A laugh-out-loud account of an outrageously rugged hike-by the beloved comic author of Lost Continent and Notes from a Small Island. Published on the 75th anniversary year of the Appalachian Trail.

There was a time when the world was sweeter....when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats.... Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the shy, almost ethereal daughter of the town's Baptist minister....Jamie, who was destined to show him the depths of the human heart—and the joy and pain of living. The inspiration for this novel came from Nicholas Sparks's sister: her life and her courage. From the internationally bestselling author Nicholas Sparks, comes his most moving story yet....

There was a time when the world was sweeter....when the women in Beaufort, North Carolina, wore dresses, and the men donned hats.... Every April, when the wind smells of both the sea and lilacs, Landon Carter remembers 1958, his last year at Beaufort High. Landon had dated a girl or two, and even once sworn that he'd been in love. Certainly the last person he thought he'd fall for was Jamie, the shy, almost ethereal daughter of the town's Baptist minister....Jamie, who was destined to show him the depths of the human heart—and the joy and pain of living. The inspiration for this novel came from Nicholas Sparks's sister: her life and her courage. From the internationally bestselling author Nicholas Sparks, comes his most moving story yet....

In his long-awaited, vastly innovative new novel, Naipaul, "one of literature's great travelers" (Los Angles Times), spans continents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiography and a fictional archaeology of colonialism. "Dickensian. . a brilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life and work."-New York Times.“Intricate … poignant … fabulous … a potent blend of fact and fiction, autobiography, history, imagination.”— Washington Post Book World“Naipaul is an artful arranger. His technique is to layer memory and history so that the past is an iridescence that colors the present.”— Time“Whichever way the narrative takes us … characters, ideas, events [are] elegantly juggled, set down and picked up again with a technical brilliance that comes with a lifetime’s experience…. Brave … fascinating … A Way in the World is a beautiful lament.”— Caryl Phillips, New Republic“A Way in the World is full of Proustian moments, fragments of memory that, once recovered, open up past worlds that bear unexpectedly on the present…. There are many pleasures in this book: finely honed prose, wry humor, exact observation, rich anecdotes.”— Wall Street Journal“Naipaul, master of literature, is playing historical trickster for us.… His reasoning and presentation are flawless, styled in English at its purest.… One cannot help but be fascinated by this cast of the master’s dice.”— Philadelphia Inquirer

With her wedding ceremony an hour away, Andrea Kleinman excused herself from the preparations to make a long-distance call — to an old and very special friend in New York City...

Can a “liberated” woman go home again?...

Andrea Kleinman has frequently played her special brand of roulette... now she goes for a final lifetime gamble — to find out if home as in hometown is a real and possible place. After education at Bryn Mawr College, and living free and fairly easy in pursuit of the “best of everything” in the Big Apple, she goes “home” to Buffalo, to marry lawyer Mark Benstock — a steady man — to take comfort in known quantities and to find out whether a lifetime journey (a “week” of seven days out of twelve years) back through old places can bring a real fulfillment.

Diary of A Man Housewife... Up the Sandbox... and A Week As Andrea Benstock — a novel about a girl who, after trying to shake her fear of flying, gives old-fashioned a new try and lives to tell about it.

Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood — his home.Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, his story is one of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.

ACCLAIM FOR Haruki Murakami“[A Wild Sheep Chase is] a bold new advance in international fiction…. Youthful, slangy, political, and allegorical.”—The New York Times“Murakami’s writing injects the rock ‘n’ roll of everyday language into the exquisite silences of Japanese literary prose.”—Harper’s Bazaar“[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature.”—Newsday“Greatly entertaining…. Will remind readers of the first time they read Tom Robbins or … Thomas Pynchon.”—Chicago Tribune“Murakami captures a kind of isolation that is special in its beauty, and particular to our time…. His language speaks so directly to the mind that one remembers with gratitude what words are for.”—Elle“[A Wild Sheep Chase] begins as a detective novel, dips before long into screwball comedy, and at its close—when the dead speak—becomes a tale of possession. That such unruly, disjunctive elements mingle harmoniously within it is perhaps the signal feat in this highly accomplished piece of craftsmanship.”—Brad Leithauser, The New Yorker“A world-class writer who has both eyes open and takes big risks…. If Murakami is the voice of a generation, then it is the generation of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.”—The Washington Post Book World

Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize — winning author of The Hours.A poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away — the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder — are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation.Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers living in his mother's basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans.Reimagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, and exquisitely illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, rarely have our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true.

