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A dysfunctional family reunites for the Christmas holiday from hell in this rediscovered festive classic.
The fire is on, sherry poured, presents wrapped, and claws are being sharpened. In a seaside cottage perched on a cliff, one family reunites for Christmas. While snow falls, a tyrannical widowed matriarch presides over her unruly brood. Her niece tends to her whims, but fantasises about eloping; and as more guests arrive, each bringing their secret truths and dreams, the Christmas tree explodes, a brawl erupts, an escape occurs - and their 'midwinter madness' climaxes ... Kathleen Farrell (1912 – 1999) was a British novelist of the post–World War II period who was known for her unsparing and sometimes bitingly funny studies of character. (288 pages / $22) A captivating story that will leave a lingering magical feeling in readers’ minds, this is the first book in a bestselling duology for anyone exhausted from the reality of their daily life.
In a mysterious town that lies hidden in our collective subconscious, there’s a quaint little store where all kinds of dreams are sold … Day and night, visitors both human and animal from all over the world shuffle in sleepily in their pyjamas, lining up to purchase their latest adventure. Each floor in the department store sells a special kind of dream, including nostalgic dreams about your childhood, trips you’ve taken, and delicious food you’ve eaten, as well as nightmares and more mysterious dreams. In Dallergut Dream Department Store we meet Penny an enthusiastic new hire; Dallergut, the flamboyant owner of the department store; Agnap Coco, producer of special dreams; Vigo Myers, an employee in the mystery department as well as a cast of curious, funny and strange clientele who regularly visit the store. When one of the most coveted and expensive dreams gets stolen during Penny’s first week, we follow along with her as she tries to uncover the workings of this wonderfully whimsical world. (256 pages / $30) Buon Natale -- A Merry Christmas -- made all the more joyful with these literary treats filled with ancient churches, trains whistling through the countryside, steaming tureens, plates piled high with pasta, High Mass, dashed hopes, golden crucifixes, flowing wine, shimmering gifts and plenty of style.
In this collection, classic works by Boccaccio to Pirandello intertwine with more recent stories from writers like Anna Maria Ortese, Natalia Ginzburg and Nobel laureate Grazia Deledda to bring together the greatest festive tales from the land of enchantment: Italy. Bursting with family chaos, carols and yuletide cheer, An Italian Christmas showcases stories that put the passionate, fiery side of the festive period back into Christmas. (Hardcover / 144 pages / $29) Storytelling has been a major force in the Nordic countries for thousands of years, renowned for its particular sense of dark humour, featuring pacts with nature and a view of the worlds you seldom find in other places.
Perhaps it is the freezing cold winter? The closeness to the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic? Maybe it’s the huge ancient forests... Most have heard about Nordic crime fiction with its dark noir flare or the Icelandic Sagas. This anthology combines all that is unique about Nordic speculative fiction, from the darkest dystopian science fiction to terrifying horror. From the rational to the eccentric, these stories combine a deep sense of place with social criticism, themes of loneliness and the concern for humanity's impact on the wilderness. Featuring 16 stories from the best contemporary speculative authors from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and The Faroe Islands, including John Ajvide Lindqvist, Hannu Rajaniemi, Tor Åge Bringsværd and more, many of which are appearing in English for the very first time. (400 pages / $30) Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history―or tear it apart.
In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own. Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor’s soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job. Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away. Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice―for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats. Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire. (Hardcover / 576 pages / $42) Shi Lian Huang, better known as S. L. Huang, is the Hugo-winning author of action-packed speculative fiction. Huang is also an MIT graduate, stunt person, and firearms expert at Hollywood. She took a break from working on sets and turned to writing after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Photo: Lucy Hewett
Burrowing deep inside the tension-filled relationship between contemporary Vietnam’s hyper-capitalist society and its communist government, Ta Duy Anh’s The Termite Queen tells the Kafkaesque story of a young man who must expose the corruption of a vast network of murky figures profiting from their connections to power.
Banned in Vietnam, this allegorical story is told by Viet, a native-born Vietnamese who takes over his deceased father’s powerful land development corporation. The funeral hasn’t even concluded before Viet suspects foul play, as one clue after another leads him to question everything he thought he knew about his father, their family business, and its incredible ability to get approval for projects with dubious societal and environmental returns. With the Termite Queen, Ta Duy Anh cements his reputation as one of contemporary Vietnam’s greatest fabulists, having filled this tale with criticisms that can only come from a deep and abiding love for his country. (288 pages / $27) About the author: Ta Duy Anh (1959- ) is unarguably a famous contemporary realist author in Vietnam. He graduated with the highest distinction from the Nguyen Du School of Creative Writing. Ta is a Vietnam Writers’ Association member and served as editor for the Vietnam Writers’ Association Publishing House until he retired in 2020. Ta, a prolific writer, has published across numerous literary genres and won numerous awards for his works in Vietnam.
Despite his well-established career as a writer and an editor, some of his works were and have been censored due to political reasons in communist Vietnam.
As time ticks along with indifference, the inmates of the Washington District Jail drag on their daily routine behind bars. Innocent at their birth, these frail creatures who have lost their way now spend their lives shut out of society, deprived of all freedom, with little prospect of being readmitted into the human fold.
Each prisoner has a story: some of them are charged with crimes of assault, murder and manslaughter, others of forgery, robbery and larceny – others still are not guilty of anything other than having been born to certain parents at a certain time in a certain country. A Long Day in a Short Life – Maltz's first novel to be published in the UK – is a powerful indictment of the penal system and a strong reminder about the underlying humanity of each individual. (352 pages / $22) Albert Maltz (1908–85) was an American playwright, fiction writer and screenwriter. He won the O. Henry Award twice. His novel The Cross and the Arrow about the German resistance to the Nazi Regime was distributed to 150,000 American soldiers during WWII. He worked on a series of films including Casablanca, until he was blacklisted during the mccarthyism era. He is best remembered today for his novels A Tale of One January and A Long Day in a Short Life. Beyond the town, there is the factory. Beyond the factory, there is nothing.
Within the sprawling industrial complex, three new employees are each assigned a department. There, each must focuses on a specific task: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. As they grow accustomed to the routine and co-workers, their lives become governed by their work--days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while--it could be weeks or years--the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here? With hints of Kafka and Beckett and unexpected moments of creeping humour, The Factory is a vivid, and sometimes surreal, portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace. (Hardcover / 128 pages / $28) "Hiroko Oyamada grew up outside Hiroshima. (She still lives in Hiroshima Prefecture, about 500 miles from the heart of the literary establishment in Tokyo.) After graduating from Hiroshima University, where she wrote her thesis on Edo-period comic fiction, she moved from one job to the next, working long and unpredictable hours. After a number of short-lived gigs, Oyamada found herself working as a temporary employee at a large factory that manufactured cars. Her fellow employees seemed content with their roles at the massive factory, but the experience left Oyamada herself feeling deeply uneasy. “Not long after I started working there,” she says, “I had to ask myself—what am I doing here, and why?” At work one day with nothing else to do, Oyamada started to write. On her work computer, she began typing what would eventually become her first novella: The Factory." Lit Hub How can we live with integrity and pleasure in this world of police brutality and racism? An Asian American activist is challenged by his mother to face this question in this powerful—and funny—debut novel of generational change, a mother’s secret, and an activist’s coming-of-age
Twenty-one-year-old Reed is fed up. Angry about the killing of a Black man by an Asian American NYPD officer, he wants to drop out of college and devote himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. But would that truly bring him closer to the moral life he seeks? In a series of intimate, charged conversations, his mother—once the leader of a Korean-Black coalition—demands that he rethink his outrage, and along with it, what it means to be an organizer, a student, an ally, an American, and a son. As Reed zips around his hometown of Los Angeles with his mother, searching and questioning, he faces a revelation that will change everything. (192 pages / Inspired by the author's family roots in activism / $30) Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples.
