A paragon of efficiency, Colette took the next natural step after finishing secretarial school by marrying a man who would do just fine. After a sobering, do-it-yourself divorce, Colette is at a loss for what to do next. Convinced that she is due an out-of-hand, life-affirming revelation, she strays into the realm of psychics and clairvoyants, hungry for a whisper to set her off in the right direction. At a psychic fair in Windsor she meets the charismatic Alison.Alison, the daughter of a prostitute, beleaguered during her childhood by the pressures of her connection to the spiritual world, lives in a different kind of solitude. She cannot escape the dead who speak to her, least of all the constant presence of Morris, her low-life spiritual guide. An expansive presence onstage, Alison at once feels her bond with Colette, inviting her to join her on the road as her personal assistant and companion.Troubles spiral out of control when the pair moves to a suburban wasteland in what was once the English countryside and take up with a spirit guide and his drowned therapist. It is not long before Alison's connection to the place beyond black threatens to uproot their lives forever. This is Hilary Mantel at her finest- insightful, darkly comic, unorthodox, and thrilling to read.

The young Dutch geologist Alfred Issendorf is determined to win fame for making a great discovery. To this end he joins a small geological expedition, which travels to the far North of Norway, where he hopes to prove a series of craters were caused by meteorites, but ultimately realizes he's more likely to drown in a fjord or be eaten by parasites. Unable to procure crucial aerial photographs, and beset by mosquitoes and insomnia in his freezing leaky tent, Alfred becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid. Haunted by the ghost of his scientist father, unable to escape the looming influence of his mother, and anxious to complete the thesis that will make his name, he moves toward the final act of vanity which will trigger a catastrophe. A deadpan comedy often subtly calling up the works of Heller or Vonnegut at their best, Beyond Sleep is a unique and illuminating examination of how hard it is to be a true pioneer in the modern world. Beyond Sleep is a masterpiece.

The school year is almost at an end, and the chocolate sale is past history.  But no one at Trinity School can forget The Chocolate War.Devious Archie Costello, commander of the secret school organizationcalled the Virgils, stall has some torturous assignments to hand out before he graduates.  In spite of this pleasure, Archie is troubled by his right-hand man, Obie, who has started to move away from the Virgils.  Luckily Archie knows his stooges will fix that.  But won't Archie be shocked when he discovers the surprise Obie has waiting for him?And there are surprises waiting for others.  The time for revenge has come to those boys who secretly suffered the trials of Trinity.  The fuse is set for the final explosion.  Who will survive?

Anna została poczęta, by zostać dawczynią szpiku dla swej siostry, Kate. Nigdy nie kwestionowała tej roli, choć musi żyć tak, jakby była ciężko chora.Ma dopiero trzynaście lat, a już przeszła niezliczone zabiegi operacyjne, by jej starsza siostra miała szansę wyleczyć się z białaczki. Jak większość nastolatków, Anna zastanawia się, kim jest; inaczej jednak niż przeciętna nastolatka ma poukładane życie: istnieje właściwie wyłącznie jako dopełnienie siostry. Dlatego podejmuje decyzję, która zagrozi jej rodzinie i prawdopodobnie będzie mieć fatalne konsekwencje dla Kate.Powieść Picoult stawia wiele ważnych pytań. Co to znaczy być dobrym rodzicem, dobrą siostrą, dobrym człowiekiem? Czy rzeczywiście można robić wszystko, by ratować życie jednego dziecka, kosztem drugiego? Czy należy podążać za głosem serca, czy raczej pozwolić kierować sobą innym? W książce Jodi Picoult znów podejmuje kontrowersyjny temat – i robi to z wdziękiem, mądrością i wrażliwością.Jodi Picoult to bestsellerowa autorka „New York Timesa”, ceniona za przenikliwość psychologiczną i umiejętność wglądu w serca i umysły ludzkie. Tym razem opowiada historię rodziny dotkniętej nieszczęściem choroby dziecka.

