Современная зарубежная литература ЛитРес

Beyond Christianity draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious Science church in Oakland, California, to illuminate the ways a group of African Americans has adapted a religion typically thought of as white to fit their needs and circumstances.This predominantly African American congregation is an anomalous phenomenon for both Religious Science and African American religious studies. It stands at the intersection of New Thought doctrine, characterized by personal empowerment teachings,and a culturally familiar liturgical style reminiscent of Black Pentecostals and Black Spiritualists. This group challenges oversimplified concepts of the Black church experience and broadens the concept of Black religion outside the boundaries of Christianity—raising questions about what it means to be an African American congregation, and about the nature of blackness itself. Beyond Christianity adds a new dimension to the scholarship on Black religion.

This is the first authoritative edition of one of the most significant children’s books of the twentieth century. Winner of the 1961 Newbery Medal, Island of the Blue Dolphins tells the story of a girl left alone for eighteen years in the aftermath of violent encounters with Europeans on her home island off the coast of Southern California. This special edition includes two excised chapters, published here for the first time, as well as a critical introduction and essays that offer new background on the archaeological, legal, and colonial histories of Native peoples in California. Sara L. Schwebel explores the composition history and editorial decisions made by author Scott O’Dell that ensured the success of Island of the Blue Dolphins at a time when second-wave feminism, the civil rights movement, and multicultural education increasingly influenced which books were taught. This edition also considers how readers might approach the book today, when new archaeological evidence is emerging about the “Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island,” on whom O’Dell’s story is based, and Native peoples are engaged in the reclamation of indigenous histories and ongoing struggles for political sovereignty.

A beautiful and deeply moving story by Pulitzer Prize winning Robert Olen Butler.

In this hilarious novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet, a honeymooning couple makes friends with a marine biologist who discovers genuine mermaids in a coral reef-and who, the next night, apparently drowns in her hotel bathtub. As a resort chain swoops in to corner the market on mermaids, the newlyweds (opinionated, skeptical narrator Deb and handsome online gamer Chip, the world's friendliest man) join forces with other vacationers-including an ex-Navy SEAL with a love of explosives and a hipster Tokyo VJ-to protect the mermaids from the corporate 'Venture of Marvels' that wants to turn their habitat into a theme park.

Ndiya Grayson returns to her childhood home of Chicago as a young professional, but even her high-end job in a law office can’t protect her from half-repressed memories of childhood trauma. One evening, vulnerable and emotionally disarrayed, she goes out and meets her equal and opposite:

Shame Luther, a no-nonsense construction worker by day and a self-taught piano player by night. The love story that ensues propels them on an unforgettable journey from Chicago’s South Side to the coast of Kenya as they navigate the turbulence of long-buried pasts and an uncertain future.

A stirring novel tuned to the clash between soul music’s vision of our essential responsibility to each other and a world that breaks us down and tears us apart, Another Kind of Madness is an indelible tale of human connection.

Middle-aged and deeply depressed, Jim arrives in California from Alaska and surrenders himself to the care of his brother Gary, who intends to watch over him. Swinging unpredictably from manic highs to extreme lows, Jim wanders ghost-like through the remains of his old life attempting to find meaning in his tattered relationships with family and friends. As sessions with his therapist become increasingly combative and his connections to others seem ever more tenuous, Jim is propelled forward by his thoughts, which have the potential to lead him, despairingly, to his end. Halibut on the Moon is a searing exploration of a man held captive by the dark logic of depression and struggling mightily to wrench himself free. In vivid and haunting prose, Vann offers us an aching portrait of a mind in peril, searching desperately for some hope of redemption.

An experienced psychologist, Maggie carefully maintains emotional distance from her patients. But when she meets a young Indian woman who tried to kill herself, her professional detachment disintegrates. Cut off from her family in India, Lakshmi is desperately lonely and trapped in a loveless marriage. Moved by her plight, Maggie treats Lakshmi in her home office for free, quickly realizing that the despondent woman doesn't need a shrink; she needs a friend. Determined to empower Lakshmi, Maggie abandons protocol, and soon doctor and patient have become close friends. But while their relationship is deeply affectionate, it is also warped by conflicting expectations. When Maggie and Lakshmi open up and share long-buried secrets, the revelations will jeopardize their close bond, shake their faith in each other, and force them to confront painful choices.

Parting with God's Hand might mean the foul-mouthed half-angel has to lie low, but he's still got to pay the rent. Will Josiah Quinn be able to do that if he hunts bounties no one else will accept? Yes, as long as he can stay alive. When a vampire hunt goes terribly wrong, Stefan is left clinging to life by a thread. Will Josiah betray the only friend he has left in the world to save the man he loves? Or will he sacrifice Stefan for the army he needs to defeat his father once and for all? Devil's Due is the third book in the Hellbent Halo series, which features an irreverent bisexual wizard, evil angels, and double-crossing demons. If you like back-alley magic and noir-style anti-heroes, you'll love this bloody good mystery.

There's no road map for what to do when your husband dies-when he jumps off a bridge to escape mistakes that he made, or even welcomed, into your lives. But Lily doesn't need to consult a map for this particular part of her journey; she knows the way back to the small town she left behind. With a precocious seven-year-old who reminds her too much of his father tucked safely in the back seat, Lily leaves New York with everything she owns packed in a U-Haul, including memories that come in waves like fields along the highway and an envelope she is too afraid to open. Once she settles in, she sifts through a box of things destined for the local thrift store-items from her past that will connect four women in unexpected ways and give them all the strength they need to move on.

Upon her mother's death from Alzheimer's, Annie Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time, as she seeks to «capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris.» She explores the bond between mother and daughter, tenuous and unshakable at once, the alienating worlds that separate them, and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love. In this quietly powerful tribute, Ernaux attempts to do her mother the greatest justice she can: to portray her as the individual she was. She writes «I believe I am writing about my mother because it is my turn to bring her into the world.»

