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Best Book of May 2024 by New York Post. Finalist for the 2024 Westport Prize for Literature.From the acclaimed #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a soulful and lyrical novel exploring sisterhood, motherhood, faith, love, and ultimately what gets passed down from one generation to the next At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life—between wine nights with her two best friends and her wedding just weeks away, she's happy in love and in friendship until a confession on her wedding day shifts her world. Unmoored and grieving a major loss, Lena finds herself trying to teach her daughter self-love while struggling to do so herself. Lena questions everything she's learned about dating, friendship, and motherhood, and through it all, she works tirelessly to bring the oft-forgotten Black history of Oregon to the masses, sidestepping her well-meaning co-workers that don't understand that their good intentions are often offensive and hurtful. Through Watson's poetic voice, skin & bones is a stirring exploration of who society makes space for and is ultimately a story of heartbreak and healing.

From the author of Confidence and The Comedown comes a wildly imaginative story collection about queerness, neurodivergence, sexuality, and self-discovery. Frumkin's latest book is a deliciously entertaining collection of five genre-defying stories that range from downright hilarious to brilliantly unhinged. Taken together, they celebrate a wide variety of human experiences. In the title story, a queer young adult with bipolar disorder drops out of college in a fog of depression, aimlessly drifting between maintaining their job at a fast food restaurant and dodging their mom's texts. But when they fall in with a group of sex workers starring in BDSM films, they find radical freedom, love, and community. In other stories, we meet a psychiatrist whose meticulously-maintained life is upended by an Alex Trebek-like voice in his head, an e-girl celebrity who is being courted by a delusional fan, a young boy on the spectrum at odds with a neurotypical world determined to “cure” him, and an elderly woman whose consciousness is being transformed by her oncoming death. With incredible insight, compassion, and honesty, Frumkin unravels each story with tantalizing precision. Sexy and raw—and compulsively readable—this collection offers a look at our innermost selves as we all try to make sense of the world and our place in it.

Mammoth's protagonist is a disenchanted young lesbian. She's inexperienced, irritated by life, eager to gestate, and determined to strip everything else down to essentials. She seduces men at random, swaps her urban habitat for an isolated farmhouse, befriends a shepherd, nurses lambs, battles stray cats, waits tables, cleans house, and dabbles in sex work – all in pursuit of life in the raw. This small bomb of a novel, not remotely pastoral, builds to a howling crescendo of social despair, leaving us at the mercy of Eva Baltasar's wild voice.

Las olas, en su resaca, mueven el fondo marino: unas veces juntan en la orilla piedras y conchas, y otras las alejan hasta la próxima marea. Como el mar, en esta obra de Virginia Woolf la vida une y separa a sus seis personajes. Desde la infancia hasta la madurez, la narración se va desplegando según cada uno de ellos toma la palabra y deja fluir su conciencia revelando sentimientos y vivencias que dibujan no solo la identidad de Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny y Louis, sino también el contorno de una amistad que invariablemente los une. Virginia Woolf, figura esencial de la historia de la literatura tanto feminista como modernista, es una de las principales autoras del siglo xx. En esta novela atrevida, desafiante y experimental que es considerada su obra maestra, Woolf vuelve a demostrar su inigualable talento y por qué ocupa un lugar destacado entre los clásicos.

Grappling with innate desires and LGBTQ identity, a family struggles under the oppressive expectations foisted on them by fundamentalist Christianity. Told through alternating perspectives, God of River Mud chronicles the lives of Berna Minor, her husband, their four children, and Berna's secret lover. To escape a life of poverty and abuse, Berna Cannaday marries Zechariah Minor, a fundamentalist Baptist preacher, and commits herself to his faith, trying to make it her own. After Zechariah takes a church beside the Elk River in rural Clay, West Virginia, Berna falls in love with someone from their congregation—Jordan, a woman who has known since childhood that he was meant to be a man. Berna keeps her secret hidden as she struggles to be the wife and mother she believes God wants her to be. Berna and Zechariah's children struggle as well, trying to reconcile the theology they are taught at home with the fast-changing world around them. And Jordan struggles to find a community and a life that allow him both to be safely and fully himself, as Jay, and to be loved for who he is. As the decades and stories unfold, traditional evangelical Bible culture and the values of rural Appalachia clash against innate desires, LGBTQ identity, and gender orientation. Sympathies develop—sometimes unexpectedly—as the characters begin to reconcile their faith and their love. God of River Mud delves into the quandary of those marginalized and dehumanized within a religious patriarchy and grapples with the universal issues of identity, faith, love, and belonging.

The long-awaited new book from multi-award winner Geoff RymanAn extraordinary science-fiction novel about identity, divinity and alternate reality – the story of the son of God.“Women, of course, can not be sons of God,”In the village of Nazareth, virgin Maryam and the wife of Yosef barLevi gives birth to a miracle: a little girl. She is named Avigayil, after her grandmother.But as Avigayil grows, it's clear she believes that she is destined to be someone greater than just the daughter of Maryam. From leading a gang of village boys to challenging the priests in the temple, Avigayil is determined to find her way as Yeshu, a man.Yeshu can work miracles. He can see futures. He can speak for God. A gripping, thoughtful sci-fi novel, tackling family, the multiverse and the survival of love through immense change and crisis.File Under: Science Fiction [ The Greatest Story Never Told | Child of The Faith | Apocrypha | Herstory ]

Inquiète après avoir quitté un emploi sans avenir, Tambudzai trouve refuge dans une auberge de jeunesse délabrée du centre ville de Harare, capitale du Zimbabwe. L'anxiété grandissante devant le manque d'argent et son âge avancée la poussent à emménager dans une pension de veuve et à accepter un travail de professeure de biologie. Chaque tentative de refaire sa vie la confronte à une nouvelle humiliation, jusqu'à ce que le douloureux contraste entre la vie rêvée et la réalité quotidienne l'amène à un point de rupture. En dernier recours, Tambudzai accepte un travail dans l'écotourisme et retourne dans le village de parents, nettement appauvri. Ce retour aux sources culmine dans un acte de trahison, révélant les ravages combinés du colonialisme et du capitalisme.