With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time--from Korean comfort women during World War II, to the precipice of climate crisis, to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. As she wrestles with the daily griefs and distances of this apocalyptic world, Choi also imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest--could look like. Bringing together Choi's signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On ultimately charts new paths toward hope in the aftermaths, and visions for our collective survival. (144 pages / $31) One of the most enchanting books about cats ever written, Minka and Curdy describes the adventures – and misadventures – of two very different kittens.
Victoria, a real tyrant of a cat, spent so many years training her owner to be the ideal hostess that Mrs Bell feels it would be disrespectful to replace that formidable creature. But her resolve is worn down, and she finally agrees to take a marmalade kitten – and is immediately offered a Siamese that she also simply cannot resist. This is the story of a writer seduced by the contrasting charms of two kittens: Curdy, lively and mischievous; and Minka, elegant, imperious, and disdainful of the ginger upstart. Delightfully illustrated with line drawings, this is a witty and charming love letter to feline companionship. (Hardcover / 128 pages / $26) Antonia White, (1899 - 1980) is a British writer and translator best known for her autobiographical novels. Throughout her life, she was devoted to her cats- as she wrote the famous Frost in May Quartet, they were her constant (and disruptive) companions. In the delightful MINKA AND CURDY she fictionalised her experiences. Julius Taranto’s wickedly satirical and refreshingly irreverent debut novel, a young physicist finds herself exiled to an island research institute that gives safe harbour to ‘cancelled’ artists and academics
Helen, a graduate student on a quest to save the planet, is one of the best minds of her generation. But when her irreplaceable advisor’s student sex scandal is exposed, she must choose whether to give up on her work or accompany him to RIP, a research institute which grants safe harbour to the disgraced and the deplorable. As Helen settles into life at the institute alongside her partner Hew, she develops a crush on an older novelist, while he is drawn to an increasingly violent protest movement. As the rift between them deepens, they both face major – and potentially world-altering – choices. Both hilarious and thought-provoking, How I Won A Nobel Prize approaches our moral confusion in a genuine and fresh way, examining the price we’re willing to pay for progress and what it means, in the end, to be a good person. (304 pages / $33) Based on the life of the 18th century showman, Tarare, who was known as the hungriest man in history.
Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it's not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land. (336 pages / $27) Note from the bookseller: My body turned cold reading this review on Guardian. I was disturbed but yet tempted to read the book. A nightmarish descent from sadness to madness, THE COLLECTOR is a dystopian horror novel where grief is forbidden and purged from the mind.
Sorrow is inefficient. It’s also inescapable. Lieutenant Dev Singh dutifully spends his days recording the memories of people who, struck with incurable depression, will soon have their minds erased in order to be more productive members of society. After all, the Bureau knows what’s best for you. At night though, hidden in the dark, Dev remembers and writes in his secret journal the special moments shared with him – the small laugh of a toddler, the stillness of a late afternoon. The first flutter of love. But when the Bureau finds out he’s been recounting the memories – and that the depression is in him, too – he’s sent to a sanatorium to heal. (320 pages / $20) Laura Kat Young is a writer and teacher living in Chicago with her family. Her works blend genre and seek to explore a deeper understanding of human behavior. She is the 2019-2021 Writer-in-Residence at the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, Fully illustrated and featuring a brand-new 'Nightmare Appendix', this uncanny and prescient novella will haunt your sleepless nights.
An epidemic of insomnia has left America crippled with exhaustion. Thankfully the Slumber Corps agency provides a lifeline, transfusing sleep to sufferers from healthy volunteers. Recruitment manager Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the disaster, has spent the last seven years enlisting new donors. But when she meets the mysterious Donor Y and Baby A - whose sleep can be universally accepted - her faith in the organisation and in her own motives begins to unravel. (176 pages / $22) An array of original stories from around the world bring a new and exciting twist to one of the most beloved figures in fiction: witches.
Bringing together twenty-nine stories and poems from some of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers working today, THE BOOK OF WITCHES features Linda Addison, C.L. Clark, P Djeli Clark, Indrapramit Das, Amal El Mohtar, Andrea Hairston, Millie Ho, Saad Hossain, Kathleen Jennings, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Cassandra Khaw, Fonda Lee, Darcie Little Badger, Ken Liu, Usman T. Malik, Maureen F. McHugh, Premee Mohammed, Garth Nix, Tobi Ogundiran, Tochi Onyebuchi, Miyuki Jane Pinckard, Kelly Robson, Angela Slatter, Andrea Stewart, Emily Teng, Sheree Renée Thomas, Tade Thompson, and E. Lily Yu—and contains illustrations from three-time Hugo award-nominated artist Alyssa Winans throughout. This dazzling, otherworldly collection gathers new stories of witches from all walks of life. Whether they be maiden, mother, crone, or other; funny, fierce, light and airy, or dark and disturbing; witches are a vital part of some of the greatest stories we have, and new ones start here! This extraordinary anthology will become a treasured keepsake for fans of fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tales everywhere. (512 pages / $33) Jonathan Rebeck is homeless. Bankrupt. He has dropped out of society and has been living quietly in a local cemetery, under the care of a raven who is quite good at stealing sandwiches.
Far from being lonely, however, Jonathan is able to converse with the ghosts around him, and finds himself following two new spirits, Michael and Laura, as they fall in love with each other. He becomes invested in, and part of, their cautious romance. But the circumstances behind Michael's death are slipping from his memory, and the further from life they drift, the closer the loss of love feels. When a visiting widow stumbles across Jonathan in his graveyard home, will the living world begin to intrude on this fine and private place? Peter S. Beagle's legendary, beautiful debut novel is filled with all his characteristic warmth and humanity. With a new introduction by Neil Gaiman, A Fine and Private Place is a timeless classic from the author of The Last Unicorn. (320 pages / $20) About the author: Peter S. Beagle (b. 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. He grew up surrounded by the arts and education: both his parents were teachers, three of his uncles were world-renowned gallery painters, and his immigrant grandfather was a respected writer, in Hebrew, of Jewish fiction and folktales. Peter Beagle is a recipient of the prestigious Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Mythopoeic, and World Fantasy Awards, and he is a Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America 2018 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, among many other literary achievements. He has given generations of readers the magic of unicorns, haunted cemeteries, lascivious trees and disgruntled gods. Neil Gaiman has described Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place as his “I-wish-I'd-written-that-first" novel. Every December, Holly writes to a stranger who is spending Christmas alone. And every year she receives a letter from another lonely person. Being a part of the Dear Stranger club is a tradition she has come to treasure. Because ever since the accident three years ago, Holly has spent Christmas alone.
Usually, the letters go unanswered. But when Holly reads this year’s Christmas letter, from an older woman called Emma, she feels compelled to find her. Emma writes of a sadness that Holly can relate to. And she mentions a place Holly knows all too well. Holly offers to help Emma reconnect with her estranged grandson. But when Holly tracks down handsome, dark-eyed Jack, she realises she’s met him once before, and the connection was electric. Suddenly helping a stranger is about to get a lot more complicated… (432 pages / $20) A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and his prized possession – a rare first edition book has been stolen. Over time, he has given up on people, and even the books in his store, instead of offering solace, are yet another reminder of a world that is changing too rapidly.
But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His life – and Maya’s – is changed forever. Gabrielle Zevin’s enchanting novel is a love letter to the world of books – an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love. (320 pages / $20) Note from the bookseller: The first book about bookshop that I'd read. I sold it in my pop-up store at The Cathay. Ten years later, I'm still raving about this book. Two cult-favorite Japanese artists present eerie graphic adaptations of 9 classic Kafka short stories, with hypnotic illustrations that will appeal to fans of Junji Ito.