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writers half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of the famous author of Albinos in Black, The Back of the Moon, and Doubtful Asphodel. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, the novel concludes  I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows.   One of the twentieth centurys master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.   Witty and sad at the same time. Profound and dazzling."e;  Chicago Sun-Times

Writers & Lovers is the highly anticipated new novel following King’s 2014 bestseller Euphoria , which was a New York Times ’ Top Ten Book of the Year and sold over 400,000 copies in North America It was a top ten book of the year in Time, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Vogue, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon , and New York , won the Kirkus Prize and New England Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award In writing this book, King sought to write the book she had always wanted to read but could never find—a novel about a woman’s struggle to become an artist. Though books like A Moveable Feast and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man depict a young man’s artistic journey, she had never found such a story from a woman’s perspective. In her words: “Where are the books about a woman clawing her life open like these men, struggling artistically but also financially, emotionally, sexually, and existentially?” As one of the biggest acquisitions in Grove’s history, Writers & Lovers will be the focus of a huge marketing and publicity campaign including a 20-city author tour, large marketing spend, numerous regional shows including Winter Institute, and major review attention With its brilliantly observed and psychologically acute exploration of modern relationships and its keen eye for dialogue, Writers & Lovers will appeal to fans of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies , while its depiction of the fraught, messy, and often joyful process of becoming oneself, artistically and emotionally, will attract readers of Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? Like Stephanie Danler’s bestselling Sweetbitter , Writers & Lovers deftly depicts the exhilarating and chaotic world of the restaurant industry, from its romantic intrigues, petty dramas, and touching moments of connection between server and patron We have already closed three major subrights deals with Picador in the UK, HarperCollins in Canada, and Blackstone in Grove’s largest audio deal to date Father of the Rain was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, New York Times Editors’ Choice, O Magazine and Marie Claire summer reading title, Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year, and winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction The Pleasing Hour (1999) was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and The English Teacher (2005) was a Chicago Tribune and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and People Critics Choice

Thirty tales of theft, onanism, incest, murder and a host of other forms of perversion and cruelty from the «ungrateful beggar» and «pilgrim of the absolute,» Léon Bloy. Disagreeable Tales, first published in French in 1894, collects Bloy's narrative sermons from the depths: a cauldron of frightful anecdotes and inspired misanthropy that represents a high point of the French Decadent movement and the most emblematic entry into the library of the «Cruel Tale» christened by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. Whether depicting parents and offspring being sacrificed for selfish gains, or imbeciles sacrificing their own individuality on a literary whim, these tales all draw sustenance from an underlying belief: the root of religion is crime against man, nature and God, and that in this hell on earth, even the worst among us has a soul.

A close friend to Joris-Karl Huysmans, and later admired by the likes of Kafka and Borges, Léon Bloy (1846–1917) is among the best known but least translated of the French Decadent writers. Nourishing antireligious sentiments in his youth, his outlook changed radically when he moved to Paris and came under the influence of Barbey d'Aurevilly, the unconventionally religious novelist best known for Les Diaboliques. He earned the dual nicknames of «The Pilgrim of the Absolute» through his unorthodox devotion to the Catholic Church, and «The Ungrateful Beggar» through his endless reliance on the charity of friends to support him and his family.

Ordinary Wolves depicts a life different from what any of us has known: Inhuman cold, the taste of rancid salmon shared with shivering sled dogs, hunkering in a sod igloo while blizzards moan overhead. But this is the only world Cutuk Hawcley has ever known. Born and raised in the Arctic, he has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. And yet, though he idolizes the indigenous hunters who have taught him how to survive, when he travels to the nearby Inupiaq village, he is jeered and pummeled by the native children for being white. When he leaves for the city as a young man, two incompatible realities collide, perfectly capturing «the contrast between the wild world and our ravaging consumer culture.» (Louise Erdrich). In a powerful coming of age story, a young man isolated by his past must choose between two worlds, both seemingly bent on rejecting him.

In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame — the sharp-tongued, intelligent Daisy. Returning to the United States, the couple (and newborn son) buy an isolated country house in Northern California’s Polk Valley. As David's health deteriorates, he has a brief affair with Marianne, producing a daughter.It’s Daisy's solution for the future of her two children, inspired by the old Chinese tradition of raising girls as sisterly wives for adoptive brothers, that exposes Daisy’s traumatic life, and the terrible inheritance her children must receive. Framed by two suicide attempts, The Border of Paradise is told from multiple perspectives, culminating in heartrending fashion as the young heirs to the Nowak fortune confront their past and their isolation.

O Magazine 's Top 20 Books to Read – Summer 2017 "Best known for his acclaimed Haitian trilogy— All Souls' Rising , Master of the Crossroads and The Stone That the Builder Refused —Bell draws on his own experiences with voodoo possession to re-create his characters' descent into a sinister otherworld. The novel toys with perspective—women shape-shifting into rocks or animals; the same life-or-death scene played repeatedly, with myriad outcomes—in a kind of primal storytelling that crackles with dread and desire."— O Magazine When Julie skips school and sets off with her best friend and some local boys for a camping trip in the desert, she finds herself the target of unwanted, drug-fueled sexual attention. Running away in fear, she takes a dangerous fall down the shaft of a vast underground cave, and it takes two days for her to be rescued. Lying unconscious in her hospital bed, Julie hovers between life and death as she travels in a seductive parallel universe inspired by remarkable cave paintings left behind by prehistoric humans. Marko, her attacker, tries to cover his tracks, menacing those who know what happened in the desert that night. Jamal, the youngest son in a family of Iraqi refugees living in Julie’s small town, is one of his prime targets. He defies Marko, keeping him away from Julie’s bedside and refusing to fall prey to his threats of violence. Meanwhile, Marissa, who gave Julie up for adoption fifteen years earlier when she became pregnant as an adolescent, is following an instinct that leads her back to the daughter she once abandoned. With the aid of Jamal and a local Native American hitman/shaman, she attempts to draw Julie back to consciousness. Madison Smartt Bell is best known for his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, including All Souls’ Rising , which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Praise for Behind the Moon : "Madison Smartt Bell writes with the urgency of someone who just received a dire prognosis. And Behind the Moon will remind you that you are alive."—Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Here I Am "Between fever dreams and stone hard reality, Madison Smartt Bell has crafted a powerful examination of what is and what might be. It is simply wonderful." —Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard out of Carolina "I love these characters. I love the writing. Behind the Moon is a brilliant work." —Percival Everett, author of Half an Inch of Water "Bell gives us this fast-paced, spiritually inspired dream-story, full of heart and hope and danger. It's adventure at its finest: a spiked drink, a desert cave, a gunshot, a mother looking for her child. Buckle in: you are headed for a terrific ride."—Deb Olin Unferth, author of Wait Till You See Me Dance

Kamikaze Lust by first-time novelist Lauren Sanders takes the reader on an electrifying ride through the spectacle of life and death in millennial America. Smart, hardboiled and humorous, the novel taps our obsession with sex and death, sex and popular culture, sex and the written word, sex and pornography, sex and green M&Ms, and, of course, the perennial sex and love."Great courage must account for such complete disregard of political correctness, and great sensitivity for such sadness."—Amanda Filipacchi, author of Vapor and Nude MenLauren Sanders is a novelist and journalist who lives in New York City. She is co-editor of the anthology Too Darn Hot: Writing About Sex Since Kinsey, published by Persea Books in 1998. She is a graduate of Columbia University's school of journalism and has an MA in Creative Writing from City College in New York.