The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes FinalistLonglisted for the 2024 Aspen Words Literary PrizeNamed a Best of the Year Book by NPRCrackling with energy and intelligence, this debut is the'smart, subversive, funny, heartbreaking'(Kamila Shamsie) story of an exceptional teenager coming of age in the shadow of colonialism and communal violence in Nigeria.Andrew Aziza is an unusually smart fifteen-year-old in Kontagora, Nigeria. He lives with his fiercely protective mother, Gloria, and fantasizes obsessively about white girls-especially blondes. When he's not in church, at school, or hanging about town with his droogs wishing to become one of “Africa's first superheroes,” he's contemplating the larger questions with his teacher Zahrah and his equally brilliant friend Fatima, a Hausa-Fulani girl who has feelings for him. Together they discuss mathematical theorems, Black power, and what Andy has deemed the Curse of Africa.Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed Andy Africa soon falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on: Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man there claims, despite his mother's denials, to be Andy's father, and an anti-Christian mob has gathered, headed for the church. In the ensuing havoc and its aftermath, Andy is forced to reckon with his identity and desires and determine how to live on the so-called Cursed Continent.The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzlingly unique literary voice. Crackling with energy, this tragicomic novel provides a stunning lens into contemporary African life, the complicity of the West, and the impossible challenges of growing up in a turbulent world.

WINNER OF THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL • This stunning debut chronicles a tumultuous, passionate love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during one, extraordinary summer in Spain, in what is ultimately a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire.“Full of so many pleasures—literary, culinary, amorous… Fuentes has created something beautiful, honest, heartbreaking and hopeful.” —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less Is LostIt is 2007, and twenty-four-year-old Demetrio is a celebrated pastry chef in New York at the French restaurant Le Bourrelet. This will be his seventh year as the pâtissier and the chef-owner, stern but paternal, feels he should move on. When Demetrio is offered a position as head of pastries at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, he wants nothing more than to accept it.But as an undocumented immigrant he is terrified that he will be found out, so Demetrio makes the difficult decision to return permanently to his homeland which he has not seen since he was a small child. It will mean leaving the only family he knows—his beloved uncle Chus who has brought him up. On his flight to Madrid, Demetrio sits next to the handsome, playful, and sensitive Jacobo, a student at NYU going home to his aristocratic, fascist family and there is an instant, unacknowledged electricity between them.In dimly lit bars in Madrid and on pebbled beaches by the sea far outside the city, Demetrio and Jacobo's subtle but intense relationship unfolds. Demetrio is tortured by a fear of true intimacy and by anxiety about their class difference. Both are struggling with their identities and sexuality, and they avoid their true feelings until a family tragedy sets them on a collision course back into one another's lives.Countries of Origin is powerfully sensual and moving. Javier Fuentes takes you on a journey that will immerse you in the intense and heartbreaking emotions and conflicts of love and loss.

Winner of The Story Prize Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize A Time Top 10 Best Fiction Book of 2023 and Must Read Book of 2023 A New York Times Book Review Editors'Choice Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Library Journal, Electric Literature, and the New York Public Library “Expansive, haunting, and intimate, Paul Yoon's new short story collection The Hive and the Honey…shows Yoon at the height of his powers.” —Sabir Sultan, Pen America From the beloved award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a spectacular collection of unique stories, each confronting themes of identity, belonging, and the collision of cultures across countries and centuries.A boy searches for his father, a prison guard, on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family. The Hive and the Honey is a “virtuosic” (Vanity Fair) collection by celebrated author Paul Yoon, one that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that haunt a Korean settlement in Far East Russia? “Absorbing...Yoon details fully realized and flawed characters attempting to wade through the complexities of immigrant life...[and] asks urgent questions about what it really means to belong somewhere.” —Time, 100 Must-Read Books of 2023

'Funny, sharp and tender, McPherson brings great insight to the struggle to reconcile where we've come from with who we want to be.'—Diana ReidThere's who she is, where she's from, and who she could become. Sam is struggling to find her place at university. There are so many parts of her that don't seem to fit—her family doesn't understand her new life, and her new friends don't know the secrets that she carries with her: the sudden death of her father, her brother's trouble with the law, and her sense that she feels things that make her different. That changes when a lecturer introduces Sam to Julia, his charming wife and a corporate lawyer who agrees to mentor Sam through law school. Their closeness provides a way for Sam to understand who she is, and who she wants to become. With time, this unspools into a dynamic of mutual preoccupation and boundary crossing, as they navigate their feelings for one another, the appropriateness of their relationship, and where it might be heading.Higher Education is a story about identity, intellectualism and class, and the transformative power of education from an exceptional new voice in Australian literary fiction.Praise for Higher Education ‘Higher Education is a beautifully written debut. In deceptively clear-cut prose, McPherson deftly unravels what it means to be young, dazed and seeking the outline of a maturing self.'- ArtsHub'Higher Education is brilliantly sharp, comedic and insightful comment on class and growing up. This highly accomplished debut, from an author to watch, is a book for everyone's to-read lists for 2023.'—Sara Jafari, author of The Mismatch'Intelligent and funny, a book about being young and feeling old, and feeling smart and being dumb. Higher Education is an outsider story with a twist, a millennial novel with a playful quality as it subverts expectations. Beautiful, sharp writing about desire and confusion.'—Jarred McGinnis, author of The Coward'Higher Education is a stimulating, witty and life-enhancing read. McPherson navigates the nuances between societal expectations and reality. Her characters remain with you, and the slow reveal of people and their privacies is a gift in McPherson's writing.'—Tice Cin, author of Keeping the House

The aftermath of the murder of a bondage teacher reveals the darkest corners of the human mind in this chilling new mystery from the master of Japanese literary noir.Two detectives. Two identical women. One dead body— then two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan's underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice.As Togashi, a junior member of the police force, investigates the murder of a kinbaku instructor, he finds himself unable to resist his own private transgressive desires. In contrast, Togashi's Sherlock Holmesian colleague Hayama is morally upright to a fault, with a stalwart commitment to the truth and nearly superhuman powers of deduction. When Hayama notices a dangerous measure of darkness within Togashi, he embarks on a parallel investigation, which soon spirals out of control. Unflinching in its flayed-raw treatment of identity, violence, sexuality, power, the occult, and the divine, The Rope Artist is both viscerally painful and unexpectedly hopeful—a genre homage that shines a light on the most dangerous elements of the human psyche.

