As Ford's women and men each experience the consolations and complications of relationships with the opposite sex, they must confront the difference between privacy and intimacy and the distinction between pleasing another and pleasing oneself.

A dozen years after the collapse of the Third Reich, four adolescents commit a gratuitously violent assault and robbery in a Viennese park. So begins Jelinek's (The Piano Teacher) brilliant new novel, an unrelenting and horrifying exploration of postwar Austria, where the sins of the fathers are visited upon a new generation too disaffected to understand the source of its inarticulate rage. Jelinek's prose is breathless and incisive as she paints psychological portraits of her characters in swift, sure brushstrokes. Among the group of young criminals in the park are Rainer Witkowski, a liar and a coward who fancies himself a poet, an intellectual and a leader of men, and his twin sister, Anna, who responds to rejection by losing her ability to speak. Their father, Otto, is a brutally sadistic, crippled ex-Nazi who takes pornographic pictures of his battered wife and whose sexual abilities are failing now that the aphrodisiac of Auschwitz is only a dim memory. He is unrepentant; history, he believes, has forgiven him. The son cites Sartre's proposition that history does not exist. But it does, and it repeats itself here in an explosion of sickeningly familiar violence.

A bravura performance by a groundbreaking new writer — a novel set in contemporary Barcelona and made up of multiple storylines, including a fictional manuscript by Stephen King.Wonderful World is the story of a son trying to make his father proud — by becoming an international criminal.Lucas Giraut inherits the family company from a father who never really cared enough to get to know him. This inheritance comes with a lot of unanswered questions and one archenemy: Lucas's mother, Fanny, an ambitious and ruthless entrepreneur who believes Lucas is as useless as his father, Lorenzo, an enigmatic man whose recent death — under mysterious circumstances — delights her.Valentina Parini is a precocious and troubled seventh-grader, and the self-proclaimed Top European Expert on the Work of Stephen King. Lucas Giraut is her upstairs neighbor and her only friend. He indulges Valentina as she reveals her dark fantasies of retribution on her classmates and teachers. As Valentina struggles with growing up, Lucas endeavors to understand what he's been bequeathed by his father. Following clues found in a windowless secret apartment and in his dreams, he ends up deep in Barcelona's underworld, far from the comforts of his home, a former ducal palace in the Gothic Quarter.In Wonderful World, Javier Calvo brings together a huge cast of unforgettable characters in a haunting, masterful tale filled with scandalous behavior and dangerous crimes. A dazzling novel in which reality and fantasy entwine, it hails the arrival of a powerful and original voice.

Fiercely observed, often hilarious, and “reminiscent of Ibsen and Strindberg” (The New York Times Book Review), this exquisitely controversial novel was initially banned in its author’s homeland.A searing portrayal of Vienna’s bourgeoisie, it begins with the arrival of an unnamed writer at an ‘artistic dinner’ hosted by a composer and his society wife — a couple he once admired and has come to loathe. The guest of honor, a distinguished actor from the Burgtheater, is late. As the other guests wait impatiently, they are seen through the critical eye of the writer, who narrates a silent but frenzied tirade against these former friends, most of whom have been brought together by Joana, a woman they buried earlier that day. Reflections on Joana’s life and suicide are mixed with these denunciations until the famous actor arrives, bringing an explosive end to the evening that even the writer could not have seen coming.

The words pour out of your wounded soul…Welcome to Quinsigamond, a worn-out New England town infected by a soulless cabal that rules the streets. Gilrein used to be one of the good guys, until this dark world claimed the life of his wife and fellow police officer, Ceil. Even exchanging his badge for a cab still cannot erase the past or the long-buried instincts Gilrein honed on the beat.The words choke in your throat…When suspected of possessing a missing rarity that someone is all too willing to murder for, Gilrein races to unearth long-buried secrets. And the only people he can turn to are the Inspector, a detective and master of linguistics who can shed light on the secret life Ceil led-and how it ended; Otto Langer, a haunted refugee from Eastern Europe; and Wylie Brown, Gilrein's ex-lover whose passion for a century-old murderer knows no bounds.The words on your breath will be your last…Word Made Flesh is a profound and utterly suspenseful tale of evil, conspiracy, and love, where a magnificent and macabre obsession with words and language will mean redemption for some…and damnation for others.

Roscoe T Martin set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the twentieth century: electricity. It became his training, his life’s work. But when his wife, Marie, inherits her father’s failing farm, Roscoe has to give up his livelihood, with great cost to his sense of self, his marriage, and his family. Realizing he might lose them all if he doesn’t do something, he begins to use his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness. Even the love of Marie and their child seem back within Roscoe’s grasp.Then a young man working for the state power company stumbles on Roscoe’s illegal lines and is electrocuted, and everything changes: Roscoe is arrested; the farm once more starts to deteriorate; and Marie abandons her husband, leaving him to face his twenty-year sentence alone. Now an unmoored Roscoe must carve out a place at Kilby Prison. Climbing the ranks of the incarcerated from dairy hand to librarian to “dog boy,” an inmate who helps the guards track down escapees, he is ultimately forced to ask himself once more if his work is just that, or if the price of his crimes — for him and his family — is greater than he ever let himself believe.