Twórczość Jerzego Pilcha nie wymaga specjalnej rekomendacji. W swojej książce Pilch rejestruje różnorodność życia społeczno-obyczajowego współczesnej Polski, łącząc swe obserwacje z nostalgiczno-ironicznymi wspomnieniami z okresu dzieciństwa i młodości. Oryginalność obserwacji, humor i sarkazm, błyskotliwe paradoksy i groteska to dodatkowe atuty autobiograficznej prozy Pilcha. Jerzy Pilch wybitny prozaik, autor Monologu z lisiej jamy (1996), zbioru opowiadań pt. Wyznania twórcy pokątnej literatury erotycznej (1988), powieści Spis cudzołożnic (1993), Tysiąc spokojnych miast (1998), felietonów opublikowanych w zbiorach Rozpacz z powodu utraty furmanki (1994) oraz Tezy o głupocie, piciu i umieraniu (1997), które znalazły się w siódemce najlepszych książek roku, nominowanych do Nagrody NIKE 98.

A compelling tale of mystery, passion and spiritual exploration Seventy-year-old Shastri; a reciter of Harikatha, encounters an Ayyappa pilgrim on a train. Around the pilgrim's neck is a Sri Chakra amulet which looks like one that belonged to Saroja, Shastri's first wife. But Shastri thought he had killed Saroja years before, believing she was pregnant by another man. If the amulet is Saroja's, then she might have survived, and the pilgrim (Dinakar, a television star) could be Shastri's son. A similar story is revealed when Dinakar visits his old friend Narayan: either could be the father of Prasad, a young man destined for spiritual attainment. The interwoven lives of three generations play out variations on the same themes. Whose son am I? Whose father am I? Where are my roots? These mysteries of the past and present are explored, but there are no clear answers. And while significant in daily???being', such questions lose urgency in the flux of???becoming' (???bhava' means both being and becoming). So we are led to consider that samsara??"the world of illusion and embodiment??"may not be very different from sunya, the emptiness from which everything arises. At times a drama of cruelty and lust, at times a lyrical meditation on love and transformation, Bhava is an exceptional novel by one of India's most celebrated writers.

Akcja Białej gardenii rozpoczyna się pod koniec II wojny światowej w wiosce na granicy chińsko-rosyjskiej. Książka opisuje historię matki i córki, rozdzielonych wojenną zawieruchą. W Harbinie, schronieniu dla rodzin, które uciekły z Rosji po upadku caratu, Alina Kozłowa musi podjąć rozdzierającą serce decyzję, dotyczącą życia lub śmierci swojego jedynego dziecka, córki Ani. Biała gardenia to książka o zderzeniu kultur różnych kontynentów. Jej bohaterów spotkamy zarówno w nocnych klubach Szanghaju, jak i w surowej Rosji radzieckiej lat sześćdziesiątych XX wieku, w najtrudniejszym okresie zimnej wojny, na samotnej wyspie Pacyfiku i w powojennej Australii. Matka i córka muszą się przygotować na wiele poświęceń, ale czy cena przetrwania nie jest zbyt wysoka? I, przede wszystkim, czy jeszcze się kiedyś odnajdą? Mnogość przygód przeplatanych licznymi faktami historycznymi owocuje znakomitą opowieścią o tęsknocie i wybaczaniu.

Это книга о собаке. И, как всякая книга о собаке, она, конечно же, о человеке. О жизни людей. В современной русской прозе это самая суровая книга о нас с вами. И самая пронзительная песнь о собачьей верности и любви.

Within the thirteen stories of Whitney Collins’s Big Bad dwells a hunger that’s dark, deep, and hilarious. Part domestic horror, part flyover gothic, Big Bad serves up real-world predicaments in unremarkable places (motels, dormitories, tiki bars), all with Collins’s heart-wrenching flavor of magical realism. A young woman must give birth to future iterations of herself; a widower kills a horse en route to his grandson’s circumcision; a conflicted summer camper is haunted by a glass eye and motorcycle crash. Collins’s cast of characters must repeatedly choose to fight or flee the “big bad” that dwells within us all.

Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, and boasting a 2020 Pushcart-winning story, Big Bad simultaneously entertains and disconcerts.