From one of the great modern masters of the fantastic, “A beautiful, brilliant, meditation on art, love, inspiration and what makes life worthwhile.'-- Neil Gaiman'[Carroll's] prose is spare, polished and quick-moving, sometimes lightly comic, always immensely engaging... Mr. Breakfast is pure pleasure to read. It will surprise you, make you laugh and scare you — and then, just when you think it's over, add several extra twists.'- Michael Dirda, The Washington PostGraham Patterson's life has hit a dead end. His career as a comedian is failing. The love of his life recently broke up with him and he literally has no idea what to do next. With nothing to lose, he buys a new car and hits the road, planning to drive across country and hopefully figure out his next moves before reaching California. But along the way Patterson does something his old self would never have even considered: he gets tattooed by a brilliant tattoo artist in North Carolina. The decision sets off a series of extraordinary events that changes his life forever in ways he never could have imagined. Among other things, Patterson is gifted with the ability to see in real time three different lives that are available to him. The choice is his: The life he is leading right now, or two very different ones. In all of them there is love or fame and of course danger because once he has chosen, there is no telling what will happen next. Mr. Breakfast is a dazzling, absorbing and deeply moving novel about the choices that we have to confront and face, confirming Jonathan Carroll's status as one of our greatest and most imaginative storytellers.

Life is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling. Tunde, the man at the centre of this novel, reflects on the places and times of his life, from his West African upbringing to his current work as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, and a traveller drawn to many different kinds of stories: from history and the epic; of friends, family, and strangers; those found in books and films. One man's personal lens refracts entire worlds, and back again. A weekend spent shopping for antiques is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speak out from a pulsing metropolis. Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst'history's own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles'- but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. This is narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature. Praise for Open City:'Open City is not a loud novel, nor a thriller, nor a nail-biter. What it is is a gorgeous, crystalline, and cumulative investigation of memory, identity, and erasure. It gathers its power inexorably, page by page, and ultimately reveals itself as nothing less than a searing tour de force. Teju Cole might just be a W. G. Sebald for the twenty-first century.'Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See'Beautiful, subtle, and finally, original...'James Wood, The New Yorker

CBC BOOKS CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023Peter Greenaway meets Angela Carter: a Gothic tale of secrets and revenge When the curtain rises on Malmaison, it reveals a once-enchanting estate, quietly falling into darkness and ruin, and at the heart of it, a father, one of a long line of fathers who have flourished at the expense of those around them. The silence seems peaceful, but lurking under it is a deep malevolence, scores of ugly and violent secrets kept by cast-off mistresses and abandoned daughters. Ever-greedy, the father brings in Aliénor, a woman who promises to make the lands give even more of themselves; the plants will flourish, the animals will multiply, each feast will be more sumptuous than the last. The father thinks the stage is set to satisfy his every desire, but Aliénor will bring a new script, one in which the hunters are hunted and a new reign will begin.

This carefully crafted ebook:'The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Tom Jones or, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is both a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London, and is among the earliest English prose works to be classified as a novel. It is the earliest novel mentioned by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1948 book Great Novelists and Their Novels among the ten best novels of the world. The novel is highly organized, despite its length. Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that it has one of the'three most perfect plots ever planned.'Tom Jones is generally regarded as Fielding's greatest book and as a very influential English novel.

“Brilliant.” —The Washington Post • “Nuanced and compelling.” —The New York Times From the PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author of The Madonnas of Echo Park, an engrossing dystopian novel set in a near-future America where mandatory identification wristbands turn second-generation immigrants into second-class citizens—“a well-imagined allegory of divisive racial politics” (Kirkus Reviews).Iris Prince is starting over. After years of drifting apart, she and her husband are going through a surprisingly drama-free divorce. She's moved to a new house in a new neighborhood, and has plans for gardening, coffee clubs, and spending more time with her nine-year-old daughter Melanie. It feels like her life is finally exactly what she wants it to be. Then, one beautiful morning, she looks outside her kitchen window—and sees that a wall has appeared in her front yard overnight. Where did it come from? What does it mean? And why does it seem to keep growing? Meanwhile, a Silicon Valley startup has launched a high-tech wrist wearable called “the Band.” Pitched as a convenient, eco-friendly tool to help track local utilities and replace driver's licenses and IDs, the Band is available only to those who can prove parental citizenship. Suddenly, Iris, a proud second-generation Mexican American, is now of “unverifiable origin,” unable to prove who she is, or where she, and her undocumented loved ones, belong. Amid a climate of fear and hate-fueled violence, Iris must confront how far she'll go to protect what matters to her most. “Part social commentary and part thoughtful consideration of themes that include family, identity, transitions, perspectives, and hope” (Shelf Awareness), My Name Is Iris is an all-too-possible story that offers a brilliant and timely look at one woman's journey to discover who she can't—and can—be.

An “extraordinary, ambitious” (The Times UK) novel that masterfully explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world—from the award-winning author of Open CityNew York Times Book Review Editors'Choice • “Cole's mind is so agile that it's easy to follow him anywhere.”—The New YorkerWINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Vulture, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, Library JournalLife is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling.A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing metropolis.We're invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, a traveler, drawn to many different kinds of stories: stories from history and epic; stories of friends, family, and strangers; stories found in books and films. Together these stories make up his days. In aggregate these days comprise a life.Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that engages brilliantly with literature, music, race, and history as it examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst “history's own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles,” but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. As he did in his magnificent debut Open City, Teju Cole once again offers narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature.