Franz Kafka’s work is given vivid new life in this collection of manga adaptations of 9 of his greatest stories. With spectacularly detailed, otherworldly illustrations, the brother-and-sister duo known as Nishioka Kyodai create a haunting, claustrophobic visual world for Kafka’s surreal masterpieces. Features adapted versions of:
(176 pages / $28) In this timely and explosive novel, an academic’s seemingly mundane midlife crisis takes an alarming turn after his visit to a Greek monastery.
It’s February 2019. Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian with a German wife and a troubled nineteen-year-old son, is on his way back from a conference in Norway when he has an unexpected and disturbing experience that completely alters his view of the life that he has been living and the world that surrounds him. Believing that Inés, an attractive Spanish sociologist whom he met at the conference, can shed light on what he is feeling, he travels to Cádiz to see her. But his journey doesn’t end there. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that he appears to find unbearable? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence or is he utterly self-deluded? And if he is in denial about what he is doing, how far will he go to avoid facing the truth? In this highly original and unsettling novel, one of the UK’s most celebrated writers portrays an ordinary man in an extraordinary dilemma, a dilemma that will push him to the very edge of annihilation and disaster. (368 pages / $34) "A novel that turns a midlife crisis inside out, rewardingly." Kirkus Reviews ‘I am going to have my dinner, after which I shan’t be thinner’
This collection, which also includes poems by the poets she herself admired, sheds light not only on Jane Austen the writer, but on the themes that are woven through her bestselling novels. Satirical, humorous and ironical, they will resonate both with readers who love her novels, and newcomers alike. ‘When stretched out on one’s bed with a fierce throbbing head … how little one cares for the grandest affairs’ ‘I am in a dilemma, for want of an Emma’ (128 pages / $16) Sixteen and pregnant, Karuna finds herself trapped in her mother’s Melbourne public housing apartment for one hundred days awaiting the birth of her child—and her mother’s next move in a shocking power struggle over who will raise the baby. To fill the seemingly endless hours of her imprisonment, she writes to her unborn child, determined that her baby will know the truth, no matter what happens.
Karuna’s pregnancy is the result of a heady act of independence, lust, and defiance that happened in a moment of freedom from her overprotective mother. In reaction to her daughter’s recklessness, Karuna’s mother locks her inside their apartment to her to make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. While postpartum confinement is a tradition in many cultures, is Karuna’s an act of love—or emotional abuse? As the birth approaches, Karuna and her mother repeatedly trip the fault lines between love and control. And somehow, despite their battles, Karuna recognizes her mother’s love in even the strangest of behaviors. At times tense and unnerving, One Hundred Days illuminates the pain, confusion, and thrill of growing up and the overwhelming desire of adults to protect the children they love. (Hardcover / 256 pages / $52) Alice Pung OAM is an award-winning writer based in Melbourne. Alice was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to literature in 2022. She is a qualified lawyer and still works as a legal researcher in the area of minimum wages and pay equity. Alice’s father, Kuan - a survivor of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime - named her after Lewis Carroll’s character because after surviving the Killing Fields, he thought Australia was a Wonderland. The first Sub-Saharan African winner of France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt.
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr was born in Dakar in 1990. He studied literature and philosophy at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. The president of Senegal named him a Chevalier of the National Order of Merit. In 2018, Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer in Paris, discovers a legendary book from the 1930s, The Labyrinth of Inhumanity. No one knows what became of its author, once hailed as the “Black Rimbaud,” after the book caused a scandal. Enthralled by this mystery, Diégane decides to search for T.C. Elimane, going down a path that will force him to confront the great tragedies of history, from colonialism to the Holocaust. Alongside his investigation, Diégane becomes part of a group of young African writers in Paris. Together they talk, drink, make love, philosophize about the role of exile in artistic creation. Diégane grows particularly close to two women: the seductive Siga, who holds so many secrets, and the photojournalist Aïda, impossible to pin down. The Most Secret Memory of Men is an astonishing novel about the choice between living and writing, and the desire to transcend the divide between Africa and the West. Above all, it is an ode to literature and its timelessness. (496 pages / $36) The book started as a poem and took shape as a film, also called Theorem, before turning at last into a work of fiction. In short prose chapters interspersed with stark passages of poetry, Pasolini tells a story of transfiguration and trauma.
To the suburban mansion of a prosperous Milanese businessman comes a mysterious and beautiful young man who invites himself to stay. From the beginning he exercises a strange fascination on the inhabitants of the house, and soon everyone, from the busy father to the frustrated mother, from the yearning daughter to the weak-willed son to the housemaid from the country, has fallen in love with him. Then, as mysteriously as he appeared, the infatuating young man departs. How will these people he has touched so deeply do without him? Is there a passage out of the spiritual desert of modern capitalism into a new awakening, both of the senses and of the soul? Only questions remain at the end of a book that is at once a bedroom comedy, a political novel, and a religious parable. (208 pages / $30) What dark fate awaits beneath the roaring falls?
Suwa and her father live alone on the slopes of Horsebare Mountain, eking out the most meager of existences. During the warmer months the beautiful waterfall brings a few sightseers, but when winter comes there is only solitude. Suwa would do anything to escape the life to which her father has resigned himself. And the lure of the river is strong... This early classic from the author of Japan’s greatest modern novel is a dark, elliptical tale of hopelessness that weaves the folklore of the mountains into an anti-coming-of-age story as vividly relevant today as it was when it was written nearly a hundred years ago. (Hardcover / 56 pages / $35) French artist Benjamin Lacombe has created stunning, one-of-a-kind artwork to illustrate the pages of Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale about a young mermaid who makes a devastating deal with a sea witch and transforms into a human, only to end up heartbroken, lose the deal, and lose her life.
The book’s illustrations and design are unique, captivating, and unexpectedly haunting, appealing to adult fans of Benjamin Lacombe and the pop surrealist movement. In addition to Hans Christian Andersen’s classic story, the book also includes additional pages featuring Andersen’s unrequited love letters to Edvard Collins and a postface by Lacombe with historical biography and context. In an essay, Lacombe explores LGBTQ themes in Hans Christian Andersen’s life. Frustrated with the overly feminine depictions of the story’s protagonist throughout history, Lacombe has created an androgynous mermaid to showcase the classic tale in a new light.
(Hardcover / 112 pages / $52) |
A woman turns herself into a forest after long being co-opted to serve as the subject of her husband’s novels—this surrealist fable challenges traditional gender attitudes and exploitation in the literary world
Nowatari Rui has long been the subject of her husband’s novels, depicted as a pure woman who takes great pleasure in sex. With her privacy and identity continually stripped away, she has come to be seen by society first and foremost as the inspiration for her husband’s art. When a decade’s worth of frustrations reaches its boiling point, Rui consumes a bowl of seeds, and buds and roots begin to sprout all over her body. Instead of taking her to a hospital, her husband keeps her in an aquaterrarium, set to compose a new novel based on this unsettling experience. But Rui breaks away from her husband by growing into a forest—and in time, she takes over the entire city. As fantasy and reality bleed together, The Forest Brims Over challenges unconscious gender biases and explores the boundaries between art and exploitation—muse abuse—in the literary world. (208 pages / $30) A radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien's hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human.