A scary, funny novel — a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination.It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense.Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad — and is poised to make a fortune on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game aimed at teenagers. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her brother, and in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz with vague fantasies of violence.Through a gallery of vivid characters — heroic, ignoble, or desperate — Mark Costello's hilarious novel limns the strategies, both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily life.

Winner of the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.The characters in Big Picture, Percival Everett’s darkly comic collection of stories, are often driven to explosive, life-changing action. Everett delves into those moments when outside forces bring us to the brink of insanity or liberation.The catalysts in Everett’s tales are surprising: a stuffed boar’s head, mounted on the wall of a diner, becomes an object of intense, inexplicable desire; a painter is driven to the point of suicide by a mute who returns day after day to mow the artist’s lawn; the loss of a pair of dentures sparks a turn toward revelation. The characters respond to their dilemmas in ways that are both unpredictable and memorable.Everett’s highly original voice propels the reader into unfamiliar, yet unforgettable terrain: a landscape full of excitement, astonishment, and self-discovery.

It's not just the motion of the ocean, ladies. It's definitely the SIZE of the boat too. And I've got both firing on all cylinders. In fact, I have ALL the right assets. Looks, brains, my own money, and a big c*&k. You might think I'm an a*&hole. I sound like one, don't I? I'm hot as sin, rich as heaven, smart as hell and hung like a horse. Guess what? You haven't heard my story before. Sure, I might be a playboy, like the NY gossip rags call me. But I'm the playboy who's actually a great guy. Which makes me one of a kind. The only trouble is, my dad needs me to cool it for a bit. With conservative investors in town wanting to buy his flagship Fifth Avenue jewelry store, he needs me not only to zip it up, but to look the part of the committed guy. Fine. I can do this for Dad. After all, I've got him to thank for the family jewels. So I ask my best friend and business partner to be my fiancée for the next week. Charlotte's up for it. She has her own reasons for saying yes to wearing this big rock. And pretty soon all this playing pretend in public leads to no pretending whatsoever in the bedroom, because she just can't fake the kind of toe-curling, window-shattering orgasmic cries she makes as I take her to new heights between the sheets. But I can't seem to fake that I might be feeling something real for her. What the hell have I gotten myself into with this... big rock?

“xTx is the complete young literary god. Billie the Bull is mind-bogglingly and intricately superb down to its tiniest punctuation marks. To me, she’s about as great as it can get. Seriously, I’m awestruck.” —Dennis Cooper

Darkly comic and more than a little disturbing, Billy and Girl introduces a version of childhood trauma that is completely original and utterly unnerving. Abandoned years ago by their parents, Billy and Girl live alone somewhere in England. Girl looks for their mother by going door-to-door and addressing every woman who answers as "Mom," and Billy fantasizes about a future in which he will be famous — preferably in the United States — as a movie star, a psychiatrist, a doctor to blondes with breast enlargements, or the author of Billy England's Book of Pain. The siblings support and torture each other, forgetting what they need to forget, inventing worlds they hope will be better, but managing to prolong nightmares as they create alternate personalities in order to survive and conquer and punish.

Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk is a razor-sharp satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq. It explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad.Ben Fountain’s remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.

The second novel in William Kennedy’s much-loved Albany cycle depicts Billy Phelan, a slightly tarnished poker player, pool hustler, and small-time bookie. A resourceful man full of Irish pluck, Billy works the fringes of the Albany sporting life with his own particular style and private code of honor, until he finds himself in the dangerous position of potential go-between in the kidnapping of a political boss’s son.

The language of the stars is the language of the body. Like a star, the anorexic burns fuel that isn't replenished; she is held together by her own gravity.With luminous, lyrical prose, Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend. On a road-trip circumnavigating the United States, they stumble into a book on veganarchism, and believe they've found a direction.Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick (or at least inundated with quick-fix solutions); a society that sells diet pills, sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight or too much weight or put on weight, and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success.

In this sumptuous offering, one of our premier storytellers provides a feast for fiction aficionados. Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these 21 vintage selected stories and 13 scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.

Biplane is the story of Richard Bach’s solo flight into the American skies—a flight that became a personal quest to discover everything that lies beyond the ordinary. Includes an introduction by Ray Bradbury.