From the author of Elena Knows, finalist for the 2022 International Booker Prize20 years after a shocking accident, Mary Lohan returns to the Buenos Aires suburb she escaped in a fugue of guilt and isolation. She is not the same—not her name or voice, not even the color of her eyes. The neighborhood looks different too, but she's still the same woman and it's still the same place, and as the past erupts into view, they slowly collide. A Little Luck is the story about the debilitating weight of lies, the messy line between bravery and cowardice, and the tragedies, big and small, that can ripple out from a single decisive event. In a place she had determined to forget forever, both anticipated encounters and unanticipated revelations show her, and us, that sometimes life is neither fate nor chance: perhaps it's nothing more than a little luck.

All Daniel Corriente wants is to escape his past and be “normal,” but as he enters his senior year in college, he must face the past traumas that have made him who he is. During his journey, Dani will find himself at the intersections of seemingly conflicting identities — Mexican/Chicano/Anglo, thug/intellectual, straight/queer, loner/friend. Along the way, Dani will begin to weave toward clarity with the help of a therapist, feuding mentors, an elitist boss, a persistent drug addict, a former love, and an old woman obsessed with his character flaws and the pizzas with extra green peppers. If he has any hope of finding himself, Dani must ultimately answer the question posed by one of his customers—a question that haunts him at every turn: ¿Qué tipo de persona quieres ser? What kind of person do you want to be?

An unforgettable story of outrunning poverty through the power of stories and imagination.In a neglected part of town beset with social problems, from unemployment and crime to inequalities of health and education, a twelve-year-old girl sees an opportunity to claim a new identity for herself.Escaping her chaotic home life, Sherrie-Lee witnesses a bungled bank robbery and manipulates one of the failed robbers into taking her in. Alone and away from home she is free to be whoever she wants, inventing stories and personas to make sense of the seemingly random world she lives in. In her new freedom she finds a mixed sense of possibility and loneliness, along with a growing worry for her younger brother back home. But it's not long before Sherrie-Lee's deceits start catching up with her and she's forced to flee once again.Fossils expertly captures the powerless half-light of adolescence and the shaky existence of all who are lost.

When twelve-year-old Sherrie-Lee witnesses a failed bank robbery in her neglected town, she seizes an opportunity to claim a new identity for herself. Escaping her troubled home life, she tries out a new name and invents stories and personas to cover her tracks. Sherrie-Lee finds both possibility and loneliness in this new freedom, as well as an unusual friendship which she nurtures. But harsh realities close in, and she's plagued with foreboding – from her vulnerable brother at home to the climate crisis. While she dreams of a kinder world, it won't be long before her own deceits start catching up with her. This arresting debut challenges assumptions and captures the powerless yearning of adolescence with a voice that is fresh, magnetic and often funny – one that pulls you in and won't let go.

Five hundred miles from mainland Colombia, grassroots resistance, sloppy vacationers, and a muddy history of conquest converge for Verónica, returning after living in Mexico City, ready to understand herself and the place she came from.San Andrés rises gently from the Caribbean, part of Colombia but closer to Nicaragua, the largest island in an archipelago claimed by the Spanish, colonized by the Puritans, worked by slaves, and home to Arab traders, migrants from the mainland, and the descendants of everyone who came before.For Victoria – whose origins on the island go back generations, but whose identity is contested by her accent, her skin colour, her years far away – the sunburnt tourists, sewage blooms, sudden storms, and ‘thinking rundowns'where liberation is plotted and dinner served from a giant communal pot, bring her into vivid, intimate contact with the island she thought she knew, her own history, and the possibility for a real future for herself and San Andrés.

WINNER, Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award Twenty-seven-year-old Isaac Funk is broke, drifting, and questioning his lonely existence on the East Coast. Having left his conservative hometown of Newfield, Manitoba full of piss and vinegar, Isaac's dreams of studying music and embracing queer culture in Halifax have gradually fizzled out. When his grandfather dies and leaves him a substantial inheritance, Isaac is pulled back to the Prairies for the first time in ten years. Finding his father Abe just as enigmatic and unreachable as always and his extended family more fragmented than ever, Isaac begins to wonder if there will ever be a place for him in Newfield. Is the prodigal son home for good, or is it time to cut and run once more?

Winner of the AAAS Book Award for ProseAPALA Adult Literature Honor BookShortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist PrizeLonglisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut NovelA New York Times Book Review Editors'ChoiceA TIME Best Book of the YearSet in the months leading up to the 2018 nuclear missile false alarm, a Korean American family living in Hawai'i faces the fallout of their eldest son's attempt to run across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea in this'fresh, inventive, and at times, hilarious novel'(Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants)Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawaiʻi seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho's Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college and working for her parents, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales. No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won't ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family's undoing. Struggling with what they don't know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades.Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaiʻi, Joseph Han's profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK “Rosie Walsh's The Love of My Life is my favorite kind of thriller—gripping, heartbreaking and impossible to put down.”—Laura DaveFrom the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted comes a love story wrapped in a mystery: an up-all-night page-turner with a dark secret at its coreI have held you at night for ten years and I didn't even know your name. We have a child together. A dog, a house. Who are you?Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she'd do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie. And she might just have got away with it, if it weren't for her husband's job. Leo is an obituary writer; Emma a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best – researching and writing about his wife's life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn't really exist. Even her name isn't real. When the very darkest moments of Emma's past finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was... But first, she must tell him about the other love of her life.