First published in French in 1892 and never before translated fully into English, The King in the Golden Mask gathers 21 of Marcel Schwob’s cruelest and most erudite tales. Melding the fantastic with historical fiction, these stories describe moments of unexplained violence both historical and imaginary, often blending the two through Schwob’s collaging of primary source documents into fiction. Brimming with murder, suicide, royal leprosy and medieval witchcraft, Schwob’s stories portray clergymen furtively attending medieval sabbaths, Protestant galley slaves laboring under the persecution of Louis XIV and dice-tumbling sons of Florentine noblemen wandering Europe at the height of the 1374 plague. These writings are of such hallucinatory detail and linguistic specificity that the reader is left wondering whether they aren’t newly unearthed historical documents. To read Schwob is to encounter human history in its most scintillating form as it comes into contact with this unparalleled imagination.

In dieser zauberhaften Fabel erzählt der Autor von seiner Begegnung mit einem «kleinen, ganz außergewöhnlichen Kerlchen», das er nach einem Flugzeugabsturz in der Wüste «tausend Meilen von jeder bewohnten Gegend» entfernt trifft. Von Tag zu Tag lernt er seinen neuen Freund besser kennen. Er hört von der wundersamen Heimat des kleinen Prinzen, von dessen Reise über sechs Planeten hin zur Erde und von den Weisheiten eines Fuchses. Es ist eine Geschichte über das, was wirklich zählt: Freundschaft, Aufgeschlossenheit und Liebe. Es ist die Geschichte des kleinen Prinzen.

Ana and her son, Philippe, are grieving the loss of Philippe's father when Ana's hairstylist Kimi dies in an apparent suicide. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ana starts digging into Kimi's past in Guyana in 1978, which leads to nested tales of north and south, past and present, and to the Jonestown Massacre. A stunning translation of a masterpiece by one of Quebec's most important novelists. Elise Turcotte is a novelist and award-winning poet who has twice received the Prix Emile-Nelligan. Rhonda Mullins was a finalist for the 2007 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation and translated Jocelyne Saucier's And the Birds Rained Down .

Originally published in book form in French in 1887, Joris-Karl Huysmans' A Dilemma remains a particularly nasty little tale, a mordantly satiric and cruel account of bourgeois greed and manipulation that holds up as clear a mirror to today's neoliberalist times as it did to the French fin-de-siècle. Written smack in-between Huysmans' most famous works—his 1881 Against Nature, which came to define the Decadent movement, and his 1891 exploration of Satanism, Down There—A Dilemma presents some of Huysmans' most memorable characters, including Madame Champagne, the self-appointed Parisian protector of women in need, and the carnal would-be sophisticate notary Le Ponsart, who wages a war of words with the bereft pregnant mistress of his deceased grandson with devastating consequences. In its unflinching portrayal of how authoritarian language can be used and abused as a weapon, this novella stands as Huysmans' indictment of the underlying crime of the novel itself: a language apparatus employed to maintain the appetites of the ruling class.

Earning a wage through a career in the French civil service, Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907) quietly explored the extremes of human nature and artifice through a series of books that influenced a number of different literary movements: from the grey and grimy Naturalism of books like Marthe and Downstream to the cornerstones of the Decadent movement, Against Nature and the Satanist classic Down There, the dream-ridden Surrealist favorite, Becalmed, and his Catholic novels, The Cathedral and The Oblate.

You've gotten away with it for so long, you think you're immune to the danger. . . At thirty-three, Don Hawkins has spent the better part of his life, in every sense, as a U.S. Marine. Enlisting to escape an alcoholic father and stepmother, he became the unofficial leader of a group of gay servicemen and women, all compelled to guard their sexual identity as faithfully as they serve their country. But with newly inaugurated President Clinton's promise to lift the ban on gays in the military, Don is optimistic that a brighter era is dawning–and not just politically. Ten years now since his lover died in Beirut, Don is finally ready to love again, and falls headlong for Patrick, a handsome young helicopter pilot. As their relationship develops, Don lets his guard down–in potentially dangerous ways. Because forces are at work in the Naval Investigative Service, in Congress, and even in the bars and clubs that Don views as his turf, with a vicious agenda that will have unforeseen consequences. . . Drawing on his own experiences as a Marine, Rich Merritt has crafted an extraordinary story of love, loss, duty, betrayal, and hope. Most of all, Code of Conduct is a deeply compelling exploration of the power of loyalty–to friends, lovers, country, and the unwavering dictates of our own hearts. Praise for Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star "Rich Merritt writes an honest, inspiring, sexy, funny, and courageous story." –William J. Mann, author of Men Who Love Men "Inspiring, thought-provoking, and brutally honest." –Michael Thomas Ford, author of Changing Tides "A gripping memoir." – Gay & Lesbian Review «Merritt has written a powerfully honest and compelling story of living two lives.» –David Mixner, author of Stranger Among Friends Rich Merritt served in the Marines from 1985 until 1998, attaining the rank of Captain. The same year he was honorably discharged, he was featured on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in an article by Jennifer Egan titled «Uniforms in the Closet: The Shadow Life of a Gay Marine.» He tells his life story in his memoir Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star (Kensington, 2005).

The story is simple: a love affair ends badly. A woman and a man marry, then cruelty, infidelity, and divorce. But this novel tells their story twice, from opposing perspectives. Our sympathies are inverted; we don’t know whom to trust; the distinction between truth and deception blurs, and then seems simply to dissolve. The novel shifts deftly between endless oppositions: lover and beloved, angel and demon, master and slave, reader and writer. But inevitably both stories must arrive at the point of rien ne va plus: the moment in roulette when all bets are off and you either win or lose—the moment when the game becomes fate.

