In Lotería, the spellbinding literary debut by Mario Alberto Zambrano, a young girl tells the story of her family’s tragic demise using a deck of cards of the eponymous Latin American game of chance.
 
With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, she retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards. Each of the cards’ colorful images—mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars—sparks a random memory.
 
Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.

Beautiful full-color images of lotería cards are featured throughout this intricate and haunting novel.

The essence and meaning of transcendent love between two people—the kernel of human existence—is often found in the crucible of war. Such was the love between Bosko, a Serbian boy, and Admira, a Bosnian girl, who were caught in one of the most barbaric and brutal periods of the last century: the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The true story of Bosko and Admira captured the world’s attention, and the couple was embraced as the Romeo and Juliet of war-torn Sarajevo.

They would not be parted, even as they lived like animals among the dead and the dying; even as they hid from those who sought to destroy them. Bosko would not leave Admira when he had the chance. Admira risked her life so that they would never be separated. Caught in the maelstrom of a war, they lived their lives with passion and unbounded love for each other.

This novel is a fictionalized account of their love story.

In Sarajevo, where there was peace within despair and love amongst the hate on the blood-soaked sidewalks and ancient walls, it is said by some that you can still hear the whisper of these two lovers:

"Was there a time my love when we were not together."
"Never…never a time we shall not be together."

Mady Barnard is a thirty-three year old unmarried woman, who still lives with her mother…

However, it cannot go unnoticed that “Bad luck’s been on her even since she was born” .

Ever since then, her difficulties, combined with her unfriendly temperament, have become a favourite topic of conversation in the local community…

The Women’s League, in particular, can’t stop discussing Mady’s life, with their enthusiastic gossiping over regular cups of tea making it all too-clear that traditional village life is full of secrets and rumours.

But then a trip to Bristow results in an unlikely relationship forming between Mady and a local Welshman and no one is quite sure what the future has in store for them…

And soon flooding and forest fires disrupt family harmony and despite everything, the idea of community has never felt so strong, or as necessary.

Empathy and grievance are combined as each family tells of their distressing events and before long, marriage, birth and death connect them together.

Upon Several Occasions is an emotional literary tale, full of lively characters and creates a portrait of a community bound together.

Elizabeth Berridge (December 1919 – December 2009) was a novelist and critic. Born in London, where she was partly educated here, she later moved to Geneva. Berridge won the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award, in 1964 for Across The Common.

‘No Hymn of Hate is among them, no glorification of slaughter, no note of boastfulness or blatancy, but a deep love of country, a clear, rational sense of the tragedy and dire necessity of what must be done...’

Published in 1918, this book is a biographical collection of war poems written by soldiers who lost their lives serving their country on the Western Front during the Great War.

Written tenderly and with a surfeit of emotion, Arthur St. John Adcock, a skilled anthologist, takes Chaucer and Pope as evidence that English poets have always discussed warfare and conflict.

Some of the soldiers who perished were scholarly, who had been to good public schools and the great universities to learn discipline and the arts, and combined them in their texts. Many others were less educated, and experimented for the first time, leaving behind raw emotion unencumbered by rhetorical flourishes.

Poets whose names have lasted the ages feature, such as Rupert Brooke, among forty or so men who wrote of various subjects while on the front. Sometimes they recalled happier times, while at others they documented the grim realities of war.

The natural world, the danger of weapons and the sense of honour and patriotism all come through in the verses quoted in the book, the lives of whose writers gives a context to already powerful text.

We have an anthology here from men who did not live to see their words inside it which, a hundred year after Armistice, remains a glorious tribute to the words of the fallen.

Arthur St. John Adcock (17 January 1864 – 9 June 1930), was a journalist, novelist and poet whose books included Songs of the War, Love in London and The Booklover’s London.

Becca Meister Fitzpatrick—wife, mother, grandmother, and pillar of the community—is the dutiful steward of her family’s iconic summer tradition . . . until she discovers her recently deceased husband squandered their nest egg. As she struggles to accept that this is likely her last season in Long Harbor, Becca is inspired by her granddaughter’s boldness in the face of impending single-motherhood, and summons the courage to reveal a secret she was forced to bury long ago: the existence of a daughter she gave up fifty years ago. The question now is how her other daughter, Rachel—with whom Becca has always had a strained relationship—will react.


