Maine author Nicholson Baker (Vox, The Mezzanine, Human Smoke) has tackled some diverse topics in his esteemed literary career, and his new novel adds to the list. The Anthologist is the story of aging poet Paul Chowder, selected to write an introduction to a new anthology of verse. The novel follows his starts and stops, becoming a wildly tangential journey through the world of poetry. While Chowder may not be the most diligent worker, his active mind and keen eye reveal him to be one of the most satisfying narrators in recent memory.

This story uncovers suburbia's darkest secrets – mostly in The Flying Swan, a cosmic Rovers Return where Neville the barman and Archroy, owner of five magic beans, do battle with beasts of the occult and in particular the rather unpleasant Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgias.

A Los Angeles Times Best of Summer pick.An Amazon Best Book of the Month (Mystery, Thriller & Suspense).A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Summer: "The best literary puzzle of the summer."The Antiquarian is Gustavo Faverón Patriau’s masterfully conceived, engrossing story of murder, madness, and passion that is set against the landscape of an unnamed South American country ravaged by political violence and corruption.Three years have passed since Gustavo, a renowned psycholinguist, last spoke to his closest friend Daniel, who has been interned in a psychiatric hospital for murdering his fiancée. When Daniel unexpectedly calls to confess the truth of what really happened, Gustavo’s long-buried loyalty resurfaces and draws him into the center of a quixotic, unconventional investigation. As Daniel reveals his account through fragments of fables, novels, and historical allusions, Gustavo begins to retrace the past: from their early college days exploring dust-filled libraries and exotic brothels; to Daniel’s intimate attachment to his sickly younger sister and his dealings as an antiquarian book collector at the Biblio Path. As the clues grow more macabre and more intricate with every turn, an increasingly skeptical Gustavo is forced to deduce a complex series of events from allegories that are more real than police reports, and metaphors more revealing than evidence.With sumptuous prose and haunting imagery reminiscent of Borges, Bolaño, and Poe, Gustavo Faverón Patriau has crafted an unforgettable labyrinthine tale about the reality of human suffering, the healing power of stories, and the strength of fraternal bonds. The Antiquarian is as entertaining as it is erudite, dark as it is illuminating.

They come together by chance in the heart of New York City, four young women at turning points in their lives. Claire finds the spacious loft apartment. But the aspiring shoe designer needs at least one roommate to manage the rent. She meets Abby, a writer trying to make it on her own, far from her successful family in L.A. Then Morgan joins them. She’s ambitious, with a serious finance job on Wall Street. Finally Sasha, a medical student. And so the sprawling space, with its exposed brick and rich natural light, becomes a home to friends about to embark on new exhilarating adventures.Their shared life in the apartment turns them into a family of beloved friends. But as unexpected opportunities and challenges alter the course of each of their lives, they face the bittersweet reality that in time, they will inevitably move away from the place where their dreams began . . .

A collection of sinister and macabre short stories by Daphne du Maurier, including "The Birds" on which Hitchcock famously based his film of the same name.

From the winner of the IMPAC Award and the Nobel Prize, a fierce novel about a young Romanian woman's discovery of betrayal in the most intimate reaches of her life."I've been summoned. Thursday, ten sharp." Thus begins one day in the life of a young clothing-factory worker during Ceaucescu's totalitarian regime. She has been questioned before; this time, she believes, will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the linings of men's suits bound for Italy. "Marry me," the notes say, with her name and address. Anything to get out of the country.As she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts stray to her friend Lilli, shot trying to flee to Hungary, to her grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them, to Major Albu, her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet kiss on her fingers, and to Paul, her lover, her one source of trust, despite his constant drunkenness. In her distraction, she misses her stop to find herself on an unfamiliar street. And what she discovers there makes her fear of the appointment pale by comparison.Herta Müller pitilessly renders the humiliating terrors of a crushing regime. Bone-spare and intense, The Appointment confirms her standing as one of Europe's greatest writers.

