On an spring afternoon in 1978 in the loft of a church outside Cambridge, England, an organ tuner named Malory loses his virginity to a dyslexic math genius named Louiza. When Louiza disappears, Malory follows her trail to Rome. There, the quest to find his love gets sidetracked when he discovers he is the heir to the Kingdom of Septimania, given by Charlemagne to the Jews of eighth-century France. In the midst of a Rome reeling from the kidnappings and bombs of the Red Brigades, Malory is crowned King of the Jews, Holy Roman Emperor and possibly Caliph of All Islam.Over the next fifty years, Malory’s search for Louiza leads to encounters with Pope John Paul II, a band of lost Romanians, a magical Bernini statue, Haroun al Rashid of Arabian Nights fame, an elephant that changes color, a shadowy U.S. spy agency and one of the 9/11 bombers, an appleseed from the original Tree of Knowledge, and the secret history of Isaac Newton and his discovery of a Grand Unified Theory that explains everything. It is the quest of a Candide for love and knowledge, and the ultimate discovery that they may be unified after all.

Four years after his sensational first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mr. Cain appears with a new one which definitely places him among the best story-tellers in America.The emphasis is hereby put upon the word story, for that, above everything else, is what this book is. It is an account of the lives of two men and one woman and of their relations with each other, which begins in a moment of tenseness and passion and moves forward with amazing speed, in the clipped and biting prose that Cain has made his own, to still greater heights — to emotion so taut that it must break in violence.The story is set in Mexico, Hollywood, and New York — a simple, primitive scene on the one hand, a brilliant, sophisticated one on the other. There are tenderness and beauty in the book, and also murder and vice. The arts of the film, the opera, and the bullfight are in it, and an incredible understanding of the strange nature of the human animal. But above all, a story is in it — a story full of fury and terror and love, which once begun must be finished and once read will be remembered.

A startling and inspirational work of transgender fiction by a leading figure in Brazil's "New Urban" fiction movement.Armando is one of the most renowned therapists in São Paulo. One of his patients, a 17-year-old boy by the name of Sergio, abruptly interrupts his course of therapy after a trip to New York. Sergio's cursory explanation to Armando is that he has finally found his own path to happiness and must pursue it.For years, without any further news of Sergio, Armando wonders what happened to his patient. He subsequently learns that Sergio is living a happy life in New York and that he is now a woman, Sandra. Not long after this startling discovery, however, Armando is shocked to read about Sandra's unexpected death. In an attempt to discover the truth about Sergio and Sandra's life, Armando starts investigating on his own.Sergio Y. is a unique and moving story about gender, identity, and the search for happiness.

A poignant, bitingly funny Indian satire and love story set in a scientific institute and in Mumbai’s humid tenements.Ayyan Mani, one of the thousands of dalit (untouchable caste) men trapped in Mumbai’s slums, works in the Institute of Theory and Research as the lowly assistant to the director, a brilliant self-assured astronomer. Ever wily and ambitious, Ayyan weaves two plots, one involving his knowledge of an illicit romance between his married boss and the institute’s first female researcher, and another concerning his young son and his soap-opera-addicted wife. Ayyan quickly finds his deceptions growing intertwined, even as the Brahmin scientists wage war over the question of aliens in outer space. In his debut novel, Manu Joseph expertly picks apart the dynamics of this complex world, offering humorous takes on proselytizing nuns and chronicling the vanquished director serving as guru to his former colleagues. This is at once a moving portrait of love and its strange workings and a hilarious portrayal of men’s runaway egos and ambitions.

A good man in a bad world, Jon Sigurdsson is 59 and divorced: a senior civil servant in Westminster who hates many of his colleagues and loathes his work for a government engaged in unmentionable acts. A man of conscience.Meg Williams is ‘a bankrupt accountant — two words you don’t want in the same sentence, or anywhere near your CV’. She’s 45 and shakily sober, living on Telegraph Hill, where she can see London unfurl below her. Somewhere out there is safety.Somewhere out there is Jon, pinballing around the city with a mobile phone and a letter-writing habit he can’t break. He’s a man on the brink, leaking government secrets and affection as he runs for his life.Set in 2014, this is a novel of our times. Poignant, deeply funny, and beautifully written, Serious Sweet is about two decent, damaged people trying to make moral choices in an immoral world: ready to sacrifice what’s left of themselves for honesty, and for a chance at tenderness. As Jon and Meg navigate the sweet and serious heart of London — passing through 24 hours that will change them both for ever — they tell a very unusual, unbearably moving love story.