​“Stunning... A forceful addition to the literature of the U.S.-Mexican border and its ongoing history of tragedy and joy.” —Jennifer Clement, The New York Times Book Review “Suspenseful, seductive... A thrill ride from cover to cover.” —Oprah Daily, “The 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2022” The riveting new novel by the acclaimed author of Sugar Run, Perpetual West is a brilliant and evocative story of borders—between countries, between lovers, and between facets of the self. When Alex and Elana move from smalltown Virginia to El Paso, they are just a young married couple, intent on a new beginning. Mexican by birth but adopted by white American Pentecostal parents, Alex is hungry to learn about the place where he was born. He spends every free moment across the border in Juárez—perfecting his Spanish, hanging with a collective of young activists, and studying lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) for his graduate work in sociology. Meanwhile Elana, busy fighting her own demons, feels disillusioned by academia and has stopped going to class. And though they are best friends, Elana has no idea that Alex has fallen in love with Mateo, a lucha libre fighter. When Alex goes missing and Elana can't determine whether he left of his own accord or was kidnapped, it's clear that neither of them has been honest about who they are. Spanning their journey from Virginia to Texas to Mexico, Mesha Maren's thrilling follow-up to Sugar Run takes us from missionaries to wrestling matches to a luxurious cartel compound, and deep into the psychic choices that shape our identities. A sweeping novel that tells us as much about our perceptions of the United States and Mexico as it does about our own natures and desires, Perpetual West is a fiercely intelligent and engaging look at the false divide between high and low culture, and a suspenseful story of how harrowing events can bring our true selves to the surface.

Le plus grand rêve de Clio, c'est que son père et sa mère se réconcilient pour que la famille soit réunie à Noël. Clio se dit qu'elle doit cesser de se mentir, mais c'est plus fort qu'elle. Seul le déni permet de couler des jours ordinaires dans un parfum d'éternité. En route pour l'école, ce matin-là, le dernier avant les vacances de fin d'année, Clio partage l'abribus avec Zoé, qui arrive de Vancouver où elle est tombée par hasard sur Carter promenant son chien, qui, lui, a croisé Anne-Julie qui sortait en pleine nuit de chez son ex… Ainsi s'amorce une chaîne de rencontres en apparence fortuites mais qui nous amèneront à décrire plusieurs boucles autour du monde. Tour de force narratif, ce nouveau roman de Jean-Simon DesRochers a la rigueur d'un algorithme et l'élégance d'une bande de Moebius. Les lecteurs retrouveront, dans cette suite de microrécits au rythme endiablé, l'imaginaire foisonnant qui caractérise le romancier. Il y joue en virtuose de son habileté à croquer une ahurissante galerie de personnages : adolescentes à la recherche de soi; joueurs de hockey finlandais en mal du pays; militante écologiste coréenne en visite à Tchernobyl; terroriste prête à tout sacrifier à sa soif d'absolu; tenancière de café parisien qui cherche l'amour en ligne. Tout le plaisir naît ici de la tension constante entre la structure suprêmement maîtrisée et le don de Jean-Simon DesRochers pour rendre l'aspect chaotique, désordonné, compulsif, de la vie des humains. Il en résulte un portrait aussi familier qu'inquiétant du monde contemporain, gouverné par des forces obscures, ébranlé par les attentats, traversé par les rumeurs conspirationnistes, obsédé par le sexe, où chacun est prêt à tout miser sur la moindre miette de tendresse.

A thrilling new story collection from acclaimed writer Don Lee exploring Asian American identity, spanning decades and continents'Don Lee is one of those masterful storytellers who is both classic and modern, who can transport you into any setting, with any character.'—The TODAY Show, recommended by author Weike Wang'The organizing conceit of all [Lee's] fiction has remained consistent: Asian Americans are not monoliths... Lee narrates from a collective perspective, his stories offering a kaleidoscopic vision of all the ways it feels to be yellow.'—New York Times Book Review'Nine stories feature complicated Asian American characters living insightfully depicted lives in the worlds of moviemaking, restaurants, and bedrooms.'—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review'Familiar joy is immediate as one reenters Lee's signature worlds of brilliant resonance and quiet depth. In his first short story collection since his lauded Yellow debut, Lee again questions identity, unlikely relationships, and fleeting connections... While Lee's devotees will joyfully relish casually dropped references to previous titles, new readers should savor plenty of first-time delight.'—Booklist, STARRED review'The Partition is flat-out brilliant: a witty, kaleidoscopic tear through questions of race and identity in America today by a writer who has wrought luminous fiction from these issues for years. Don Lee's collection offers vivid, entertaining proof that ethnicity is never straightforward or easy—no matter who we are, or where we stand.'—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad Twenty-one years after the publication of his landmark debut collection Yellow, Don Lee returns to the short story form for his sixth book, The Partition.The Partition is an updated exploration of Asian American identity, this time with characters who are presumptive model minorities in the arts, academia, and media. Spanning decades, these nine novelistic stories traverse an array of cities, from Tokyo to Boston, Honolulu to El Paso, touching upon transient encounters in local bars, restaurants, and hotels.Culminating in a three-story cycle about a Hollywood actor, The Partition incisively examines heartbreak, identity, family, and relationships—the characters searching for answers to universal questions: Where do I belong? How can I find love? What defines an authentic self?

Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) war ein britischer Schriftsteller und Verfasser der ersten Mystery Thriller. Aus dem Buch:'Nach Empfang dieser Mitteilung zog der Baumeister sich und seine Leute, sobald die westliche Treppe und das Geländer in Stand gesetzt waren, zurück und Porthgenna Tower blieb abermals der Obhut der Haushälterin und des Kastellans überlassen, ohne daß Herr oder Herrin, Freunde oder Fremdlinge die einsamen Gänge durchwandelt oder die leeren Zimmer belebt hätten.'

‘I anticipated the release of Summer Fun for six years, and now that I finally got to read it, its characters and story will linger with me much longer than that. I suspect it will come to be considered the Pet Sounds of trans literature: a masterpiece that feels both astonishingly new and comfortingly familiar'—Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, BabyGala, a young trans woman, works at a hostel in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She is obsessed with the Get Happies, the quintessential 1960s Californian band, helmed by its resident genius, B----. Gala needs to know: Why did the band stop making music? Why did they never release their rumored album, Summer Fun?And so she writes letters to B---- that shed light not only on the Get Happies, but paint an extraordinary portrait of Gala. The parallel narratives of B---- and Gala form a dialogue about creation--of music, identity, self, culture, and counterculture.