After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar planet and disabled by Earth’s gravity. To survive, they will need to practice walking. And what better way than to hunt for food? As they discover, humans are delicious. Intelligent, clever, and adaptable, the alien shift their gender, appearance, and conduct to suit a prey’s sexual preference, then attack at the pivotal moment of their encounter. They use a variety of hunting tools, including a popular dating app, to target the juiciest prey and carry a backpack filled with torturous instruments and cleaning equipment. But the alien’s existence begins to unravel one night when they fail to kill their latest meal. Thrust into an ill-fated chase across the city, the alien is confronted with the psychological and physical tolls their experience on Earth has taken. Questioning what they must do to sustain their own survival, they begin to understand why humans also fight to live. But their hunger is insatiable, and the alien once again targets a new prey, not knowing what awaits. . . . Dolki Min’s haunting debut novel is part psychological thriller, part searing critique of the social structures that marginalize those who are different—the disabled, queer, and nonconformist. Walking Practice uncovers humanity in who we consider to be alien, and illuminates how alienation can shape the human experience. (Hardcover / 176 pages / 21 black-and-white line drawings throughout / Translated from the Korean by Victoria Caudle / $47) How do you find love . . . when you have the loneliest job in the world?
This is the story of Gayle and Martin, who fall in love over the course of ten years- over a yearly visit to a tiny, isolated island off the Welsh coast. Gayle is a teacher and each year she brings her class to the island to see the local flora and fauna, from sea birds to playful seals. Martin, the island’s caretaker and only human resident, lives in and maintains the lighthouse, which opens to the public for just this one day a year. Gayle is effervescent but feels trapped, while Martin is lonely and isolated. As their love slowly builds over time, they both yearn for the annual field trip where they can finally see each other… Until one year Gayle doesn’t come back, and Martin has to leave his island hideaway to find her. (368 pages / $20) Elizabeth Smart's passionate fictional account of her intense love-affair with the poet George Barker, described by Angela Carter as 'Like Madame Bovary blasted by lightening ... A masterpiece'.
One day, while browsing in a London bookshop, Elizabeth Smart (1913 - 1986) chanced upon a slim volume of poetry by George Barker - and fell passionately in love with him through the printed word. Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker's impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife from Japan, where he was teaching, to join her in the United States. Thus began one of the most extraordinary, intense and ultimately tragic love affairs of our time. They never married but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children and their relationship provided the impassioned inspiration for one of the most moving and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Originally published in 1945, this remarkable book is now widely identified as a classic work of poetic prose which, more than six decades later, has retained all of its searing poignancy, beauty and power of impact. (160 pages / $23) A story told in three parts, Teacher Narit is a historical novel centering on the main protagonist, Narit, a mysterious civil war veteran who escaped the capital in the 70s to start a new life as a history teacher in northern Thailand.
Once a young, idealistic postgraduate student and activist during one of Thailand’s blackest periods, The 14th October 1973 revolution, Narit embarked on a turbulent relationship that led him to battling a war of conscience, love and political allegiance; a war that ended in pain and disillusion for both him and his family-leaving him embittered, running from his past. However, it is in northern Thailand, that a chance encounter with his first love forces him to confront his demons, and Narit is made to choose between seeking forgiveness or fleeing once more. (232 pages / $28) Explore the enchanting world of Polynesian folklore in this beautiful, illustrated collection.
A woman falls in love with the king of the sharks. Two powerful sorcerers compete in a battle of magical wits. The king of Maui's fastest messenger races to bring a young woman back from the dead. In these traditional stories, the borders blur between life and death, reality and magic, and land and sea. You'll encounter awe-inspiring warriors, tricky magicians, and fearsome creatures of the deep. This volume includes legends from Hawai'i, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Samoa, showcasing the rich narrative tradition of the Polynesian islands. Each tale is paired with evocative contemporary art in this special illustrated edition. (Hardcover / 144 pages / $43) The dark, atmospheric, feminist offspring of Squid Game, The Hunting Party and Misery
A book deal to die for. Five attendees are selected for a month-long writing retreat at the remote estate of Roza Vallo, the controversial high priestess of feminist horror. Alex, a struggling writer, is thrilled. Upon arrival, they discover they must complete an entire novel from scratch, and the best one will receive a seven-figure publishing deal. Alex's long-extinguished dream now seems within reach. But then the women begin to die. Trapped, terrified yet still desperately writing, it clear there is more than a publishing deal at stake at Briar estate. As Alex must confront her own demons – and finish her novel – to save herself. This unhinged, propulsive, claustrophobic closed-door thriller will pull you in and spit you out… (320 pages / $28) One of the darkest, most nightmarish stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” created a sensation when it was first published in 1948. Now celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, this lucid tale of a sleepy town’s annual lottery—and the monstrous desires it awakens—endures as an essential classic of American fiction.
The Lottery and Other Stories unites “The Lottery” with twenty-four wonderfully strange and equally terrifying short stories from the legendary Shirley Jackson. Together they demonstrate Jackson’s remarkable range—from the hilarious to the horrible, the unsettling to the ominous—and showcase a true master at the height of her haunting powers. (320 pages / $30) What if the murder you had to solve was your own?
Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her. Now it’s not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she’s always enjoyed—she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller. (304 pages / $30) The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night.
Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic talent. If he didn’t have a family to feed, he’d be a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but full of arrogance and resentment, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. It's his first-born who, years later, will sift the lies from the truth to tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and steeped in the city’s language and imagery, The House on Via Gemito – first published 20 years ago - is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature. (480 pages / $35) A mystery writer turns detective to protect the woman he loves. But is he hunter or hunted?
The chance meeting between a crime novelist and a married woman blossoms into friendship. When she confides to him that she has been receiving threatening and sadistic letters from an ex-lover, who says he is watching her in the shadows, he knows he must help her. But the trail unexpectedly leads to another writer, Oe Shundei, the mysterious and secretive author of works of grotesque violence. Suddenly nothing is as it seems, and nobody is safe. (112 pages / $23) No one speaks to strangers on the train. What would happen if they did?
Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. As a seasoned commuter, Iona sees the same group of people each day - ones she makes assumptions about, gives nicknames to, but never ever talks to. But then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist-Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Suspiciously-Nice-New Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction. With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don't match reality. But when Iona's life begins to fall apart, will her new friends be there when she needs them most? (416 pages / $20) She's lonely and searching for connection.
He's lonely, but afraid to reach out. But is finding someone else really the answer to their problems? CRUSHING, an illustrated misadventure in love and loneliness, is a story told in silence - a story about connections in the big city - making them, missing them and longing for them. Small but meaningful moments of comfort and connection are celebrated through wordless, dreamlike illustrations, along with the bliss that comes from finally finding someone who truly understands you. Sometimes, words aren't enough. (Hardcover / 160 pages / $39) Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in the city. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn’t.
At thirty-two, Fern’s life doesn’t look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern’s back home, running her mother’s lakeside resort—something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend’s the manager, and Fern doesn’t know where to begin. She needs a plan—a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern’s going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern’s not sure she wants to know what it is. But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him? (336 pages / $20) Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence—until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression.
In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru. An unusual man who has always pursued something of an unconventional life, especially after his wife Momoko left him out of the blue five years earlier, Satoru runs a second-hand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s famous book district. Takako once looked down upon Satoru’s life. Now, she reluctantly accepts his offer of the tiny room above the bookshop rent-free in exchange for helping out at the store. The move is temporary, until she can get back on her feet. But in the months that follow, Takako surprises herself when she develops a passion for Japanese literature, becomes a regular at a local coffee shop where she makes new friends, and eventually meets a young editor from a nearby publishing house who’s going through his own messy breakup. But just as she begins to find joy again, Hideaki reappears, forcing Takako to rely once again on her uncle, whose own life has begun to unravel. Together, these seeming opposites work to understand each other and themselves as they continue to share the wisdom they’ve gained in the bookshop. (160 pages / $22) In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in Staten Island. The boys are a conspicuous trio: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul is Korean and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern, but they are so close as to be almost inseparable. Nevertheless, Youssef is keeping a secret from his brothers: he has an imaginary double, a familiar who seems absolutely real, a shapeshifting creature he calls Brother.
