After fleeing his dying parents and the drudgery of work in Dublin for the Manhattan of his imagination — a place of romance and opulence, dark old concert halls and mellow front parlours quieted by the hiss of the phonograph cylinder — Rickard Velily hopes to be reborn as an Irish tenor, and to one day be reunited with the love of his life.At the very peculiar Cha Bum Kun Club, a masonic-style refuge for immigrants who can’t quite cut it in New York City, he meets Denny Kennedy-Logan and Clive Sullis, and a plan is enacted: to revive the art songs and ballads of another time for a hip young city in thrall to technology and money.But that is without reckoning on meddlesome sprites, the phantoms of the past — and more malign forces who plot to subjugate the human race.Gavin Corbett's new novel Green Glowing Skull is a half-crazed brain-shunt of a trip around the dream world, the spirit world, the cyber world and a woozily recognisable real world. A darkly comic tale of mythologies, machines and the metaphysical swirl, it’s a decent third effort from Corbett that, with a fair wind and a bit of mercy shown towards it, and all other things being equal, will pick up some good reviews and find some kindly readers. Sure, all you can do is hope.

Alle sieben Jahre steht Bergenstadt Kopf: Beim traditionellen» Grenzgang «werden die Grenzen der Gemeinde bekräftigt — und alle anderen in Frage gestellt. Auch für Kerstin und Thomas, die in der kleinstädtischen Provinz hängen geblieben sind, nachdem sich ihre Lebensträume zerschlagen haben: Sie reibt sich auf zwischen pubertierendem Sohn und demenzkranker Mutter, er ist nur deshalb Lehrer, weil die Unikarriere eine Sackgasse war. Aber beide geben sie ihre Suche nach dem Glück nicht auf.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Grey Area demonstrates Will Self's razor-sharp wit in nine new stories that delve into the modern psyche with unsettling and darkly satiric results. "Inclusion®" tells the story of a doctor who is illegally testing a new antidepressant made from bee excrement. "A Short History of the English Novel" brings us face to face with a pompous publisher who is greeted at every turn by countless rejected authors. In "The End of the Relationship" a woman who has been left by her boyfriend provokes — "like some emotional Typhoid Mary" — that same reaction among all the couples she goes to for comfort. The narrator of "Between the Conceits" declares without hesitation that London is controlled by only eight individuals, and, thankfully, he is one of them.

A brilliant collection of stories set in the tenements and cheap casinos of Glasgow, Manchester and London.

Arnolph Archilochos ist Unterbuchhalter eines Unterbuchhalters in der Geburtszangenabteilung einer großen Firma. Des Alleinseins müde geworden, gibt Arnolph Archilochos eines Tages ein Heiratsinserat auf, dessen Text kurz und vielsagend lautet: Grieche sucht Griechin. Und das Wunder geschieht: der dickliche Junggeselle lernt das reizendste Mädchen kennen, das man sich erträumen kann. Nur einen Fehler hat sie…

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow — antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.In this extraordinary debut — part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best First Book (Fiction), this riveting novel tells of a young, orphaned woman who is scorned by society for her mixed human and elven blood. She discovers that she possesses a mysterious magical power and when she travels to Elven lands in search of answers, she discovers a shocking truth about her identity that will have epic consequences for an entire nation.

Jelena has found acceptance and love amongst the elves, but war, a sweeping pestilence, and the death of her beloved leave her desolate. Unaware Ashinji still lives, she seeks comfort in the arms of a young soldier determined to marry her. Knowing Jelena's life is in peril, Ashinji continues his desperate trek homeward. Racing against time, and chased by murderous slave hunters, he and his companions are out-matched until Ashinji breaks the bonds preventing him from tapping his own extraordinary magical power. The award winning Griffin's Daughter Trilogy concludes this epic tale of love's triumph over evil. As the world teeters on the brink of destruction, Jelena and Ashinji face their fates and discover Griffin's Destiny.

Flapping Eagle, a young Indian, receives the gift of immortality after drinking a magic fluid. Tiring of the burden of eternal life, he sets out on a monumental search for the mystical Calf Island, where he can rejoin the human race. His journey is peopled with strange characters.

«En 1913, el escritor norteamericano Ambrose Bierce, misántropo, periodista de la cadena Hearst y autor de hermosos cuentos sobre la Guerra de Secesión, se despidió de sus amigos con algunas cartas en las que, desmintiendo su reconocido vigor, se declaraba viejo y cansado». Sin embargo, en todas ellas se reservaba el derecho de escoger su manera de morir. La enfermedad y el accidente -por ejemplo, caerse por una escalera- le parecían indignas de él. En cambio, ser ajusticiado ante un paredón mexicano… Ah -escribió en su última carta-, ser un gringo en México, eso es eutanasia.«Entró en México en noviembre y no se volvió a saber de él. El resto es ficción.»Ésta es la asombrosa reconstrucción de lo que podría haber sido la trayectoria del anciano novelista. Elaborada como una larga vuelta atrás, esta novela es ante todo una reflexión sobre la identidad, la búsqueda del padre, el concepto de frontera como «cicatriz», unión y separación.

