Fiction

A profound mystery is at the heart of this magnificent new novel by Yiyun Li, "one of America's best young novelists" (Newsweek) and the celebrated author of The Vagrants, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Moving back and forth in time, between America today and China in the 1990s, Kinder Than Solitude is the story of three people whose lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed. As one of the three observes, "Even the most innocent person, when cornered, is capable of a heartless crime."

When the men of Burh, settlers from continental Europe, fall upon the sleeping nomad tribe in the depths of the forest amid the Downs of southern England, Tagart is the only survivor, escaping by sheer chance after his wife and young son have been massacred. Twenty-five and heir to the chiefdom of the roving hunters, he sees his only inheritance now to be an overwhelming urge for merciless revenge - of his family, his tribe and indeed of a way of life which in the England of 5,000 years ago is steadily being eroded by these tillers of the soil.

Sasha Sokolov is one of few writers to have been praised by Vladimir Nabokov, who called his first novel, A School for Fools, "an enchanting, tragic, and touching book." Sokolov's second novel, Between Dog and Wolf, written in 1980, has long intimidated translators because of its complex puns, rhymes, and neologisms.

The award-winning and internationally acclaimed author of the To the End of the Land now gives us a searing short novel about the life of a stand-up comic, as revealed in the course of one evening's performance. In the dance between comic and audience, with barbs flying back and forth, a deeper story begins to take shape-one that will alter the lives of many of those in attendance.

Equal parts transporting love story and gripping historical conspiracy, debut author Melodie Winawer takes readers deep into medieval Italy, where the past and present blur and a twenty-first century woman will discover a plot to destroy Siena.

Nemesis (n.) 1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome; 2) A person’s undoing; 3) Joshua Templeman.

The vast ocean of stories that influenced storytelling the world over 'The Kathasaritasagara' is said to have been compiled by a Kashmiri Saivite Brahmin called Somadeva in AD 1070, although the date has not been conclusively established. Legend has it that Somadeva composed the Kathasaritasagara for Queen Suryavati, wife of King Anantadeva who ruled Kashmir in the eleventh century. The stories in this book are retold from ten of the eighteen books of the original Kathasaritasagara.

"In Shaman we live again an all but-forgotten chapter of American history, replete with adventure, violence and eroticism - the compelling and often horrific account of a collision between two cultures so different that one of them has to be wiped off the face of the earth."

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but not how to live

Being a 16-year-old safecracker and active-duty daughter of international spies has its moments, good and bad. Pros: Seeing the world one crime-solving adventure at a time. Having parents with super cool jobs. Cons: Never staying in one place long enough to have friends or a boyfriend. But for Maggie Silver, the biggest perk of all has been avoiding high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. Then Maggie and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, and all of that changes. She'll need to attend a private school, avoid the temptation to hack the school's security system, and befriend one aggravatingly cute Jesse Oliver to gain the essential information she needs to crack the case . . . all while trying not to blow her cover.

A #1 New York Times bestseller by Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of loveKim Edwards's stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century-in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago.A family drama, The Memory Keeper's Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.

In Voices from the Past, a daring group of five independent novels, acclaimed author Paul Alexander Bartlett accomplishes a tour de force of historical fiction, allowing the reader to enter for the first time into the private worlds of five remarkable people: Sappho of Lesbos, the famous Greek poet; Jesus; Leonardo da Vinci; Shakespeare; and Abraham Lincoln. Each novel appears here in its entirety within a single unique volume of 644 pages beautifully illustrated by the author-artist.

This fine debut of twelve stories explores a topography of the interior, probing the thoughts, motivations, and little-understood impulses behind moments of aggression, jealousy, and loneliness. Turning her eye on the academic landscape as well as the workaday world, Frucht keenly observes people forging friendships, groping for greater self-understanding, and attempting to find meaning in their lives and loves.

Bestselling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir takes on what no fiction writer has done before: creating a dramatic six-book series in which each novel covers one of King Henry VIII's wives. In this captivating opening volume, Weir brings to life the tumultuous tale of Katherine of Aragon, Henry's first, devoted, and "true" queen.

When his wife is murdered on his wedding day, Lucas Trask launches himself on a quest for revenge. Using his personal fortune, he buys a spaceship and becomes a Space Viking, raiding worlds while hunting for his wife's killer. But raiding is not his destiny, and he gradually becomes a trader, starting to build a galactic empire. Before he can achieve his new goals, however, he must still deal with his wife's killer. A thrilling intergalactic saga!

There are things that happen in the world that are difficult and sometimes impossible to explain. At times, we are confronted with circumstances or situations over which we have no control. How we deal with those situations reveals much about our strongest beliefs, our dreams, and our fears. This collection of short stories explores specific instances of involvement with or belief in the supernatural in one North African country. The tales, all claiming to be true, were collected over several years while the author was living in Morocco.

Affair is a novel by Nick Stokes. A man who collects sticks and gathers stones has an affair with a woman in the woods and struggles to return to his wife. An author writes about a man having an affair in order to destroy the man and discover who he is. The two stories are woven and inextricable. Affair was serialized by The Seattle Star from 2012-2014. Affair is influenced by magical-realism, surrealism, absurdism, postmodernism, modernism, post-postmodernism, premodernism, realism, organisms, and ismism. From Affair: "I think to take off my ring and hang it on the light switch. Electricity, she has it. Solar power perhaps. Or hydro or wind. Off the grid. What I have always wanted, I think. Then I think I should turn off the light when I leave, go in, at which point the ring would clang to the floor and I do not want to listen to my ring clatter, and the ring may further get itself lost in the floor, in the vent register for example, except there are no vent registers because this is a oneroomlogcabinwithabathroom without forced air, but there are plenty of cracks in the floor in which to lose a ring, many more than four corners, and not a few holes, as in drains and mouse access openings and other holes less holey, all of which are hungry for a ring, which they would swallow, finger inside or no, no questions asked. Whether a man is inside it or no. I am not sure what I want to do and do not want to do right now, and all the bifurcations between, but I am absolutely without a doubt positive I at this very moment have no inkling of a desire to be looking for a ring I am inside on the one hand and outside on the other."

In the second decade of the twenty-first century the world is struck by two catastrophes, a new mini-ice age and, nearly simultaneously, a plague to dwarf all previous experiences. Rising out of the disaster is the character known to history as "Bandit Six" an American Army officer caught up in the struggle to rebuild the world and prevent the fall of his homeland-despite the best efforts of politicians both elected and military. The Last Centurion is a memoir of one possible future, a world that is a darkling mirror of our own. Written "blog-style," it pulls no punches in its descriptions of junk science, bad strategy and organic farming not to mention all three at once

When starfighter pilot Simon Dodds is enrolled in a top secret military project, he and his wingmates begin to suspect that there is a lot more to the theft of a legendary battleship and an Imperial nation's civil war than either the Confederation Stellar Navy or the government are willing to let on.

With his latest pulse-pounding adventure, Brad Thor puts the rest of the genre on notice-Use of Force is the thriller to beat in 2017."-The Real Book Spy