"There is always a surprise in the voice and in the heart of Laird Hunt's stories, with its echoes of habit caught in a timeless dialect, so we see the world he gives us as if new. 'You hear something like that and it walks out the door with you.'" — Michael Ondaatje"Laird Hunt's Kind One, about two slave girls who take their white mistress into captivity, is a profound meditation on the sexual and racial subconscious of America. . [A] gorgeous and terrifying novel." — Danzy SennaAs a teenage girl, Ginny marries Linus Lancaster, her mother's second cousin, and moves to his Kentucky pig farm "ninety miles from nowhere." In the shadows of the lush Kentucky landscape, Ginny discovers the empty promises of Linus' "paradise" — a place where the charms of her husband fall away to reveal a troubled man and cruel slave owner. Ginny befriends the young slaves Cleome and Zinnia who work at the farm — until Linus' attentions turn to them, and she finds herself torn between her husband and only companions. The events that follow Linus' death change all three women for life. Haunting, chilling, and suspenseful, Kind One is a powerful tale of redemption and human endurance in antebellum America.Laird Hunt is the author of several works of fiction and a finalist for the 2010 PEN Center USA Award in Fiction. Currently on the faculty of the University of Denver's creative writing program, he and his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, live in Boulder, Colorado, with their daughter, Eva Grace.

A profound mystery is at the heart of this magnificent new novel by Yiyun Li, “one of America’s best young novelists” (Newsweek) and the celebrated author of The Vagrants, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Moving back and forth in time, between America today and China in the 1990s, Kinder Than Solitude is the story of three people whose lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed. As one of the three observes, “Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime.”When Moran, Ruyu, and Boyang were young, they were involved in a mysterious “accident” in which a friend of theirs was poisoned. Grown up, the three friends are separated by distance and personal estrangement. Moran and Ruyu live in the United States, Boyang in China; all three are haunted by what really happened in their youth, and by doubt about themselves. In California, Ruyu helps a local woman care for her family and home, and avoids entanglements, as she has done all her life. In Wisconsin, Moran visits her ex-husband, whose kindness once overcame her flight into solitude. In Beijing, Boyang struggles to deal with an inability to love, and with the outcome of what happened among the three friends twenty years ago. Brilliantly written, a breathtaking page-turner, Kinder Than Solitude resonates with provocative observations about human nature and life. In mesmerizing prose, and with profound insight, Yiyun Li unfolds this remarkable story, even as she explores the impact of personality and the past on the shape of a person’s present and future.

Inspired by the infamous case of Leopold and Loeb, King Coffin is a chilling glimpse into the mind of a twisted genius.The sun is setting over Harvard, and Jasper Ammen is not impressed. A brilliant student who loathes all that the world has put before him, he gazes with contempt at the beauty of the campus, the intellectual pretensions of his fellow students, and the gaudiness of the sunset, for none of these approaches the majesty of Jasper’s mind. A reader of Nietzsche and Stirner, he is convinced of his own superiority, and has decided to prove it in the most irrefutable manner: with the perfect murder.Ammen will choose his victim at random and commit the unsolvable crime before a host of witnesses who will see what happens but not be able to understand it. Only his closest friends will realize that he has gotten away with murder, and they won’t be able to stop him or see him punished for the ghastly deed.An intense and disturbing portrait of rationalism taken to a dangerous extreme, King Coffin ranks alongside the works of Henry James and Fyodor Dostoevsky as a masterpiece of psychological realism.

The lives of two women—the sole survivor of an airplane crash and the troubled park ranger leading the rescue mission — collide in this “gripping” novel of tough-minded resilience (Vogue).

The sole survivor of a plane crash, seventy-two-year-old Cloris Waldrip finds herself lost and alone in the unforgiving wilderness of Montana’s rugged Bitterroot Range, exposed to the elements with no tools beyond her wits and ingenuity. Intertwined with her story is Debra Lewis, a park ranger struggling with addiction, a recent divorce, and a new mission: to find and rescue Cloris.

As Cloris wanders mountain forests and valleys, subsisting on whatever she can find as her hold on life grows more precarious, Ranger Lewis and her motley group of oddball rescuers follow the trail of clues she’s left behind. Days stretch into weeks, and hope begins to fade. But with nearly everyone else giving up, Ranger Lewis stays true until the end.

