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The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
by J. G. BallardNamed a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle A collection of 98 enthralling and pulse-quickening stories, spanning five decades, venerates the remarkable imagination of J. G. Ballard.With a body of work unparalleled in twentieth-century literature, J. G. Ballard is recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic writers in the world. With the much-hailed release of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard, readers now have a means to celebrate the unmatched range and mesmerizing cadences of a literary genius. Whether writing about musical orchids, human cannibalism, or the secret history of World War III, Ballard's Complete Stories evokes the hallucinations of Kafka and Borges in its ability to render modern paranoia and fantastical creations on the page.Includes the story "The Garden of Time," the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala Dress code.
Some Go Home: A Novel
by Odie LindseyThis "thrilling" novel that follows three generations—fractured by murder, seeking redemption—in fictional Pitchlynn, Mississippi "has the grit, power, and soul of Janis Joplin and the hardscrabble depth of Johnny Cash." (Randall Kenan)An Iraq War veteran turned small-town homemaker, Colleen works hard to keep her deployment behind her—until pregnancy brings her buried trauma to the surface. She hides her mounting anxiety from her husband, Derby, who is in turn preoccupied with the retrial of his father, Hare Hobbs, for a decades-old, civil rights–era murder. Colleen and Derby’s community, including the descendants of the murder victim, still grapple with the fallout; corrections officer Doc and his wife, Jessica, have built their life in the shadow of this violent act.As a media frenzy builds, questions of Hare’s guilt—and of the townsfolks’ potential complicity in the crime—only magnify the ever-present tensions of class and race, tied always to the land and who can call it their own. At the center of these lingering questions is Wallis House, an antebellum estate that has recently passed to new hands. A brick-and-mortar representation of a town trying to erase its past, Wallis House is both the jewel of a gentrifying 2010s Pitchlynn, and the scene of the 1964 murder itself. When fresh violence erupts on the property grounds, the battle between old Pitchlynn and new, between memorial site and moving on, forces a reckoning and irreparable loss.Some Go Home twists together personal and collective history, binding north Mississippi to northside Chicago, in a richly textured, explosive depiction of both the American South and our larger cultural legacy.
The Highland Witch: A Novel
by Susan Fletcher"This engrossing historical novel is essential for lovers of Scottish history. With its strong female protagonist, Fletcher’s latest work casts a spell that will linger over readers long after they have finished the book." —Library Journal (starred review)In 1692, brilliant, captivating Corrag—accused witch, orphaned herbalist, and unforgettable heroine—is imprisoned for her supposed involvement in a massacre in the Scottish highlands. Suspected of witchcraft and murder and awaiting her death, she tells her story to Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist who seeks information to condemn the Protestant King William, rumored to be involved in the massacre. Hers is a story of passion, courage, love, and the magic of the natural world. By telling it, she transforms both their lives.Originally published in hardcover under the title Corrag: A Novel.
Fallam's Secret: A Novel
by Denise GiardinaA master storyteller delivers an historical novel with a twist-what will become of a modern American woman in Cromwell's England? Returning home to West Virginia after her beloved Uncle John's death, Lydde finds that he has left her an odd legacy: a note with instructions that lead her to a remote mountain cave. When she falls into a crevasse, she finds she has followed her uncle farther than she thought-to Norchester, England, in 1657. Times are dark: the ruling Puritans have beheaded the king and prohibited song, dance, and even Christmas. Though she passes as a boy with her short hair and pants, local official Noah Fallam is still suspicious of her strange clothing and outspokenness. Luckily, she soon finds her uncle, and another man: the Raven, a bandit who provides for the poor through smuggling and robbery. The unlikely couple fall in love, and Lydde must decide where-and when-she belongs. This captivating story brings us close to Denise Giardina's signature concerns of faith and the way we treat the earth.
