What happens when you're stalked by Death? You fall in love with him, of course.Pagan Moore doesn't cheat Death, but instead, falls in love with him.Seventeen year old Pagan Moore has seen souls her entire life. Once she realized the strangers she often saw walking through walls were not visible to anyone else, she started ignoring them. If she didn't let them know she could see them, then they left her alone. Until she stepped out of her car the first day of school and saw an incredibly sexy guy lounging on a picnic table, watching her with an amused smirk on his face. Problem is, she knows he's dead.Not only does he not go away when she ignores him, but he does something none of the others have ever done. He speaks. Pagan is fascinated by the soul. What she doesn't realize is that her appointed time to die is drawing near and the wickedly beautiful soul she is falling in love with is not a soul at all.He is Death and he's about to break all the rules.

For young Miller Le Ray, life has become a search. A search for his dad, who may or may not have joined the army and gone to Iraq. A search for a notorious (and, unfortunately, deceased) writer, Frederick Exley, author of the “fictional memoir” A Fan’s Notes, who may hold the key to bringing Miller’s father back. But most of all, his is a search for truth. As Miller says, “Sometimes you have to tell the truth about some of the stuff you’ve done so that people will believe you when you tell them the truth about other stuff you haven’t done.”In Exley as in his previous bestselling novel, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, Brock Clarke takes his reader into a world that is both familiar and disorienting, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining. Told by Miller and Dr. Pahnee, both unreliable narrators, it becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real.

A wickedly funny and satisfyingly highbrow black comedy about the collapse of Western academic institutions under the weight of neoliberal economics and crushing, widespread idiocy.Lars and W., the two preposterous philosophical anti-heroes of Spurious and Dogma—called “Uproarious” by the New York Times Book Review — return and face a political, intellectual, and economic landscape in a state of total ruination.With philosophy professors being moved to badminton departments and gin in short supply — although not short enough — the two hapless intellectuals embark on a relentless mission. Well, several relentless missions. For one, they must help gear a guerilla philosophy movement — conducted outside the academy, perhaps under bridges — that will save the study of philosophy after the long, miserable decades of intellectual desert known as the early 21st-century.For another, they must save themselves, perhaps by learning to play badminton after all. Gin isn’t free, you know.

Улицы замёрзшего города полны самых разных существ, сражающихся за свою жизнь. Одни сбиваются в стаи, другие в одиночку пытаются дотянуть до долгожданной оттепели. Иногда желание найти тепло кажется единственным, что ещё поддерживает жизнь в полумёртвом теле.

Set at the dawn of the great age of exploration, the era of Shackleton and Perry and Scott, the book presents the adventures of two intrepid teams, both vying to reach the AFP, or Agreed Furthest Point-a worthy, even ennobling cause. The competition is friendly but conditions are extreme. To get through the arid, lifeless landscape, both teams must learn to make sacrifices, sacrifices that will change just about everything.

Des personnages luttent en quête d'amour, d'argent… Cette idée, Michel Houellebecq nous la transmet via une oeuvre amère : un homme dénué de toute ambition, cumulant les déceptions, qui risque de sombrer peu à peu dans la dépression.

The last work of fiction by one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Extinction is widely considered Thomas Bernhard’s magnum opus.Franz-Josef Murau — the intellectual black sheep of a powerful Austrian land-owning family — lives in Rome in self-imposed exile, surrounded by a coterie of artistic and intellectual friends. On returning from his sister’s wedding on the family estate of Wolfsegg, having resolved never to go home again, Murau receives a telegram informing him of the death of his parents and brother in a car crash. Not only must he now go back, he must do so as the master of Wolfsegg. And he must decide its fate. Written in the seamless, mesmerizing style for which Bernhard was famous, Extinction is the ultimate proof of his extraordinary literary genius.

Over the course of one Saturday night, a man and his half-sister meet at her request to spend the evening preparing for her assisted death. They drink and reminisce fondly, sadly, amusingly about their lives and especially her children, both of whom have led dramatic and profoundly different lives.Extraordinary is a gentle consideration of assisted suicide, but it is also a story about siblings—about how brothers and sisters turn out so differently; about how little, in fact, turns out the way we expect. In the end, this is a novel about the extraordinary business of being alive, and it may well be David Gilmour’s very best work of fiction to date.

