessie, and his interest turns from professional…to romantic. Jessie and Michael must unravel a mystery rife with political agendas, deceit, and betrayal. When confidential papers reveal a fertility scandal surrounding the enigmatic Girl Three, the two realize the danger of exposing the truth. Who is Girl Three? And will the murderer kill again to keep a secret?

'I was someone hungry for stories; more specifically, I was someone who craved after facts. I was, you see, a person with no history. Lacking this, I developed a curiosity about other's people's stories....'Clara Perez is a reporter on a small South Seas island. An orphan raised by nuns, she is a young woman with origins shrouded in mystery. Full of idealistic ambition, she grows tired of the trivial assignments she's given at the daily paper, yearning to write articles of substance. So when the tiny street of Calle de Leon bursts into flames after a student demonstration--and a soldier kills an unarmed man--Clara seizes the chance to cover the explosive story.Yet after Clara rushes to the burning street to investigate the tragedy, she discovers another, more personal one involving some remarkable truths about her unknown past--ghosts, she realizes, which have been silently pursuing her all her life. And as family secrets begin to unfold, Clara's missing history slowly spreads itself out on the tumultuous backdrop of a country wracked by revolution....An evocative and multilayered tale, at once political and personal, Eating Fire and Drinking Water is an extraordinary work, a powerful and pulsing novel of politics and commitment, loyalty and love, and the poignant search for truth.

Being the'unacknowledged legislator'of the world a literary artist derives substance for his legislation from diverse sources including politics. In the bewildering modern world which witnesses the overthrow of existing conceptualized versions and definitions political situations have also altered astonishingly. Politics, today, has acquired awesome dimensions. Socio-political dialectics dominate the global society and resultantly the world of literature, too. Present anthology surveys the premises of political consciousness in Indian English fiction since the days of India's first political novel that gave India her national song to the recent times when novelists are busy exploring the wider connotations of politics. The odyssey of Indian political novel in English is marked with sweeping waves of change whose action is measured through various synoptic papers on the giants of Indian fiction like Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, Bhabani Bhattacharya, V. S. Naipaul, Chaman Nahal, Khushwant Singh, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal, Salman Rushdie, Shashi Tharoor, Rohinton Mistry, Amitav Ghosh and Aravind Adiga. Moreover, a survey of the fiction of Sunil Sharma, P. C. K. Prem and P. V. Jaganmohan offers a glance at the wider perspective and current trends in the field of political novel. In an era when everything is politics the anthology will certainly be of great help to the teachers, researchers and scholars of English literature.

“A stylish, expertly drawn novel about the characters who made journalism what it was, and whose disappearance is making journalism what it is now” (Kirkus). Ed Clancy and Joe Shelby are journalists with The Paris Star, an English-language paper based in Paris. Relics from a time when print news was in its heyday, when being a reporter meant watching a city crumble around you as you called in one last dispatch, the Internet age has taken them by surprise. The two friends are faced with the death of what they hold most dear—their careers, and, for Shelby, a woman he cannot bring himself to mention.The Paris Correspondent is a tribute to journalism, love, and liquor in a turbulent era. Written in riveting prose that captures the changing world of a foreign correspondent's life, Alan S. Cowell's breakout novel is not to be missed. Written from personal experience and in homage to Reynolds Packard's classic Dateline Paris, there is “also a touch of Kingsley Amis in Shelby's satiric dimensions and of Saul Bellow's Ravelstein in the book's late-in-the-day confessions” (Kirkus).

Now an award-winning feature film The Human Resources Manager A suicide bomb explodes in a Jerusalem market. One of the victims is a migrant worker without any papers, only a salary slip from the bakery where she worked as a night cleaner. As her body lies unclaimed in the morgue, her employers are labelled unfeeling and inhuman by a local journalist. The manager of human resources is given the task of discovering who she was and why she had come to Jerusalem. As the image of this once-beautiful dead woman begins to obsess him, the manager turns this duty into a personal mission - he is no longer just saving his company's reputation by trying to discover her identity and assure her of a dignified funeral. He is now restoring her not only to her family and country but also to common humanity - whilst at the same time conquering the hardness of his own heart.