"If America was a melting pot, Butte would be its boiling point," observes Morrie Morgan, the itinerant teacher, walking encyclopedia, and inveterate charmer last seen leaving a one-room schoolhouse in Marias Coulee, the stage he stole in The Whistling Season. A decade later Morrie is back in Montana, as the beguiling narrator of Work Song.Lured like so many others by "the richest hill on earth," Morrie steps off the train in Butte, copper-mining capital of the world, in its jittery heyday of 1919. But while riches elude Morrie, once again a colorful cast of local characters – and their dramas -seem to seek him out: a look-alike-sound-alike pair of retired Welsh miners; a streak-of lightning waif so skinny he is nicknamed Russian Famine; a pair of mining company goons; a comely landlady propitiously named Grace; and an eccentric boss at the public library, the mere whisper of whose nickname inspires an unbookish terror in all who hear it. When Morrie crosses paths with a lively former student, now engaged to a young union leader, he is caught up in the mounting clash between the ironfisted mining company, radical "outside agitators," and the beleaguered miners. And as tensions above and below reach the explosion point, Morrie finds a unique way to give voice to those who truly need one.So, while Work Song is rich in many of the ingredients that readers have liked so much in the earlier novel, it has its own undertow of circumstance, humor, and drama – and through it all, Morrie in his inimitable way calls the tune of "the music of men's lives."

Four friends get together to watch the 1998 World Cup final. One of them has an idea: let's write down our wishes for the next few years, put them away, and during the next final — four years from now — we'll get them out and see how many we've achieved. This is how World Cup Wishes opens, and from here we watch what happens to their wishes and their friendships as life marches on.The four men's bond is deep and solid, but tested by betrayal, death,and distance their alliance comes under pressure. Each friend offers a different perspective, though not necessarily a reliable one… and as they and the world around them change, so do their ideas of friendship and happiness. By the end they are forced to ask whether wishes can really be fulfilled. Or will their story turn out to be a requiem — for a generation, for friendship, or even for one of the four young men?Once again, Eshkol Nevo has produced a novel suffused with charm, warmth and an astonishing wisdom.

Haunted by the burden of his family's traitorous past, woozy with pot, cheap wine and sex, and disturbed by a frighteningly real encounter with some family ghosts, Walter van Brunt is about to have a collision with history.It will lead Walter to search for his lost father. And it will send the story into the past of the Hudson River Valley, from the late 1960's back to the anticommunist riots of the 1940's to the late seventeenth century, where the long-hidden secrets of three families-the aristocratic van Warts, the Native-American Mohonks, and Walter's own ancestors, the van Brunts-will be revealed.

Training horses is dangerous-a head-to-head confrontation with a 1,000 pounds of muscle and little sense takes courage, but more importantly patience and smarts. It is these same qualities that allow John and his uncle Gus to live in the beautiful high desert of Wyoming. A black horse trainer is a curiosity, at the very least, but a familiar curiosity in these parts. It is the brutal murder of a young gay man, however, that pushes this small community to the teetering edge of fear and tolerance.As the first blizzard of the season gains momentum, John is forced to reckon not only with the daily burden of unruly horses, a three-legged coyote pup, an escape-artist mule, and too many people, but also a father-son war over homosexuality, random hate-crimes, and — perhaps most frightening of all-a chance for love.Highly praised for his storytelling and ability to address the toughest issues of our time with humor, grace, and originality, Everett offers yet another brilliant novel.

A boldly candid, raw portrait of a young woman's search for meaning and purpose in an indifferent world.Decisively aimless, self-destructive, and impulsively in and out of love, Elsie is a young woman who feels stuck. She has a tumultuous relationship with an abusive boyfriend, a dead-end job at a newspaper, and a sharp intelligence that’s constantly at odds with her many bad decisions. When her initial attempts to improve her life go awry, Elsie decides that a dramatic change is the only solution.An auto-didact who prefers the education of travel to college, Elsie uses an inheritance to support her as she travels to Paris and Sri Lanka, hoping to accumulate experiences, create connections, and discover a new way to live. Along the way, she meets men and women who challenge and provoke her towards the change she genuinely hopes to find. But in the end, she must still come face-to-face with herself.Whole-hearted, fiercely honest and inexorably human, Wreck and Order is a stirring debut that, in mirroring one young woman's dizzying quest for answers, illuminates the important questions that drive us all.