From the acclaimed author of The Edge of the Sky and Wildwood comes a spellbinding tale of domestic drama in the powerful tradition of Jacqueline Mitchard's The Deep End of the Ocean that will capture your heart–and your imagination–from the very first page. Dana Cabot cannot remember the kind of person she was before May 29th, the day she became angry at God, at her workaholic attorney husband, and herself. The day her seven-year-old daughter, Bailey, disappeared. As the months wear on without a trace of her adorable but troubled child, Dana can't help blaming her husband's controversial defense of an accused abuser for playing a role in the abduction–and it shows in the strain on their marriage. But then a shocking event offers a clue to what really happened to Bailey–and Dana's unwitting part in it. Haunted by the unthinkable consequences of revealing everything she knows, Dana must decide whether to keep the truth to herself–or risk losing the rest of her family.Suspenseful, searing, and poignant, this beautifully written novel offers stunning insights into the meaning of honesty–in marriage, in friendship, and in justice. . . Praise for Drusilla Campbell's Wildwood «The pull of family and career, the limits of friendship and the demands of love all come to vivid life.»–Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue «Resist the urge to turn the page to find out what happens next. Linger, instead, to savor the skillfully crafted writing.»–Judy Reeves, author of The Writer's Book of Days

A new novel from the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African LiteratureAt thirty-nine, Deola Bello, a Nigerian expatriate in London, is dissatisfied with being single and working overseas. Deola works as a financial reviewer for an international charity, and when her job takes her back to Nigeria in time for her father’s five-year memorial service, she finds herself turning her scrutiny inward. In Nigeria, Deola encounters changes in her family and in the urban landscape of her home, and new acquaintances who offer unexpected possibilities. Deola’s journey is as much about evading others’ expectations to get to the heart of her frustration as it is about exposing the differences between foreign images of Africa and the realities of contemporary Nigerian life. Deola’s urgent, incisive voice captivates and guides us through the intricate layers and vivid scenes of a life lived across continents. With Sefi Atta’s characteristic boldness and vision, A Bit of Difference limns the complexities of our contemporary world. This is a novel not to be missed.

Allie Fox hat die Schnauze voll von den USA. Vom Kapitalismus. Vom bürgerlichen Dasein. Und so lädt er seine Familie auf ein Schiff und fährt mit ihr kurzerhand in die noch kaum berührten Wälder hinter Honduras‘ Moskito-Küste. Er ist ein genialer Erfinder. Und ein lautstarker, herrschsüchtiger Tyrann. Er drangsaliert seine Familie und die Einheimischen, kauft eine Stadt, baut in dichtestem Urwald ein Modelldorf und stellt mitten hinein – ausgerechnet eine riesige Eismaschine. Doch der Traum von einem autarken, besseren Leben im Dschungel währt nur kurz, und der Weg in die absolute Freiheit wird mehr und mehr zu einem Irrgang durch einen rechtlosen, von einer übermächtigen Natur beherrschten Raum.  Paul Theroux‘ 1981 erschienener, gesellschafts- wie zivilisationskritischer Abenteuerroman war ein Bestseller und gilt als sein erfolgreichstes Werk. 1986 wurde das Buch mit Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren und River Phoenix in den Hauptrollen verfilmt. Über dreißig Jahre war er vergriffen – nun ist Theroux‘ Klassiker endlich wieder auf Deutsch erhältlich.

Secrets cannot stay buried forever In the town of Ross Prairie, Caroline Webb and Sarah Bilyk are bound by family, duty, and a decades-old act of betrayal. On opposing sides of a long-simmering feud between their husbands’ families, the two women meet again after years of estrangement when Caroline moves into the same nursing home as Sarah’s father. Seeing each other sparks memories – of young love and the path to a fateful summer day that changed everything. Together, Caroline and Sarah uncover a truth that alters their lives forever, proving that love will overcome heartache and that friendship survives time.

Beauty and privilege, a charming, handsome husband and two promising young daughters, money, a beach house on the Pacific—Jane has everything that Mattie thinks she wants. But Jane always works to damage what she’s given. Mattie knows that better than anyone.But even she is caught off-guard when Jane leaves her whole life behind one broken morning before dawn. And it will take Mattie awhile to see that, by driving away, Jane has forced open the questions that have always hung in the air between them—the ones that are hardest to answer—questions about desire and envy and integrity. These are the issues of the heart that reveal themselves, not through the bold and dramatic gestures of a woman like Jane, but in even the briefest moments and the smallest of acts.With the same rich language and keen, compassionate eye that earned acclaim for her first novel, Lise Haines delves here into the forces that memory and touch raise in our lives and our most private hungers.

<P>Behind the bars on her window, Rosa Maria dreams of sunshine, love, calm, and leaving the city where she lives with her family. She suffers her father's beatings, hides her femininity behind shapeless clothing, and pines for the beautiful Jason as she awaits her opportunity to flee. Meanwhile, her older brother is found dead in a nearby parking lot, and the neighborhood explodes in a riot against the police. Rosa Maria resolves to act before she is devoured by family intrigues and despair. Wilfried N'Sondé's powerful voice creates a palpable sense of the absence of hope and the social and racial isolation that pervade the Paris projects, even as he never abandons the expansive capacity of individuals to dream of better lives beyond a seemingly hopeless reality.</P>

Marilee journeys from Los Angeles to New Mexico to surprise her fiancé, Larry, who has taken a job on the Alamogordo Air Force Base to gain, in one of his antithetical Zen experiments, an understanding of peace. Sympathy for Enoch, a hitchhiking dwarf, disrupts her orderly plans. In a separate voyage, Figman, an insurance claims adjuster on the run, relocates to New Mexico after surviving a lethal car crash that results in an unfair lawsuit against him. Now prone to migraines and the conviction that he is dying, Figman embarks on new adventures. Late in the novel, these two distinct love stories converge on a highway in near collision.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday at the Almost Home Bar and Grill with the hometown Broncos playing for their second championship in a row, and the already busy night is about to get busier. When the bartender walks off, she leaves the remaining staff to the chaos of the night—and with the real question. Not why did she leave but why do they stay? After closing time and on a school night, Colleen’s 14-year-old daughter is no stranger to the Almost Home. She’ll do almost anything to leave, to move her life forward or somehow return to earlier, better times, anywhere but here. But it doesn’t matter; there seems to be no way out.For one night, we follow all of them as they make their cash, close up, and then linger into the after hours, as they always do, their lives colliding, past and present, in the dark back corner at table 14—drinking, talking, and, now, in the wake of Marna’s absence, facing questions: Where did she go? Will she return? Why do we stay? How dangerous is restaurant love?Smart, provocative, and flawlessly on target, Tara Yellen’s revealing debut offers keen insights on a group of people left to put the pieces of their own lives back together in the wake of a friend’s disappearance. After Hours at the Almost Home will put you in an altered state—it’s got kick and goes down like a shot. But its effects might be far more lasting.