Ranging across two centuries, and from the western Himalaya to an Adirondack village, these wonderfully imagined stories and novellas travel the territories of yearning and awakening, of loss and unexpected discovery. A mapper of the highest mountain peaks realizes his true obsession. A young woman afire with scientific curiosity must come to terms with a romantic fantasy. Brothers and sisters, torn apart at an early age, are beset by dreams of reunion. Throughout, Barrett's most characteristic theme — the happenings in that borderland between science and desire — unfolds in the diverse lives of unforgettable human beings. Although each richly layered tale stands independently, readers of Ship Fever (National Book Award winner) and Barrett's extraordinary novel The Voyage of the Narwhal, will discover subtle links both among these new stories and to characters in the earlier works.

Set in 1967, at the peak of the Mao cult, Serve the People! is a beautifully told, wickedly daring story about the forbidden love affair between Liu Lian, the young, pretty wife of a powerful Division Commander in Communist China, and her household’s lowly servant, Wu Dawang. When Liu Lian establishes a rule for her orderly that he is to attend to her needs whenever the household’s wooden Serve the People! sign is removed from its usual place, the orderly vows to obey. What follows is a remarkable love story and a profound and deliciously comic satire on Mao’s famous slogan and the political and sexual taboos of his regime. As life is breathed into the illicit sexual affair, Yan Lianke brilliantly captures how the Model Soldier Wu Dawang becomes an eager collaborator with the restless and demanding Liu Lian, their actions inspired by primitive passions that they are only just discovering. Originally banned in China, and the first work from Yan Lianke to be translated into English, Serve the People! brings us the debut of one of the most important authors writing from inside China today.

Prieš septynerius metus pradingo Anos mama. O dabar Ana vis girdi jos pagalbos šauksmą. Bet tas šauksmas – tik mergaitės galvoje. Ar ji pradeda eiti iš proto? O gal mamą iš tiesų kažkas įkalinęs, ir jai reikia pagalbos? Pėdsakai atveda prie Šešėlių vartų – tiesiai į tamsą, kurios Ana taip bijo. Tamsą, kurioje galima žūti.

"The funniest American novel since Sam Lipsyte's The Ask."— Village Voice"A ribald chronicle of [a] 60-something Manhattan accountant, who's come to Rio de Janeiro as a sex tourist. [A] fever dream of a novel."— New York Times Book Review"Levy delivers a visceral blend of hilarious satire and study in human sexuality, taking us on a deviant tour of Rio."— Interview MagazineI have come to regard almost everything that happens in human life as a form of therapy.So muses Kenny Cantor, always dapper in his seersucker suit from the Brooks Brothers 346 collection. Kenny is a CPA, amateur psychoanalyst, and sex-tourist vacationing in Rio when he gets waylaid at a psychoanalytic conference.What ensues is a provocative journey that merges sex and psychoanalysis through Rio's tawdry netherworld of Susan Sontag-quoting denizens as only an incendiary voice like Francis Levy could imagine.

The year is 1903, and Captain Lalande Biran, overseeing a garrison on the banks of the Congo, has an ambition: to amass a fortune and return to the literary cafés of Paris. His glamorous wife Christine has a further ambition: to own seven houses in France, a house for every year he has been abroad. At the Captain's side are an ex-legionnaire womaniser, and a servile, treacherous man who dreams of running a brothel. At their hands the jungle is transformed into a wild circus of human ambition and absurdity. But everything changes with the arrival of a new officer and brilliant marksman: the enigmatic Chrysostome Liège.

My sister wants the truth.But sometimes the truth hurts.For months, my long-lost twin, Emma, has been living my life and trying to solve my murder. She's unearthed dark secrets about my friends, my family, and my tangled past. But when it comes to finding my killer, she keeps running into dead ends.Until my body shows up in Sabino Canyon. Suddenly everyone knows there are two girls who look like Sutton Mercer—and that one of them is dead. At first the police assume the body is Emma's. But as questions and accusations start flying, it's harder than ever for Emma to keep playing me. The truth is bound to come out eventually. And when it does, Emma will be suspect number one in my murder investigation. If she can't find my killer before time runs out, she'll end up behind bars . . . or worse.Sara Shepard, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars books, finally reveals the shocking truth about Sutton's murder in this riveting novel about secrets, lies, and killer consequences.