Alfonso Stephen O'Kelly'O known as Stephen, son of rumoured former bootleggers, ex-naval gunner, unemployed compuser, student of dairy cattle in Wisconsin and of music in Italy, has little to recommend him as a marriage prospect but his tender heart, his chivalry, and his comprehensive knowledge of the great city of New York. So when the exquisitely pneumatic and extraordinarily wealthy Sylvia Triumphington, adored adoptive heiress to the Triumphington family forture, sets her sights on him, Stephen is caught quite off guard…Wrong Information is Being Given out at Princeton' is an excellent work, proving Donleavy is still the master of blending pathos and humour.

Murakami czuje się świetnie również w zwartej oszczędnej i precyzyjnej formie krótkiego opowiadania. Kilkoma słowami zarysowuje wyraziste, sugestywne światy, a każda z historii jest przekonująca, pełna i satysfakcjonująca. Każdy z bohaterów odbywa jakąś podróż czy to w rzeczywistym, geograficznym, czy jedynie wewnętrznym, duchowym wymiarze do której bodźcem staje się tytułowe trzęsienie ziemi każdy z nich odkrywa w sobie jakąś tajemnicę, którą próbuje przeniknąć albo po prostu pogodzić się z jej istnieniem każdy ma jakąś obsesję, która zatruwa mu życie każdy jest uwikłany bądź dopiero się wikła w skomplikowane relacje z innymi ludźmi, poprzez które następuje niejako wzajemna wymiana sekretnych duchowych labiryntów. Nieposkromiona wyobraźnia Murakamiego raz po raz rozsadza ramy realności, przenosząc czytelnika to w świat snów, to marzeń, to czystej surrealnej fantazji.

Bohater- pan Jose, urzędnik Archiwum Głównego Akt Stanu Cywilnego- za wszelką cenę stara się odnaleźć pewną kobietę. Choć nie ma żadnego konkretnego powodu, by jej szukać, coś pcha go do działania. Aby osiągnąć swój cel, ten uczciwy, z pozoru bezbarwny człowiek ucieka się do oszustwa, a nawet przestępstwa. Co każe mu to czynić? Odbywając z bohaterem absurdalną wędrówkę po korytarzach Archiwum, czytelnik niepostrzeżenie zagłębia się w labirynt własnego umysłu, by odnaleźć w nim to, czego wcale się nie spodziewa.

Beniamin Malaussene jest bratem doskonałym – by utrzymać liczne rodzeństwo porzucone przez frywolną mamę, pracuje w domu towarowym na stanowisku… kozła ofiarnego. Z pokorą i głębokim żalem przyjmuje na siebie wszelkie winy producentów. Ale oto na kolejnych stanowiskach wybuchają bomby, zawsze tuż po przejściu lub na oczach Beniamina, który nie przypuszcza, w jak makabrycznej grze został kozłem ofiarnym.

Autobiografia Johna Irvinga napisana jest, podobnie jak powieści jego autorstwa, z dystansem, ironią, a ponadto z dużą dozą samokrytycyzmu. Wspomnienia autora skupiają się wokół pasji jego życia, którą zaskakująco okazują się zapasy. Przez wiele lat Irving uważał się przede wszystkim za zapaśnika, a dopiero w drugiej kolejności za pisarza. Książka jest zbiorem zwięzłych, autoironicznych wspomnień przedstawionych z właściwym Irvingowi humorem, lekkością. Jego styl posiada jedną z najbardziej cenionych przez Czytelnika cech, którą jest wrażenie intymności oraz bliskości z autorem. Zapasy okazują się pretekstem do przedstawienia rozlicznych fascynacji Irvinga, zwłaszcza tych literackich, oraz wspomnień związanych z najbliższymi. Czytelnik dowie się ponadto o wieloletniej przyjaźni Johna Irvinga z jego mistrzem duchowym Kurtem Vonnegutem, który skłonił go do pisania. Okazuje się, że bodźcem do napisania wspomnień była nie pycha, ale złamane ramię, czyli pośrednio zapasy.

Предельно жесткая, беспощадно красивая проза, где история пластического хирурга Хрипунова переплетается с судьбой Хасана ибн Саббаха, персидского Старца Горы и основателя секты ассасинов, где никто никого не любит, где каждый одержим своими демонами накрепко и без всякой надежды на спасение. Это роман о безумии, смерти, зле и… красоте. И о том, что не каждые желания стоят осуществления.

Предельно жесткая, беспощадно красивая проза, где история пластического хирурга Хрипунова переплетается с судьбой Хасана ибн Саббаха, персидского Старца Горы и основателя секты ассасинов, где никто никого не любит, где каждый одержим своими демонами накрепко и без всякой надежды на спасение. Это роман о безумии, смерти, зле и… красоте. И о том, что не каждые желания стоят осуществления.