The boys’ adoptive father, Imam Salim, is known for his radical sermons extolling the virtues of opting out of Western ideologies. But he is uncharismatic at home, a distant father who spends evenings in his study with whiskey-laced coffee, writing letters to his former compatriots back in Saudi Arabia. Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health, the reason for his nighttime excursions from the house and the truth about what happened to the boys’ parents. When Imam Salim’s path takes him back to Saudi Arabia, the boys will be forced to follow. There they will be captivated by an opulent, almost futuristic world and find traces of their parents’ stories. But they will have to change if they want to survive in this new world, and the arrival of a creature as powerful as Brother will not go unnoticed. With stylistic brilliance and intellectual acuity, in Brother Alive Zain Khalid brings characters to vivid life with a bold energy that matches the great themes of his novel – family, capital, power, sexuality and the possibility of reunion for those who are broken. (352 pages / $24) Beautiful Star is a 1962 tale of family, love, nuclear war and UFOs, and was considered by Mishima to be one of his very best books.
Translated into English for the first time, this atmospheric black comedy tells the story of the Osugi family, who come to the sudden realization that each of them hails from a different planet: Father from Mars, mother from Jupiter, son from Mercury and daughter from Venus. This extra-terrestrial knowledge brings them closer together, and convinces them that they have a mission: to find others of their kind, and save humanity from the imminent threat of the atomic bomb... (288 pages / $23) A young woman tries to figure out if she’s the best (a creative genius) or if she’s maybe just the worst (completely delusional).
I’d be in heaven but on the edge of a deeper misery than ever, I’d be on top of the world and then they’d ask me, Did you make the right choice Kim? Are you currently, still, making the right choices Kimberly Mueller? Over the course of a year in Berlin, an aspiring novelist, Kim, and her historian best friend, Bel, confront their twin acts of creation. Kim is becoming a writer, and is determined to write a bestseller. She's been convinced of this idea by Matthew, an American literary agent who is as emotionally unavailable as he is handsome (very). Kim lives in her own carefully constructed reality, which her imagination is constantly pumping full of hot air. As she attempts to buoy herself using other people for external motivation, they poke holes in her fantasies, leading her to wonder if she’s going to come crashing down or somehow stay afloat. Meanwhile, Bel is becoming a mother, and gives birth, certain it will fulfil her in ways her career does not seem to. Kim and Bel support and deceive each other as only the best of friends can. In the face of probable failure, how do we convince ourselves to try and become something anyway? And how do we live with the choices we make? (320 pages / $35) Small-town German bookseller Carl Kollhoff maybe 72 years old, but he's young at heart. . Every night he goes door-to-door delivering books by hand to his loyal customers. He knows their every desire and preference, carefully selecting the perfect story for each person.
One evening as he makes his rounds, nine-year-old Schascha appears. Loud and precocious, she insists on accompanying him - and even tries to teach him a thing or two about books. When Carl's job at the bookstore is threatened, will the old man and the girl in the yellow raincoat be able to restore Carl's way of life, and return the joy of reading to his little European town? (256 pages / $25) Sweeping through the 1970s to a modern corner of London, this is a life-affirming story of small spaces, small pleasures – and a community lost and found.
In a small pocket of London, between the houses of No.77 and No.79 Eastbourne Road, lies a neglected community garden. Once a sanctuary for people when they needed it most, the garden’s gate is now firmly closed. And that’s exactly how Winston at No.79 likes it – anything to avoid his irritating new next-door neighbour. But when a mystery parcel drops on Winston’s doormat – a curious bundle of photographs of a community garden, his garden, bursting with life years ago – a seed of an idea is planted . . . Somewhere out there, a secret gardener made a decades-old promise to keep the community’s spirit alive. And now it’s time for The Twilight Garden to come out of hibernation . . . (400 pages / $31) A wickedly funny debut novel—a black comedy with a generous heart that explores the power of imagination and reading—about a woman who tries to use fiction to find her way to happiness.
Victoria is unhappily married to an ambitious and controlling lawyer consumed with his career. Burdened with overbearing in-laws, a boring dead-end job she can’t seem to leave, and a best friend who doesn’t seem to understand her, Victoria finds solace from the daily grind in her beloved books and the stories she makes up in her head. One day, in a favorite café, she notices an attractive man reading the same talked-about bestselling novel that she is reading. A woman yearning for her own happy ending, Victoria is sure it’s fate. The handsome book lover must be her soul mate. There’s only one small problem. Victoria is already married. Frustrated, and desperate to change her life, Victoria retreats to the dark places in her mind and thinks back to all the stories she’s ever read in hopes of finding a solution. She begins to fantasize about nocturnal trysts with café man, and imaginative ways of getting rid of the dread husband. It’s all just harmless fantasy born of Victoria’s fevered imagination and her books—until, one night, fiction and reality blur and suddenly it seems Victoria is about to get everything she’s wished for... . . . .
(288 pages / $33) Note from the bookseller: I finished the book and not a single chapter is uninteresting. I think the title is misleading; the plot is beyond bookish. Lalitha, abused by her own mother, learns that bullies carry emotional traumas that scar everyone’s lives.
Shiva Das confronts the truth of his own culpability when his adult special child dies in tragic circumstances. A woman, deeply in love with her husband, discovers to her anguish that the love of a good man is not enough. A little boy tries hard to hold his family together as his parents’ marriage disintegrates before his eyes. A mother has a poignant yet brutal conversation with God about her severely disabled son. Three young people idealistically reject racial prejudice and stereotyping, only to find that in Malaysia, their future paths are largely determined by ethnicity and privilege. The extent to which a woman will go in her hatred for her daughter’s childhood friend, ends in a violent aftermath. An Indonesian maid realizes that the money she sends home has become more important than her own welfare or safety to her family. A racial slur triggers reflections on friendship, identity, the loss of belonging and trust in a multi-racial community. Authentic and unsentimental, each story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit even as it challenges comfortable conventions about identity, love, family, community and race relations. (176 pages / $27) Darwin is a down-on-his-luck gravedigger, newly arrived in the Trinidadian city of Port Angeles to seek his fortune, young and beautiful and lost. Estranged from his mother and the Rastafari faith she taught him, he is convinced that the father he never met may be waiting for him somewhere amid these bustling streets.
Meanwhile in an old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide's mother is dying. And she is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: the power to talk to the dead. The women of Yejide's family are human but also not - descended from corbeau, the black birds that fly east at sunset, taking with them the souls of the dead. Darwin and Yejide both have something that the other needs. Their destinies are intertwined, and they will find one another in the sprawling, ancient cemetery at the heart of the island, where trouble is brewing... Rich with magic and wisdom, When We Were Birds is an exuberant masterpiece that conjures and mesmerises on every line. Ayanna Lloyd Banwo weaves an unforgettable story of loss and renewal, darkness and light; a triumphant reckoning with a grief that runs back generations and a defiant, joyful affirmation of hope. (288 pages / $23) In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Stood in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime...
Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seicho Matsumoto's masterpiece - and as one of the most fiendish puzzles ever written. (160 pages / $23) On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence – street cricket, barbecues, painting windows… A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever.
Jon McGregor's first novel brilliantly evokes the histories and lives of the people in the street to build up an unforgettable human panorama. (288 pages / $23) I believe every word you say. That was always my mistake.
