“A startling debut. Joshua Mohr takes us to a different city, but a city we know, populated by the dark side of ourselves.”—Stephen ElliottEnter Damascus, the womb-like bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, and you’ll find Rhonda, a thirty-year-old man suffering from depersonalization — a disorder allowing him to reconfigure his reality to tolerate trauma. When Rhonda was young he imagined the rooms of his house drifting apart like separating continents as he raced to avoid his mother’s abusive boyfriend while trying to make sense of her extended disappearances.The next stool over is Vern, a diaper-clad Vet nursing warm beers, who wishes for nothing more than the opportunity to re-break Rhonda’s arm.Beside Vern, Old Lady Rhonda, a neglected housewife who excels at Wheel of Fortune.Some Things That Meant the World to Me is the gritty tale of a band of outcasts struggling to make sense of their broken pasts in this subtly affecting, achingly poignant, and mature debut novel.I’d like to brag about the night I saved a hooker’s life. Like to tell you how quiet everything else in the world was while I helped her. This was in San Francisco. Late 2007. I’d been drinking in Damascus, my favorite dive bar, which was painted entirely black — floor, walls, and ceiling. Being surrounded by all that darkness had this slowing effect on time, like a shunned astronaut meandering in space.Joshua Mohr has been published in Other Voices, The Cimarron Review, Pleiades, and Gulf Coast, among others.

At last a new book: a baker’s dozen of stories all with Helen DeWitt’s razor-sharp genius

For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a reader as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success. “Look,” a character begins to explain, laying out some gambit reasonably enough, even if facing a world of boomeranging counterfactuals, situations spinning out to their utmost logical extremes, and Rube Goldberg-like moving parts, where things prove “more complicated than they had first appeared” and “at 3 a.m. the circumstances seem to attenuate.”

In various ways, each tale carries DeWitt’s signature poker-face lament regarding the near-impossibility of the life of the mind when one is made to pay to have the time for it, in a world so sadly “taken up with all sorts of paraphernalia superfluous, not to say impedimental, to ratiocination.”

The stories in Some Day This Will Be Funny marry memory to moment in a union of narrative form as immaculate and imperfect as the characters damned to act them out on page. Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, presides over the ceremony; Clarence Thomas, Marvin Gaye, and Madame Realism mingle at the reception. Narrators — by turn infamous and nameless — shift within their own skin, struggling to unknot reminiscence from reality while scenes rush into warm focus, then cool, twist, and snap in the breeze of shifting thought. Epistle, quotation, and haiku bounce between lyrical passages of lucid beauty, echoing the scattered, cycling arpeggio of Tillman’s preferred subject: the unsettled mind.Collectively, these stories own a conscience shaped by oaths made and broken; by the skeleton silence and secrets of family; by love’s shifting chartreuse. They traffic in the quiet images of personal history, each one a flickering sacrament in danger of being swallowed up by the lust and desperation of their possessor: a fistful of parking tickets shoved in the glove compartment, a little black book hidden from a wife in a safe-deposit box, a planter stuffed with flowers to keep out the cooing mourning doves. They are stories fashioned with candor and animated by fits of wordplay and invention — stories that affirm Tillman’s unshakable talent for wedding the patterns and rituals of thought with the blushing immediacy of existence, defying genre and defining contemporary short fiction.

A fully realized portrait of one woman’s life in all its complexity, by the National Book Award–winning authorAn ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott’s extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections—of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age—come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott’s deft, lyrical voice.     Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an “amadan,” a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott’s novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another.     Marie’s first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother’s brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents’ deaths; the births and lives of Marie’s children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn—McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today.