Considered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels.Moberg's extensive research in the papers of Swedish emigrants in archival collections, including the Minnesota Historical Society, enabled him to incorporate many details of pioneer life. First published between 1949 and 1959 in Swedish, these four books were considered a single work by Moberg, who intended that they be read as documentary novels. These editions contain introductions written by Roger McKnight, Gustavus Adolphus College, and restore Moberg's bibliography not included in earlier English editions.Book 3 focuses on Karl Oskar and Kristina as they adapt to their new homeland and struggle to survive on their new farm.'It's important to have Moberg's Emigrant Novels available for another generation of readers.'—Bruce Karstadt, American Swedish Institute

BONUS: This edition contains a The Blue Notebook discussion guide and an excerpt from James A. Levine's Bingo's Run.An unforgettable, deeply affecting debut novel, The Blue Notebook tells the story of Batuk, a precocious fifteen-year-old girl from rural India who is sold into sexual slavery by her father. As she navigates the grim realities of Mumbai's Common Street, Batuk manages to put pen to paper, recording her private thoughts and writing fantastic tales that help her transcend her daily existence. Beautifully crafted, surprisingly hopeful, and filled with both tragedy and humor, The Blue Notebook shows how even in the most difficult situations, people use storytelling to make sense of and give meaning to their lives.

A thrilling, epic novel about a young American man who is arrested for murder in Pakistan and narrowly escapes through the Himalayas, experiencing war, love, and revelation along the way. Disillusioned with American life, Nicholas Sunder has spent months backpacking through South Asia, most recently in the company of a beautiful French woman he met in India. When the woman is found brutally murdered in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, Nick is arrested and tortured by the Pakistani police, who are convinced he is the killer. Amazingly, Nick escapes their custody and heads off on foot through the steep mountains of Kashmir, the highest war zone on earth. Now a fugitive without papers, money, or a country that will welcome him, Nick is reduced to his most elemental human identity in an unforgiving mountainous landscape where his very survival is unlikely. Nick's fortune turns when he encounters an eccentric Kashmiri smuggler and his mysterious companion, Fidali. An enormous, nearly silent man, Fidali not only knows a hidden way through the mountains but makes a deep impression upon Nick through his sacrifices for others. In time, after barely surviving great violence, Nick reaches an idyllic mountain village in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where he is drawn to Aysha, a remarkable woman unlike any he has ever met, who operates a medical clinic in the remote region. It is there he will confront the divide between Islam and the West and be forced to ponder how he has reached such a place -- forced to consider, in other words, Fidali's way. Drawn from the author's own experiences trekking through Asia, Fidali's Way brims with George Mastras's deep knowledge of the Himalayan region. He has walked the lands, climbed the mountains, and met the diverse peoples who call the high Himalayas their home. Few American authors have traveled as extensively as Mastras has through these remote, dangerous, and unstable places, and his personal insight is evident on every page. Not only a powerful suspense story, Fidali's Way is a timely exploration of a politically complex region and a meditation on some of the most important issues of our time: the relationship between Islam and the West, the ruthlessness of fanatical religion, and the redemptive power of pure faith. Sweeping in its scope and moral complexity, Fidali's Way brings forth a story that only an ambitious, large-hearted novel can tell and introduces George Mastras as a major new American novelist.

Considered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels.Moberg's extensive research in the papers of Swedish emigrants in archival collections, including the Minnesota Historical Society, enabled him to incorporate many details of pioneer life. First published between 1949 and 1959 in Swedish, these four books were considered a single work by Moberg, who intended that they be read as documentary novels. These editions contain introductions written by Roger McKnight, Gustavus Adolphus College, and restore Moberg's bibliography not included in earlier English editions.Book 2 opens in the summer of 1850 as the emigrants disembark in New York City. Their journey to a new home in Minnesota Territory takes them by riverboat, steam wagon, Great Lakes steamship, and oxcart to Chisago County.'It's important to have Moberg's Emigrant Novels available for another generation of readers.'—Bruce Karstadt, American Swedish Institute

Considering whether it is moral to use radical and violent solutions to stop the destruction of the environment, this dark novel portrays a succession of fights over land rights and pollution in northern Ontario. As tensions increase, a local Canadian Native man decides to follow his vision of revenge by kidnapping the manager of the paper mill and a reporter who arrives on the scene.