Honey for the Bears: A Novel
by Anthony Burgess"There are so few genuinely entertaining novels around that we ought to cheer whenever one turns up. Continuous, fizzing energy…Honey for the Bears is a triumph." —Kingsley Amis, New York TimesA sharply written satire, Honey for the Bears sends an unassuming antiques dealer, Paul Hussey, to Russia to do one final deal on the black market as a favor for a dead friend's wife. Even on the ship's voyage across, the Russian sensibility begins to pervade: lots of secrets and lots of vodka. When his American wife is stricken by a painful rash and he is interrogated at his hotel by Soviet agents who know that he is trying to sell stylish synthetic dresses to the masses starved for fashion, his precarious inner balance is thrown off for good. More drink follows, discoveries of his wife's illicit affair with another woman, and his own submerged sexual feelings come breaking through the surface, bubbling up in Russian champagne and caviar.
The Abyssinian Proof: A Kamil Pasha Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels) (Kamil Pasha Novels #0)
by Jenny White"An immensely enjoyable read, richly textured and wonderfully atmospheric."—Sarah Graves Constantinople, May 1453. In the dying days of the Byzantine Empire, Isaak Metochites and his family are entrusted with a silver reliquary carved with the figure of a weeping angel and the inscription: Behold the Proof of Chora, Container of the Uncontainable. Four hundred years later, magistrate Kamil Pasha is plagued by thefts of antiquities from mosques and churches and a series of murders in which the bodies bear the same distinctive mark. Sources lead Kamil to a hidden sect descended from Abyssinian slaves living in an abandoned cistern in Istanbul's gritty underworld. The reemergence of the forgotten reliquary sets off a brutal race between those sworn to protect it and those who will stop at nothing to gain its explosive secret.
The Lost Notebook of Édouard Manet: A Novel
by Maureen GibbonSet in the richly drawn art world of nineteenth-century Paris, this stunning historical novel imagines Édouard Manet’s last days in an indelible snapshot of genius, illness, and the dying embers of passion.Suffering from the complications of syphilis toward the end of his life, Édouard Manet begins to jot down his daily impressions, reflections, and memories in a notebook. He travels for healing respites in the French countryside and finds inspiration in nature—a cloud of dragonflies, peonies blanketed by the morning dew. Back in Paris, the artist holds court in his studio and meets a mysterious muse, Suzon. Entranced by Suzon’s cool blue eyes, he decides to paint his final masterpiece, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, life-sized—and wagers his health to complete it. In a sensual portrait of Manet’s last years, illustrated with his own sketches, Maureen Gibbon offers a vibrant testament to the endurance of the artistic spirit.
Island: The Complete Stories
by Alistair MacLeodWinner of the PEN/Malamud Award: “The genius of his stories is to render his fictional world as timeless.”—Colm Tóibín The sixteen exquisitely crafted stories in Island prove Alistair MacLeod to be a master. Quietly, precisely, he has created a body of work that is among the greatest to appear in English in the last fifty years. A book-besotted patriarch releases his only son from the obligations of the sea. A father provokes his young son to violence when he reluctantly sells the family horse. A passionate girl who grows up on a nearly deserted island turns into an ever-wistful woman when her one true love is felled by a logging accident. A dying young man listens to his grandmother play the old Gaelic songs on her ancient violin as they both fend off the inevitable. The events that propel MacLeod's stories convince us of the importance of tradition, the beauty of the landscape, and the necessity of memory.
Midwinter Break: A Novel
by Bernard MacLavertyShortlisted for the 2019 International Dublin Literary Award "[A] wrenchingly intimate depiction of a couple in the chilly, hibernal years of their marriage…[A book] with rare and unexpected beauty." —Wall Street JournalWith Midwinter Break, a moving portrait of retired couple Gerry and Stella Gilmore’s marriage in crisis, Bernard MacLaverty reminds us why he is regarded as one of the greatest living Irish writers. Through accurate, compassionate observation and effortlessly elegant writing, MacLaverty reveals the long-unspoken insecurities that exist between Gerry and Stella over their four-day holiday in Amsterdam, crafting a profound examination of human love.