It’s night time, and a young man sits writing at a table. He’s afraid. Afraid of having to decide—on a woman, a group of friends, an annual holiday destination. He’s afraid of becoming numb to emotion. Afraid of growing up.

But all of that is about to change. When an acquaintance makes him a proposition, our unnamed protagonist is drawn into a scheme where each night at seven o’clock, he must commit one of the seven sins—a task that forces him to decide how far he is truly willing to go in his efforts to stave off habit and ennui and save his own life.

The most reviewed, discussed, and recommended German language debut of the last decade, Seven Nights has earned Simon Strauss praise as “one of the greatest talents of his generation” by the Tagesspiegel newspaper and also one of the most controversial.

Isan, the novel s protagonist, is either Seth himself or a latter-day avatar. A desert-wandering seer and proponent of desert life, he settles for an extended stay in a fertile oasis. If Jack Frost, the personification of the arrival of winter, were to visit a tropical rain forest, the results might be similarly disastrous. Not surprisingly, since this is a novel by Ibrahim al-Koni, infanticide, uxoricide, serial adultery, betrayal, metamorphosis, murder by a proxy animal, ordinary murder, and a life-threatening chase through the desert all figure in the plot, although the novel is also an existential reflection on the purpose of human life.Ibrahim al-Koni typically layers allusions in his works as if he were an artist adding a suggestion of depth to a painting by applying extra washes. Tuareg folklore, Egyptian mythology, Russian literature, and medieval European thought elbow each other for room on the page. One might expect a novel called The Seven Veils of Seth to be a heavy-handed allegory. Instead, the reader is left wondering. The truth is elusive, a mirage pulsing at the horizon."

As tense as a thriller, as vivid as an undercover documentary, a brilliant first novel from Argentina takes readers right into the streets and slums of Buenos Aires as one young man fights for his life.In Buenos Aires the economy has collapsed and people are protesting on the streets. But in the barrio, life goes on — the slums of the city are ruled by gangs, drugs, and guns. Gringo and Chueco are almost adults, and joining the gang warfare that governs their community seems inevitable. Chueco thinks he can join El Jetita’s gang but remain his own man, while Gringo knows this can't happen — you obey the leader or else. As they two get drawn ever deeper into the turf war between El Jetita and his rival Charly, Gringo sees an alternative way of life, and love, pass before his eyes. A few days ago he and Chueco were joking about killing cats; now he's fighting to save his skin. Matias Nespolo's bold and brilliant first novel takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through a place of crime and deprivation.

"I've been sitting at the counter of this bar for almost an hour, now on my third drink, when I notice one of the women, in a group of women, saunter in and sit in a booth. There are five of them, all in their mid-twenties to early thirties. I don't want to seem too conspicuous. I try to verify my suspicion from the mirror at the bar. There are too many bottles in the way. I turn around and look. Yes, it's her — my ex-wife. She sees me looking, no expression on her face, quickly goes back to her four friends — smiling and laughing, as if I don't exist." Say you're a private eye and, using your skills and techniques, you probe and pry the intimate sensual details from a group of women. Each woman has her own sordid, enticing, and kinky past — including your ex-wife, who has some doozies to tell!Get the scoop, gumshoe, and don't let it show — you're a tough guy, and tough guys don't cry!

Alex has spent the majority of his adult life between two very different women — and he can’t make up his mind. Sonia, his wife and business partner, is everything a man would want. Intelligent, gorgeous, charming, and ambitious, she worked tirelessly alongside him to open their architecture firm and to build a life of luxury. But when the seven-year itch sets in, their exhaustion at working long hours coupled with their failed attempts at starting a family get the best of them. Alex soon finds himself kindling an affair with his college lover, Ivona. The young Polish woman who worked in a Catholic mission is the polar opposite of Sonia: dull, passive, taciturn, and plain. Despite having little in common with Ivona, Alex is inexplicably drawn to her while despising himself for it. Torn between his highbrow marriage and his lowbrow affair, Alex is stuck within a spiraling threesome. But when Ivona becomes pregnant, life takes an unexpected turn, and Alex is puzzled more than ever by the mysteries of his heart.Peter Stamm, one of Switzerland’s most acclaimed writers, is at his best exploring the complexities of human relationships. Seven Years is a distinct, sobering, and bold novel about the impositions of happiness in the quest for love.