A suicide bomb explodes in a Jerusalem market. One of the victims is a migrant worker without any papers, only a salary slip from the bakery where she worked as a night cleaner. As her body lies unclaimed in the morgue, her employers are labelled unfeeling and inhuman by a local journalist.

Hailed by Time as an "extravagantly comic" novel, A Woman Named Drown is a wild and strange journey through America's South that follows a young PhD dropout who falls in with an amateur actress-cum-pool shark On the brink of earning his doctorate in chemistry, the unnamed narrator decides to chuck it all away in favor of real life. So begins an odd pilgrimage through the American South. In Tennessee, our hero is bewitched by an older, gin-swilling, pool-playing sometimes-actress who claims to have recently starred in a theatrical production about a "woman named Drown." He moves in with her and just as quickly begins encountering her strange compatriots. Before he knows it, they're heading farther south together-to Florida-where the data that the dropout scientist is collecting from life's laboratory is about to get quite contradictory. Richly influenced by offbeat literary giant Donald Barthelme, Padgett Powell's A Woman Named Drown offers readers a smorgasbord of literary strangeness-a surreal series of adventures in which nothing much-and yet everything-happens at once."We are on the border of Donald Barthelme's never-never land. . Powell is very funny. His characters are raffish clowns with foul mouths and a kind of crazy sweetness. This is special stuff. There's a lot of vivid life here." — People"Powell's ear for Southern speech is impeccable." — Publishers WeeklyPadgett Powell is the author of six novels, including The Interrogative Mood and You & Me. His novel Edisto was a finalist for the National Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Little Star, and the Paris Review, and he is the recipient of the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Whiting Writers' Award. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches writing at MFA@FLA, the writing program of the University of Florida.

From New York Times bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford comes a triumphant novel of an unforgettable womanDetermined to rise above all that she has ever known, a young and impoverished Emma Harte embarks on a journey first of survival, then of unimaginable achievement. Driven to succeed, the iron-willed Emma parlays a small shop into the world's greatest department store and an international business empire: Harte Enterprises.Unhappily married twice, loving only the one man she can never marry, personal happiness eludes her. Harte Enterprises, the realization of her grand dreams, is her all: her heart, her soul, her life. When those closest to her threaten to destroy her empire through their greed and envy, Emma brilliantly outwits her enemies. She wreaks her devastating revenge on those who would betray her in a way only she knows how.Drawing us into the mesmerizing life of a remarkable woman who dared to seize a dream and was willing to pay any price to make it come true, Barbara Taylor Bradford's deeply involving novel is a celebration of an indomitable spirit.

Toby Hood, a young Englishman, shuns the politics and the causes his liberal parents passionately support. Living in Johannesburg as a representative of his family's publishing company, Toby moves easily, carelessly, between the complacent wealthy white suburbs and the seething, vibrantly alive black townships. His friends include a wide variety of people, from mining directors to black journalists and musicians, and Toby's colonial-style weekends are often interspersed with clandestine evenings spent in black shanty towns. Toby's friendship with Steven Sithole, a dashing, embittered young African, touches him in ways he never thought possible, and when Steven's own sense of independence from the rules of society leads to tragedy, Toby's life is changed forever.