Cascade: Stories
by Craig DavidsonFrom the best-selling author of The Saturday Night Ghost Club comes this collection of seven brilliantly cinematic short stories.Set in the Niagara Falls of Craig Davidson’s imagination—known as "Cataract City"—the superb stories of Cascade shine a shimmering light on this slightly seedy, slightly magical, slightly haunted place. The six gems in this collection each illuminate familial relationships in a singular way: A mother and her infant son fight to survive a car crash in a remote wintry landscape outside of town. Fraternal twins at a juvenile detention center reach a dangerous crisis point in their entwined lives. A pregnant social worker grapples with the prospect of parenthood as a custody case takes a dire turn. A hardboiled ex-firefighter goes after a serial arsonist with a flair for the theatrical even as his own troubled sister is drawn toward the flames. These are just some of the unforgettable characters animating this stellar collection that crackles with Davidson’s superb craft and kinetic energy: in the steel-tipped prose, in the psychological perspicacity, and in the endearing humor.
I Don't Like Where This Is Going: A Wylie Coyote Novel (A Wylie Coyote Novel)
by John Dufresne“If Raymond Chandler were reincarnated as a novelist in south Florida, he couldn’t nail it any better than John Dufresne.”—Carl HiaasenJohn Dufresne has been hailed by the New York Times as “an original talent . . . [whose] humor is frightfully dark, but . . . dazzling.” I Don’t Like Where This Is Going continues the misadventures of therapist-on-the-run Wylie “Coyote” Melville. Wylie has witnessed a woman falling to her death outside the Luxor Hotel. Troubled by the ensuing cover-up, he becomes a man on a mission, enlisting the help of his old friend, an ace card player and master magician, to help find answers. The duo’s escapades range from poker tables to desert highways, from bordellos to child beauty pageants, resulting in a thoroughly satisfying and hilarious whodunit.
The World to Come: A Novel
by Dara Horn"Nothing short of amazing." —Entertainment WeeklyA million-dollar Chagall is stolen from a museum during a singles' cocktail hour. The unlikely thief, former child prodigy Benjamin Ziskind, is convinced that the painting once hung in his parents' living room. This work of art opens a door through which we discover his family's startling history—from an orphanage in Soviet Russia where Chagall taught to suburban New Jersey and the jungles of Vietnam.
The Book of Negroes: A Novel
by Lawrence HillLawrence Hill’s award-winning novel is a major television miniseries airing on BET Networks.The Book of Negroes (based on the novel Someone Knows My Name) will be BET’s first miniseries. The star-studded production includes lead actress Aunjanue Ellis (Ray, The Help), Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men), Oscar and Emmy winner Louis Gossett Jr. (A Raisin in the Sun, Boardwalk Empire), and features Lyriq Bent (Rookie Blue), Jane Alexander (The Cider House Rules), and Ben Chaplin (The Thin Red Line). Director and co-writer Clement Virgo is a feature film and television director (The Wire) who also serves as producer with executive producer Damon D’Oliveira (What We Have).In this “transporting” (Entertainment Weekly) and “heart-stopping” (Washington Post) work, Aminata Diallo, one of the strongest women characters in contemporary fiction, is kidnapped from Africa as a child and sold as a slave in South Carolina. Fleeing to Canada after the Revolutionary War, she escapes to attempt a new life in freedom.
Lamb: A Novel
by Bernard MacLaverty“Lamb will move you by the grace of its prose and by its honesty and emotional accuracy. It is not easy to write about innocence in a world like ours but Bernard MacLaverty has done it. This is a beautiful novel.” —John Gabree, Newsday When Brother Sebastian, nee Michael Lamb, runs away from a bleak reformatory, taking with him twelve-year-old Owen Kane, the media and the police call it a kidnapping. For Lamb, though, it is a rescue of a formerly abused boy from a place of no hope, a last grasp at an elusive happiness. But as the outside world closes in, as time and money run out, Lamb finds himself moving towards a solution that is as shocking as it is loving.