The novel follows its six narrators from childhood through adulthood. Woolf is concerned with the individual consciousness and the ways in which multiple consciousnesses can weave together. Bernard is a story-teller, always seeking some elusive and apt phrase. Some critics see Woolf's friend E. M. Forster as an inspiration for him. Louis is an outsider who seeks acceptance and success. Some critics see in him aspects of T. S. Eliot, whom Woolf knew well. Neville, who may be partly based on another of Woolf's friends, Lytton Strachey, seeks out a series of men, each of whom becomes the present object of his transcendent love. Jinny is a socialite whose world view corresponds to her physical, corporeal beauty. There is evidence that she is based on Woolf's friend Mary Hutchinson. Susan flees the city, preferring the countryside, where she grapples with the thrills and doubts of motherhood. Some aspects of Susan recall Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell. Rhoda is riddled with self-doubt, anxiety and depression, always rejecting and indicting human compromise, always seeking out solitude. She echoes Shelley's poem'The Question'. Rhoda resembles Virginia Woolf in some respects...

Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen (1891 –1964) published just two novels and three short stories in her lifetime, but achieved lasting literary acclaim. Her novel Passing first appeared in 1929.

An exquisitely eerie and unsettling speculative novel that grapples with questions of trauma, identity, and the workings of memory Months after her sister's death, Marianne wakes up to find a growth of thick black hairs along her spine. They defy her attempts to remove them, instead proliferating, growing longer. The hairs, Marianne's doctor tells her, are a reaction to trauma, developed in the wake of the loss of her sister, Marie. Her doctor recommends that Marianne visits Nede, a modern, New Age rehabilitation center in a remote forest in Wales where the patients attend unorthodox therapy sessions and commune with nature. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As the hairs on her back continue to grow, the past starts to entangle itself with the present and the borders of her consciousness threaten to disintegrate. She finds herself drawn back compulsively to the memory of Marie, obsessing over the impulse that drew her sister toward death and splintered her family apart. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself. Haunting, lyrical, and introspective, Garden of Earthly Bodies is a startlingly accomplished and original debut about the bond between two sisters, love and its limits, and our inability to ever truly to know the minds of others. With an intense and precise attention to the internal workings of minds and bodies and a disturbing speculative plot, the novel welcomes an assured new voice to the genre.

Tales of characters trying to find their way through the struggles of underemployment. Wendy Wimmer's debut short story collection, Entry Level, contains a range of characters who are trying to find, assert, or salvage their identities. These fifteen stories center around the experience of being underemployed—whether by circumstance, class, gender, race, or other prevailing factors—and the toll this takes on an individual. Wimmer pushes the boundaries of reality, creating stories that are funny, fantastic, and at times terrifying. Her characters undergo feats of endurance, heartbreak, and loneliness, all while trying to succeed in a world that so often undervalues them. From a young marine biologist suffering from imposter syndrome and a haunting to a bingo caller facing another brutal snowstorm and a creature that may or not be an angel, Wimmer's characters are all confronting an oppressive universe that seemingly operates against them or is, at best, indifferent to them. These stories reflect on the difficulties of modern-day survival and remind us that piecing together a life demands both hope and resilience. Entry Level was selected by Deesha Philyaw as the winner of the 2021 Autumn House Fiction Prize.

A mondegreen is something that is heard improperly by someone who then clings to that misinterpretation as fact. Fittingly, Volodymyr Rafeyenko's novel Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love explores the ways that memory and language construct our identity, and how we hold on to it no matter what. The novel tells the story of Haba Habinsky, a refugee from Ukraine's Donbas region, who has escaped to the capital city of Kyiv at the onset of the Ukrainian-Russian war. His physical dislocation—and his subsequent willful adoption of the Ukrainian language—place the protagonist in a state of disorientation during which he is forced to challenge his convictions. Written in beautiful, experimental style, the novel shows how people—and cities—are capable of radical transformation and how this, in turn, affects their interpersonal relations and cultural identification. Taking on crucial topics stirred by Russian aggression that began in 2014, the novel stands out for the innovative and probing manner in which it dissects them, while providing a fresh Donbas perspective on Ukrainian identity.

From the acclaimed author of The Last Thing to Burn, a psychological thriller about the dark secrets that emerge when a woman's twin sister is murdered, with his signature “intense, gripping, taut, terrifying, moving, and brilliant” (Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author) prose.Sisters. Soulmates. Strangers. Molly Raven lives a quiet, structured life in London, finding comfort in security and routine. Her identical twin Katie, living in New York, is the exact opposite: outgoing, spontaneous, and adventurous. But when Molly hears that Katie has died, possibly murdered, she is thrown into unfamiliar territory. As terrifying as it is, she knows she must travel across the ocean and find out what happened. But as she tracks her twin's final movements, cracks begin to emerge, and she slowly realizes her sister was not who she thought she was and there's a dangerous web of deceit surrounding the two of them.

Publishing for the first time with Grove Atlantic, Pulitzer Prize finalist and celebrated author of seven novels Jonathan Dee delivers a daring, tense, ticking time bomb of a novel about an anonymous white man on the run from his own identity.“This propulsive and furious book is as fun to read as it is relentless and unsparing. Deranged and faltering America, Jonathan Dee has your number.” —Joshua Ferris, author of The Dinner PartyIn Jonathan Dee's elegant and explosive new novel, Sugar Street, an unnamed male narrator has hit the road. Rid of any possible identifiers, his possessions amount to $168,548 in cash stashed in an envelope under his car seat. Vigilantly avoiding security cameras, he drives until he hits a city where his past is unlikely to track him down, and finds a room to rent from a less-than-stable landlady whose need for money outweighs her desire to ask questions. He seems to have escaped his former self. But can he?In a story that moves with swift dark humor and insight, Dee takes us through his narrator's attempt to disavow his former life of privilege and enter a blameless new existence. Having opted out of his material possessions and human connections, the pillars of his new self - simplicity, kindness, above all invisibility - grow shakier as he butts up against the daily lives of his neighbors in their politically divided working-class city. With the suspense of a crime thriller and the grace of our best literary fiction, Dee unspools the details of our unlikely hero's former life and his developing new one in a drumbeat roll up to a shocking final act.Dee has been compared by the Wall Street Journal to authors such as Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan for his expansive, contemporary, social novels; Sugar Street is a leaner, more personal, but still uncannily timely look at the volatile America of today. A risky, engrossing and surprisingly visceral story about a white man trying to escape his own troubling footprint and start his life over.