Dramatic and morally complex, Kingdomtide is a story of the decency and surprising resilience of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances. In powerful, exquisite prose, debut novelist Rye Curtis delivers an inspiring account of two unforgettable characters whose heroism reminds us that survival is only the beginning.

'There are moments in this novel when one could be watching an episode of Blackadder. Frivolity abounds… Hut beneath the gags,.I serious historical novel is lurking. Julian Rathbone has had the excellent idea of viewing the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of some visitors from India. Their reactions to what they see. ranging from disgust to bemusement, shed unexpected light on fifteenth-century England' Sally Cousins, Sunday Telegraph'Set in 1460, this hugely enjoyable romp is narrated by Mah-Lo from Mandalay – a wink at Joseph Conrad and the sort of sly joke with which the book abounds. The heart of darkness is not Africa, however, but England in the grip of the Wars of the Roses. The novel tells of a group of men who travel from Goa to trace a kinsman. Rathbone vividly describes the "Inglysshe, the least civilised and most barbaric people on earth", and brings to life the sounds, sights and, above all. smells of fifteenth-century England' Sunday Times'Rathbone's novel is excellent, both as a fictional adventure story and as a detailed and enlightening description of an ancient land' The TimesKirkus ReviewsNo doubt hoping to extend the extravagant sweep-of-history-on-the-road theme of his previous novel (The Last English King, 1999), but falling short, Rathbone shifts to the Wars of the Roses, and a group of travelers from India who arrive just in time to be in the thick of the intrigue. In 1459, the disfigured but widely traveled Arab trader Ali, already pushing 60, agrees to deliver a packet from a mysterious, soon-dead stranger he meets in an English inn to the royal family of Vijayanagara in southern India. Ali's success earns him a return to the cold and rain of Albion, but this time with a prince of the family and his retinue in tow. The mission now: to track down the prince's brother, long estranged and believed to be practicing a secret, forbidden religion somewhere in the north. As they head west, Ali discovers that the monk in their party is actually a sensuous young woman he met briefly before leaving India. Later, Uma seduces him in a Cairo bathhouse, and adds a teenaged English nobleman to her list of conquests as they prepare to cross the English Channel. The boy, Eddie, is one of those plotting to overthrow the king of England; finding a hostile reception when Ali and company make it to London, he is forced to flee. Ali and the others get caught up in the civil war as well, with the prince shut up in the Tower of London and Ali and Uma leaving town without him. When Ali falls ill and stops in a monastery to recuperate, Uma keeps going, looking for Eddie, but she's thrown in prison, too, just as the two sides begin their series of bloody battles. Eventually, she finds her hot-blooded boy, and the prince finds his brother-but these reunions aren't what they've been expecting.The rambling seems more travelogue than novel, including, as it does, everything from theology to weather reports, and the notion of strangers in a strange land never quite catches fire.

'There are moments in this novel when one could be watching an episode of Blackadder. Frivolity abounds… Hut beneath the gags,.I serious historical novel is lurking. Julian Rathbone has had the excellent idea of viewing the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of some visitors from India. Their reactions to what they see. ranging from disgust to bemusement, shed unexpected light on fifteenth-century England' Sally Cousins, Sunday Telegraph'Set in 1460, this hugely enjoyable romp is narrated by Mah-Lo from Mandalay – a wink at Joseph Conrad and the sort of sly joke with which the book abounds. The heart of darkness is not Africa, however, but England in the grip of the Wars of the Roses. The novel tells of a group of men who travel from Goa to trace a kinsman. Rathbone vividly describes the "Inglysshe, the least civilised and most barbaric people on earth", and brings to life the sounds, sights and, above all. smells of fifteenth-century England' Sunday Times'Rathbone's novel is excellent, both as a fictional adventure story and as a detailed and enlightening description of an ancient land' The TimesKirkus ReviewsNo doubt hoping to extend the extravagant sweep-of-history-on-the-road theme of his previous novel (The Last English King, 1999), but falling short, Rathbone shifts to the Wars of the Roses, and a group of travelers from India who arrive just in time to be in the thick of the intrigue. In 1459, the disfigured but widely traveled Arab trader Ali, already pushing 60, agrees to deliver a packet from a mysterious, soon-dead stranger he meets in an English inn to the royal family of Vijayanagara in southern India. Ali's success earns him a return to the cold and rain of Albion, but this time with a prince of the family and his retinue in tow. The mission now: to track down the prince's brother, long estranged and believed to be practicing a secret, forbidden religion somewhere in the north. As they head west, Ali discovers that the monk in their party is actually a sensuous young woman he met briefly before leaving India. Later, Uma seduces him in a Cairo bathhouse, and adds a teenaged English nobleman to her list of conquests as they prepare to cross the English Channel. The boy, Eddie, is one of those plotting to overthrow the king of England; finding a hostile reception when Ali and company make it to London, he is forced to flee. Ali and the others get caught up in the civil war as well, with the prince shut up in the Tower of London and Ali and Uma leaving town without him. When Ali falls ill and stops in a monastery to recuperate, Uma keeps going, looking for Eddie, but she's thrown in prison, too, just as the two sides begin their series of bloody battles. Eventually, she finds her hot-blooded boy, and the prince finds his brother-but these reunions aren't what they've been expecting.The rambling seems more travelogue than novel, including, as it does, everything from theology to weather reports, and the notion of strangers in a strange land never quite catches fire.