Two men: One discovers the cost of keeping secrets, of building a career within a government agency where secrets are the operational basis. Noel Leonard works for the Defense Intelligence Agency, mapping coordinates for military actions halfway around the world. One morning he learns that an error in his office is responsible for the bombing of a school in Pakistan. And he knows suddenly that he is as alone as he is wrong. From his windowless office in DC to an intelligence conference in Switzerland, and back to his daughter’s college in Virginia, Noel claws his way toward a more personally honest life in which he can tell his family everything every day.Another man learns that family secrets have kept him from who he is and from the ineluctable ways he is attached to a world he has always disdained. This unnamed narrator, a cartographer, is the son of a career diplomat whose activities in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War and then in Europe during the Cold War may not have been what they were said to be. He, too, travels to Switzerland, but his quest is not to release himself from secrecy—it is to learn how deep the secrets in his own life go.With a voice like John le Carré’s and the international sensibility of Graham Greene, Frederick Reuss examines the unavoidably covert nature of lives that make their circles through Washington, DC. A Geography of Secrets is a novel of the time from an acclaimed author who knows the lay of the land.

A woman in New York awakens knowing, as deeply as a mother’s blood can know, that her grown son is in danger. She has not heard from him in weeks. His name is Jonas. His girlfriend, Vic, doesn’t know what she has done wrong, but Jonas won’t answer his cell phone. We soon learn that Jonas is isolated in a safe-house apartment in New York City, pondering his conversion to Islam and his experiences training in Pakistan, preparing for the violent action he has been instructed to take in 31 hours. Jonas’s absence from the lives of those who love him causes a cascade of events, and as the novel moves through the streets and subways of New York we come to know intimately the lives of its characters. We also learn to feel deeply the connections and disconnections that occur between young people and their parents not only in this country but in the Middle East as well.Carried by Hamilton’s highly-lauded prose, this story about the helplessness of those who cannot contact a beloved young man who is on a devastatingly confused path is compelling on the most human level. In our world, when a family loses track of an idealistic son an entire city could be in danger. From the author of The Distance Between Us.

As Cynthia ruminates on her changing circumstances, life forces her to take a look at those she calls family. A former literary notable, Cynthia Wilkes is looking down the barrel of an empty nest, an empty desk, and an endless supply of empty pages when an unlikely protégé comes calling, setting in motion a chain of events that will force Cynthia, and those closest to her, to redefine the idea of family and of self. This novel is a humorous look at the creation and reconstruction of family and the lingering hold of the people we keep close and those we try to let go … the siblings and step-siblings, parents and step-parents, spouses and exes, the friends, the colleagues, and the others we call family.

In 1899, the streets of New York were as unsettled as the heart and mind of Mary Jane Elmer. The ideas of the transcendentalists were still in the air, and thoughts of a second revolution were rising. Emma Goldman spoke to ever-growing numbers of the disenfranchised in Union Square and scandalized the city fathers. Police used horses, clubs and bullets to disperse the crowds. Women were redefining their roles for the coming century. And, near the middle of life, solitary in her marriage to an intractable and distant artist, and still grieving the death of their daughter ten years earlier, Mary struggles to shape a future she can endure.Derived from the lives of real people, this beautiful novel is a whirlwind of history, art, familial tremors, and personal desire. But beyond its elegance, beyond its historical authenticity, Every Past Thing is an intimate and moving family portrait—and its every brushstroke is marked with longing.

A failed erotic novelist; a hostess of prim sex-toy parties; an artist and a bookshop owner pursued by a demented if harmless stalker; wives, lovers, twin sisters, daughters—all members of the artsy crowd in Omaha, try to hold their families, friendships and personal lives together as they face damaged and broken marriages, and mid-life crises during one whirlwind day that may only be saved by their own children, a timely fire, and a return to their senses.Ashley, a frustrated novelist, teaches a community college class in the writing of erotica, which only seems to turn a magnifying glass on her own marriage woes. June has become filthy rich by selling marital aides at Tupperware-like home parties for a company called Sugar Shop Inc., but despite her wealth, she still longs to reunite with her impoverished ex-husband. Viv, an artist, learns to find creative inspiration, and maybe even a better understanding of herself, from a dirty-minded stalker who reliably sends her startling pictures in the mail every day. Peach and Plum, twin sisters, own a bookstore called Mermaids Singing, where together they attempt to unravel the knots of their own neuroses. All the while, the words and questionable wisdom of a tough-love motivational speaker, known only as Sybil the Guru, echoes throughout all their lives.The day ends with a few raucous parties that threaten, or promise, to challenge the ways these various women continue to live. As the women struggle for guidance in the face of sheer lunacy, they come to realize that the most useful answers are likely the ones they come up with all on their own.

As she prepares dinner for her husband andtheir extended family, Suzanne hears on the radiothat a jetliner has crashed and her lover is dead.Alex Elling was a renowned orchestra conductor.Suzanne is a concert violist, long unsatisfied withher marriage to a composer whose music turnsemotion into thought. Now, more alone thanshe’s ever been, she must grieve secretly. But ascomplex as that effort is, it pales with the arrival ofAlex’s widow, who blackmails her into completingthe score for Alex’s unfinished viola concerto.As Suzanne struggles to keep her double life asecret from her husband, from her best friend,and from the other members of her quartet, sheis consumed by memories of a rich love affairsaturated with music. Increasingly manipulated byher lover’s widow and tormented by the concerto’smany layers, Suzanne realizes she may loseeverything she’s spent her life working for.A story of love, loss, sex, class, and betrayal,this psychologically compelling novel exploresthe ways that artists’ lives and work interact, thenature of relationships among women as friendsand competitors, and what it means to make a lifeof art.

