As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Her children are almost grown, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.But no one can foresee what will happen in the days and months that follow. For this is East Pakistan in 1971, a country on the brink of war. And this family's life is about to change forever.Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, 'A Golden Age' is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith, and unexpected heroism. In the chaos of this era, everyone must make choices. And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana will be forced to face a heartbreaking dilemma.

A thirteen-year-old girl must choose between her mother in Beverly Hills or her pot-growing father in the Allegheny Mountains. Dr. Bernie Roth and his wife Chloe reside in a grand hacienda in La Jolla. Their children are in college, and their disappointments are profound. But Bernie has his doctor’s bag of elixirs for the regrets of late middle age. Mrs. Barbara Stein, a high school teacher, looks like she’d sacrifice her life for Emily Dickinson’s honor. That’s camouflage―Mrs. Stein actually spends summers in the Sisyphean search for her prostitute daughter in Los Angeles.

These are some of the tales told in Kate Braverman’s audacious new story collection. These furious and often hilarious tableaus of American family life remind us of why she has been seducing readers ever since her debut novel Lithium for Medea shook the literary world nearly forty years ago.

“Braverman possesses a magical, incantatory voice and the ability to lift ordinary lives into the heightened world of myth.”―New York Times

Kate Braverman is the author of a memoir, four novels, two story collections, and four books of poetry. She is the recipient of the Economist Prize, an Isherwood Fellowship, and the O’Henry Award. Her classic short fiction has appeared in Ben Marcus’s New American Short Stories, Tobias Wolfe’s The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Best American, Carver, The Paris Review, and numerous esteemed anthologies and award-winning collections. She lives in the Bay Area.

In his first book of stories since The Bridegroom was published in 2000 ("Finely wrought. . Every story here is cut like a stone." — Chicago Sun-Times), National Book Award — winning Ha Jin gives us a collection that delves into the experience of Chinese immigrants in America.With the same profound attention to detail that is a hallmark of his previous acclaimed works of fiction, Ha Jin depicts here the full spectrum of immigrant life and the daily struggles — some minute, some grand — faced by these intriguing individuals.A lonely composer takes comfort in the antics of his girlfriend's parakeet; young children decide to change their names so that they might sound more "American," unaware of how deeply this will hurt their grandparents; a Chinese professor of English attempts to defect with the help of a reluctant former student. All of Ha Jin's characters struggle in situations that stir within them a desire to remain attached to be loyal to their homeland and its traditions as they explore and avail themselves of the freedom that life in a new country offers.In these stark, deeply moving, acutely insightful, and often strikingly humorous stories, we are reminded once again of the storytelling prowess of this superb writer.

Boyd's excruciatingly funny first novel presents an unforgettable anti-hero and a vision of Africa seldom seen. British diplomat Morgan Leafy bumbles heavily through his job in Kinjanja. When he finds himself blackmailed, diagnosed with a venereal disease, and confounded with a dead body, he realizes very little is going according to plan.

Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Now Grove Press is proud to reissue this contemporary classic by one of America's most important living writers, in a new edition of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain that includes two subsequently published stories — "Salem" and "Missing" — that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam.