Paul Trilby is having a bad day. If he were to be honest with himself, Paul Trilby would have to admit that he's having a bad life. His wife left him. Three subsequent girlfriends left him. He's fallen from a top-notch university teaching job, to a textbook publisher, to, eventually, working as a temp writer for the General Services department of the Texas Department of General Services. And even here, in this world of carpeted partitions and cheap lighting fixtures, Paul cannot escape the curse his life has become. For it is not until he begins reach out to the office's foul-mouthed mail girl that he begins to notice things are truly wrong. There are sounds coming from the air conditioning vents, bulges in the ceiling, a disappearing body. There are the strange men lurking about town, wearing thick glasses and pocket protectors.The Kings of Infinite Space is a hilarious and macabre spoof on our everyday lives, and gives true voice to the old adage, "Work is Hell."

kira-kira (kee ra kee ra): glittering; shining Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering — kira-kira — in the future.

A New York Times Notable Book: A lethal accident turns life into a waking nightmare for a mother and her son in this gripping novel of secrecy and dread.Abandoned by her husband, Joanie Mucherino and her eleven-year-old son, Todd, struggle to cope while dealing with their comically tactless and intrusive Italian family. Further complicating things, Joanie now seems available to Bruno Minea, an old family friend whose two-decade passion for her has been unwavering and faintly frightening. When Joanie and Todd kill an acquaintance in a hit-and-run accident, they soon discover — to their horror — that they’re keeping it a secret. But as the weight of their lies becomes more than they can can bear, their crime connects them to something even more sinister, as the victim had powerful, dangerous friends who will go to great lengths to avenge his death.Part family drama, part thriller, Kiss of the Wolf exemplifies the talents of National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard, author of 2015 favorite The Book of Aron, who crafts hilarious, spot-on dialogue with the same mastery he lends to the ingenious, page-turning plot, in which a loving mother is forced to confront her role as the architect of her son’s anguished guilt.

From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central comes a charming, evocative and piercing examination of an ancient Japanese tradition and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty….What is a woman? To what extent is femininity a performance? Writing with the extraordinary awareness and endless curiosity that have defined his entire oeuvre, William T. Vollmann takes an in-depth look into the Japanese craft of Noh theater, using the medium as a prism to reveal the conception of beauty itself.Sweeping readers from the dressing room of one of Japan's most famous Noh actors to a transvestite bar in the red-light district of Kabukicho, Kissing the Mask explores the enigma surrounding Noh theater and the traditions that have made it intrinsic to Japanese culture for centuries. Vollmann then widens his scope to encompass such modern artists of attraction and loss as Mishima, Kawabata and even Andrew Wyeth. From old Norse poetry to Greek cult statues, from Japan's most elite geisha dancers to American makeup artists, from Serbia to India, Vollmann works to extract the secrets of staged femininity and the mystery of perceived and expressed beauty, including explorations of gender at a transgendered community in Los Angeles and with Kabuki female impersonators.Kissing the Mask is illustrated with many evocative sketches and photographs by the author.