Welcome to Tandara, where gods are fickle, nightmares are real, and trolls make excellent bakers . . . Raine Stewart is convinced she’ll die young and alone in Alabama, the victim of a chronic, mysterious illness. Until a man in a shabby cloak steps out of her mirror and demands her help to defeat a bloodthirsty wizard.Raine shrugs it off as a hallucination—just one more insult from her failing body—and orders her intruder to take a hike. But the handsome figment of her imagination won’t take no for an answer, and kidnaps her anyway, launching her into a world of utmost danger—and urgent purpose.Ruled by unpredictable gods and unstable nations, Tandara is a land of shapeshifters and weather-workers, queens and legends. Ravenous monsters and greedy bounty hunters patrol unforgiving mountains. Riverboats pulled by sea-cattle trade down broad waterways. And creatures of nightmare stalk Raine herself, vicious in the pursuit of her blood.But Raine isn’t helpless or alone. She’s part of a band as resourceful as it is odd: a mage-shy warrior, a tattered wizard, a tenderhearted giant, and a prickly troll sorceress. Her new friends swear she has powers of her own. If she can stay under their protection, she might just live long enough to find out . . .

Zlata and Srebra are 12-year-old twins conjoined at the head. It is 1984 and they live in Skopje, which will one day be the capital of Macedonia but is currently a part of Yugoslavia. A Spare Life tells the story of their childhood, from their only friend Roze to their neighbor Bogdan, so poor that he one day must eat his pet rabbit. Treated as freaks and outcasts—even by their own family—the twins just want to be normal girls. But after an incident that almost destroys their bond as sisters, they fly to London, determined to be surgically separated. Will this be their liberation, or only more tightly ensnare them?At once extraordinary and quotidian, A Spare Life is a chronicle of two girls who are among the first generation to come of age under democracy in Eastern Europe. Written in touching prose by an author who is also a master poet, it is a saga about families, sisterhood, immigration, and the occult influences that shape a life. Funny, poignant, dark, and sharply observed, Zlata and Srebra reveal an existence where even the simplest of actions is unlike any we’ve ever experienced.

In her first memoir—Immortelles: Memoir of a Will-o’-the-Wisp—Mireille Marokvia described her life growing up in a small village near Chartres, France, in the first decades of the 20th Century. We learned in that beautiful book that the people in her life so long past still live like ghosts in her memory.This extraordinarily sensitive and assured writer brings that same dear voice and sharp vision to bear in her new book. But Sins of the Innocent covers the most difficult years of her life.From Paris in 1939, a young Mireille follows her artist husband, Abel, when he returns to Germany to care for his mother. Once Hitler begins his invasions across Europe the displaced couple must find a way to survive the war in a country they both consider foreign. Abel finally takes work, but it requires extensive travel through the war zones, and so Mireille is left essentially alone. With France lost to her, and horribly misfit in wartime Germany, suspected by her neighbors of spying for the Allies, Mireille has to define a life for herself, a life that is as quiet as possible in a dangerous world.Sins of the Innocent is a lyrical portrait of those harsh years, infused with doubt, anger, and the author’s love of life. These were the years in which Mireille learned the difference between quiet persistence and courage—during WWII in Europe, a time when so many had to find their own small places in history. It was the era that determined who Mireille Marokvia was—and who she still is.Read Mireille Marokvia’s account of the making of the manuscript in “History of a Story.”

This book is about the collective set of circumstances that drove the main character, Nathan, to make the choice to begin robbing banks. Nathan is an ex-con who is doing his best to live a square life and follow the rules. Along the way, he meets a vibrant, sexy lady named Brandy, and she has his nose wide open. Eventually they move in together. For this handsome couple, the future looks bright. But an unexpected and sudden bout with a recurring illness causes Nathan to lose his job and puts a serious strain on both his finances and his relationship. Feeling like less than a man because of his inability to contribute to his household financially and due to the constant nagging and negativity and disrespect by Brandy, Nathan decides to rob just one bank to remedy his situation. But Nathan is an addict and was instantly addicted to the thrill and adrenaline rush caused by robbing that bank. Once he got started, stopping was never really an option.

Adventures, and misadventures, with eccentric characters, fill this quirky read about two brothers, abandoned by their mother (a convent novitiate nun). Luigi and Guido grow up with an adopted father who rubbed pigs and an Irish mother who danced for a living. When their professions died out, they started an Irish pizza restaurant in the pork capital of Italy. The green dough and unique flavors made it a hit. After their 5th year of high school, the formally conjoined twins make their way from Italy to New ark – a suburb of New York City, to find their fame and fortune. Their innocence in their travels and ‘interesting decisions’ make this riotous book a must read. The opening of their restaurant in the Kennington Court area in Newark is absurdity at its best. Their sister, also abandoned by the same mother, joins them later with her own humorous journey on the same ship the twins came over on – ‘The New Sole’, and then travels with them to a raucous pizza convention in North Carolina. The business is slow in Kennington Court until they decide to make green pizza in honor of their parents, using locally sourced ‘Oregano’ to make it green That’s when it gets even more interesting!

Protagonist is a disgraced hockey player who acknowledges and discusses the negative side of the professional hockey world and how it changed him, including the violence, drugs, and brain damage Novel also explores other themes, including drug cartels, rattlesnake farming, small-town living, and family Protagonist is a Canadian playing hockey in the States Author has two previous novels, and his writing has been compared to John Irving The title refers to a travelling game that the protagonist is introduced to by the family he’s staying with

CO-WINNER OF THE 2012 CONTEMPORARY BULGARIAN WRITERS CONTEST[/b] After deciding to take a semester off their studies to think about future plans, long-time friends Maya, Sirma, and Spartacus decide to hitchhike to the sea. Boril Krustev, former rock star and middle-aged widower who is driving aimlessly to outrun his grief, picks them up and accompanies them on their journey. It doesn't take them long to figure out they're connected to each other by more than their need to travel—specifically through Boril's daughter, whose actions damaged each of the characters in this novel. Co-winner of the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers Contest, A Short Tale of Shame[/i] marks the arrival of a new talent in Bulgarian literature with a novel about the need to come to terms with the shame and guilt we all harbor. Angel Igov[/b] is a Bulgarian writer, literary critic, and translator. He has published two collections of short stories, the first of which won the Southern Spring award for debut fiction. Igov has also translated books by Paul Auster, Martin Amis, Angela Carter, and Ian McEwan into Bulgarian. Angela Rodel[/b] earned an M.A. in linguistics from UCLA and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study and learn Bulgarian. In 2010 she won a PEN Translation Fund Grant for Georgi Tenev's short story collection. She is one of the most prolific translators of Bulgarian literature working today.