Preparing to leave for work one morning, Youssef al-Firsiwi finds a mysterious letter has been slipped under his door. In a single line, he learns that his only son, Yacine, whom he believed to be studying engineering in Paris, has been killed in Afghanistan fighting with the Islamist resistance. His comfortable life as a leftist journalist shattered, Youssef loses both his sense of smell and his sense of self. He and his wife divorce and he becomes involved with a new woman. He turns for support to his friends Ahmad and Ibrahim, themselves enmeshed in ever-more complex real estate deals and high-profile cases of kidnapping. Meanwhile Youssef struggles to reconnect with his father, who, having lost his business empire and his sight, spends his days guiding tourists around ancient Roman ruins. Shuttling between Marrakech, Rabat and Casablanca, Youssef begins to rebuild his life. Yet he is pursued by his son's spectral presence and the menace of religious extremism, in this novel of shifting identity and cultural and generational change.

Ismail, the profesor, is a retired teacher in a small Colombian town where he passes the days pretending to pick oranges while spying on his neighbor Geraldina as she lies naked in the shade of a ceiba tree on a red floral quilt. The garden burns with sunlight; the macaws laugh sweetly.Otilia, Ismail's wife, is ashamed of his peeping and suggests that he pay a visit to Father Albornoz. Instead, Ismail wanders the town visiting old friends, plagued by a tangle of secret memories. "Where have I existed these years? I answer myself; up on the wall, peering over."When the armies slowly arrive, the profesor's reveries are gradually taken over by a living hell. His wife disappears and he must find her. We learn that not only gentle, grassy hillsides surround San Joseacute; but landmines and coca fields. The reader is soon engulfed by the violence of Rosero's narrative that is touched not only with a deep sadness, but an extraordinary tenderness.

She’d made it sound as though her husband would be joining them for dinner. She’d made it sound that way on purpose, and then she arrived alone.Los Angeles, 1934. Mary Frances is young, restlessly married, and returning from her first sojourn in France. She is hungry, and not just for food: she wants Tim, her husband Al’s charming friend, who encourages her writing and seems to understand her better than anyone. After a night’s transgression, it’s only a matter of time before Mary Frances claims what she truly desires, plunging all three of them into a tangled triangle of affection that will have far-reaching effects on their families, their careers, and their lives.Set in California, France, and the Swiss Alps, The Arrangement is a sparkling, sensual novel that explores the complexities of a marriage and the many different ways in which we love. Writing at the top of her game, Ashley Warlick gives us a completely mesmerizing story about a woman well ahead of her time, who would go on to become the legendary food writer M. F. K. Fisher.

So having weighed the pros and cons you've decided to approach your boss to ask for that well-earned raise in salary but before you schedule the all-important meeting you decide to dip into this handy volume in the hope of finding some valuable tips but instead find a hilarious, mind-bending farcical account of all the many different things that may or may not happen on the journey to see your boss which uses no punctuation or capitalisation and certainly no full stops.Georges Perec famously wrote a whole novel without using the letter 'e'. Now, in this playful short novel, brilliantly translated by David Bellos, Perec once again dispenses with the normal rules for literary compostion, with similarly pyrotechnic results.

The debut work in English by Mexico's greatest and most influential living author and winner of the Cervantes Prize ("the Spanish language Nobel"), The Art of Flight takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the world's cultural capitals as Sergio Pitol looks back on his well-traveled life as a legendary author, translator, scholar, and diplomat.The first work in Pitol's "Trilogy of Memory," The Art of Flight imaginatively blends the genres of fiction and memoir in a Borgesian swirl of contemplation and mystery, expanding our understanding and appreciation of what literature can be and what it can do.

