2008-ųjų Pulitzerio premijos laureatas Junot Diaz yra vienas išskirtiniausių ir įdomiausių balsų šiuolaikinėje amerikiečių literatūroje. Jo proza – vulgari, drąsi ir poetiška, jo kalba – literatūrinės elegancijos ir gatvės žargono mišinys.„Štai taip tu ją prarandi“ – devynios tikrumu nuginkluojančios istorijos apie netobulą meilę. Jų centre – jaunas kietakaktis Junioras, kurio širdį autorius negailestingai sudaužo daugybę kartų, demonstruodamas, kaip stipriai meilė, romantiška, fizinė ar šeimos, gali paveikti net ir vyriškiausią charakterį. Junot Diaz sielvartą prilygina radiacijai – gali palaidoti ir bandyti pamiršti, tačiau ji niekada galutinai neišnyks.

The guys you lick don’t make you a champ, kid — it’s the guys who lick you... whose red leather roars till that final gong—

Claire moved around to the side of the house to watch her best friend Samantha make love to her boyfriend. Mesmerised by the scene in front of her she didn’t notice the stranger who snuck up behind her.And when the stranger started to caress and fondle her she didn’t ask him to stop, in fact she begged him for more.After having one of the most intense sex sessions that she ever had she turned to find the stranger had already left.Who was he? Would she ever see him again? And why did she feel so guilty?

The year is 2209, and the hour has grown late for the human race. Famine and disease have drastically compounded the misery of a warming planet. With many billions scrambling after the Earth’s depleted resources, a multinational agency known as The Authority has instituted a population-control policy known simply as Labor.In an effort to stem the tides of procreation and instill a measure of gender equality in the birthing process, men must survive a deadly twenty-four-hour gauntlet of chaos and destruction in order to earn the privilege to become fathers. The Authority regulates every aspect of the birthing process, from ensuring that male subjects abstain from alcohol and prescription drugs to delivering each man a quota of sleepless nights.Such is the case for Bryan Norton, whose wife’s due date has just fallen into testing range. Very soon, they will experience the joy of the birth of their son. Norton has endured the year-long process of qualifying for Labor. He has sacrificed his health and comfort for the chance to become a father. But the greatest test still lies ahead, and the chances are slim that he’ll ever hold his son in his arms.Daniel Powell’s new dystopic novelette “Survival” poses an enduring human question: How far would you go to be with your family?Drawing upon influences as diverse as Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” and Stephen King’s THE RUNNING MAN, “Survival” is a chilling narrative on the nature of parenthood in turbulent times.

“You’re back in the bushes, kid, with one of your spikes in a rookie’s grave and one still touching a big league rubber. You can go back either way — but one is called a comeback!”

Only a fool would risk his life to please a mob of crazy peons. But only a coward could refuse the challenge of this greatest bull of all.

Target Practice brings together for the first time the complete short works of fiction that Rex Stout wrote for All-Story Magazine, the famous journal which published the cream of his early writings. Including “Secrets,” the first crime fiction Stout wrote, and “Justice Ends at Home,” with a detective team foreshadowing Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, these are sixteen of his best stories.

Josh is a fourteen year-old boy living in a world where the global economic recession has led to money being devalued.Three days ago, his parents went out for supplies. They left Josh and his older brother, Archie, behind.They haven’t returned.Their dad always told them to get to their Nan’s if there was ever any trouble. A gang of looters has ransacked their house and set it on fire—the boys decide their current situation is definitely trouble.Setting out into the streets of London, the boys quickly learn what a world looks like when capitalism has failed.It isn’t pretty.What the reviewers say:This is a slice of terror that takes you into the grim, distributing, dystopian world of CrashWhere to begin. Hmmmmmm……… GRAB this now.It’s got lots of teeth that bite in and keep you reading, really interesting storyline, great characters and a promise of more to come, what more can one ask for?

Terminal by Lavie Tidhar is an emotionally wrenching science fiction story about people, who, either having nothing to lose or having a deep desire to go into space, travel to Mars via cheap, one-person, one-way vehicles dubbed jalopies. During the trip, those in the swarm communicate with each other, their words relayed to those left behind.