From Publishers WeeklyMayle's breezy, uncomplicated fifth novel (Chasing Cezanne, etc.) and ninth book follows 30-something Max Skinner from a sabotaged financial career in London to his adoption of the Provençal lifestyle on an inherited vineyard in France. Max spent holidays at his Uncle Henry's vineyard as a child, so when he inherits the place, the prospect of returning is tempting; a generous "bridging loan" from ex-brother-in-law Charlie seals the deal. The estate, Le Griffon, is in a dire state of disrepair and the wine cellar is filled with bottles of a dreadful-tasting swill, but it's nothing that vineyard caretaker Claude Roussel and prim housekeeper Madame Passepartout can't resolve. Max settles into his new life easily thanks to the attentions of local notary Nathalie Auzet and busty cafe owner Fanny. The arrival of young Californian "wine brat" Christie Roberts, Uncle Henry's long-lost daughter, complicates matters for Max, but her surprise offer and Charlie's arrival lessen the impact of a vicious vineyard scandal involving a delicious, high-priced, discreetly produced wine called Le Coin Perdu. Mayle's simple story provides lighthearted if unadventurous reading and a fond endorsement of the pleasures of viniculture.From The Washington PostEven a hyperactive terrier will sometimes melt to the floor, paws in the air and tongue alop, when he's approached by someone he trusts. But will he get a soul-satisfying belly rub this time or just a quick pat and tickle? The expectant pooch never knows.So it is for fans of Peter Mayle, who became the adoptive bard of Provence with his phenomenally successful A Year in Provence. Will admirers open the ex-advertising man's ninth book and find the Mayle whose eye for detail and ear for language make for satisfying wallows in the south of France (the original Year, Hotel Pastis, Anything Considered) or the Mayle who sometimes slices the saucisson a bit thin in an effort to perpetuate his franchise (Toujours Provence, Encore Provence)?The short answer is that A Good Year, Mayle's latest fictional confection, winds up slightly in the latter category. Once again we have the beleaguered Brit at an unhappy crossroad. In Hotel Pastis it was Simon Shaw being stripped bare by his newly minted ex-wife; in Anything Considered it was Bennett, the Brit on his uppers trying to score by flushing toilets in closed-up manor houses to keep an invented strain of dung beetles from invading the plumbing lines (that actually was funny). And once again the sunny south comes to the rescue, with the potential for making a living without losing one's soul, with a rasher of busty, leggy women and, of course, with good food and drink.But, as the creators of television's "Law and Order" understand, why tamper with a winning formula? And thus are we launched into the marginal life of Max Skinner, a London investment banker suddenly deal-less and jobless on the streets of the City, where the day's weather forecast is for "scattered showers, followed by outbreaks of heavier rain, with a chance of hail."And all this is followed, in Peter Mayle's classic caper formula, by timely good luck (inheritance, on the very day he loses his job, of a beloved uncle's big old house and vineyard in the hilly Luberon region of Provence), more good luck (dishy village maidens and a languid new lifestyle to explore), a halfway-engaging intrigue (an unknown American rival for the estate and the mysterious interest in vines that seem to produce nothing but pipi de chat – you know, cat pee) and then more good luck (they all drink happily every after). Coming soon to a movie theater near you, thanks to filmmaker Ridley Scott, whose "nose for a good story" got Mayle started on the rather thin plot and who already has "A Good Year" in production.Are we just being cranky? Maybe. There really is a comfort factor that assures long, profitable lives to characters – fictional detectives, for instance – whose next formula book readers learn to anticipate. But when the formula is presented practically bare-bones, with only cursory attempts at embellishment, heretofore faithful readers may walk away feeling they've been snookered.Mayle's deftness with detail – grace notes rather than entire imagery-laden passages – has been thoroughly catalogued. But there's detail that moves you right along: "He turned off the N7 toward Rognes and followed the narrow road that twisted through groves of pine and oak, warm air coming through the open window, the sound of Patrick Bruel whispering 'Parlez-moi d'amour' trickling like honey from the radio." (Okay, moves you along with a little huffing and puffing.) And then there's detail that stops you cold: " 'Air France to Marseille?' The girl at the desk didn't even bother to consult her computer. 'Out of luck there, sir. Air France doesn't fly direct to Marseille from London anymore. I could try British Airways.' "Yes, by all means, please do.The caper in A Good Year revolves around a mysterious small-batch cult wine that never makes it to the wine store and trades as an investment. But given that the bulk of Mayle's faithful are presumed Francophiles and therefore at least marginally interested in viticulture, the false note on page 90 is perplexing. As Max inspects his vineyard for the first time he finds a piece of his land that "sloped away gently down to the east… the surface appeared to consist entirely of jagged limestone pebbles, blinding white in the sun, warm to the touch, an immense natural radiator. It seemed unlikely that even the most undemanding of weeds could find sufficient nourishment to grow here. And yet the vines appeared to be healthy."Perhaps Max has never read descriptions of the poor, gravelly soil in many of the finest districts of Bordeaux, source of some of the priciest wines in the world. But those who have done so are doomed to spend the next 197 pages wondering why Mayle would give the game away so early. Kindly interpretation: We're meant to read on, smiling slightly, feeling superior to poor Max. Or, darker thought: Mayle thinks we're clueless enough to fall for this.Even as venerable a novelist as Graham Greene recognized that lighter fare – Our Man in Havana, Stamboul Train – had a role to play in his life as a writer and ours as readers. He nonetheless flinched slightly, labeling these works "entertainments." As entertaining as Peter Mayle can be, he might aim a bit higher – if not for his own entertainment, then for ours.Wafer-thin saucisson, oui. Pipi de chat on the rocks? Non!***In A Good Year, Max Skinner's London career has just taken a nosedive when he suddenly inherits his uncle's vineyard in Provence. Leaving one life behind to start another, Max soon discovers that the wine made on his uncle's land is swill, but he's captivated by the village, landscape, weather, and the beautiful notaire. He can't understand why the caretaker is so eager to buy the land when the wine is so bad, and then a woman claiming to be his uncle's long-lost daughter arrives from California with her claim on the property. Max's new life threatens to fall out from under him before it can even take off. Peter Mayle (author of A Year in Provence) has written a light-hearted novel that has received positive reviews. BookPage says, "Brimming with colorful, eccentric characters, A Good Year offers both a behind-the-scenes peek at the high-stakes wine business and a voyeuristic portrait of Provencal village life. Richly evocative of the pleasures of both place and palate, Mayle's latest is sure to entertain and delight his many devotees."

