With dramatic force, with a simplicity that seizes the heart, The Chosen illumines-for us, for now-the eternal, powerful bonds of love and pain that join father and son, and the ways in which these bonds are, and must be, broken if the boy is to become a man.The novel opens in the 1940's, in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Two boys who have grown up within a few blocks of each other, but in two entirely different worlds, meet for the first time in a bizarre and explosive encounter-a baseball game between two Jewish parochial schools that turns into a holy war.The assailant is Danny Saunders-moody, brilliant, magnetic-who is driven to violence by his pent-up torment, who feels imprisoned by the tradition that destines him to succeed his awesome father in an unbroken line of great Hasidic rabbis, while his own restless intelligence is beginning to reach out into forbidden areas of secular knowledge.The astonished victim of Danny's rage is Reuven Malther, the gentle son of a gentle scholar-one of the merely Orthodox Jews whom the Hasids regard as little better than infidels.From the moment of their first furious meeting, the lives of Danny and Reuven become more and more intertwined. In a hospital room their hatred turns toward friendship. In his synagogue, before the assembled congregation, the formidable Rabbi Saunders makes deliberated mistakes in Talmudic discourse to test his son and his son's new friend. Through strange evenings at Danny's house it becomes increasingly apparent that it is only through Reuven that Danny's father can speak his heart to his own son and spiritual heir. And it is through the intensifying friendship between the two boys that the visions their fathers embody-the mystic and the rationalist-are brought into confrontation, and the mystery of Danny's cruelly austere upbringing "in silence" is gradually unraveled.In scene after wonderfully compelling scene-in sun-splashed rooms of modest homes, in dark schoolboy battles that echo the passions of the distant war-life is created. As the novel moves toward its climax of revelation, all is experienced, all is felt: the love of fathers and sons, the communions and quarrels of friendship, the true religionist's love of God, the scholar's love of knowledge, the tumults and abrasions by which the human heart is made human-and how, despite the tensions between youth and age, a moral heritage is passed on from one generation to another.

“Hamill, a master raconteur, mines his own roots in this enchanting new anthology.”—New York TimesPete Hamill’s collected stories about Brooklyn present a New York almost lost but not forgotten. They read like messages from a vanished age, brimming with nostalgia-for the world after the war, the days of the Dodgers and Giants, and even, for some, the years of Prohibition and the Depression.THE CHRISTMAS KID is vintage Hamill. Set in the borough where he was born and raised, it is a must-read for his many fans, for all who love New York, and for anyone who seeks to understand the world today through the lens of the world that once was.

This is not your mother’s memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman’s developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.

Bertie Krohn, only child of Perry Krohn — creator of TV's longest running space opera, Starwatch: The Navigators — recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two friends: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea.Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary movie star. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers. As the incestuous clique attempts to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents during the filming of a Starwatch episode, Bertie scrupulously chronicles their futile struggles against the ravenous, narcissistic, and addicted Hollywood that claims them.

Set among the apple orchards of rural Maine, it is a perverse world in which Homer Wells' odyssey begins. As the oldest unadopted offspring at St Cloud's orphanage, he learns about the skills which, one way or another, help young and not-so-young women, from Wilbur Larch, the orphanage's founder, a man of rare compassion with an addiction to ether.Dr Larch loves all his orphans, especially Homer Wells. It is Homer's story we follow, from his early apprenticeship in the orphanage, to his adult life running a cider-making factory and his strange relationship with the wife of his closest friend.

A novel which traces the adventures of a young weaver called Alu, a child of extraordinary talent, from his home in an Indian village through the slums of Calcutta, to Goa and across the sea to Africa. By the author of THE SHADOW LINES.

A novel which traces the adventures of a young weaver called Alu, a child of extraordinary talent, from his home in an Indian village through the slums of Calcutta, to Goa and across the sea to Africa. By the author of THE SHADOW LINES.

At the awful dawn of a nuclear age-at the painful birth of the Cold War-the Citadel was constructed in secret beneath the Antarctic ice. Housing the most devastating weapon imaginable, it was a safeguard against an unseen threat far more potent than the growing Communist menace. Now, six decades later, America 's destruction seems all but assured-because the enemy has re-emerged from the shadows of time.And the Citadel has been breached.The commander of Section 8-a covert force of misfits assigned the impossible missions no one else will touch-Captain Jim Vaughn must now lead his unit into the unknown to diffuse a nightmare of astronomical proportions. The future hangs in the balance-and the ultimate survival of humankind is in the hands of men with nothing left to lose…

From the author of The Death of Vishnu, “a big, pyrotechnic… ambitious… ingenious” (Wall Street Journal) novel.Mumbai has emptied under the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation; gangs of marauding Hindu and Muslim thugs rove the desolate streets; yet Sarita can think of only one thing: buying the last pomegranate that remains in perhaps the entire city. She is convinced that the fruit holds the key to reuniting her with her physicist husband, Karun, who has been mysteriously missing for more than a fortnight. Searching for his own lover in the midst of this turmoil is Jaz—cocky, handsome, and glib. “The Jazter,” as he calls himself, is Muslim, but his true religion has steadfastly been sex with men. Dodging danger at every step, both he and Sarita are inexorably drawn to Devi ma, the patron goddess who has reputedly appeared in person to save her city. What they find will alter their lives more fundamentally than any apocalypse to come.A wickedly comedic and fearlessly provocative portrayal of individuals balancing on the sharp edge of fate, The City of Devi brilliantly upends assumptions of politics, religion, and sex, and offers a terrifying yet exuberant glimpse of the end of the world.