Eden is the account of the days leading up to the Fourth of July weekend, as Becca prepares to disclose her secret and her son and brothers conspire to put the estate on the market, interwoven with the century-old history of Becca’s family—her parents’ beginnings and ascent into affluence, and her mother’s own secret struggles in the grand home her father named “Eden.”

A brief, unnerving, and exceptionally hard-hitting novel about time and loss as only the bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of White Noise and Underworld can tell it.

In this potent and beautiful novel, the writer The New York Times calls “prophetic about twenty-first-century America” looks into the mind and heart of a scholar who was recruited to help the military conceptualize the war.

We see Richard Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker and by Elster’s daughter Jessica—an “otherworldly” woman from New York. The three of them build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event turns detachment into colossal grief, and it is a human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.

“Fast-paced, interesting—and as deep as they come! It’s Cloud Atlas meets a Course in Miracles, after Hemingway meets Bukowski in a cafe for drinks!”

“An emotional tour de force and breathtaking adventure in forgiveness!”

“Engripping! A novel so novel it takes a new word to describe.” ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

A quiet night over coffee. A new page in life.

Both would be Maya's last.

And that was just the beginning...

Cut from equal parts steel and soul, Maya Lee is tenacious and smart as they come.

She might bend—but she never breaks.

Outmaneuvered, exiled, bleeding out on a cold December coffeehouse floor... only to open her eyes to a blood-stained forest, in the middle of Rome’s worst nightmare since Hannibal.

These are the past and future lives of Maya Lee,

Her epic sweep through history

Spurned in her yearning for the love of a charismatic revolutionary, struggling against the weight of an Empire, she struggles to walk the gripping, gut-wrenching line between death and redemption, loss and forgiveness, illusions and peace…

Can Maya awaken in love before she loses everyone and everything—before she loses hereself?

“A modern spiritual parable... but with characters you'll actually give a damn about.”

“The path to enlightenment, in all its awesome, gruesome—and ultimately redeeming vision!”

“Choose: Snakes or Ladders: A Psychological Coming-of-Age Novel” from hot new contemporary fiction author, Sally Forest.

This is “a well-plotted tale of human growth, sexuality, and self-discovery which will be enjoyed by readers of women’s fiction and literary fiction alike.”
Mitty is a young girl brought up in a punitive sect who escapes to a typist job in the city - a step to fulfilling her dreams of being a lady. She is hampered by deep fears of hell and punishment, and utter ignorance of the facts of life.

The 1950’s – sex, drugs and rock and roll, but not in the small towns of Australia. There were lots of jobs, clothes and wealth in the cities but this threatened the values of the past - a culture where men desire and decide, while women love and serve.

Miss Mitty Bedford knew the outside world through Hollywood movies at the local Pictures, only to find in real life that there can be nasties behind smiling, beautiful faces.

A stalker’s attack clashes with her newfound joy in sensual self-discovery inspired by a crush on her boss, and her love for decent, loving, traditional Col. She writhes between shame, repentance and joy.  Mitty wants a career and respect, but what path must she choose? She needs love, but does she want freedom more?

This emotional and dramatic journey to win trust, love and independence, will keep readers turning the pages, as well as provoking questions that still apply today.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Harper’s Bazaar • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian • The Kansas City Star • National Post • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews

From Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding work of fiction that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush, richly layered novel in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling.

In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub–Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor’s office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining.

Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world.

Once the line between worlds is breached on a grand scale, Dunia’s children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights—or two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights. It is a time of enormous upheaval, in which beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse.

Inspired by the traditional “wonder tales” of the East, Salman Rushdie’s novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in today’s world. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is satirical and bawdy, full of cunning and folly, rivalries and betrayals, kismet and karma, rapture and redemption.

Praise for Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“Rushdie is our Scheherazade. . . . This book is a fantasy, a fairytale—and a brilliant reflection of and serious meditation on the choices and agonies of our life in this world.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian

“One of the major literary voices of our time . . . In reading this new book, one cannot escape the feeling that [Rushdie’s] years of writing and success have perhaps been preparation for this moment, for the creation of this tremendously inventive and timely novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“A wicked bit of satire . . . [Rushdie] riffs and expands on the tales of Scheherazade, another storyteller whose spinning of yarns was a matter of life and death.”—USA Today

“A swirling tale of genies and geniuses [that] translates the bloody upheavals of our last few decades into the comic-book antics of warring jinn wielding bolts of fire, mystical transmutations and rhyming battle spells.”—The Washington Post

“Great fun . . . The novel shines brightest in the panache of its unfolding, the electric grace and nimble eloquence and extraordinary range and layering of his voice.”—The Boston Globe


From the Hardcover edition.