An instant New York Times bestseller!A New York Times Notable Book of 2022“Batuman has a gift for making the universe seem, somehow, like the benevolent and witty literary seminar you wish it were...This novel wins you over in a million micro-observations.” —The New York Times “Batuman is a genius, rendering human folly at its most colorful and borderline surreal.” —VogueFrom the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin's quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthoodSelin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it's sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin's elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan's weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel—a life worthy of becoming a novel—without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice—no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER This delightful debut rom-com follows the adventures of a woman trying to connect with her South Asian roots and introduces readers to a memorable cast of characters in a veritable feast of food, family traditions, and fun.Manny Dogra is the beautiful young CEO of Breakup, a highly successful company that helps people manage their relationship breakups. As preoccupied as she is with her business, she's also planning her wedding to handsome architect Adam Jamieson while dealing with the loss of her beloved parents. For reasons Manny has never understood, her mother and father, who were both born in India, always wanted her to become an “All-American” girl. So that's what she did. She knows next to nothing about her South Asian heritage, and that's never been a problem—until her parents are no longer around, and an image of Manny that's been Photoshopped to make her skin look more white appears on a major magazine cover. Suddenly, the woman who built an empire encouraging people to be true to themselves is having her own identity crisis. But when an irritating client named Sammy Patel approaches Manny with an odd breakup request, the perfect solution presents itself: If they both agree to certain terms, he'll give her a crash course in being “Indian” at his brother's wedding. What follows is days of dancing and dal, masala and mehndi as Manny meets the lovable, if endlessly interfering, aunties and uncles of the Patel family, and, along the way, discovers much more than she could ever have anticipated.

From the award-winning author of Under the Udala Trees and Happiness, Like Water comes a brilliant, provocative, up-to-the-minute novel about a young white man's education and miseducation in contemporary America.Harry Sylvester Bird grows up in Edward, Pennsylvania, with his parents, Wayne and Chevy, whom he greatly dislikes. They're racist, xenophobic, financially incompetent, and they have quite a few secrets of their own. To Harry, they represent everything wrong with this country. And his small town isn't any better. He witnesses racial profiling, graffitied swastikas, and White Power signs on his walk home from school. He can't wait until he's old enough to leave. When he finally is, he moves straight to New York City, where he feels he can finally live out his true inner self.In the city, he meets and falls in love with Maryam, a young Nigerian woman. But when Maryam begins to pull away, Harry is forced to confront his identity as he never has before—if he can. Brilliant, funny, original, and unflinching, Harry Sylvester Bird is a satire that speaks to all the most pressing tensions and anxieties of our time—and of the history that has shaped us and might continue to do so.

Flying doesn't always mean freedom. Anna is a regular teenaged girl. She runs track with her best friend, gets good grades, and sometimes drinks beer at parties. But one day at track practice, Anna falls unconscious... but instead of falling down, she falls up, defying gravity in the disturbing first symptom of a mysterious disease. This begins a series of trips to the hospital that soon become Anna's norm. She's diagnosed with lepidopsy: a rare illness that causes symptoms reminiscent of moths: floating, attraction to light, a craving for sugar, and for an unlucky few, more dangerous physical manifestations. Anna's world is turned upside down, and as she learns to cope with her illness, she finds herself drifting further and further away from her former life. Her friends don't seem to understand, running track is out of the question, and the other kids at the disease clinic she attends once a week are a cruel reminder that things will never be the same. From debut author Heather Kamins comes a beautiful and evocative story about one girl's journey of choosing who she wants to be--in a life she never planned for.

If the mermaid doesn't swim back to the sea, but instead goes ashore, she will learn to walk on two legs. Perhaps, she will even learn to dance...... In her early thirties, Summer lives alone, jobless, with little material wants. Her only passion is dancing. To be more specific, ballroom dancing. She is at an awkward position: she started too late to be competition-worthy, yet takes dancing far too seriously to be a mere pastime. Her solitary existence poses another obstacle: you need a partner in the ballroom, where'men lead, women follow'is the ironclad rule. Under the tutelage of the legendary Donny, Summer embarks on a journey of self-discovery and, perhaps more importantly, in search of the perfect partner. Her hopes are dashed again and again as she witnesses (and sometimes partners with) the colorful characters in the ballroom: the arrogant youngster Youlin from a dancing dynasty; the talented Grace who wants nothing but an ordinary life; and the petite Meixin, forever at war with her fiance/partner. There is of course Donny, the gay dancer ferociously committed to competition and every bit as traditional as most straight men. As Summer continues her pursuit for Mr Right, she is forced to confront the dark memories of her past: the slut-shaming from her control-freak mother, the attempted suicide of her cousin, and the painful humiliation of sex with a classmate. She dreams of the perfect dancing body, yet dreads her own sexuality. The Mermaid's Tale is a beautiful solo dance of a novel. It brings to mind the exploration of the female body in The Vegetarian and the madness of the dance world of Black Swan, but is told in a lighter voice at once dreamy, whimsical, and scintillating. Written in the author's darkest days, it is nevertheless a book about life and freedom.

Longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the stories in What Isn't Remembered explore the burden, the power, and the nature of love between people who often feel misplaced and estranged from their deepest selves and the world, where they cannot find a home. The characters yearn not only to redefine themselves and rebuild their relationships but also to recover lost loves—a parent, a child, a friend, a spouse, a partner. A young man longs for his mother's love while grieving the loss of his older brother. A mother's affair sabotages her relationship with her daughter, causing a lifelong feud between the two. A divorced man struggles to come to terms with his failed marriage and his family's genocidal past while trying to persuade his father to start cancer treatments. A high school girl feels responsible for the death of her best friend, and the guilt continues to haunt her decades later. Evocative and lyrical, the tales in What Isn't Remembered uncover complex events and emotions, as well as the unpredictable ways in which people adapt to what happens in their lives, finding solace from the most surprising and unexpected sources.