Amazon.com ReviewWho hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Provençal cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all Côtes-du-Rhône and fleur-de-lis? Author Peter Mayle answers that question with wit, warmth, and wicked candor in A Year in Provence, the chronicle of his own foray into Provençal domesticity.Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year's Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. "We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers," he writes, "looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window." He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool-its lack of central heating. Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict with the idyll when the Mistral, that frigid wind that ravages the Rhône valley in winter, cracks the pipes, rips tiles from the roof, and tears a window from its hinges. And that's just January.In prose that skips along lightly, Mayle records the highlights of each month, from the aberration of snow in February and the algae-filled swimming pool of March through the tourist invasions and unpredictable renovations of the summer months to a quiet Christmas alone. Throughout the book, he paints colorful portraits of his neighbors, the Provençaux grocers and butchers and farmers who amuse, confuse, and befuddle him at every turn. A Year in Provence is part memoir, part homeowner's manual, part travelogue, and all charming fun. – L.A. SmithFrom Publishers WeeklyAn account of the author's first frustrating but enlightening year in Provence opens with a memorable New Year's lunch and closes with an impromptu Christmas dinner. "In nimble prose, Mayle… captures the humorous aspects of visits to markets, vineyards and goat races, and hunting for mushrooms," said PW.***One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors, A Year in Provence is a light-hearted autobiography as well as a travel/restaurant guide and cultural study of the south of France. Peter Mayle, once a British businessman, has finally chucked it all and bought a house in Provence with his wife and two dogs. He recounts a year of their adventures living and working amid the French, including daily struggles with the strong Provençal accent, the nosiness of neighbors, and the self-proclaimed experts on everything from geophysics to truffle hunting. His humorous yet affectionate approach will make you long for France, particularly the south, whether or not you've ever been there.You won't be able to stop laughing when you read about the author's discovery of French bureaucracy and the bone-chilling winter wind called the Mistral, his desperate tactical maneuvering to get his house remodeled, and the hordes of rude tourists. You'll be tickled by his observations of French greetings and body language. You'll love his French neighbors and hate his English friends. And you will be starving after reading his mouth-watering descriptions of dozens of restaurants and dinner parties.Whether you are interested in learning more about French, "the Hexagon," or cuisine française, A Year in Provence is the book to get you started on your cultural discovery of the south of France. The best discovery of all is that Peter Mayle continues to write about Provence, both non-fiction and novels. You will definitely want to seek out all of his books and continue learning about the people, traditions, and food of southern France.Laura K. Lawless

"Duras's language and writing shine like crystals." — The New Yorker"A spectacular success. . Duras is at the height of her powers." — Edmund WhiteAvailable for the first time in English, Abahn Sabana David is a late-career masterpiece from one of France's greatest writers.Late one evening, David and Sabana — members of a communist group — arrive at a country house where they meet Abahn, the man they've been sent to guard and eventually kill for his perceived transgressions. A fourth man arrives (also named Abahn), and throughout the night these four characters discuss existential ideas of understanding, capitalism, violence, revolution, and dogs, while a gun lurks in the background the entire time.Suspenseful and thought-provoking, Duras's novel calls to mind the plays of Samuel Beckett in the way it explores human existence and suffering in the confusing contemporary world.Marguerite Duras wrote dozens of plays, film scripts, and novels, including The Ravishing of Lol Stein, The Sea Wall, and Hiroshima, Mon Amour. She's most well-known for The Lover, which received the Goncourt Prize in 1984 and was made into a film in 1992. This is her third book to be published by Open Letter.Kazim Ali is a poet, essayist, and novelist, and has published a translation of Water's Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri in addition to co-translating Duras's L'Amour. He teaches at Oberlin College and the University of Southern Maine.

La marshal Mackenzie Stewart estaba pasando un tranquilo fin de semana en New Hampshire, en la casa de su amiga la jueza federal Bernadette Peacham, cuando fue atacada. Ella pudo repeler el ataque, pero el agresor consiguió escapar. Todo sugería que se trataba de un loco violento… hasta que llegó el agente del FBI Andrew Rook.Mackenzie había roto con él su norma de no salir con agentes del orden, pero sabía que él no se había desplazado desde Washington para verla, sino porque trabajaba en su caso. A medida que continuaba la caza del misterioso atacante, el caso dio un giro inesperado cuando Mackenzie siguió a Rook a Washington y descubrió que un antiguo juez amigo de Bernadette, ahora caído en desgracia y convertido en informador de Rook, había desaparecido.Mackenzie y Rook comprenderían entonces que había más en juego de lo que pensaban y que se enfrentaban a una mente criminal que no tenía nada que perder y estaba dispuesta a jugárselo todo.

Abba Abba is about two poets who may or may not have met in Rome in 1820-1821. One was John Keats, who was dying in a house on the Spanish Steps. The other was Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli a great poet, though little known outside Rome. The first part of the book is about Keats and Belli. The second part presents Belli himself as poet, translated by Mr. Burgess.