Set in Budapest — a city marked by its rich cultural heritage, the scars of empire, the fresher wounds of industry, and the collateral damage of globalism—Extraordinary Renditions is the sweeping story of three equally tarnished expatriates. World-renowned composer and Holocaust survivor Lajos Harkályi has returned to Hungary to debut his final opera and share his mother's parting gift, the melody from a lullaby she sang as he was forced to leave his Hungarian home for the infamous Czech concentration camp Terezín. Private First Class Jonathan "Brutus" Gibson is being blackmailed by his commanding officer at the US Army base in Hungary, one of the infamous black-sites of the global War on Terror, and he must decide between going AWOL or risking his life to make an illegal firearms deal in Budapest. Aspiring musician Melanie Scholes is preparing for the most important performance of her career as a violinist in Harkályi's opera, but before she takes the stage she must extricate herself from a failing relationship and the inertia that threatens to consume her future. As their lives converge on Independence Day, they too will seek liberation — from the anguish of the Holocaust, the chains of blackmail, and the bonds of conformity.A formidable new voice in American fiction, Ervin tackles the big themes of war, prejudice, and art, lyrically examining the reverberations of unrest in today's central Europe, the United States' legacy abroad, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Anthony Beavis is a man inclined to recoil from life. His past is haunted by the death of his best friend Brian and by his entanglement with the cynical and manipulative Mary Amberley. Realising that his determined detachment from the world has been motivated not by intellectual honesty but by moral cowardice, Anthony attempts to find a new way to live. Eyeless in Gaza is considered by many to be Huxley’s definitive work of fiction.

Enter the sublime, upside-down / inside-out world of William H. Gass. . in this case where the Eyes have it every which way, including up. . in a dazzling new collection of novellas and stories (six in all) from one of the most revered writers of our time, author of sixteen books, among them, the universally acclaimed The Tunnel ("An extraordinary achievement"-Michael Dirda, The Washington Post); Middle C("Exhilaratingly ingenious"-Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review cover); and Life Sentences ("A literary miracle"-The New York Observer).This enchanting, Gassian journey begins with "In Camera," an investigation into what is likely to develop when a possibly illicit collection of photographs becomes the object of a greedy salesman's loving eyes. . In "Charity," a young lawyer, whose business it is to keep hospital equipment honestly produced, offers a simple gift and is brought to the ambiguous heart of charity itself. "Don't Even Try, Sam" tells of the battered, old piano Dooley Wilson plays in Casablanca as it complains in an interview of its treatment during the making of the picture. "Soliloquy for a Chair" is just that, a rumination by a folding chair in a barber shop that is ultimately bombed. . and in "The Toy Chest," Disneylike creatures take on human roles and worries and live in an atmosphere of a child's imagination.A glorious fantasia; each, quintessentially Gass; each, a virtuoso delight.

Eyrie tells the story of Tom Keely, a man who’s lost his bearings in middle age and is now holed up in a flat at the top of a grim highrise, looking down on the world he’s fallen out of love with.He’s cut himself off, until one day he runs into some neighbours: a woman he used to know when they were kids, and her introverted young boy. The encounter shakes him up in a way he doesn’t understand. Despite himself, Keely lets them in.What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times — funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting — populated by unforgettable characters. It asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing.

From the young, internationally acclaimed author of Measuring the World: a stunning tragicomic novel about three brothers, their relationship to their distant father, and their individual fates and struggles in the modern world.One day Arthur Friedland piles his three sons into the car and drives them to see the Great Lindemann, Master of Hypnosis. Protesting that he doesn't believe in magic even as he is led onto the stage, Arthur nevertheless experiences something. Later that night, while his family sleeps, he takes his passport, empties all the money from his bank account, and vanishes. In time, still absent from his family, he beings to publish novels and becomes an internationally famous author. His sons grow into men who manifest their inexplicable loss — Martin becomes a priest who does not believe in God; Ivan, a painter in constant artistic crisis; Eric, a businessman given to a fear of ghosts and hallucinations — even as they struggle to understand their father's disappearance and make their own places in the world.