This science-fiction novel for adults tells the story of a man who undergoes a memory transfer under conditions that science isn't yet able to explain. When André wakes up on a flight from Australia to Canada with someone else's identity, he finds himself in a very surprising and embarrassing situation. How will he manage to cope in the short and long term? A most unusual journey awaits him as soon as his plane lands. Sometimes the curtain between fiction and reality lifts up. Such a transfer may one day be possible thanks to progress made by science.

Pour son premier roman, Henri E. Najm a peint d'une plume exquise l'histoire de L'Homme sans Nom. C'est une histoire qu'on ne peut situer ni dans l'espace ni dans le temps. Une leçon de vie dans un monde de plus en plus matérialiste et standardisé qui perd son âme. Un roman poignant au style simple et poétique, mêlant sentiments, passions et réflexions. Il invite à l'évasion et à s'interroger sur le droit d'être différent, d'être soi-même tout simplement.

A Recommended Read from: Entertainment Weekly • Buzzfeed • Good Morning America • USA Today • Harper's Bazaar • Fortune • A.V. Club • The Millions • Lit Hub • International Examiner • Publishers WeeklyWhen her husband suddenly disappears, a young woman must uncover where he went—and who she might be without him—in this striking debut of immigration, identity, and marriage.After another taxing day as the sole female employee at her New York City tech startup, Edwina comes home to find that her husband, Marlin, has packed up a suitcase and left. The only question now is why. Did he give up on their increasingly hopeless quest to secure their green cards and decide to return to Malaysia? Was it the death of his father that sent him into a tailspin? Or has his strange, sudden change in personality finally made Marlin and Edwina strangers to each other?As Edwina searches the city for traces of her husband, she simultaneously sifts through memories of their relationship, hoping to discover the moment when something went wrong. All the while, a coworker is making increasingly uncomfortable advances toward her. And she can't hide the truth about Marlin's disappearance from her overbearing, eccentric mother for much longer. Soon Edwina will have to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to stay in her marriage and in America.Poignant and darkly funny, Edge Case is a searing meditation on intimacy, estrangement, and the fractured nature of identity. In this moving debut, YZ Chin explores the imperfect yet enduring relationships we hold to country and family.“Chin's specificity and wonderfully drawn minor characters add depth and richness…. Not only a subtly provocative depiction of the tech industry, and this country, as tilting ever more off-kilter; but also a realistic portrayal of a woman in crisis.” —Lauren Oyler, The New York Times Book Review

The winner of the prestigious The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award.In those first moments, that admission felt precious to me: it was something that I alone had been deemed worthy enough to carry and I was grateful. I was grateful to finally know, but I still couldn't speak.Something was wrong, she knew it, but she was entirely unprepared for what he would tell her.Viewed through the lens of a relationship breakdown after one partner discloses to the other that they are transgender, this autofiction spans eighteen months: from the moments of first discovery, through the eventual disintegration of their partnership, to the new beginnings of independence.In diaries and letters, Now That I See You unfolds a love story that, while often messy and uncomfortable, is a poignant and personal exploration of identity, gender, love and grief.'An insightful novel... absorbing page-turner from the start.'Hsu-Ming Teo, previous winner of The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award for Love and Vertigo

Nella Larsen's 1929 novella follows friends Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two black women who pass as white. Their anxieties about passing culminate in tragedy, revealing the powerful repercussions of hiding one's identity. Nearly a century later, Larsen's exploration of race remains urgent and relevant as ever.

Sur le plateau de Bernard Pivot, le 5 février 1988, un auteur québécois s'illustre. Sous l'œil fasciné de Jacques Attali et de Pierre Assouline, Réal Lessard parle de son autobiographie, L'Amour du faux, qui vient de paraître chez un éditeur parisien renommé et qui connaît un grand succès. On y apprend que son auteur est un peintre aux talents multiformes. Lessard raconte la vie rocambolesque qu'il a partagée avec tous les grands noms du monde des faussaires de son époque. Et parmi eux, Fernand Legros, le marchand qui a également été son amant et qui l'a initié à la « grande vie », Elmyr de Hory, alias « la princesse de Transylvanie », à qui Orson Welles a consacré un film, ou encore l'écrivain Clifford Irving, qui a créé un immense scandale en publiant de faux mémoires du multimilliardaire Howard Hughes. Lessard y parle aussi de son activité artistique, que son enfance à Mansonville annonçait déjà, et raconte comment nombre de ses tableaux se sont retrouvés sur les cimaises des plus grands musées du monde, sauf qu'ils sont signés par d'autres noms que le sien. Ceux de Matisse, de Van Dongen et de Picasso, par exemple. Du moins, c'est ce qu'il affirme. Mais qui se souvient de Réal Lessard aujourd'hui? Sa trace réapparaît puis s'efface de nouveau, ne laissant dans son sillage qu'une aura de mystère. Et surtout, qui est-il? Génie à l'égal des grands maîtres qu'il imite? Artiste à la vocation dévoyée? Bandit de grand chemin? Justicier qui défend l'art véritable contre les prétentions des spécialistes? L'auteur de Ma vie rouge Kubrick se lance ici à la recherche du « vrai » Réal Lessard. En chemin, il partage avec nous des réflexions sur des questions qui ont toujours été proches de ses préoccupations. Est-il possible de tracer la frontière entre vérité et fiction? Qu'est-ce qu'un nom? Pourquoi prend-il tant d'importance? A-t-on le droit de raconter la vie de quelqu'un d'autre? Livre labyrinthe où l'auteur prend un malin plaisir à nous égarer, Fait par un autre nous invite à un étonnant voyage au pays de la vérité et du mensonge.