Hailed as one of Agnon’s most significant works, A Guest for the Night depicts Jewish life in Eastern Europe after World War I. A man journeys from Israel to his hometown in Europe, saddened to find so many friends taken by war, pogrom, or disease. In this vanishing world of traditional values, he confronts the loss of faith and trust of a younger generation. This 1939 novel reveals Agnon’s vision of his people’s past, tragic present, and hope for the future.Cited by National Yiddish Book Center as one of "The Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature".

Winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Biography, Autobiography & Memoir.A powerful memoir of war, politics, literature, and family life by one of Europe's leading intellectuals.When George Konrad was a child of eleven, he, his sister, and two cousins managed to flee to Budapest from the Hungarian countryside the day before deportations swept through his home town. Ultimately, they were the only Jewish children of the town to survive the Holocaust.A Guest in My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, beginning with his survival during the final months of the war. Konrad captures the dangers, the hopes, the betrayals and courageous acts of the period through a series of carefully chosen episodes that occasionally border on the surreal (as when a dead German soldier begins to speak, attempting to justify his actions).The end of the war launches the young man on a remarkable career in letters and politics. Offering lively descriptions of both his private and public life in Budapest, New York, and Berlin, Konrad reflects insightfully on his role in the Hungarian Uprising, the notion of "internal emigration" — the fate of many writers who, like Konrad, refused to leave the Eastern Bloc under socialism — and other complexities of European identity. To read A Guest in My Own Country is to experience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside.

James Bray, an English colonial administrator who was expelled from a central African nation for siding with its black nationalist leaders, is invited back ten years later to join in the country's independence celebrations. As he witnesses the factionalism and violence that erupt as revolutionary ideals are subverted by ambition and greed, Bray is once again forced to choose sides, a choice that becomes both his triumph and his undoing.