"An elegant, postmodern fairy tale." —Jacob Hoefer, Bookseller, Labyrinth Books Away! Away! – a new novel from Jana Beňová, winner of the European Union Prize for Literature! Sometimes running away is the bravest option. Or, so believes Rosa, who ditches her husband and home and takes off on the road. Along the way, she encounters the owner of a puppet theater who’s on a mission to conquer the world with his performance of The Snow Queen . Which character from this old fairy tale will Rosa identify with? With Gerda, searching fruitlessly for her lost love? With Kai, who flees home and his beloved one day without a word? Or with the Snow Queen, who seems to stand aloof above it all? With magnetic, sparkling prose, Beňová delivers a lively mosaic that ruminates on human relationships, our greatest fears and desires.

Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town—burying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a flood—through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this ritual violence, and with his wild, child-like, and teenage stepmother, who becomes his playmate. It is through these rituals, and the developing relationships between the boy and the townspeople, that Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society. The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions. Written over a period of twenty years—after Rodoreda was forced into exile following the Spanish Civil War— Death in Spring is musical and rhythmic, and truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers. Mercè Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring . Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

For a long time now, Edward Falco has quietly established his place among the absolute best American storytellers. Those who haven’t yet read him don’t want to miss this chance. That’s why we’re so excited to offer the very best of his work, gathered together for the first time, to a wider readership.Falco’s stories are unforgettable, dangerous as a high-wire act without a net, filled with dramatic action, and peopled with believable characters challenged by events into making risky moral choices, so emotionally true that readers will carry them around for a long time. His prose is tense, sharp, and beautifully, wonderfully rich. In story after story, Falco’s characters find the comfortable order of their lives ambushed by an upswelling of dark forces beyond their control. In order to protect the lives of family—lovers, wives, and especially children—from a catastrophe, they often must summon up the personal courage to climb back from their own monsters, to set aside old, private scars. The decisions they make reveal their bonds, the set of their hearts, and the harsh nature of the culture we all live in today.If someone out there could write the contemporary counterpart to Flannery O’Conoor’s classic “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” it would be Falco. His are good, old-fashioned, hard-to-find stories set way out there on the edge.

A moody and beautiful reflection on relationships, and how our idea of the world too often fails to match reality, All My Friends delivers five stories that probe the boundaries between individuals to mediate on how well we really know anybody, including ourselves. Written in hypnotic prose with characters both fully fleshed and unfathomable, All My Friends opens with the fraught love story of a man who has fallen for his housekeeper, his student of many years ago. Losing his grip as he feels his own family turning against him, he plots romance between the housekeeper and an old friend, whom he thinks is perfect for her. Later NDiaye gives us the harsh tale of a young boy longing to escape his life of poverty by becoming a sex slave—just like the beautiful young man that lived next door. And when a woman takes her mentally challenged son on a bus ride to the city, they both know that she’ll return, but he won’t. Chilling, provocative, and touching, this is an unflinching look at the personal horrors we fight every day to suppress—but in All My Friends they’re allowed to roam free.

In a clash of love and destiny, who pays the price? Jackson thought he was the most powerful shifter in the world. Blessed with gifts and popularity, he's always felt bad for his brother Rush, who'd been born with the disadvantage of being normal. But when a beautiful shifter named Bright Star appears on the scene, Jackson learns his brother is far from normal. Bright Star forces Rush to reveal unimaginable talents he's always kept hidden-talents Bright Star claims will save the world. . .whether Rush likes it or not. WARNING: Contains graphic violence and sexual content.90,000 Words

"If laughter actually is the best medicine, fortunate readers of this wonderful novel will surely enjoy perfect health for the rest of their days."—Kirkus Reviews[/i] A comic gem, Jerzy Pilch's A Thousand Peaceful Cities[/i] takes place in 1963, in the latter days of the Polish post-Stalinist «thaw.» The narrator, Jerzyk («little Jerzy»), is a teenager who is keenly interested in his father, a retired postal administrator, and his father's closest friend, Mr. Traba, a failed Lutheran clergyman, alcoholic, and would-be Polish insurrectionist. One drunken afternoon, Mr. Traba and the narrator's father decide to take charge of their lives and do one final good turn for humanity: travel to distant Warsaw and assassinate the de facto Polish head of state, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, Wladyslaw Gomulka—assassinating Mao Tse-tung, after all, would be impractical. And they decide to involve Jerzyk in their scheme… Jerzy Pilch[/b] is one of Poland's most important contemporary writers and journalists. In addition to his long-running satirical newspaper column, Pilch has published several novels, and has been nominated for Poland's prestigious NIKE Literary Award four times; he finally won the Award in 2001 for The Mighty Angel[/i]. His novels have been translated into numerous languages.David Frick[/b] is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley.

"A remarkably funny book written by a remarkable pair of collaborators."—New York Times[/i] Ostap Bender, the «grand strategist,» is a con man on the make in the Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period. He's obsessed with getting one last big score—a few hundred thousand will do—and heading for Rio de Janeiro, where there are «a million and a half people, all of them wearing white pants, without exception.» When Bender hears the story of Alexandr Koreiko, an «undercover millionaire»—no Soviet citizen was allowed to openly hoard so much capital—the chase is on. Koreiko has made his millions by taking advantage of the wide-spread corruption and utter chaos of the NEP, all while serving quietly as an accountant at a government office and living on 46 rubles a month. He's just waiting for the Soviet regime to collapse so he can make use of his stash, which he keeps hidden away in a suitcase. Ilya Ilf[/b] (1897–1937) and Evgeny Petrov (1903–1942) were the pseudonyms of Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzilberg and Evgeny Petrovich Katayev, a pair of Soviet writers who met in Moscow in the 1920s while working on the staff of a newspaper that was distributed to railway workers. The foremost comic novelists of the early Soviet Union (invariably referred to as Ilf & Petrov), the pair collaborated together for a dozen years, writing two of the most revered and loved Russian novels, The Twelve Chairs[/i] and The Golden Calf , as well as various humorous pieces for Pravda and other magazines. Their collaboration came to an end following the death of Ilya Ilf in 1937—he had contracted tuberculosis while the pair was traveling the United States researching the book that eventually became Little Golden America . Konstantin Gurevich[/b] is a graduate of Moscow State University and the University of Texas at Austin. He translates with his wife, Helen Anderson. Both are librarians at the University of Rochester. Helen Anderson[/b] studied Russian language and literature at McGill University in Montréal. She translates with her husband, Konstantin Gurevich.