Lee Casey plays guitar in a noise band called Ottermeat, about to leave NJ, to try and make it in Los Angeles. For now, he's squatting in a collapsing house, working as a stone mason, driving a jacked up pickup truck that he crashes into everything. As a close friend Ods in his sleep, Lee falls into a three-way relationship with two college girls, June Doom and K Neon. F250 is a novel equal parts about growing up, and being torn apart.

F., a los treinta y cinco años, prometió no vivir más de cincuenta. Estaba con un amigo en una plaza de Reus, era una tarde de junio de 1957 y dijo que pensaba matarse antes del 20 de mayo de 1972, día de su cincuenta cumpleaños. Justo Navarro, poeta, traductor, crítico literario y novelista, persigue la deriva de una vida, sigue el rastro de las mujeres, de las lecturas, de los trabajos y los días de un poeta que creía más en la inteligencia que en la inspiración, de un escritor que afirmaba que el único tema que le interesaba eran las mujeres, y cuando las mujeres le abandonaban huía al estudio de las lenguas, el griego, el latín, el ruso, el polaco, de todas las lenguas germánicas, al estudio de otras palabras que borran aquellas que no pueden ser pronunciadas ni pensadas. Un crítico indispensable del que Gil de Biedma dijo que era el hombre más inteligente que había conocido, el hombre sin edad que seducía a los las jóvenes y había alcanzado una extraordinaria perfección en el arte de interpretarse a sí mismo en los cafés, el traductor que había traducido a destajo a Dashiel Hammett en la España franquista, cuando Hammett se preparaba para morir, acosado por el FBI, América, las deudas, la vida. Porque F. es Gabriel Ferrater, poeta, traductor, crítico literario y, al menos una vez, novelista. Y esta historia de F., esta indagación sobre Ferrater, esta novela o memoria, que puede leerse como el informe que escribiría un detective de Hammett que también fuera escritor, como Hammett, como F., como Justo Navarro, concluye en la fecha en que Ferrater fijó su destino. Todos los datos están aquí y, si hay un enigma, también está aquí. Aunque los personajes y lugares, reales o ficticios, sólo aparezcan como personajes y lugares imaginarios. Y la única respuesta sea la pregunta.

В романе Анны Козловой “F20” героиня живет со страшным диагнозом “шизофрения”. Читая этот безжалостный, смешной и глубоко драматичный текст, невольно задаешься вопросом: кого на самом деле стоит считать нормальным.

Анна Козлова родилась в 1981 году, в Москве. Автор шести книг и многочисленных кино- и телесценариев. Роман «Люди с чистой совестью» вышел в финал премии «Национальный бестселлер», сериал «Краткий курс счастливой жизни» (1 канал) удостоился премии ТЭФИ.

Ērihs Kestners Fabiansstāsts par kādu morālistuNo vācu valodas tulkojusi Velta Balode Mākslinieks Viesturs GrantsNoskannējis grāmatu un failu izveidojis Imants Ločmelis© Tulkojums latviešu valodā, pēcvārds, «Liesma», 1980

Fabryka bezkresnych snów to najlepsza powieść Ballarda; jedna z niewielu naprawdę kultowych książek. To bajeczna przypowieść o znaczeniu i potrzebie marzeń, magii i fantazji w naszym życiu. Przygody Blakea – bohatera książki- mogą być tylko urojeniami chorej wyobraźni, ale też mogły zdarzyć się naprawdę. To nasze życie to przecież mieszanina snów, jawy, fantazji i rzeczywistości. Marzenia są piękne. Sny bywają okrutne. Fantazja jest potrzebna każdemu z nas.

8.00.Надо наконец стряхнуть с себя это вязкое утреннее оцепенение и встать под душ.Вода мигом сделает из меня человека.Я включаю CD-проигрыватель. Apollo-440 с их `Millenium Fever` кажутся чересчур энергичными.Бреюсь и постепенно приободряюсь.Сегодня пятница, а значит…