Reminiscent of Aimee Bender and Karen Russell—an enthralling new collection that uses the world of the imagination to explore the heart of the human condition.Major new literary talent Ramona Ausubel combines the otherworldly wisdom of her much-loved debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, with the precision of the short-story form. A Guide toBeing Born is organized around the stages of life—love, conception, gestation, birth—and the transformations that happen as people experience deeply altering life events, falling in love, becoming parents, looking toward the end of life. In each of these eleven stories Ausubel’s stunning imagination and humor are moving, entertaining, and provocative, leading readers to see the familiar world in a new way.In “Atria” a pregnant teenager believes she will give birth to any number of strange animals rather than a human baby; in “Catch and Release” a girl discovers the ghost of a Civil War hero living in the woods behind her house; and in “Tributaries” people grow a new arm each time they fall in love. Funny, surprising, and delightfully strange—all the stories have a strong emotional core; Ausubel’s primary concern is always love, in all its manifestations.

A wry, cutting deconstruction of the Communist empire by one of Eastern Europe’s exceptional authors.Called “a perceptive and amusing social critic, with a wonderful eye for detail” by The Washington Post, Slavenka Drakulić—a native of Croatia—has emerged as one of the most popular and respected critics of Communism to come out of the former Eastern Bloc. In A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism, she offers a eight-part exploration of Communism by way of an unusual cast of narrators, each from a different country, who reflect on the fall of Communism. Together they constitute an Orwellian send-up of absurdities during the final years of European Communism that showcase this author’s tremendous talent.

Amid the turmoil of modern Damascus, one teenage boy finds his political voice in a message of rebellion that echoes throughout Syria and as far away as Western Europe. Inspired by his dearest friend, old Uncle Salim, he begins a journal to record his thoughts and impressions of family, friends, life at school, and his growing feelings for his girlfriend, Nadia. Soon the hidden diary becomes more than just a way to remember his daily adventures; on its pages he explores his frustration with the government injustices he witnesses. His courage and ingenuity finally find an outlet when he and his friends begin a subversive underground newspaper. Warmed by a fine sense of humor, this novel is at once a moving love story and a passionate testimony to the difficult and committed actions being taken by young people around the world.

These eleven stories, along with a masterful novella, mark the triumphant return of David Gates, whom New York magazine anointed “a true heir to both Raymond Carver and John Cheever.”A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me is populated by characters, young or old or neither, who are well educated, broadly knowledgeable, often creative and variously accomplished, whether as a doctor or a composer, an academic or a journalist. And every one of them carries a full supply of the human condition: parents in assisted-living—or assisted-dying—facilities, too many or too few people in their families and marriages, the ties that bind a sometimes messy knot, age an implacable foe, impulses pulling them away from comfort into distraction or catastrophe. Terrifyingly self-aware, they refuse to go gently—even when they’re going nowhere fast, in settings that range across the metropolitan and suburban Northeast to the countryside of upstate New York and New England. Relentlessly inventive, alternately hilarious and tragic, always moving, this book proves yet again that Gates is one of our most talented, witty and emotionally intelligent writers.

Stylish historical fiction in the tradition of True Grit and Carter Beats the Devil, A Hanging at Cinder Bottom is an epic novel of exile and retribution, a heist tale and a love story both.The year is 1910. Halley’s Comet has just signaled the end of the world, and Jack Johnson has knocked out the “Great White Hope,” Jim Jeffries. Keystone, West Virginia, is the region’s biggest boomtown, and on a rainy Sunday morning in August, its townspeople are gathered in a red-light district known as Cinder Bottom to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman are at the gallows, awaiting their execution. He’s Keystone’s most famous poker player; she’s the madam of its most infamous brothel. Abe split town seven years prior under suspicion of armed robbery and murder, and has been playing cards up and down the coast, hustling under a variety of pseudonyms, ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father’s saloon in shambles — and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family’s past, does the real swindle begin.Glenn Taylor, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, has a unique voice that breathes life into history and a prose style that snaps with lyricism and comedy.