From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central comes a charming, evocative and piercing examination of an ancient Japanese tradition and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty….What is a woman? To what extent is femininity a performance? Writing with the extraordinary awareness and endless curiosity that have defined his entire oeuvre, William T. Vollmann takes an in-depth look into the Japanese craft of Noh theater, using the medium as a prism to reveal the conception of beauty itself.Sweeping readers from the dressing room of one of Japan's most famous Noh actors to a transvestite bar in the red-light district of Kabukicho, Kissing the Mask explores the enigma surrounding Noh theater and the traditions that have made it intrinsic to Japanese culture for centuries. Vollmann then widens his scope to encompass such modern artists of attraction and loss as Mishima, Kawabata and even Andrew Wyeth. From old Norse poetry to Greek cult statues, from Japan's most elite geisha dancers to American makeup artists, from Serbia to India, Vollmann works to extract the secrets of staged femininity and the mystery of perceived and expressed beauty, including explorations of gender at a transgendered community in Los Angeles and with Kabuki female impersonators.Kissing the Mask is illustrated with many evocative sketches and photographs by the author.

This collection — derived from many impulses but unified through one distinctive sensibility — contains passionate subversive acts of language, oblique takes on American life, outbursts of comic genius, long meditations on the cruelty of contemporary customs, and funny, disturbing glimpses of daily life. Reality is rendered pitilessly real, and fantasy bares its teeth. At once playful and devastatingly serious, the works in this collection employ a variety of forms — genres, anti-genres, fantasies, games — while highlighting the dangers and delights of contemporary life: Hollywood, tsunamis, war, the art world, AIDS, ambition, weapons of mass destruction, family values, perverse sexualities, urban violence, small change and big bucks, are all used to chum the waters of imagination and truth.

Didžiosios Britanijos rašytoja Joanna Trollope (Džoana Trolop) skaitytojų ir kritikų vertinama už gilų šiuolaikinių žmonių mąstymo, elgesio, santykių išmanymą. Rašytoja nepaprastai tikroviškai ir pažvelgdama iš skirtingų požiūrio taškų atkuria situacijas, į kurias jie pakliūna, ir dilemas, su kuriomis susiduria. Knygos „Kita šeima“ veikėjai – dvi vieno vyro šeimos: dvi jo moterys ir jų vaikai. Vieną moterį jis buvo sutikęs jaunystėje, o su kita pragyveno visą likusį savo gyvenimą. Su pirmąja gyveno labai trumpai, tačiau buvo ją vedęs ir iki gyvenimo pabaigos oficialiai neišsiskyręs. Su antrąja – praleido dvidešimt trejus metus, tačiau per tiek laiko taip ir nepasipiršo. Po vyro mirties dalijantis testamentu paliktą palikimą abi moterys ir jų vaikai bus priversti susitikti, ir šis susitikimas pasės daug abejonių, prikels daug praeities paslapčių, sujauks jausmus ir nė vieno nepaliks tokio, koks buvo iki šiol…

Klara and the Sun is a magnificent new novel from the Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro—author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day.

Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her.

Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

In its award citation in 2017, the Nobel committee described Ishiguro’s books as “novels of great emotional force” and said he has “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

Kleinzeit, Russell Hoban's second novel, is probably the funniest of his books. It's a stylized, completely unpredictable story about a man in search of reality, armed only with a Glockenspiel and a copy of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War. The story opens as our hero, Kleinzeit, experiences a mysterious flash of pain in his hypotenuse. That morning he gets sacked from his job as a copywriter and is checked into hospital by his doctor. Hospital has been waiting for Kleinzeit; so has Sister, the kindly nurse who is about to become his link to sanity as he is existentially heckled by the voracious, sadistically witty institution known as Hospital, as well as the nonsensical doctors and ailments who put him there.