In this National Book Award Finalist, a cop navigates unexplained memory gaps, a mysterious new assignment, and a world gone mad in the wake of 9/11.Officer Brian Remy has no idea how he got here. It's been only five days since terrorists attacked his city, and Remy is experiencing gaps in his life—as if he were a stone being skipped across water. He has a self-inflicted gunshot wound that he doesn't remember inflicting. He has a beautiful new girlfriend whose name he doesn't know. His son insists on mourning him, despite his being alive. And his old partner now appears on a box of First Responder cereal.While smoke still hangs over the city, Remy is recruited by a shadowy government agency assigned to gather all of the paper that was scattered in the attacks. As Remy stumbles across a dangerous plot, he realizes he must track down the most elusive target of all—himself. And the only way to do that is to return to that place where everything started falling apart.

'[Ryman] has not so much created as revealed a world in which the promise of redemption takes seed even in horror.'—The Boston Globe“Sweeping and beautiful.... The complex story tears the veil from a hidden world.”—The Sunday Times“Inordinately readable... extraordinary in its detail, color and brutality.”—The Independent'Ryman has crafted a solid historical novel with an authentic feel for both ancient and modern Cambodia.'—Washington DC City Paper“Another masterpiece by one of the greatest fiction writers of our time.”—Kim Stanley Robinson'Ryman's knack for depicting characters; his ability to tell multiple, interrelated stories; and his knowledge of Cambodian history create a rich narrative that looks at Cambodia's'killing fields'both recent and ancient and Buddhist belief with its desire for transcendence. Recommended for all literary fiction collections.'—Library JournalArcheologist Luc Andrade discovers an ancient Cambodian manuscript inscribed on gold leaves but is kidnapped—and the manuscript stolen—by a faction still loyal to the ideals of the brutal Pol Pot regime. Andrade's friends, an ex-Khmer Rouge agent and a young motoboy, embark on a trek across Cambodia to rescue him. Meanwhile, Andrade, bargaining for his life, translates the lost manuscript for his captors. The result is a glimpse into the tremendous and heart-wrenching story of King Jayavarman VII: his childhood, rise to power, marriage, interest in Buddhism, and the initiation of Cambodia's golden age. As Andrade and Jayavarman's stories interweave, the question becomes whether the tale of ancient wisdom can bring hope to a nation still suffering from the violent legacy of the last century.Geoff Ryman is the author of the novels Air (winner of Arthur C Clarke and James Tiptree awards) and The Unconquered Country (a World Fantasy Award winner). Canadian by birth, he has lived in Cambodia and Brazil and now teaches creative writing at the University of Manchester in England.

In his brilliant second novel, Dermot McEvoy sweeps his readers into the midst of one of the most heated political races in New York City history, where an unlikely player decides to make her presence known. First it hits the papers that the Virgin Mary has appeared to Jackie Swift, an affable G.O.P. congressman with a couple of nasty habits. She then appears in a dream to Wolfe Tone O'Rourke, a liberal political consultant who is still haunted by the ghost of Bobby Kennedy, whose death he feels responsible for.Swift uses the Virgin, soon styled “Our Lady of Greenwich Village,” to put a strong anti-abortion spin on his current run for office, which immediately polarizes Greenwich Village. O'Rourke, beset by his many demons, sees something familiar in the Virgin's dancing eyes and the line of her smile and decides to run against Swift with the campaign slogan “NO MORE BULLSHIT.” With help from unlikely characters like Cyclops Reilly, a one-eyed newspaper columnist for the Daily News, and Simone “Sam” McGuire, O'Rourke's pretty, no-nonsense assistant, Tone is sent on a transcontinental journey that forces him to confront his own ghosts and dig deep into his family history, all to answer one burning question: What does Our Lady of Greenwich Village really want him to do?Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

A novel of one desperate woman's hopes and desires set in contemporary Prague from “a literary gem who is too little appreciated in the West” (The Boston Globe). Divorced, approaching fifty, and mother to a rebellious fifteen-year-old, Kristyna is beginning to feel the strain of her bleak existence—until she finds a new sense of joy when she begins a love affair with a man fifteen years her junior But her escape into romance is far from complete. She worries about her daughter Jana, who has been cutting school, and may be using heroin—the latest plague on the city. And Kristyna's mother has forced her to accept the personal papers of her dead father, a tyrant whose Stalinist ideals she despised. At a crossroads in her life, she must find a way to put the past behind her and deal with the challenges of the present in a Czechoslovakia that is still trying to overcome years of communist oppression. In this Washington Post Best Book of 2001, Klima “unflinchingly presents the problems facing modern Prague and civilization in general... [and] fills it with mercy” (San Francisco Chronicle).