Old King: A Novel
by Maxim LoskutoffOne of NPR's Books We Love in 2024 • A Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year • A CrimeReads Notable Crime Novel of 2024 In this haunting novel about the end of the frontier dream, a man tries to reinvent himself in one of America’s last wild territories, while his neighbor begins a crime spree that will tremble the nation.In the summer of 1976, Duane Oshun finds himself stranded in a remote Montana town beset by a series of strange and menacing events. He takes a job as a logger and builds a cabin on an isolated road near a reclusive neighbor—a hermit named Ted Kaczynski.The two men are captivated by the valley’s endangered old-growth forest, but Kaczynski’s violent grievances against modern society soon threaten the lives of all those around him. As Kaczynski’s bombs crescendo to the book’s devastating conclusion, Old King wrestles with the birth of the modern environmental movement, the accelerating dominion of technology in American life, and a new kind of violence that lives next door.Told in four parts sweeping across two decades, Old King establishes Maxim Loskutoff as one of the most thrilling and inventive authors of the American west, a writer “endowed with fearless audacity, stunning grace, and gutsy heart” (Nickolas Butler).
Adjustment Day: A Novel
by Chuck PalahniukNew York Times Bestseller "An irreverent satirical fantasy about a sudden and violent upheaval.…Think Tom Robbins channeling Jonathan Swift." —David Takami, Seattle TimesAdjustment Day is an ingenious darkly comic work in which Chuck Palahniuk does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society. Geriatric politicians bring the nation to the brink of a third world war to control the burgeoning population of young males, while working-class men dream of burying the elites. Adjustment Day’s arrival makes real the logical conclusion of every separatist fantasy, alternative fact, and conspiracy theory lurking in the American psyche.
The Burning Ground: Stories
by Adam O'RiordanA debut collection of stories by a poet with a “painter’s eye for detail and pianist’s touch for sounding the right notes” (Simon Armitage).Moving from remote, sun-scorched towns to the charged hum of Venice Beach, The Burning Ground is a collection of eight stories populated by men haunted by their past and by their dreams, set against the canvas of California, where beauty and bleakness go hand in hand. In “A Thunderstorm in Santa Monica,” a man’s unmoored lifestyle is reflected back at him after a long flight. In “Black Bear in the Snow,” a divorced advertising executive tries to rekindle a relationship with his son. And in the title story, “The Burning Ground,” a painter is haunted by memories of his former lover. The stories take familiar roles—the deadbeat dad, the drifting divorcé, the wayward man—and bring them new emotional depth, peeling back the layers to reveal interiors both unexpected and arresting in their complexity.Written with a poet’s lyricism and an outsider’s keen eye, Adam O’Riordan’s insightful work paints an intimate portrait of diverse male lives contending with the potential of the West Coast.
Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World
by Kathleen RaganOne hundred great folk tales and fairy tales from all over the world about strong, smart, brave heroines.Dismayed by the predominance of male protagonists in her daughters' books, Kathleen Ragan set out to collect the stories of our forgotten heroines. Gathered from around the world, from regions as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa and Western Europe, from North and South American Indian cultures and New World settlers, from Asia and the Middle East, these 100 folktales celebrate strong female heroines.Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters is for all women who are searching to define who they are, to redefine the world and shape their collective sensibility. It is for men who want to know more about what it means to be a woman. It is for our daughters and our sons, so that they can learn to value all kinds of courage, courage in battle and the courage of love. It is for all of us to help build a more just vision of woman.
Right Ho, Jeeves (Jeeves and Wooster)
by P. G. Wodehouse“To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language.”—Ben Schott Follow the adventures of Bertie Wooster and his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves, in this stunning new edition of one of the greatest comic novels in the English language. Bertie must deal with the Market Snodsbury Grammar School prize giving, the broken engagement of his cousin Angela, the wooing of Madeline Bassett by Gussie Fink-Nottle, and the resignation of Anatole, the genius chef. Will he prevail? Only with the aid of Jeeves!