This tale of an exotic adventure undertaken in the face of tragedy includes a revealing portrait of Conrad Aiken’s friend and protégé Malcolm Lowry.Blomberg has loved Noni for what seems like his whole life. He loves her like he loves the sunset, like he loves the air he breathes. But beautiful, strange, impulsive Noni — who has spent years in a passionless marriage to one of Boston’s most notorious swindlers — has only a few months to live; her heart is about to give out.Before she dies, Noni begs Blom to finance a trip to Mexico, where she can obtain a quick divorce and marry the man she loves. That man is not Blom, however, but Gil — an upstanding young gentleman who is to know nothing of Noni’s condition. With his own heart aching, Blom arranges the money, and the trio heads south on a journey that will bring them face to face with the mysteries of life and death.

"Joshua Cohen has created a visionary novel that is terrifying and heartbreaking and humbling in its luminous brilliance. In my view, it firmly places the author on the same level as Kafka." — Michael Disend, author of Stomping the Goyim"The idea that there are multiple heavens, right ones and wrong ones, white ones and black ones, is pushed to its fantastical limits by Brooklyn writer Joshua Cohen in his dream-world novel of the afterlife. . Heaven is a challenging but rewarding read on thematic and formal levels." — The Brooklyn Rail"A breathless flight of controlled delirium, an exquisitely blasphemous tour of an afterlife where earth's dominion, in all its terror and glory, trumps the miraculous and overturns the world to come. . It's a brave book that should earn its young author the reader's profound and enduring admiration." — Steve Stern, author of The Frozen RabbiWhen a ten-year-old Jewish boy is exploded on a Jerusalem street by a ten-year-old Palestinian boy, he wakes up in a heaven no one in his tradition prepared him for, a heaven of others. Joshua Cohen's novel stands at the crossroads of a conflicted city and wordplay that both celebrates and dismantles tradition.

A Heritage and its History tells the story of 69 year old Sir Edwin Challoner, and his extended family. Unmarried, and with no direct issue, Challoner's closest relation, and business associate, is his younger brother Hamish. When Hamish dies of a heart condition, his son Simon prepares to take over as head of the house, as everyone assumes that Sir Edwin will also die in a matter of months.However, Sir Edwin surprises everyone by announcing his marriage to Rhoda, his neighbour, also more than 40 years his junior. Following the return from their honeymoon, Rhoda succumbs to a moment of unbridled passion with Simon, her new husband's nephew. When Rhoda falls pregnant, there is no question who has fathered the child.A Heritage and its History, gets right to the heart of this family as it splits into factions, growing increasingly bitter and resentful. The reader watches on in amazement as two families become more and more entangled, and the path to the inheritance of this once great house and title becomes ever more twisted. Sooner or later, the secret must come out.