Writing a novel after having won a Nobel Prize for Literature must be even more daunting than trying to follow a brilliant, bestselling debut. In Somersault (the title refers to an abrupt, public renunciation of the past), Kenzaburo Oe has himself leapt in a new direction, rolling away from the slim, semi-autobiographical novel that garnered the 1994 Nobel Prize (A Personal Matter) and toward this lengthy, involved account of a Japanese religious movement. Although it opens with the perky and almost picaresque accidental deflowering of a young ballerina with an architectural model, Somersault is no laugh riot. Oe's slow, deliberate pace sets the tone for an unusual exploration of faith, spiritual searching, group dynamics, and exploitation. His lavish, sometimes indiscriminate use of detail can be maddening, but it also lends itself to his sobering subject matter, as well as to some of the most beautiful, realistic sex scenes a reader is likely to encounter. – Regina MarlerFrom Publishers WeeklyNobelist Oe's giant new novel is inspired by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which released sarin gas in Tokyo 's subway system in 1995. Ten years before the novel begins, Patron and Guide, the elderly leaders of Oe's fictional cult, discover, to their horror, that a militant faction of the organization is planning to seize a nuclear power plant. They dissolve the cult very publicly, on TV, in an act known as the Somersault. Ten years later, Patron decides to restart the fragmented movement, after the militant wing kidnaps and murders Guide, moving the headquarters of the church from Tokyo to the country town of Shikoku. Patron's idea is that he is really a fool Christ; in the end, however, he can't escape his followers' more violent expectations. Oe divides the story between Patron and his inner circle, which consists of his public relations man, Ogi, who is not a believer; his secretary, Dancer, an assertive, desirable young woman; his chauffeur, Ikuo; and Ikuo's lover, Kizu, who replaces Guide as co-leader of the cult. Kizu is a middle-aged artist, troubled by the reoccurrence of colon cancer. Like a Thomas Mann character, he discovers homoerotic passion in the throes of illness. Oe's Dostoyevskian themes should fill his story with thunder, but the pace is slow, and Patron doesn't have the depth of a Myshkin or a Karamazov-he seems anything but charismatic. It is Kizu and Ikuo's story that rises above room temperature, Kizu's sharp, painterly intelligence contrasting with Ikuo's rather sinister ardor. Oe has attempted to create a sprawling masterpiece, but American readers might decide there's more sprawl than masterpiece here.

In the 1960's, we were never able to look at military life in the same way again. Now Joseph Heller has struck far closer to home.Something Happened is about ambition, greed, love, lust, hate and fear, marriage and adultery. It is about the struggle among men, the war between the sexes, the conflict of parents and children. It is about the life we all lead today — and you will never be able to look at that life in the same way again.Once in a decade, something important happens in books. In the 1970's, it is Something Happened."Hypnotic, seductive. as clear and as hard-edged as a cut diamond!"— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The New York Times Sunday Book"The test of a novel is when it deserves to be read a second time. People will be rereading Something Happened and fifty years from now they'll be reading it still!"— Philadelphia Inquirer

A physical novel in which Lucien Taylor, a native son of Montana, embarks on a half-witted, half-unwilling journey into self-discovery.

Jamal is a successful psychoanalyst haunted by his first love and a brutal act of violence from which he can never escape. Looking back to his coming of age in the 1970s forms a vivid backdrop to the drama that develops thirty years later, as he and his friends face an encroaching middle age with the traumas of their youth still unresolved. Like "The Buddha of Suburbia", "Something to Tell You" is full-to-bursting with energy, at times comic, at times painfully tender. With unfailing deftness of touch Kureishi has created a memorable cast of recognisable individuals, all of whom wrestle with their own limits as human beings, haunted by the past until they find it within themselves to forgive.

Ikonomou's stories convey the plight of those worst affected by the Greek economic crisis-laid-off workers, hungry children. In the urban sprawl between Athens and Piraeus, the narratives roam restlessly through the impoverished working-class quarters located off the tourist routes. Everyone is dreaming of escape: to the mountains, to an island or a palatial estate, into a Hans Christian Andersen story world. What are they fleeing? The old woes-gossip, watchful neighbors, the oppression and indifference of the rich-now made infinitely worse. In Ikonomou's concrete streets, the rain is always looming, the politicians' slogans are ignored, and the police remain a violent, threatening presence offstage. Yet even at the edge of destitution, his men and women act for themselves, trying to preserve what little solidarity remains in a deeply atomized society, and in one way or another finding their own voice. There is faith here, deep faith-though little or none in those who habitually ask for it.