Bright, promising Emma is entangled in a toxic romance with her old professor - and she's losing control. Cruel, charming Tom is idolized by his students and peers - confident he holds all the cards. In their small Oxford home, he manipulates and undermines her every thought and act. Soon, he will push her to the limit and she must decide: to remain quiet and submit, or to take her revenge. Written in verse and charged with passion and anger, The Poet is a portrait of a deeply dysfunctional relationship, exploring coercive control, class and privilege. It is also a page-turning tale of female solidarity and survival. (320 pages / $23) Years ago, in an almost accidental moment of heroism, Ed saved Amy from drowning. Now, in his thirties, he finds himself adrift. He's been living in London for years - some of them good - but he's stuck in a relationship he can't move forward, has a job that just pays the bills, and can't shake the sense that life should mean more than this.
Perhaps all Ed needs is a moment to pause. To exhale and start anew. And when he meets Amy again by chance, it seems that happiness might not be so far out of reach. But then tragedy overtakes him, and Ed must decide whether to let history and duty define his life, or whether he should push against the tide and write his own story. Filled with hope and characteristic warmth, Undercurrent is a moving and intimate portrait of love, of life and why we choose to share ours with the people we do. (272 pages / $23) The cult classic from one of France's most stylish writers
'Don't give a damn,' says Zazie, 'what I wanted was to go in the metro' Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with her uncle Gabriel. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau's cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever. (192 pages / $23) There’s no shortage of sadness. There’s no blaming those who succumb to omnipresent gloom. It’s today’s pervasive emotional climate.
However, there’s also enough laughter to go around. At least laughter that comes with a knowing wink, in camaraderie with the many prone to sadnesses. This collection of 19 short stories hopes to make you laugh. That is: Despite the planet heating up. Despite the constant threat of fascism and disinformation. Despite empires disguised as good guys. Despite neoliberalism’s false promises and the ruthless competition it demands. Despite the persistent clout of capitalism, unrelenting in its dominion over life, over happiness. Despite, perhaps, a lack of exercise . . . By the end of the book, laughter finds a purpose, a place in the collective, aware of its rightful target. From sadness to laughter to indignation . But wait there’s more. Cheers. (224 pages / $25) A heartrending tale of a mother hell-bent on saving her family after her daughter's suicide attempt--despite the destruction it might mean for herself.
When Rose's seventeen-year-old daughter, Juliet, attempts suicide, she does everything she can to hold her family together despite the inevitable unraveling that follows. Her husband Syd thinks their daughter is fine, that she's going through a phase, and tells Rose she's overreacting--as do the doctors, the school principal, and even Juliet herself. But Rose knows her daughter better than anyone. Doesn't she? Rose and Juliet begin to drift apart and then fade into each other until they aren't sure who's saving whom--or if they're saving each other. As Rose struggles to navigate this unknown territory, the family unwittingly makes decisions that suddenly send them all into an escalated tailspin toward disaster. Capturing the tightly coiled tension of seeing someone on the edge of a bridge about to jump, Yasuko Thanh takes us on a journey into the psyche of a woman grappling to understand why her daughter would want to die, and how to protect her child when she's chosen not to protect herself. Haunting, emotional, and unforgettable, To the Bridge shows how a bridge is not something to leap from, but something to cross--how a mother and her daughter can find a way to connect, even when there is a river of difference raging between them. (272 pages / $33) From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire.
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide… Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? (560 pages / $24) About the author: Rebecca F. Kuang: A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. |
A tender meditation on friendship and the importance of community, Brian is also a tangential work of film criticism, one that is not removed from its subject matter, but rather explores with great feeling how art gives meaning to and enriches our lives.
Perennially on the outside, Brian has led a solitary life; he works at his local council, lunches every day at Il Castelletto café and then returns to his small flat in North London. It is an existence carefully crafted to avoid disturbance and yet Brian yearns for more. A visit one day to the British Film Institute brings film into his life, and Brian introduces a new element to his routine: nightly visits to the cinema on London’s South Bank. Through the works of Yasujirō Ozu, Federico Fellini, Agnes Varda, Yilmaz Güney and others, Brian gains access to a rich cultural landscape outside his own experience, but also achieves his first real moments of belonging, accepted by a curious bunch of amateur film buffs, the small informal group of BFI regulars. (200 pages / $28) Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents.”
Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny – with a growing sense of unrest and distrust – starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling? At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old. (272 pages/ $30) An unputdownable debut charting the thrilling life and heroism of Hannie Schaft, a young-woman-turned-Dutch-Resistance-fighter in Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
Hannie Schaft didn't train to be a soldier: she had dreams of her own. But dreams die in wartime, and her friends are no longer safe. Hiding them is not enough. Hannie is young but she won't stand aside as the menace of Nazi evil tightens its grip on her country. Recruited into the Resistance, she learns to shoot and is notorious for not missing her targets.
As she draws deeper into a web of plots, disguises and assassinations, whispers spread like wildfire amongst enemies and friends alike. They know her name. She's "the Girl with Red Hair." A match for any Nazi soldier, a true threat, a target. (448 pages / $32) Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she's drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts-and herself.
Paris 1936. She may have escaped Berlin for Paris, but Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from the anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live-or die-for. New York 1944. Since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator's attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. Viv knows just how much they mean to the men through the letters she receives-including the last one she got from Edward. She also knows the only way to win this battle is to counter the senator's propaganda with a story of her own-at the heart of which lies the reclusive and mysterious woman tending the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books in Brooklyn. As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever. Inspired by the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime-the WWII organization founded by booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors to use books as "weapons in the war of ideas"-The Librarian of Burned Books is an unforgettable historical novel, a haunting love story, and a testament to the beauty, power, and goodness of the written word. (416 pages / $35) In the days leading up to Christmas, Dómhildur delivers her 1,922nd baby. Beginnings and endings are her family trade; she comes from a long line of midwives on her mother’s side and a long line of undertakers on her father’s. She even lives in the apartment that she inherited from her grandaunt, a midwife with a unique reputation for her unconventional methods.
As a terrible storm races towards Reykjavik, Dómhildur discovers decades worth of letters and manuscripts hidden amongst her grandaunt’s clutter. Fielding calls from her anxious meteorologist sister and visits from her curious new neighbour, Dómhildur escapes into her grandaunt’s archive and discovers strange and beautiful reflections on birth, death and human nature. For even in the depths of an Icelandic winter, new life will find a way. (192 pages / translated novel / $22) In the mountainous city of Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lacklustre career, but also a scrumptious collection of antique dolls locked away in his cupboard. And soon Q lands his crowning acquisition: a music box ballerina named Aliss who tantalizingly springs to life.
Guided by his mysterious friend Owlish and inspired by an inexplicably familiar painting, Q embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Aliss, oblivious to the sinister forces encroaching on his city and the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty. Thrumming with secrets and shape-shifting geographies, Dorothy Tse's extraordinary debut novel is a boldly inventive exploration of life under repressive conditions. About the author: Dorothy Tse is a fiction writer who has received multiple literary awards in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Her collection Snow and Shadow (translated by Nicky Harman) was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. A co-founder of Hong Kong's leading literary magazine, Fleurs des Lettres, she teaches at Hong Kong Baptist University. (224 pages / $30) From the acclaimed author of the dystopian classic A Clockwork Orange, The Wanting Seed is an inventive, thought-provoking and darkly absurd novel set in a work rampant with overpopulation.
As governments struggle to maintain order in the face of overpopulation and food shortages and homosexuality is glorified in an attempt to further limit family sizes, Tristram Foxe and his wife Beatrice-Joanna find themselves facing dire choices. Their world transforms into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger. (208 pages / $20) In Spell Heaven, a linked story collection, a lesbian couple moves to a coast town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of outsiders.