It's 1868 and Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., arch-cad, amorist, cold-headed soldier, and reluctant hero, is back! Fleeing a chain of vengeful pursuers that includes Mexican bandits, the French Foreign Legion, and the relatives of an infatuated Austrian beauty, Flashy is desperate for somewhere to take cover. So desperate, in fact, that he embarks on a perilous secret intelligence-gathering mission to help free a group of Britons being held captive by a tyrannical Abyssinian king. Along the way, of course, are nightmare castles, brigands, massacres, rebellions, orgies, and the loveliest and most lethal women in Africa, all of which will test the limits of the great bounder's talents for knavery, amorous intrigue, and survival.Flashman on the March—the twelfth book in George MacDonald Fraser's ever-beloved, always scandalous Flashman Papers series--is Flashman and Fraser at their best.

Stephen Mann-- loyal son, war veteran, divorced father--is the subject of Donald Anderson's contemporary short-story cycle, Fire Road. In this award-winning collection, Mann negotiates life's punches through gain and loss, love and death, and the all too random dangers of being human. Woven between each personal story are poetic vignettes of isolated moments-- the headlines in a morning paper, a political murder--and the century's most violent tragedies--the bombing of Hiroshima, the firestorm at Dresden. Each vingette is a constant, powerful reminder of the human capacity to love and, ultimately, to destroy. A bruising view of one man's tumultuous journey through life, Fire Road explores the small and large crimes we all commit in the name of love and fear, despair and longing.

A masterful tale of betrayal and violence in a tight-knit community in Northern Ireland during the last days of the Troubles, from an acclaimed Irish writer making their US debut...1994, the summer leading up to the ceasefire between Britain and the IRA. In the Northern Irish border town of Cross, after decades of violent activity protesting British rule, a community plays out its end game.Francie, a hardened yet troubled IRA man, has authorized the murder of a policeman by two teenaged henchmen. The Widow Donnelly protests in the town square because her son has gone missing. Young Cathy Murphy, a Protestant, is trying to find her place among a people who ignore her. And pathological Handy Byrnes, whose marksmanship makes him a valuable weapon, is out of control.Meanwhile, paranoia is growing because operations are beginning to go wrong. The townsfolk suspect a tout, but no one is willing to accept the evidence before their eyes.Cross is a complex tale of betrayal and brutality at the height of the Troubles, a powerful, moving, and empathetic lament for a community that has lost its way in its battle for the nation.

A sardonic, Palestinian Citizen Kane, Sand-Catcher is a dark and thrilling fable about collective memory and the many ways it can be both saved and subverted.Four Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are tasked with writing a profile on one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba, the violent expulsion of native Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. Confident that the old man will be more than willing to go on record about his experiences, the reporters are nonplussed when they are repeatedly, and obscenely, rebuffed by the man and his grandchildren. This living witness to history seems to have no desire to be interviewed, no desire for his memories to be preserved, no desire to talk. As the team's editor-in-chief puts more and more pressure on the young journalists, a battle of wills escalates to ruinous consequences that will leave no one unscathed.Omar Khalifah's debut novel Sand-Catcher is at once a polyphonic satire and a tightly plotted tale of suspense. Walking the line between gallows humor, rage, and depthless heartbreak, it is a unique reflection of contemporary Palestinian identity in all its facets.

Deep River Crossings, a novel, is set in the northern suburbs of Chicago, spanning 2010 to 2031. The book takes place in Lewis Town, a small community torn apart by urban renewal in the 1960s, which has never recovered from the trauma. Hannah has recently returned to the town to accept a job as a hospital chaplain, and in the wake of the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd, Hannah and her friends, Indigo and Roberta, launched a campaign to restore justice, balance, and peace. Competing factions clash, further dividing the historically troubled town along racial, economic, and social lines. Hannah's quest is multifaceted, encompassing sociological, spiritual, and theological dimensions. It prompts her to balance the impacts of race, class, and gender as she tries to discern her purpose in life and reclaim her equilibrium. Grounded in womanist theology and epistemology, the novel serves as a beacon for those searching for personal meaning and balance during the storms of life.