Goliarda Sapienza's The Art of Joy was written over a nine year span, from 1967 to 1976. At the time of her death in 1996, Sapienza had published nothing in a decade, having been unable to find a publisher for what was to become her most celebrated work, due to its perceived immorality. One publisher's rejection letter exclaimed: 'It's a pile of iniquity.' The manuscript lay for decades in a chest finally being proclaimed a "forgotten masterpiece" when it was eventually published in 2005.This epic Sicilian novel, which begins in the year 1900 and follows its main character, Modesta, through nearly the entire span of the 20th century, is at once a coming-of-age novel, a tale of sexual adventure and discovery, a fictional autobiography, and a sketch of Italy's moral, political and social past. Born in a small Sicilian village and orphaned at age nine, Modesta spends her childhood in a convent raised by nuns.Through sheer cunning, she manages to escape, and eventually becomes a princess. Sensual, proud, and determined, Modesta wants to discover the infinite richness of life and sets about destroying all social barriers that impede her quest for the fulfilment of her desires. She seduces both men and women, and even murder becomes acceptable as a means of removing an obstacle to happiness and self-discovery.Goliarda Sapienza (1924–1996) was born in Catania, Sicily in 1924, in an anarchist socialist family. At sixteen, she entered the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome and worked under the direction of Luchino Visconti, Alessandro Blasetti and Francesco Maselli. She is the author of several novels published during her lifetime: Lettera Aperta (1967), Il Filo Di Mezzogiorno (1969), Università di Rebibbia (1983), Le Certezze Del Dubbio (1987). L'Arte Della Gioia is considered her masterpiece.Anne Milano Appel, Ph.D., a former library director and language teacher, has been translating professionally for nearly twenty years, and is a member of ALTA, ATA, NCTA and PEN. Her translation of Giovanni Arpino's Scent of a Woman (Penguin, 2011) was named the winner of The John Florio Prize for Italian Translation (2013).

The first collection in seven years from one of America's most celebrated and admired writers-ten wonderful short (and long) stories that allow us to explore and enjoy once again the many facets of John Gardner's unique fictional world. Here are enchanting tales about queens and kings and princesses in magical, timeless lands; marvelously warm and funny stories that move, amuse, and enlighten us as they probe the mysterious and profound relation between art and life.

Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has 'not been developing': after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor – a major 'ask' – who, mysteriously, has requested Milo 's involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo 's sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the 'give' won't come cheap. Probing many themes – or, perhaps, anxieties – including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, The Ask is a burst of genius by a young American master who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.

Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has “not been developing”: after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor — a major “ask”—who, mysteriously, has requested Milo’s involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo’s sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the “give” won’t come cheap. Probing many themes— or, perhaps, anxieties — including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, The Ask is a burst of genius by a young American master who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.

A wry and astute debut about a young Manhattanite whose embezzlement scam turns her into an unlikely advocate for the leagues of overeducated and underpaid assistants across the city.Tina Fontana is the hapless but brazen thirty-year-old executive assistant to Robert Barlow, the all-powerful and commanding CEO of Titan Corp., a multinational media conglomerate. She’s excellent at her job and beloved by her famous boss — but after six years of making his reservations for restaurants she’d never get into on her own and pouring his drinks from bottles that cost more than her rent, she’s bored, broke, and just a bit over it all.When a technical error with Robert’s travel-and-expenses report presents Tina with the opportunity to pay off the entire balance of her student loan debt with what would essentially be pocket change for her boss, she struggles with the decision: She’s always played by the rules. But it’s such a relatively small amount of money for the Titan Corporation — and for her it would be a life-changer…The Assistants speaks directly to a new generation of women who feel stuck and unable to get ahead playing by the rules. It will appeal to all of those who have ever asked themselves, “How is it that after all these years, we are still assistants?”

For readers of Mohsin Hamid, Dave Eggers, Arundhati Roy, and Teju Cole, The Association of Small Bombs is an expansive and deeply humane novel that is at once groundbreaking in its empathy, dazzling in its acuity, and ambitious in scope.When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family’s television set at a repair shop with their friend Mansoor Ahmed one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb — one of the many “small” bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the world — detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine. Woven among the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland.Karan Mahajan writes brilliantly about the effects of terrorism on victims and perpetrators, proving himself to be one of the most provocative and dynamic novelists of his generation.

Hailed by Newsday as "the most unconventional-and possibly the most exciting and imaginative-novelist at work today," William T. Vollmann has also established himself as an intrepid journalist willing to go to the hottest spots on the planet. Here he draws on these formidable talents to create a web of fifty-three interconnected tales, what he calls?a piecemeal atlas of the world I think in.? Set in locales from Phnom Penh to Sarajevo, Mogadishu to New York, and provocatively combining autobiography with invention, fantasy with reportage, these stories examine poverty, violence, and loss even as they celebrate the beauty of landscape, the thrill of the alien, the infinitely precious pain of love. The Atlas brings to life a fascinating array of human beings: an old Inuit walrus-hunter, urban aborigines in Sydney, a crack-addicted prostitute, and even Vollmann himself.