Early works of an author who has hit the big-time are often reissued for reasons more venal than literary. None of the pre- and post- publications of Tracy Chevalier come anywhere near the standard of The Girl with the Pearl Earring, but that didn't stop them being rushed into instant print once best-sellerdom was declared and the film came out.Andrei Makine gained international recognition only when his fourth novel, Le Testament Francais, won two prestigious prizes. Famously, the refugee from the Soviet Union who wrote in French hadn't been able to get his first novel published until he pretended it was translated from "the original Russian" by the mythical "Francoise Bour".It's a cute story, but why has that one, A Hero's Daughter, suddenly come out in English 14 years after publication? Are the translator and/or publishers jumping on a bandwagon in the light of later prizes awarded to them both?At 163 elegant pages, and featuring only two central characters – that is, "without the bewildering patronymics or the excessive length" of most Russian novels (a grab on the back cover) – A Hero's Daughter lightly realises huge moments in recent Russian history.Starting with the atrocious encounters between Germany and Russia in World War II, when existence was a frozen trench and the lads are kept going with vodka and blind loyalty ("For Stalin's sake it all made sense…"), it skips over 40 pretty good years to bring the eponymous hero into the '80s, the era of Gorbachev and perestroika.Life starts changing in ways incomprehensible to an old soldier, if 53 can be called old. Ivan feels old because he is a veteran, and because, by great good luck, he was made a Hero of the Soviet Union for simply surviving the Battle of Stalingrad. The real act of heroism that he did commit, no one ever saw. But Ivan has a precious Gold Star to prove the benevolent idiocy of the authorities, and he will never sell it, not even to numb his misery with vodka after his wife dies in their backwoods village, when life holds nothing for him.Well, not nothing. Although their son died, Ivan and Tatyana had a daughter, Olya, a model child who studied hard and went away to Moscow to become a translator. By now, Western snouts are poking greedily into Russian troughs and there is plenty of work for a girl who knows a language or two. And who is prepared to go the extra mile – the businessmen staying in the huge hotels expect more than mere translation. The valuta they pay for services rendered means that Olya can shop at the Beriozki shops for luxury goods only available in Western currency.Deep down she doesn't approve of this lifestyle, although perhaps it is justified by the small-time espionage she can engage in while her drugged clients are snoring. It all makes sense for the New Russia's sake. Though it would kill her father if he were to find out. She'd drop it all anyway, the moment she found a nice boy to marry.While Olya is ambivalent about her compromises, Ivan gets some real shocks. For the first time he is no longer trotted out to speak to local schoolchildren about his role in the great battle; and in Moscow one of his old mates spills the beans on what translators really do. Ivan gets drunk and goes berserk. The damage he does in a Beriozka becomes a radio news item, and grounds for Olya's rich Russian "fiance" to give her the flick, even though she's just survived an abortion with complications. All she wants to do is to shuck off her sordid life and take her father back to the village, where she can look after them both. Unfortunately, he dies suddenly of a heart attack. Olya sleeps with a man one last time, in order to raise the money for the coffin – flogging the Gold Star doesn't do it.The stories of Ivan and Olya are truly tough, but strangely uplifting. Life in the Soviet Union was never easy, and whatever benefits rampant capitalism might be about to provide lie outside the novel's time-frame.Meanwhile, the penury, shortages and brutal hardship that drive ordinary citizens to alcoholism and prostitution are countered by some kind of irreducible humanity. Olya emerges as an innately good girl who will one day find her proper level; Ivan is moved by an untutored morality based on vague but sound instincts. Their friends are all pals to them and to each other.The human face of Soviet society may have been covered with warts, but virtue of a sort shone out of it, as it also does from this deceptively slight, excellently translated, and deeply involving first novel.

In the not-too-distant future, competing giant fast food factions rule the world. Leonard works for Neetsa Pizza, the Pythagorean pizza chain, in a lonely but highly surveilled home office, answering calls on his complaints hotline. It’s a boring job, but he likes it — there’s a set answer for every scenario, and he never has to leave the house. Except then he starts getting calls from Marco, who claims to be a thirteenth-century explorer just returned from Cathay. And what do you say to a caller like that? Plus, Neetsa Pizza doesn’t like it when you go off script.Meanwhile, Leonard’s sister keeps disappearing on secret missions with her “book club,” leaving him to take care of his nephew, which means Leonard has to go outside. And outside is where the trouble starts.A dazzling debut novel wherein medieval Kabbalists, rare book librarians, and Latter-Day Baconians skirmish for control over secret mystical knowledge, and one Neetsa Pizza employee discovers that you can’t save the world with pizza coupons.

A tale of border warfare, military and erotic, set in the twenty-third century, where the women rule the kingdom and the men play war games. This is the fictional memoir of Wat Dryhope — edited, annotated and commented upon. History has come to an end, war is regulated as if it's all a game. But Wat, the "History Maker" himself, does not play entirely by the rules, and when a woman, Delilah Puddock, joins the fray, this 'utopian' history is further enlivened. Alasdair Gray cleverly plays with the notion and writing of history, as well as perennial modern debates on war, sexism and society — entertaining and thought-provoking, this is a delightful satire illustrated throughout by the author.