Egils LukjanskisKliedziens no debesīm - Pirmā grāmataDivu cilvēku mīlestība likteņa nežēlīgo rotaļu un laikmeta kolīziju bargajā pārbaudē, kad jāiziet cauri ciešanu muklājiem, nodevības gļetajām dūņainēm, saglabājot skaidru un tīru cil­vēciskumu sevi. Pasaules bargie viesuļi brāžas par divu mīlošu cilvēku likteņiem, plosot tos, šķirot, aiznesot tālu vienu no otra un atkal satuvinot dzīves ņirbošajā virpuli. Daudzi un dažādi cilvēki jāsatiek, daudzi notikumi jāizdzīvo romānā, kura dar­bība, sākusies Pirmā pasaules kara dunoņā, turpinās līdz mūsdienām. Un kā kliedziens no debesim arī mūsu laikā ielau­žas jau sen nodzīvoti mūži, sen sacīti mīlas vārdi, sen dedzis naids, visnegaidītākajā veidā turpinoties mūsu šodienā.SĀKOTNĒJI šī grāmata bija iecerēta galvenokārt kā patiess stāsts par kādu ļoti garu un apbrīnojamu mīlestību, par to vienīgo garīgo spēku, kas šādā vai tādā mērā ietekmē ikviena cilvēka dzīvi. Taču drīz iecere nedaudz mainījās, pamazām romāna saturs paplašinājās un sāka aptvert daudz dziļākus un daudzpusīgākus dzīves un cilvēku attiecību slāņus, atklājot arvien jaunus un neparastākus cilvēku likteņus. Romānā varbūt īstai realitātei neatbilst daži sapņi un nakts vīzijas, taču visa darba pamatu un galvenās sižeta lī­nijas veido pilnīgi patiesi notikumi, kādreiz un vēl tagad dzīvojošu cilvēku īstenas biogrāfijas.Tomēr jāatzīmē, ka, neraugoties uz to, ka arī romāna gal­venajam varonim dzīvē ir bijis reāls prototips, viņš tomēr nesaucas īstajā vārdā, ir nedaudz vispārināts un sevī iemieso daudzu mūsu tautiešu likteņus, tādēļ pareizāk būtu teikt, ka grāmata ir veltīta citiem — mirušajiem un dzīvajiem, sāpju un šaubu ceļu izgājušajiem, nevainīgi nokautajiem un pievilta­jiem, dzīves salauztajiem un uzvarētājiem, godīgajiem un nodevējiem, vientuļajiem un stiprajiem, mums — latvie­šiem . . .Mākslinieciskā redaktore M. Dragūne Tehniskā redaktore V. Kuskule Korektore Z. GražanskaParakstīta iespiešanai 27.06.94. Reģistrācijas apliecība N' 2 0306. Formāts 84x108/32. Tipogrāfijas papīri. Kompjūtera salikuma. Augstspiedums. 18,48 uzsk. iespiedi.; 19,69 izdcvn. 1. Pašūt. N* 195-3. Izdevniecība -Liesma-, LV-1468 Rija, Aspazijās bulv. 24. Iespiests tipogrāfija -Rota-, LV-1011 Rīga, Blaumaņa iela 38/40.Autorsromāns divās grāmatāsR!GA L I E S M A 1994Noskannējis grāmatu un FB2 failu izveidojis Imants LočmelisRedaktors JĀNIS SIRMBĀRDIS Mākslinieks ALDIS ALEKS©Egils Lukjanskis, 1994

In this unforgettable work of fiction, Donald Ray Pollock peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place. Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are irresistibly, undeniably real. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor.

The work of John Jodzio has already made waves across the literary community. Some readers noticed his nimble blending of humor with painful truths reminded them of George Saunders. His creativity and fresh voice reminded others of Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. But with his new collection, Jodzio creates a class of his own.Knockout is the unified collection of stories that create flawless portraits of deeply flawed figures on the edge of the American Dream. A recovering drug addict gets tricked into stealing a tiger. A man buys a used sex chair from his neighbor. A woman suffering from agoraphobia raises her son completely indoors. An alcoholic runs a bed and breakfast with the son from his deceased wife's first marriage. These people will admit that their chances have passed them by. These people know they were born on the wrong side of the tracks, and their dreams will remain unreachable, but that doesn't stop them from dreaming. Yet readers won’t be fooled by the funny premises — Jodzio steers these stories into deeper places, creating a brilliant examination of those on the fringes of modern life.With its quirky humor, compelling characters, and unexpected sincerity, Knockout by John Jodzio is poised to become his breakout book, drawing a wide readership to this provocative and talented young writer.