Stories include the tale of an undocumented boy’s drowning when a wave pulls him out to sea, an ex–FBI agent’s surveillance of a man who leaves chocolate bars at a tree in a weekly ritual, a mother on meth who teaches a lesson on mercy, and Kite Man, who flies kites from a fishing pole and sells drugs on the side. His motto: When the kites fly, you can buy. The narrator of these stories, raised in a working-class Croatian American fishing family and immigrant community, chooses an early career in labor-oriented jobs. Years later, she finds herself in an academic position in a white-collar world “where the clothes are clean but the politics are dirty.” She questions her own stereotypes about her neighbors and gradually begins to question her life path. Spell Heaven celebrates those who are looking for a human connection in an increasingly isolated world. (288 pages / $30) What if the thing you most wanted feels nothing like you expected?
Stevie’s life seems full: she has a successful career and a glamorous social life in New York. But what she wants most is a baby, an aspiration that feels impossible for a single woman in her late 30s. Determined to be a mother, Stevie returns home to London and has a baby on her own. Soon, though, she finds motherhood painfully at odds with her former life and wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake. As she struggles with her new reality and what her future might hold, Stevie is forced to face difficult truths about her past and reconsider everything she believed about family and love. (384 pages / $22) Isobel lives an isolated life in North London, where she works at a nearby library. She feels safe, so long as she keeps to her routines and doesn't let her thoughts stray too far into the past. But a newspaper photograph of a missing local schoolgirl and a letter from her old teacher send her spiralling and bring back the trauma of what happened years ago, when she was a pupil at The Schoolhouse.
The Schoolhouse was a 1970s experimental school where Isobel's days were a dark interplay of freedom and adventure, violence and fear. The only record of what happened there lies in the pages of her teenage diary. The Schoolhouse taught Isobel that some truths must never be revealed, but as police investigating the missing girl start to ask uncomfortable questions, she realises the truth is coming for her - and it will put her, and everyone she has tried to protect, at risk. From the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Love and Other Thought Experiments comes a masterful and gripping thriller about truth, silence, and the dead weight of the past. (304 pages / $21) Player Piano is the debut novel from one of history's most innovative authors, published on Vonnegut's 100th birthday.
In Player Piano, the first of Vonnegut's wildly funny and deadly serious novels, automata have dramatically reduced the need for America's work force. Ten years after the introduction of these robot labourers, the only people still working are the engineers and their managers, who live in Ilium; everyone else lives in Homestead, an impoverished part of town characterised by purposelessness and mass produced houses. Paul Proteus is the manager of Ilium Works. While grateful to be held in high regard, Paul begins to feel uneasy about his position - especially after a trip to Homestead. Eventually, Paul makes the decision to rebel against all he's been given, inciting seismic repercussions... (352 pages / $22) In Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho, rips into his most frightening subject yet: himself.
He became a bestselling novelist while still in college, immediately famous and wealthy. He watched his insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box. He was lost in a haze of booze, drugs and vilification. Then he was given a second chance. This is the life of Bret Easton Ellis, the author and subject of this remarkable novel. Confounding one expectation after another, Lunar Park is equally hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking. It’s the most original novel of an extraordinary career – and best of all: it all happened, every word is true. (464 pages / $24) When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to see his mother, and the judge believed him.
She approaches this new life with passionate intensity and the desire for an unencumbered existence, certain that no love can last. Apart from cigarettes, two regular lovers and women she has brief affairs with, Constance's approach is monastic and military - she swims daily, reads, writes, and returns to small or borrowed rooms for the night. A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices asked from mothers, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge. (Hardcover / 176 pages / $28) About the author: The daughter of an illustrious French family whose members include a former Prime Minister, a model, and a journalist, Constance Debré abandoned her marriage and legal career in 2015 to write full-time and begin a relationship with a woman. Debré's work is often compared with the punk-era writings of Guillaume Dustan and Herve Guibertt. Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.
Connecticut, 1666: An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector. The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil. To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help. Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan - one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake. This terrifying tale of bewitchery features more than two dozen of Brom's haunting full-color paintings and brilliant endpapers, fully immersing readers in this wild and unforgiving world. Brom is currently kept in a dank cellar somewhere in the drizzly Northwest. There he subsists on poison spiders, centipedes, and bad kung-fu flicks. When not eating bugs, he is ever writing, painting, and trying to reach a happy sing-a-long with the many demons dancing about in his head.
(320 pages / $36) 256 A wide-ranging and appealingly fairy-sized treasury of fantastical poems from across the centuries and around the world
Fascination with fairies spans centuries and cultures. With ancient roots in pagan belief, fairies have long populated mythology, folklore, and oral and written poetry. They have seen repeated surges of renewed popularity from the Renaissance to the present fantasy-besotted moment. Elves, changelings, leprechauns, pixies, brownies, and sprites, England’s Queen Mab, France’s Melusine, Scandinavian nixies, and Scottish selkies: these magical creatures are sometimes mischievous, sometimes dangerous, but always enchanting. This collection brings together a diverse array of literary fairies: here are Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Shakespeare‘s Titania, and Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” but also Arthur Rimbaud’s “Fairy,” Goethe’s “Erlking,” Claude McKay’s “Snow Fairy,” Denise Levertov’s “Elves,” Sylvia Plath’s “Lorelei,” Christopher Okigbo’s “Watermaid,” and Neil Gaiman’s “The Fairy Reel.” Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. (Hardcover / 256 pages / $32) From one of the most highly celebrated young Chinese writers, three dazzling novellas of Northeast China, mixing realism, mysticism, and noir.
An inventor dreams of escaping his drab surroundings in a flying machine. A criminal, trapped beneath a frozen lake, fights a giant fish. A strange girl pledges to ignite a field of sorghum stalks. Rouge Street presents three novellas by Shuang Xuetao, the lauded young Chinese writer whose frank, fantastical short fiction has already inspired comparisons to Ernest Hemingway and Haruki Murakami. Located in China’s frigid Northeast, Shenyang, the author’s birthplace, boasts an illustrious past―legend holds that the emperor’s makeup was manufactured here. But while the city enjoyed renewed importance as an industrial hub under Mao Zedong, China’s subsequent transition from communism to a market economy led to an array of social ills―unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorce, suicide―that gritty Shenyang epitomizes. Orbiting the toughest neighborhood of a postindustrial city whose vast, inhospitable landscape makes every aspect of life a struggle, these many-voiced missives are united by Shuang Xuetao’s singular style―one that balances hardscrabble naturalism with the transcendent and faces the bleak environs with winning humor. Rouge Street illuminates not only the hidden pains of those left behind in an extraordinary economic boom but also the inspirations and grace they, nevertheless, manage to discover. (240 pages / $33) When her cousin and wife fail to return from a walk, this story takes a sinister turn to a quest of survival
A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival. This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world. (256 pages / $22) "It's a novel that contrives to be, by turns, utopian and dystopian, an idyll and a nightmare... Every joint and sinew of the story is restless with a sense of threat" ― London Review of Books Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world, from one of today's finest short story writers - MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Fellow Kelly Link, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble.
Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers - characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose. In 'The White Cat's Divorce', an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which will become his heir. In 'The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear', a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In 'Skinder's Veil', a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers - or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche. Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable - these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction. (272 pages / $34) The Absolute is a sprawling historical novel about the Deliuskin-Scriabin family, made up of six generations of geniuses and madmen.