Allerorten wird der Verlust der Mitte beklagt. Auch in unseren Umgangsformen offenbart er sich: Moralismus auf der einen Seite, narzisstische Selbstentblößung und Verrohung auf der anderen. Vielleicht schlägt gerade jetzt die Stunde der lange gescholtenen »Sekundärtugenden«? Das Taktgefühl ist eine von ihnen. Es gewährt mentalen Schutz, lässt uns dem anderen mit Verständnis begegnen, ohne dass wir seine Motive zwangsläufig nachvollziehen müssen. Obgleich es auf Konventionen beruht, ist es doch mehr Improvisation als Spiel nach Noten. Mit diesem Essay legt Martin Scherer eine Analyse des Taktgefühls vor. Es ist zugleich eine Hommage an die Höflichkeit und ein Lob der distanzierten Nächstenliebe. Denn nur Abstand und Ritual bieten Schutz vor Verletzung und vermögen jene hochaggressive Spezies namens Mensch zu kultivieren.

'Dazzling... Plot-packed, emotionally extravagant, dramatically intense'Guardian A sweeping story of forbidden love, of friendship and betrayal, power and revenge, set against the tumultuous political landscape of post-Independence India The mounting curiosity amongst them was not about the identity of the victims; they all knew who the dead ones were. The only question that remained, therefore, was who amongst them had seen it happen. Vijaya and Sree are the daughters of the wealthy, landowning Deshmukh family, whose social status and power are absolute in the tiny village of Irumi. Krishna and Ranga are the sons of a widowed servant who works in the Deshmukh household. The four children should never have spoken, let alone forged a friendship. But the bonds they form are intense – and dangerous. When they are caught up in a devastating accident, the consequences ripple through their lives and send them scattering to different corners of India. Years later, when violent uprisings tear across the countryside, Vijaya and Krishna find themselves irresistibly drawn back to one another, despite the differences in their class and background. But this is not the India they once knew. Their country is changing, burning from the inside out. Irumi is no longer safe. •Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize 2024•'A heart-wrenching tale of forbidden love.'Washington Post'Rao's illuminating tale of moral corruption and redemptive love is beautifully crafted [and] heralds a terrific new talent.'Observer'A spellbinding epic of land, class and family in post-independence India.'Aube Rey Lescure

A literary tour-de-force, this vivid account of an infamous Ottoman sultan's life in exile is also a powerful indictment of the hypocrisies of the West, from the internationally bestselling author of Disquiet.Abdülhamid II ruled the Ottoman Empire for thirty-three years, from 1876 to 1909, when he was deposed following the Young Turk Revolution and sent into exile in Thessaloniki. Now, more than a century after that fateful night of April 27, Zülfü Livaneli brings to life the fascinating later days of the overthrown sultan, who precipitated the empire's collapse.Based on the memoirs of Atıf Hüseyin Bey, personal physician to Abdülhamid and his entourage in exile, this vibrant historical novel explores the nature of power while painting a nuanced psychological portrait of the man who oversaw progressive reforms yet became known as the “Red Sultan” for the Armenian massacres during his reign.

•••NOW AN AMAZON PRIME TV SERIES STARRING CHRIS PRATT•••'Jack Carr is the real deal'ANDY MCNAB'Seriously good'LEE CHILD You think you know James Reece. Think again. A storm is on the horizon. America's days are numbered. A Chinese submarine has gone rogue and is navigating towards the continental United States, putting its nuclear missiles within striking distance of the West Coast. A rising Silicon Valley tech mogul with unknown allegiances is at the forefront of a revolution in quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence. A politician controlled by a foreign power is a breath away from the Oval Office. Three seemingly disconnected events are on a collision course to ignite a power grab unlike anything the world has ever seen. The country's only hope is a quantum computer that has gone dark, retreating to the deepest levels of the internet, learning at a rate inconceivable at her inception. But during her time in hiding, she has done more than learn. She has become a weapon, positioned to act as either the country's greatest saviour or its worst enemy. She is known as ‘Alice', and her only connection to the outside world is a former Navy SEAL sniper named James Reece who has left the violence of his past life behind. With the walls closing in, James Reece is on a race to dismantle a conspiracy that has forced America to her knees in the latest high-octane page-turner from the ‘hottest author on the thriller scene today'(The Real Book Spy), #1 New York Times bestseller and former Navy SEAL Jack Carr.