Мальчик, затем уже юноша, мужчина рассказывает в хронологическом порядке историю всей своей жизни, собственного становления, ощущений, мыслей, чувств и женщин, которых любил. Он взрослеет, и даже манера речи, взгляды, стиль повествования меняются с детских и наивных в более зрелые вместе с ним. Казалось бы, обычный человек вспоминает свою жизнь, но одна особенность мешает чистоте восприятия этого рассказа: слишком часто мечты и истинные события путаются, не давая понять, что было на самом деле, а что являлось лишь плодом фантазии. Окруженный любимыми людьми уже пожилой герой доживает свои абсолютно счастливые дни, пока еще не задаваясь вопросом, что именно из происходящего вокруг него реально… И кто реален.

Ashton, son of The Tank Man, and his sister were forced to move to the Port in 1989. He was contented with his life in the Port, but everything changed on that day when he was deprived of the right to vote against the dissolution of the government, a plebiscite initiated by a group of people who called themselves freedom-pursuers.

His grudge against those freedom-pursuers, who he deemed as a bunch of hypocrites, prompted him to leave the country and start a new life in the place where he was born despite others’ objections, but it turned out to be a journey that he could never forget. And the chance of telling this story has only come to him after he passed away.

Ирина Денежкина – сверхновая звезда русской литературы. Книга, изданная немедленно после того, как Ирина стала финалистом премии `Национальный бестселлер`, завоевала русских читателей силой чувств, необузданностью энергии и мастерством исполнения.Сегодня `Дай мне!` – всемирный бестселлер. Книга вышла в Италии, где заняла место в Топ-10 между Паоло Коэльо и Исабель Альенде. Летом книга Денежкиной выходит в Голландии, Германии, Литве, осенью – в Англии, Швеции, Финляндии, Франции. В начале 2004 года – в США. `Дай мне!`, как ледокол, взломала лед недоверия к современной русской литературе.Герои повестей и рассказов Ирины Денежкиной переживают самый сложный период жизни, когда их главной заботой становится реализация сексуального влечения. Но наряду с ними такими же действующими лицами можно считать саму ювенильную реальность и скрытый механизм романтики любви.

"Not since Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird or Agota Kristof’s Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it’s like to be a young person in a war. That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle.”—Rebecca Brown, author of The End of Youth"The moment you enter these pages, you step into a beautiful and terrifying dream. You are in the hands of a master, a literary shaman. Abani casts his spell so completely — so devastatingly — you emerge cleansed, redeemed, and utterly haunted." — Brad Kessler, author of Birds in FallPart Inferno, part Paradise Lost, and part Sunjiata epic, Song for Night is the story of a West African boy soldier’s lyrical, terrifying, yet beautiful journey through the nightmare landscape of a brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The reader is led by the voiceless protagonist who, as part of a land mine-clearing platoon, had his vocal chords cut, a move to keep these children from screaming when blown up, and thereby distracting the other minesweepers. The book is written in a ghostly voice, with each chapter headed by a line of the unique sign language these children invented. This book is unlike anything else ever written about an African war.Chris Abani is a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail (a New York Times Editor’s Choice), and GraceLand (a selection of the Today Show Book Club and winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). His other prizes include a PEN Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He lives and teaches in California.

A contemporary American masterpiece about music, race, an unforgettable man, and an unreal America during the Civil War era.At the heart of this remarkable novel is Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical genius who performed under the name Blind Tom.Song of the Shank opens in 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere — inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots — who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother.As the novel ranges from Tom’s boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. In his symphonic novel, Jeffery Renard Allen blends history and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man who profoundly changes all who encounter him.

With unreliable memories and scraps of photographs as his only clues, Conor Lyons follows in the tracks of his father, a rootless photographer, as he moved from war-torn Spain, to the barren plains of Mexico, where he met and married Conor's mother, to the American West, and finally back to Ireland, where the marriage and the story reach their heartrending climax. As the narratives of Conor's quest and his parents' lives twine and untwine, Collum McCann creates a mesmerizing evocation of the gulf between memory and imagination, love and loss, past and present.