Beginning in the mid-18th century in Russia, across Europe and ending in late 20th-century Argentina, the characters’ lives play out in different branches of art, politics and science in such radical ways that they transform the world and its reality. The narrator’s ancestor, Frantisek Deliuskin, invents a new form of music in the 18th century; his son, Andrei Deliuskin, makes some marginal annotations to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that are later interpreted by Lenin as an instruction manual to carry out the Russian Revolution of 1917; Esau Deliuskin, following the course of his father, creates a socialist utopian society; and down through the generations to the narrator, whose creation takes him back in time and space to the moment of the Big Bang. The Absolute is a monumental work about the creation of art and about family, about spiritual traditions and about throwing oneself into the world not to capture life but to create it, in and through words. (464 pages / $35) In this collection, readers will rediscover Gertrude Stein as the bearer of a joyfully radical literary vision. A bold experimenter, her writing sparks with vitality, relishing in rhythm, repetition, sound and colour in its central vision: to prise apart language and association and find thrilling new ways to express the true essence of her subject with charming joie de vivre
Stein considered her shorter writings to be the truest expressions of her enrapturing style. Her fascination with people and personalities can be located in expressive portraits of close friends such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Juan Gris, whilst her decades-long relationship with Alice B. Toklas is immortalised with shimmering eroticism. There are also playful meditations on her unique writing process, conveying her serious delight in meddling with conventions of grammar and composition. (224 pages / $27) A picaresque novel of the lower Baroque style, written in five books by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen.
The picaresque novel is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Picaresque novels typically adopt a realistic style. There are often some elements of comedy and satire. Simplicius Simplicissimus - the towering achievement of H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen, one of the earliest novelists in the German language - charts the adventures of its hero, Simplicius, through the horrors of battle, murder, fire and famine, offering an invaluable eyewitness account of the Thirty Years' War and showing how humanity can, in the end, triumph over brutality A work of great poetical beauty and satirical strength, and a lasting historical document of timeless value, Simplicius Simplicissimus is one of the greatest picaresque novels in the Western canon. About the author: After serving as a soldier in the Thirty Years War, H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen (1621-76), devoted himself to literature, penning various satires and gallant novels, although he is chiefly remembered for his picaresque masterpiece, Simplicius Simplicissimus. (379 pages / Unexpurgated Edition / $22) She’s been painted out of history…until now. Who tells her story?
The breathtaking historical novel inspired by the true story of the woman who made Van Gogh famous In 1890, Vincent Van Gogh dies penniless, unknown, a man tortured by his own mind. Eleven years later his work is exhibited in Paris and his unparalleled talent finally recognised. The tireless efforts of one woman gave the world one of its greatest creative minds. But twenty-eight year old Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, Vincent’s sister-in-law and the keeper of his immense collection of paintings, sketches and letters, has, until now, been written out of history. This beautiful, moving novel finally gives this extraordinary woman a voice… (480 pages / $20) When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market. But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them… (400 pages / $20) An intensely compulsive novel for anyone who has ever felt hopeful and helpless in one breath, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW is about how you keep living when the world is on fire.
At a New York City wedding, on a sweltering summer night, four people are trying to be happy. Yun has everything he ever wanted, but somehow it's never enough. Emory is finally making her mark, but feels the shame more than the success. Andrew is trying to be honest, but has lied to himself his whole life. Fin can't resist falling in love, but can't help wrecking it all either. And then the world begins to end. The four of them watch as one of the wedding guests sits down and refuses to get back up. Soon it's happening across the world. Is it a choice or an illness? Because how can anyone be happy in a world where the only choice is to feel everything - or nothing at all? (352 pages / $31) A brilliantly original and funny novel about a sex therapist’s transcriptionist who falls in love with a client while listening to her sessions. When they accidentally meet in real life, an explosive affair ensues.
Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house, built in 1737, is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she’s tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. Greta is fascinated by Big Swiss’s refreshing attitude toward trauma. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past. One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and contrives a meeting. They quickly become enmeshed. Although Big Swiss is unaware of Greta’s true identity, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship… Bold, outlandish, and filled with irresistible characters, Big Swiss is both a love story and also a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more—from an amazingly talented, one-of-a-kind voice in contemporary fiction. (336 pages / $28) A young man is found brutally murdered in the middle of the snowed-in village of Wivenhoe. Over his body stands another man, axe in hand. The gathered villagers must deal with the consequences of an act that no-one tried to stop.
WIVENHOE is a haunting novel set in an alternate present, in a world that is slowly waking up to the fact that it is living through an environmental disaster. Taking place over twenty-four hours and told through the voices of a mother and her adult son, we see how one small community reacts to social breakdown and isolation. Samuel Fisher imagines a world, not unlike our own, struck down and on the edge of survival. Tense, poignant, and set against a dramatic landscape, WIVENHOE asks the question: if society as we know it is lost, what would we strive to save? At what point will we admit complicity in our own destruction? (160 p ages / $21) "Cuddy isn't a novel, it's an invocation'
ROB COWEN Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England.
Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras - from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage - their dreams, desires, connections and communities. (464 pages / $33) A newly married woman longs, irrationally, for a silk umbrella; a husband chases away his wife's beloved cat; a betrayed mother impulsively sacks her housekeeper. Underneath the surface of these precisely observed tales of love, marriage and family life in mid-century Copenhagen pulse currents of desire, violence and despair, as women and men dream of escaping their conventional roles and finding freedom and happiness - without ever truly understanding what that might mean.
(192 pages / $23) About the author: Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighbourhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties, and was followed by many more books, including her three brilliant volumes of memoir, Childhood (1967), Youth (1967) and Dependency (1971). She married four times and struggled with alcohol and drug abuse throughout her adult life until her death by suicide in 1978. A novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction.
It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic—in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star. Then Moon suddenly retires, vanishing from the public eye. As Y/N flies from Berlin to Seoul to be with Moon, our narrator, too, journeys to Korea in search of the object of her love. An escalating series of mistranslations and misidentifications lands her at the headquarters of the Kafkaesque entertainment company that manages the boyband until, at a secret location, together with Moon at last, art and real life approach their final convergence. From a conspicuous new talent comes Y/N, a provocative literary debut about the universal longing for transcendence and the tragic struggle to assert one’s singular story amidst the amnesiac effects of globalization. Crackling with the intellectual sensitivity of Elif Batuman and the sinewy absurdism of Thomas Pynchon, Esther Yi’s prose unsettles the boundary between high and mass art, exploding our expectations of a novel about “identity” and offering in its place a sui generis picture of the loneliness that afflicts modern life. (Hardcover / 224 pages / $47) One of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century and a hero of political thought, the largely unsung and often misunderstood Hannah Arendt is best known for her landmark 1951 book on openness in political life, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which, with its powerful and timely lessons for today, has become newly relevant.
She led an extraordinary life. This was a woman who endured Nazi persecution firsthand, survived harrowing "escapes" from country to country in Europe, and befriended such luminaries as Walter Benjamin and Mary McCarthy, in a world inhabited by everyone from Marc Chagall and Marlene Dietrich to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. A woman who finally had to give up her unique genius for philosophy, and her love of a very compromised man - the philosopher and Nazi-sympathizer Martin Heidegger - for what she called "love of the world." Compassionate and enlightening, playful and page-turning, New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein's The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is a strikingly illustrated portrait of a complex, controversial, deeply flawed, and irrefutably courageous woman whose intelligence and "virulent truth telling" led her to breathtaking insights into the human condition, and whose experience continues to shine a light on how to live as an individual and a public citizen in troubled times. (Hardcover / Graphic biography / 240 pages / $47) Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.
But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Forced to resign, she reluctantly signs on as the host of a cooking show, Supper at Six. But her revolutionary approach to cooking, fuelled by scientific and rational commentary, grabs the attention of a nation. Soon, a legion of overlooked housewives find themselves daring to change the status quo. One molecule at a time. (400 pages / $22) |