From the heartlands of the 1880s Upper Midwest comes a morality tale of survival and destiny told in the convincing language of a patriarch’s journal, evoking a real sense of the time and place. Gerhardt Praeger, a farmer of some education and plenty experience, understands the mixture of hard work, ingenuity, ethic, grace and steadiness of spirit needed to hold his settler family and neighboring community together while homesteading the hard territory of the Dakotas. He, along with his wife and seven sons, must constantly contend with natural disasters and manmade challenges to carve out their holdings in an unforgiving environment that has defeated so many of their neighbors, sending them home to their families back east. Praeger believes that God will provide sufficiently if not in abundance to those who can resist over-reaching. But a new neighbor, the bold Beidermann, who seems at times almost larger than life, stirs both his curiosity and envy, and tests Praeger’s moral beliefs. Between his remarkable journal entries that observe the increasingly tense events between them, is also a narrative that moves the everyone toward calamity. What results is an almost biblical story of moral imperatives and self-revelation, of man striving to civilize his own impulses along with the wild land.

As recorded in Rick Collignon’s second novel,Perdido, a tall black man with one arm longer thanthe other walked into Guadalupe, New Mexico onemorning about 50 years ago, stayed pretty muchto himself for seven years, and then walked backout of town. No one knew who he was or whatbecame of him.Now, as his last act, an old man named RuffinoTrujillo tells his grown son Cipriano a story aboutwhat became of the black man. After Ruffino’sdeath, Cipriano discovers an old canvas bagbearing the name of Madewell Brown. Inside area hand-carved doll, an old blanket, an unlabeledphoto of a Negro League baseball team, and asmall, yellowing envelope that was never posted.Thinking it the least he can do, Cipriano mails theletter. When it arrives in Cairo, Illinois, it comesinto the hands of a young woman named Rachael,who believes it is from her lost grandfather. Shebelieves this because of all that she’s been told bythe raggedy old man who taught her everything:Obie Poole, who was Madewell’s friend and theorphaned Rachael’s anchor, the man who gives thiseloquent novel its authentic sense of history lived.Drawn magically forward on Rick Collignon’sdirect and haunting prose, we follow Rachael toGuadalupe in search of her own identity and wewatch as Cipriano tries to make sense of the storyhis father told him about a dead man who didn’tbelong there.This fourth installment in Collignon’s belovedGuadalupe series is as magical as its predecessors,as emotionally honest, as surprising — and it firmlyestablishes Rick Collignon as a master Americanstoryteller.

In a country known for its underground criminal organizations, no state in America more so deserved the titled of the city of "Cut Throats".
Cleveland, Ohio is the birthplace of many things, but more infamous the growth and development of the notorious criminal enterprise simply know as "The Family."
What started out as simply hustling to uproot themselves from their poverty infested environment, soon turned into the formation of a tight knit organization. Known for their go hard attitudes, but feared for the ruthless way in which they rose to power. For several years the "Family" controlled the happenings in the concrete jungle of which they surveyed almost uncontested. Dedication, determination, and discipline is what got it all started. It was the glue that cemented them together, but would it be enough to keep them together.
Now the family's dominance is being tested, by an unknown enemy who is determined to stop at nothing less then complete control of the city. As tension rises, so does the body count.
After several encounters, all of which left a trail of bloody bodies, the family is forced to face the harsh realities, that it's a "cut throat" world full of "cut throat" people and in order to survive, you needed to be the one doing the cutting.
Will the family's dominance prevail? Or will they be dethroned by people who share the same ideology!

In The Distance Between Us, Noah Bly presents a blistering portrait of a troubled family, of bonds that can be battered but never broken, and of the friendships that can make us whole again.  Hester Parker resides in an elegant Victorian house in the town of Bolton, Illinois. She spends her evenings listening to the lush tones of Mahler and Chopin, drinking sub-par Merlot, and reflecting on a life that has suddenly fallen apart. At seventy-one, Hester is as brilliant and sharp-tongued as ever, capable of inspiring her music students to soaring heights or reducing them to tears with a single comment. But her wit can’t hide the bitterness that comes with loss—the loss of her renowned violinist husband, Arthur Donovan, who left her for another woman, and the loss of her career as a concert pianist after injuring her wrist. In this home that holds so many memories, Hester and Arthur raised three volatile children—Paul, a talented and neurotic cellist, Caitlin, an accomplished literary professor who inspires both dread and worship among her students, and Jeremy, sweet, spirited, and as musically gifted as his parents. Though Caitlin and Paul still live in Bolton, both have taken Arthur’s side in the divorce and rarely see their mother. When Hester decides to rent out the attic apartment to Alex, a young college student, she has no idea of the impact he will have on her life and her family. Good-natured and awkward, with secrets of his own, Alex becomes an unlikely confidant and a means of reconnecting with the world outside Hester’s window. But his presence also exposes old memories and grief that Hester has tried to bury. Over the course of one remarkable month, Hester will confront angry accusations, long-hidden jealousies, and the inescapable truth that tore her family apart and might, against all odds, help reconcile them again. And her brief friendship with Alex will leave each with a surprising legacy—acceptance of the past, a seed of comfort in the present, and hope for the future, wherever it may lead. Tender and funny, heartbreaking and wise, The Distance Between Us is a masterful evocation of family and friendship, of the pain that goes hand-in-hand with love, and of the grace and wisdom that remain when heartbreak finally subsides.

Complex, densely textured literary novel, constructed somewhat loosely around a tornado, a mountain lion attack, and several alternative potentialities, set in Cathar County, Nebraska sometime in the recent past, or perhaps the present, or perhaps the future, rich in biblical allusions and many a pop-cultural reference not to mention the scientific method. Alternatively humorous, heartbreaking, and profound. Featuring characters named Faith and Arch and A. Jacks and Parrish and May and Hanratty and Helen and Horton, and others too numerous to mention, none of whom are less real than any other reality. Faith seeks recovery of a twin son apparently captured by a big cat. Arch seeks to tune in an elusive frequency. A. Jacks seeks to re-construct a Valhalla collapsed by a cyclone. Parish seeks spiritual deliverance in a coming apocalypse. A two-million dollar accidental death insurance policy hands in the balance. Stream of consciousness constructs a beginning, a middle and an end.