The Voyage of the Morning Light: A Novel
by Marina EndicottFrom a critically acclaimed and beloved storyteller comes a sweeping novel set aboard the Morning Light, a Nova Scotian merchant ship sailing through the South Pacific in 1912.Kay and Thea are half-sisters, separated in age by almost twenty years, but deeply attached. When their stern father dies, Thea travels to Nova Scotia for her long-promised marriage to the captain of the Morning Light. But she cannot abandon her orphaned young sister, so Kay too embarks on a life-changing journey to the other side of the world.At the heart of The Voyage of the Morning Light is a crystallizing moment in Micronesia: Thea, still mourning a miscarriage, forms a bond with a young boy from a remote island and takes him on board as her own son. Over time, the repercussions of this act force Kay, who considers the boy her brother, to examine her own assumptions—which are increasingly at odds with those of society around her—about what is forgivable and what is right.Inspired by a true story, Marina Endicott shows us a now-vanished world in all its wonder, and in its darkness, prejudice, and difficulty, too. She also brilliantly illuminates our present time through Kay’s examination of the idea of “difference”—between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs and species. The Voyage of the Morning Light is a breathtaking novel by a writer who has an astonishing ability to bring past worlds vividly to life while revealing the moral complexity of our own.
Fools: Stories
by Joan SilberLonglisted for the National Book Award "'Linked' doesn’t begin to describe the complex web Silber has woven…Emotionally, it’s astounding…[A] beautiful, intricate, and wise collection." —New York Times Book ReviewWhen is it wise to be a fool for something? What makes people want to be better than they are? From New York to India to Paris, from the Catholic Worker movement to Occupy Wall Street, the characters in Joan Silber’s dazzling new story cycle tackles this question head-on.
The Family Izquierdo: A Novel
by Rubén DegolladoA Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2022 Longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award A masterful debut that weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love, and a curse.The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo’s marriage is falling apart; daughter Dina, beleaguered by the fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them—could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another. Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humor, The Family Izquierdo is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.
Saint Monkey: A Novel
by Jacinda Townsend"[A] compelling debut…Townsend's writing [is] full of fresh turns of phrase and keen insights." —Ayana Mathis, New York Times Book Review Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she’ll never get out of Kentucky—but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County. That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem—an offer she can’t resist, not even for Caroline. And in New York City the music never stops. Audrey flirts with love and takes the stage at the Apollo, with its fast-dancing crowds and blinding lights. But fortunes can turn fast in the city—young talent means tough competition, and for Audrey failure is always one step away. Meanwhile, Caroline sinks into the quiet anguish of a Black woman in a backwards country, where her ambitions and desires only slip further out of reach.Jacinda Townsend’s remarkable first novel is a coming-of-age story made at once gripping and poignant by the wild energy of the Jazz Era and the stark realities of segregation. Marrying musical prose with lyric vernacular, Saint Monkey delivers a stirring portrait of American storytelling and marks the appearance of an auspicious new voice in literary fiction.
Household Words: A Novel
by Joan SilberWinner of the PEN/Hemingway Award "Unqualified praise goes to this rarity: an extraordinary novel about ordinary people." —Chicago TribuneThe year is 1940, and Rhoda Taber is pregnant with her first child. Satisfied with her comfortable house in a New Jersey suburb and her reliable husband, Leonard, she expects that her life will be predictable and secure. Surprised by an untimely death, an unexpected illness, and the contrary natures of her two daughters, Rhoda finds that fate undermines her sense of entitlement and security. Shrewd, wry, and sometimes bitter, Rhoda reveals herself to be a wonderfully flawed and achingly real woman caught up in the unexpectedness of her own life.
The Lost Garden: A Novel
by Helen HumphreysLeaving London to grow food for the war effort, Gwen discovers a mysterious lost garden and the story of a love that becomes her own.This word-perfect, heartbreaking novel is set in early 1941 in Britain when the war seems endless and, perhaps, hopeless. London is on fire from the Blitz, and a young woman gardener named Gwen Davis flees from the burning city for the Devon countryside. She has volunteered for the Land Army, and is to be in charge of a group of young girls who will be trained to plant food crops on an old country estate where the gardens have fallen into ruin. Also on the estate, waiting to be posted, is a regiment of Canadian soldiers. For three months, the young women and men will form attachments, living in a temporary rural escape. No one will be more changed by the stay than Gwen. She will inspire the girls to restore the estate gardens, fall in love with a soldier, find her first deep friendship, and bring a lost garden, created for a great love, back to life. While doing so, she will finally come to know herself and a life worth living.