“ If you found us, you're likely lost, we like to tease strangers.” When Birdie Barker Price finds an old ballot box on her front porch, she opens a Pandora's Box full of clues to Coweetsee County's corrupt elections, hidden crimes, and guilty passions. She enlists the help of her ex-husband, Roy Barker, currently campaigning for sheriff. Suspicions soon fall on Charlie Clyde Harmon, a felon who served time for a fatal arson at a Black church. He still insists he was framed by the disgraced former sheriff, but no one believes him. Filled with false charges, child brides, and murder ballads about the heartache of wronged women and the revenge they seek, Kings of Coweetsee introduces us to a people and place with a vanishing culture and an uncertain future.

In this shrewd, timely novel with the allure of old-school noir, an aging boxer and his daughter fight back against political corruption and sexual abuse.At 40, the great boxer Max Le Corre was enjoying a renaissance, back at the top of the ticket after a long absence. When he wasn't in the ring, he worked as a driver for the mayor, Quentin Le Bars. Above all, he was a father to Laura, his 20-year-old daughter who recently returned home after trying her hand at modeling.Quentin had helped Max when he was down on his luck, a seemingly washed-up fighter, and now Max hoped he would help Laura find her bearings in town. But Laura's meeting with Quentin reveals a darker side to the politician, setting in motion a chain of events that will pit Max against his benefactor.With deceptively simple, evocative prose, Tanguy Viel has crafted a brilliant takedown of the power imbalances that allow #MeToo situations to occur and fester.

What are the best ways to support political struggles that aren't your own? What are the fundamental principles of a utopia during war? Can we transcend the societal values we inherit? Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is a remarkably original, literary page-turner that explores such pressing questions of our time.A depressed writer visits a war zone. He knows it's a bad idea, but his curiosity and obsession that his tax dollars help to pay for foreign wars draw him there. Amid the fighting, he stumbles into a small strip of land that's being reimagined as a grassroots, feminist, egalitarian utopia. As he learns about the principles of the collective, he moves between a fragile sense of self and the ethical considerations of writing about what he experiences but cannot truly fathom. Meanwhile, women in his life—from this reimagined society and elsewhere—underscore truths hidden in plain sight. In these pages, real-world politics mingle with profoundly inventive fabulations. This is an anti-war novel unlike any other, an intricate study of our complicity in violent global systems and a celebration of the hope that underpins the resistance against them.

A brush with death may finally bring a father and son together, in the conclusion to the award-winning, decades-spanning series. Sir Lewis Eliot has made his way from a deprived childhood to knighthood, but when he experiences cardiac arrest during surgery, his thoughts turn to the meaning of it all. As he considers a life spent in the realms of law, government, and academia, he can't refrain from passing judgment on himself. Yet amid his melancholy musings about age and infirmity, Eliot finds his characteristic optimism has not deserted him—and looks to the future in the form of his adult son, who is part of a new generation he struggles to understand, but who remains as beloved as the day he was born... “As with [John] Galsworthy, Snow's respectable achievement has been to make honest drama out of the undramatic stuff of compromise.” —Time “A master craftsman in fiction.” —The New York Times

An emotionally devastated widower is drawn to a married woman in this “impressive” novel set in wartime England (Kirkus Reviews). Lewis Eliot has lost his deeply troubled wife, Sheila, under tragic circumstances. While her suicide has shaken Lewis to his core, it has also put an end to a painful and difficult marriage. In the wake of Sheila's passing and Britain entering the Second World War, Lewis plunges into his civil service work. During this time, he meets Margaret and begins to feel his heart stirring—and sees the possibility of healing. But Margaret already has a husband, severely complicating the attraction they both feel, in this series of historical novels that the Telegraph called “Balzacian masterpieces of the age.” “A master craftsman in fiction.” —The New York Times “An extremely shrewd observer of men and society.” —Commentary