A cartographic thriller with so many twists and turns it requires its own mapA cartography-obsessed misfit clerk from an antique map store in a district that’s not quite trendy yet. A bold young woman chasing the answer to a question she can’t quite formulate. A petty criminal hoping the parking lot he’s just purchased is the ticket to a new life of respectability with his school-age daughter. A ruthless but vulnerable killer and his disgruntled accomplice. In The City Under the Skin, it’s not fate that will bind these characters together but something more concrete and sinister: the appearance of a group of mysterious women, their backs crudely and extensively tattooed with maps.They have been kidnapped, marked, and released, otherwise unharmed. When one turns up on the doorstep of the map shop and abruptly bares her back, only to be hustled away by a man in a beat-up blue Cadillac, it’s the misfit clerk Zak, pushed by his curious new friend Marilyn, who finds himself reluctantly entering a criminal underworld whose existence he’d prefer to ignore.In this haunting literary thriller, Geoff Nicholson paints a deft portrait of a city in transition. His sharply drawn characters are people desperate to know where they are but scared of being truly seen. A meditation on obsession and revenge, a hymn to the joys of urban exploration, The City Under the Skin is a wholly original novel about the indelible scars we both live with and inflict on others.

From world-renowed author Erich Segal comes a powerful and moving saga of five extraordinary members of the Harvard class of 1958 and the women with whom their lives are intertwined. Their explosive story begins in a time of innocence and spans a turbulent quarter century, culminating in their dramatic twenty-five reunion at which they confront their classmates-and the balance sheet of their own lives. Always at the center; amid the passion, laughter, and glory, stands Harvard-the symbol of who they are and who they will be. They were a generation who made the rules-then broke them-whose glittering successes, heartfelt tragedies, and unbridled ambitons would stun the world.

Thomas Copeland has just turned forty years old, but unlike some men his age, he’s not going to have a midlife crisis. Sure, he works at a small grocery store on the North Carolina coast, he doesn’t have many friends, and he’s unmarried and childless, but he’s content with his simple life. Others, however, are not so content, and they want to make sure Thomas knows it.Between a family curse, wanderlust-filled (and lust-filled) co-workers, a dangerously unhappy sister, and a vindictive ex-friend-with-benefits, Thomas finds himself in an exhausting battle to maintain his idyllic lifestyle. Will Thomas be able to resolve — or at least survive — these dramas? Will he find love, or just tepid one-night stands? Will his boss ever notice he’s cleaned the bathroom? What will he get his Secret Santa giftee? And what will be the ultimate fate of the grocery store where he works?“The Clerk” is both satirical and poignant, a riveting exploration of the choices people make in the pursuit of freedom and success. You’ll never look at a grocery store the same way again.

An easygoing young girl becomes inextricably involved with the Emerson family when she takes a job as their handyman.

Cloud atlas is a cleverly written book consisting of six seperate, but connecting stories set across six different periods in time. Each story has been chopped in two and symmetrically placed in the book so you don’t discover the conclusion to the first tale until the very end of the book.This layout effectively creates a storytelling ripple where the sixth and final story is told, as a whole, at the books central core, before the reader then moves back out in the direction they came to discover each of the other characters destiny’s.

Cloud atlas is a cleverly written book consisting of six seperate, but connecting stories set across six different periods in time. Each story has been chopped in two and symmetrically placed in the book so you don’t discover the conclusion to the first tale until the very end of the book.This layout effectively creates a storytelling ripple where the sixth and final story is told, as a whole, at the books central core, before the reader then moves back out in the direction they came to discover each of the other characters destiny’s.

"Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language." — Ricardo Piglia"What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters' attempts to write their own narratives within its excess." — BookforumIn modern-day Paris, Pichón Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript — which might be fictional, or could be a memoir — by Doctor Real, a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum. Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone — even the other patients — into sleeping with her.Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile — a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers — as well as an examination of madness.Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University. She is the author of two manuscripts and, in addition to Saer, she has translated work by Carlos Pintado.

The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek’s classic story collection. A child’s collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder’s inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination, The Coast of Chicago is a masterpiece from one of America’s most highly regarded writers.

Под напором своей тетушки Далии Берти Вустер берется за нелегкое дело – изъятие антикварного кувшинчика для сливок из рук судьи Бассета. Круговорот преступных событий закручивается все сильнее, и фамильная честь Вустеров оказывается под угрозой.

Для удобства читателя текст сопровождается комментариями и кратким словарем.

Предназначается для продолжающих изучать английский язык (уровень 4 – Upper-Intermediate).

A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in, the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician – last heard of investigating the physics of free will and ranting about the devil – vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate are closing in on Alex Smart – a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off with hope in his heart and a ring in his pocket to ask his American girlfriend to marry him. At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable – an organisation so secret that many of its operatives aren't 100 per cent sure it exists – Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and a very large number of unhealthy but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work. "The Coincidence Engine" is consistently engaging – one of the most enjoyable, entertaining debut novels you'll come across for ages.