A quiet tour de force, Chris Bachelder's Abbott Awaits transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, startlingly depicting the intense and poignant challenges of a vulnerable, imaginative father as he lives his everyday American existence.In Abbott we see a modern-day Sisyphus: he is the exhausted father of a lively two-year old, the ruminative husband of a pregnant insomniac, and the confused owner of a terrified dog. Confronted by a flooded basement, a broken refrigerator, a urine-soaked carpet, and a literal snake in the woodpile, Abbott endures the beauty and hopelessness of each moment, often while contemplating evolutionary history, altruism, or the passage of time.An expectant father and university teacher on summer break, Abbott tackles the agonizing chores of each day, laboring for peace in his household and struggling to keep his daughter clean and happy, all while staving off a fear of failure as a parent, and even as a human being. As he cleans car seats, forgets to apply sun block, clips his dog's nails, dresses his daughter out of season, and makes unsuccessful furniture-buying trips with his wife, his mind plays out an unrelenting series of paradoxical reflections. Abbott's pensive self-doubt comes to a head one day in late June as he cleans vomited raspberries out of his daughter's car seat and realizes: "The following propositions are both true: (A) Abbott would not, given the opportunity, change one significant element of his life, but (B) Abbott cannot stand his life."Composed of small moments of domestic wonder and terror, Abbott Awaits is a charming story of misadventure, anxiety, and the everyday battles and triumphs of parenthood.

"Wenn du dich als Achtjähriger, als Dreizehnjähriger, als Sechzehnjähriger denkst, erkennst du dich in ihnen wieder?""Ja. Und sehr gerne dazu.""Gibt es einen Lebensabschnitt, in dem du dir fremd vorkommst?""Zwischen fünfundzwanzig und dreißig ein bisschen fremd. Gestern und vorgestern sehr fremd.""Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung. Welche Reihenfolge?""Liebe, Hoffnung, Glaube. Wenn ich den anderen dabei zusehe.""Bei dir selber?""Keine Ahnung. Ich denke, das gilt nur bis sechzig oder siebzig. Bei den Auserwählten vielleicht etwas länger." Er lacht."Was ist das Größte, das du in deinem leben vollbracht hast?"Keine Antwort darauf."Abendland" ist im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes ein Generationenroman. Mit großer erzählerischer Kraft wird dargestellt, wie die unterschiedlichsten Menschen jenseits der politischen und historischen Wechselfälle aufeinander angewiesen sind und aneinander hängen, warum sie sich gegeneinander auflehnen und wie sie dann doch ihren Frieden schließen. In einem bewegenden Panorama des 20. Jahrhunderts werden die großen historischen Sündenfälle und die kleinen privaten Reaktionen darauf beschrieben. Ein solches Buch hat es in der deutschen Literatur schon lange nicht gegeben.

Set at a boardinghouse in rural New Jersey in the summer of 1939, this novel revolves around four people who experience the comedies, torments and rare pleasures of family, romance and sex while on vacation from Brooklyn and the Depression. Billy Recco, an eager ten-year-old in search of a father. . Marie Recco, nèe McGrath, an attractive divorcèe caught between her son and father, without a life of her own. . John McGrath, dignified in manner yet brutally soured by life, insanely fearful of his daughter's restlessness. . Tom Thebus, a rakish salesman who precipitates the conflict between Marie's hopes and her father's wrath.We follow these individuals through the events of thirty-six hours, culminating in Tom's disastrous near seduction of Marie. As the novel's perspective shifts to each of these characters, four discrete stories take form, stories that Sorrentino further enriches by using a variety of literary methods—fantasies, letters, a narrative question-and-answer, fragments of dialogue and memory. Strong and unforgettable, each voice is compelling in itself, yet in the end is only part of a complex, painful pattern in which dreams go unfulfilled and efforts unrewarded.What emerges is a sure understanding of four people who are occasionally ridiculous, but whose integrity and good intentions are consistently, and tragically, frustrated. Combining humor and feeling, balancing the details and the rhythms of experience, Aberration of Starlight re-creates a time and a place as it captures the sadness and value of four lives. It is widely considered one of Sorrentino's finest novels.