“Right from the start I picked her for a thief, although that day she didn’t take anything. . I knew she’d be back,” the narrator/bookseller of Severina recalls in this novel’s opening pages. Imagine a dark-haired book thief as alluring as she is dangerous. Imagine the mesmerized bookseller secretly tracking the volumes she steals, hoping for insight into her character, her motives, her love life. In Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s hands, this tale of obsessive love is told with almost breathless precision and economy. The bookstore owner is soon entangled in Severina’s mystery: seductive and peripatetic, of uncertain nationality, she steals books to actually read them and to share with her purported grandfather, Señor Blanco.In this unsettling exploration of the alienating and simultaneously liberating power of love, the bookseller’s monotonous existence is rocked by the enigmatic Severina. As in a dream, the disoriented man finds that the thin border between rational and irrational is no longer reliable. Severina confirms Rey Rosa’s privileged place in contemporary world literature.

Sewing Shut My Eyes is a tour-de-force avant-pop anti-spectacle — nine darkly satiric out-takes of America tubing. Visions of mid-air synchronicities, robotic cockroaches, cyborg poets and one monstrous HDTV, all rendered in a hypo-manic style of electrified clauses and full-throttle patter. Here's Mona Sausalito, self-proclaimed "fricking gorgeous" bad-little-girl for Escort a la Mode and, on the side, Neogoth lyricist in the band of her boyfriend Mosh ("His real name is Marvin Goldstein"). Mona wants to be a poet. "I write about human sacrifices, cannibalism, vampires, and stuff. Mosh loves my work. He says we're all going to be famous some day. Only right now we're not, which bites, cuz I've been writing for like almost ten months. These things take time, I guess."Olsen hallucinates a turned-on, channel-surfing nation where pain has become home theater and given enough channels, watching would beat sex. A nameless agent of the ultimate phantom bureaucracy holds his Yeltsin-70 at the ready and recalls O.J. on trial, supermodels and styrofoam landscapes, America screening fast and addictive. In the title story, Kerwin Penumbro wakes on his birthday to the ultimate tv, the renowned Mitsubishi Stealth, and at a point thirty-three thousand feet above the triangulation of Iron Lightning, Faith, and Thunder Butte, SD, Itty Snibb, supremely confident dwarf and prosperous entrepreneur, prepares to meet God.These are fictions for minds lit with cathode-ray tubes, hands pixilated with static, for bodies that have become switching stations for the Society of the Spectacle.The only thing left to do is start sewing shut our eyes.

The iconic author of the bestselling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with a glittering tale of love and longing as a young woman finds herself torn between two worlds–the WASP establishment of her father’s family and George Zao, a man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with. On her very first morning on the jewel-like island of Capri, Lucie Churchill sets eyes on George Zao and she instantly can’t stand him. She can’t stand it when he gallantly offers to trade hotel rooms with her so that she can have the view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, she can’t stand that he knows more about Curzio Malaparte than she does, and she really can’t stand it when he kisses her in the darkness of the ancient ruins of a Roman villa and they are caught by her snobbish, disapproving cousin, Charlotte. “Your mother is Chinese so it’s no surprise you’d be attracted to someone like him,” Charlotte teases. Daughter of an American-born-Chinese mother and blue-blooded New York father, Lucie has always sublimated the Asian side of herself in favor of the white side, and she adamantly denies having feelings for George. But several years later, when George unexpectedly appears in East Hampton where Lucie is weekending with her new fiancé, Lucie finds herself drawn to George again. Soon, Lucy is spinning a web of deceit that involves her family, her fiancé, the co-op board of her Fifth Avenue apartment, and ultimately herself as she tries mightily to deny George entry into her world–and her heart. Moving between summer playgrounds of privilege, peppered with decadent food and extravagant fashion, Sex and Vanity is a truly modern love story, a daring homage to A Room with a View, and a brilliantly funny comedy of manners set between two cultures

Содержание нового романа Андрея Кучаева укладывается в семь больших глав. Суть его – бритвенно точный анализ действительности. В том же, что такое «Sex Around The Clock», почему это такое, откуда взялось и какие головокружительные события натолкнули автора на написание нижеприведённого эротико-приключенческого романа, читатель разберется сам, прочтя без отрыва написанное.