A high school jock and nerd fall in love senior year, only to part after an amazing summer of discovery to attend their respective colleges. They keep in touch at first, but then slowly drift apart.

Flash forward twenty years.

Travis and Craig both have great lives, careers, and loves. But something is missing .... Travis is the first to figure it out. He's still in love with Craig, and come what may, he's going after the boy who captured his heart, even if it means forsaking his job, making a fool of himself, and entering the great unknown. Told in narrative, letters, checklists, and more, this is the must-read novel for anyone who's wondered what ever happened to that first great love.

COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE

"A true leftfield wonder: Days Without End is a violent, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making."—Kazuo Ishiguro, Booker Prize winning author of The Remains of the Day and The Buried Giant

“A haunting archeology of youth . . . Barry introduces a narrator who speaks with an intoxicating blend of wit and wide-eyed awe, his unsettlingly lovely prose unspooling with an immigrant’s peculiar lilt and a proud boy’s humor.”—The New York Times Book Review

From the two-time Man Booker Prize finalist Sebastian Barry, “a master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal), comes a powerful new novel of duty and family set against the American Indian and Civil Wars

Thomas McNulty, aged barely seventeen and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.

Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.

A “gripping dystopian fantasy” (Kirkus Reviews) that brims with romance and suspense, from the author of The Body Finder.

In the violent country of Ludania, the language you speak determines your class, and there are harsh punishments if you forget your place—looking a member of a higher class in the eye can result in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina (Charlie for short) can understand all languages, a dangerous ability she’s been hiding her whole life. The only reprieve from oppression is within the drug-filled underground club scene. There, she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy who speaks a language she’s never heard, and her secret is almost exposed. As the violent clashes between the totalitarian monarchy and the rebel forces escalate, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country’s only chance for freedom from the terrible grip of a deadly regime.
     Kimberly Derting, author of The Body Finder series, writes powerfully and movingly of a girl with dangerous powers in an unusual and expertly crafted setting.

Winner of the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction

“I read The Life and Death of Sophie Stark with my heart in my mouth. Not only a dissection of genius and the havoc it can wreak, but also a thunderously good story.”—Emma Donoghue, New York Times bestselling author of Room

“This novel is perceptive, subtle, funny and lingers in unexpected ways. The analysis of a woman who puts her art above all else is equal parts inspiration and warning story. Anna North makes prose look easy.”—Lena Dunham

Gripping and provocative, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark is a haunting story of fame, love, and legacy told through the propulsive rise of an iconoclastic artist. Sophie Stark begins her filmmaking career by creating a documentary about her obsession, Daniel, a college basketball star. But when she becomes too invasive, she finds herself the victim of a cruel retribution. The humiliation doesn’t stop her. Visionary and unapologetic, Sophie begins to use stories from the lives of those around her to create movies, and as she gains critical recognition and acclaim, she risks betraying the one she loves most.

Told in a chorus of voices belonging to those who knew Sophie best, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark is an intimate portrait of an elusive woman whose monumental talent and relentless pursuit of truth reveal the cost of producing great art. It is “not only a dissection of genius and the havoc it can wreak, but also a thunderously good story” (Emma Donoghue).

William Shakespeare's The Tempest retold as Hag-Seed
 
Felix is at the top of his game as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds.
 
Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And also brewing revenge.
 
After twelve years, revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here, Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It's magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?
 
Margaret Atwood’s novel take on Shakespeare’s play of enchantment, retribution, and second chances leads us on an interactive, illusion-ridden journey filled with new surprises and wonders of its own.

In a world where the South has won the Civil War…

It’s 1982. A hundred years have passed since the South emerged victorious in the War of Northern Aggression. From the ashes of the aftermath, the industrial North has evolved into the technical center of the modern world, while the agrarian South, now broken up into Protectorate territories overseen by Protectors, props up its culture with vicious oppression. But now the South is in dire economic straits. Their refusal to allow slaves to use technology in their work has made their system obsolete and unable to compete with the global economy. Something must be done.