The people of Gaant are telepaths. The people of Enith are not. The two countries have been at war for decades, but now peace has fallen, and Calla of Enith seeks to renew an unlikely friendship with Gaantish officer Valk over an even more unlikely game of chess.

When the Walrus experiment goes wrong, McGee becomes one whale of a problem!

No one remembered Singer Washburn now; the years had chugged by, and the old grey train had carried him far past the time when he’d be champ, past the time when he’d be retiring. Then he saw this kid Joe, with a mean streak in him, and knew that Singer Washburn wasn’t useless yet — there were a few things he could do, and maybe doing them would somehow make up for what he’d lost...

Trapped by a desperate hunted man, Susan — at any cost to herself — had to warn the children. Could she find the strength, the calm she’d need to outwit him?

When an author turns out several stories a month — and they’re all first-rate, which is unusual — you’d think, rightly, that he’d been in the game a long time. But that’s not the case with John D. MacDonald. Even though he falls into the first category, he definitely doesn’t fall into the second, because he’s only been writing about a year. Never even wanted to be a writer.

One week ago I thought I knew exactly how I was going to spend the rest of my life: looking at the gray walls of a prison cell. Figuring out how to survive the apocalypse wasn’t something I’d planned for.Yet here I was, getting a second chance at the end of the world.The Ashes is the 10,000 word prequel to The Eden Trilogy. Book one, The Bane will be available March 5, 2013.Previously published as Rebirth.

Best remembered for his sensational bestselling novels of the 1930s, James M. Cain may well be one of the most important, yet still misunderstood, of American authors. Among other writers and for certain critics, his reputation and singularity are unquestioned, resting on an extraordinary force of style and view of the human condition that have influenced a host of modern authors. Cain’s unique voice — hard-edged, caustically ironic, and impeccably controlled — was in fact forged through an extensive journalistic training and remains best exemplified in the compressed power of his short fiction.Here then, timed with a major revival of interest in Cain’s work, is the first book to collect the best of his shorter work — selected short stories and sketches together with one of his finest serials, the novella published at different times under the titles “Money and the Woman” and “The Embezzler.” As taut and brilliant in its way as Cain’s most famous serial, Double Indemnity, this ingenious example of Cain’s “love rack” fiction has been out of print for many years, but reads as immediately today as when first written more than three decades ago. Equally fascinating, especially when seen within Roy Hoopes’s tracings of the development of Cain’s work, are the entertaining sketches and dialogues Cain originally wrote for journalistic publication — beautiful models of efficiency and concision stamped with Cain’s characteristic irony. We are given ten of his best, out of hundreds he wrote for the New York World and H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury. Together with nine of his finest short stories — including those three Cain classics, “Pastorale,” “The Baby in the Icebox,” and “Dead Man” — this volume comprises both an ideal introduction to the work of this remarkable American author and a mandatory book for all James M. Cain fans.

Best remembered for his sensational bestselling novels of the 1930s, James M. Cain may well be one of the most important, yet still misunderstood, of American authors. Among other writers and for certain critics, his reputation and singularity are unquestioned, resting on an extraordinary force of style and view of the human condition that have influenced a host of modern authors. Cain’s unique voice — hard-edged, caustically ironic, and impeccably controlled — was in fact forged through an extensive journalistic training and remains best exemplified in the compressed power of his short fiction.Here then, timed with a major revival of interest in Cain’s work, is the first book to collect the best of his shorter work — selected short stories and sketches together with one of his finest serials, the novella published at different times under the titles “Money and the Woman” and “The Embezzler.” As taut and brilliant in its way as Cain’s most famous serial, Double Indemnity, this ingenious example of Cain’s “love rack” fiction has been out of print for many years, but reads as immediately today as when first written more than three decades ago. Equally fascinating, especially when seen within Roy Hoopes’s tracings of the development of Cain’s work, are the entertaining sketches and dialogues Cain originally wrote for journalistic publication — beautiful models of efficiency and concision stamped with Cain’s characteristic irony. We are given ten of his best, out of hundreds he wrote for the New York World and H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury. Together with nine of his finest short stories — including those three Cain classics, “Pastorale,” “The Baby in the Icebox,” and “Dead Man” — this volume comprises both an ideal introduction to the work of this remarkable American author and a mandatory book for all James M. Cain fans.