Back in print by popular demand, national bestselling author Jodi Picoult's acclaimed debut novel treats fans old and new to a beautiful, poignant story of family, friendship and love. Jodi Picoult's powerful novel portrays an emotionaly charged marriage that changes course in one explosive moment. For years, Jane Jones has lived in the shadow of her husband, renowned San Diego oceanographer Oliver Jones. But during an escalating argument, Janes turns to him with an alarming volatility. In anger and fear, Jane leaves with her teenage daughter, Rebecca, for a cross-country odyssey. Charted by letters from her borther Joley, they are guided to his Massachusetts apple farm, where surprising self-discoveries await. Now Oliver, an expert at tracking humpback whales across vast oceans, will search for his wife across a continent, and find a new way to see the world, his family, and himself: through her eyes.

From the award-winning author of No One Is Here Except All of Us, an imaginative novel about a wealthy New England family in the 1960s and '70s that suddenly loses its fortune — and its bearings.Labor Day, 1976, Martha's Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house along this moneyed coast of New England, Fern and Edgar — married with three children — are happily preparing for a family birthday celebration when they learn that the unimaginable has occurred: There is no more money. More specifically, there's no more money in the estate of Fern's recently deceased parents, which, as the sole source of Fern and Edgar's income, had allowed them to live this beautiful, comfortable life despite their professed anti-money ideals. Quickly, the once-charmed family unravels. In distress and confusion, Fern and Edgar are each tempted away on separate adventures: she on a road trip with a stranger, he on an ill-advised sailing voyage with another woman. The three children are left for days with no guardian whatsoever, in an improvised Neverland helmed by the tender, witty, and resourceful Cricket, age nine.Brimming with humanity and wisdom, humor and bite, and imbued with both the whimsical and the profound, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty is a story of American wealth, class, family, and mobility, approached by award-winner Ramona Ausubel with a breadth of imagination and understanding that is fresh, surprising, and exciting.

It is Hartford, Connecticut, in the late 1940’s, and a set of twins is separated at birth by a desperate nurse. Nat Cartwright goes home with his parents, a schoolteacher and an insurance salesman. But his twin brother is to begin his days as Fletcher Andrew Davenport, son of a wealthy CEO and his society wife.During the years that follow, the two brothers grow up unaware of each other’s existence. Nat leaves college at the University of Connecticut to serve in Vietnam. Returning a war hero, he finishes school and goes on to become a successful bank executive. Fletcher, meanwhile, has graduated from Yale University and distinguishes himself as a criminal defence lawyer before he is elected a senator. As their lives unfold, both men are confronted with tragedy and betrayal, loss and hardship, all the time overcoming life’s obstacles to become the men they are destined to be.In the tradition of Jeffrey Archer’s most popular books, SONS OF FORTUNE is as much a chronicle of a nation in transition as it is the story of the making of these two men — and how, eventually, they come to find each other...

In the summer of his seventeenth year, Samuel Sooleymon gets the chance of a lifetime: a trip to the United States with his South Sudanese teammates to play in a showcase basketball tournament. He has never been away from home, nor has he ever been on an airplane. The opportunity to be scouted by dozens of college coaches is a dream come true.

Samuel is an amazing athlete, with speed, quickness, and an astonishing vertical leap. The rest of his game, though, needs work, and the American coaches are less than impressed.

During the tournament, Samuel receives devastating news from home: A civil war is raging across South Sudan, and rebel troops have ransacked his village. His father is dead, his sister is missing, and his mother and two younger brothers are in a refugee camp.

Samuel desperately wants to go home, but it’s just not possible. Partly out of sympathy, the coach of North Carolina Central offers him a scholarship. Samuel moves to Durham, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season. There is plenty of more mature talent and he isn’t immediately needed.

But Samuel has something no other player has: a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America. He works tirelessly on his game, shooting baskets every morning at dawn by himself in the gym, and soon he’s dominating everyone in practice. With the Central team losing and suffering injury after injury, Sooley, as he is nicknamed, is called off the bench. And the legend begins.

But how far can Sooley take his team? And will success allow him to save his family?

“Michael Bible may have hit what a lot of us were trying, a singular new voice for CEOs to slackers. He’s so open, so easy, so fluid, you’ll smile with joy turning every page.”—Barry HannahIf Nicholson Baker shaved his beard and moved south of the Mason-Dixon line, he’d look and sound a lot like Michael Bible. Uproariously funny, unabashedly sexy, and with a nuanced sincerity that won’t sneak up on you till the end, Michael Bible’s novel is not only much-anticipated, but highly rewarding.