Patrick Edgerton is the leader of the Railway Association, an underground network devoted to freeing slaves. When Patrick learns of the horrifying “final solution” to the South’s economic predicament, he teams up with Olivia Askew, a Southern Protector’s daughter. Now, it’s up to them to prevent the mass genocide the South is proposing.

Southern Republic brings to life vivid details about the dual nations created when the South succeeded in defending its way of life, and asks the question, ‘What would our world look like if the South had won the Civil War?’

As Lord Byron, who no doubt survived many an awkward situation himself, said, “Always laugh whenever you can. It is cheap medicine."

In the Glow of the Lavalamp delivers ten stories of sex gone hilariously wrong, set in the bathtubs, back seats, battlegrounds, and bedrooms of America. These tales confirm that bizarre is indeed the nature of the universe and humor may be the best path through it.

A grad student rappels down the side of a building on a bed sheet in an attempt to escape shame. An unlikely couple destroys a family heirloom when desire careens out of control. A bumbling lothario nearly beheads his lover when his seduction plans go awry. A middle-aged woman finds herself entwined in a passionate embrace at a Civil War battlefield. Earnest people, hell-bent on believing that reality lies at the surface of things, scramble toward acceptance of their humanity as they stumble over the unspoken and unacknowledged.

You'll laugh, grimace, maybe even shriek with recognition. Odd as it may seem, tales of bad sex and other misfortunes can restore your faith in humankind, in your ability to weather the chaos of life, and in the healing power of laughter. Light and redemption glitter among the catastrophes within these pages.

Jendi Reiter's debut novel offers a backstage look at the glamour and tragedy of 1990s New York City through the eyes of Julian Selkirk, an aspiring fashion photographer. Coming of age during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Julian worships beauty and romance, however fleeting, as substitutes for the religion that rejected him. His spiritual crisis is one that too many gay youth still face today. This genre-bending novel couples the ambitious political analysis of literary fiction with the pleasures of an unconventional love story. Vivid social realism, enriched by unforgettable characters, eroticism, and wit, make Two Natures a satisfying read of the highest sort.

A war on vice In Washington, DC—a city constantly awash in scandals? Hard to believe, but it really happened. Only not exactly the way it’s told here.

In an upscale residential neighborhood, in a perfectly respectable apartment building, one of the best-known, high-priced call houses on the East Coast operates quietly on the top floor. Everything goes along smoothly until the DC Police and the FBI try to outdo each other in waging a war on vice.

This funny, fast-paced novel casts 1940s Washington DC as the main character, not just the setting. And as the adolescent world capital fills up with trainloads of hopefuls, you’ll get to know Mattie Simon, who wants some adventure, and Andrew Stevens, the newly elected congressman, who only wants to serve his country. But Washington has a way of changing people—even when they get what they want.

C.P. Stiles’ crisp writing and sharp eye for detail keep you smiling as you take in a Washington that never dreamed of today’s scandals—but was on its way to them.

Brilliant young trial attorney J.T. Lockman finds himself in the trial of a lifetime when he's appointed to represent an innocent African American man accused of murdering a wealthy white man in a county where the Klan has ruled supreme for many years. Lindsey Wilkens, a proud family man, has already experienced the impact of racism on a jury verdict. He was charged with dealing in stolen property for selling an electric saw he found abandoned in the woods as he walked home from work. He went to trial against his attorney's advice and learned that innocence didn't matter when it came to a finding of guilt in a courtroom set in one of the state's most infamously racist counties. Now, when he finds himself in the bowels of a jailhouse run by the sheriff whose reputation is what gives the county its shameful notoriety, he turns to the same attorney, a man he'd learned to love during his first experience with criminal justice.

Lockman embraces the chance to right what he considered a terrible wrong the first time his client was convicted, but he faces the wrath of public opinion, as well as the anger of his friends, family, and the woman he loves as he takes on the establishment of the county, bringing to the surface the many ghosts of its racist and violent past. In doing so, he must also come to terms with his own past if he will have any chance to save his relationship with the first woman he's ever really loved. This is a book that makes us face the reality of our past, but carries within its pages a hope for a future where we, as a society, may be able to move beyond the disease of racism, although the journey may destroy the lives of many along the way.