,,Gringo… to książka podróżnicza pełna przygód i zaskakujących zwrotów akcji. Autor – Wojciech Cejrowski, znany z niezwykłego poczucia humoru -po raz kolejny wprowadza nas w odległy, tajemniczy i całkowicie obcy współczesnemu europejczykowi świat indiańskich wierzeń i obyczajów. Na szczególną uwagę zasługują zamieszczone w książce zdjęcia ukazujące najbardziej egzotyczne zakątki świata i barwne wizerunki ich dzikich mieszkańców. Lektura tej ksiażki całkowicie pochłania czytelnika przenosząc go w ginący klimat pierwotnych kultur i plemiennych obyczajów.

A long overdue retelling of New Grub Street-George Gissing's classic satire of the Victorian literary marketplace-Grub chronicles the triumphs and humiliations of a group of young novelists living in and around New York City.Eddie Renfros, on the brink of failure after his critically acclaimed first book, wants only to publish another novel and hang on to his beautiful wife, Amanda, who has her own literary ambitions and a bit of a roving eye. Among their circle are writers of every stripe-from the Machiavellian Jackson Miller to the `experimental writer' Henry who lives in squalor while seeking the perfect sentence. Amid an assortment of scheming agents, editors, and hangers-on, each writer must negotiate the often competing demands of success and integrity, all while grappling with inner demons and the stabs of professional and personal jealousy. The question that nags at them is this: What is it to write a novel in the twenty-first century?Pointedly funny and compassionate, Grub reveals what the publishing industry does to writers-and what writers do to themselves for the sake of art and to each other in the pursuit of celebrity.

Ever since the publication of The Harmony of the World in 1984, Charles Baxter has slowly gained a reputation as one of America’s finest short-story writers. Each subsequent collection—Through the Safety Net, A Relative Stranger, and Believers—was further confirmation of his mastery: his gift for capturing the immediate moment, for revealing the unexpected in the ordinary, for showing how the smallest shock can pierce the heart of an intimacy. Gryphon brings together the best of Baxter’s previous collections with seven new stories, giving us the most complete portrait of his achievement.Baxter once described himself as “a Midwestern writer in a postmodern age”: at home in a terrain best known for its blandness, one that does not give up its secrets easily, whose residents don’t always talk about what’s on their mind, and where something out of the quotidian — some stress, the appearance of a stranger, or a knock on the window — may be all that’s needed to force what lies underneath to the surface and to disclose a surprising impulse, frustration, or desire. Whether friends or strangers, the characters in Baxter’s stories share a desire — sometimes muted and sometimes fierce — to break through the fragile glass of convention. In the title story, a substitute teacher walks into a new classroom, draws an outsized tree on the blackboard on a whim, and rewards her students by reading their fortunes using a Tarot deck. In each of the stories we see the delicate tension between what we want to believe and what we need to believe.By turns compassionate, gently humorous, and haunting, Gryphon proves William Maxwell’s assertion that “nobody can touch Charles Baxter in the field that he has carved out for himself.”

All the heroes of this collection—Ulysses and his minions trapped in the Trojan horse; the man who cannot escape his house; Gregor the cockroach, who wakes one day to discover he has become a human teenager—are faced with a world that is always changing, where time and space move in circles, where language has become meaningless.

A novel of colonialism and revolution, death, sexual violence and political and spiritual impotence.

Set in an unspecified but eerily familiar time and landscape, this is the story of Mark, a protagonist who struggles against the machinations of a hostile society and bureaucracy. Suffering at first from the persecution of his father as a conscientious objector, his life quickly comes under the control of the Machiavellian Mr. Spector, an influential government minister who arranges Mark's education, later employment, and even accommodation. It is when Mark tries to break free from Spector's influence that his life begins to unravel.

It was one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland: the construction, during the war's most savage phase, of a factory in West Belfast to make a luxury sports car with gull-wing doors. Huge subsidies were provided by the British government. The first car rolled off the line during the appalling hunger strikes of 1981.The prime mover and central character of this intelligent, witty and moving novel was John DeLorean, brilliant engineer, charismatic entrepreneur and world-class conman. He comes to energetic, seductive life through the eyes of his fixer in Belfast, a traumatised Vietnam veteran, and of a woman who takes a job in the factory against the wishes of her husband. Each of them has secrets and desires they dare not share with anyone they know.A great American hustler brought to vivid life in the most unlikely setting imaginable.

Struggling to make a life for his young son when the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company takes a dive, Forrest Gump shares a second series of offbeat adventures that entangle him with the Coca-Cola company and Oliver North.

Struggling to make a life for his young son when the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company takes a dive, Forrest Gump shares a second series of offbeat adventures that entangle him with the Coca-Cola company and Oliver North.