Fiction: literary and general non-genre

Book SynopsisPraise for Cynan Jones:“[A] piercing novella . . . Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical.”—Kirkus, starred review“Jones’ prose clips along at an unnerving pace, barely giving you time to process the previous beautiful image, before knocking you dead with the next one.”—Green Apple Books, Our Favorite Books of 2015“This book will collapse you into its single point of infinite heaviness, and you’ll love it.”—Elliott Bay Book CompanyOn a long, hot day, Gareth searches for a missing pregnant cow. A dog must be put down, there are ducks to go in the pond, there are children, and there is Kate, his wife, who may be an uncrossable distance from him. Jones's rural Wales is alive with the necessities of our own animal instincts and most human longing.Cynan Jones was born near Aberaeron on the west coast of Wales in 1975. He is the author of five short novels,The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, Bird, Blood, Snow, The Dig and The Cove. His work has been translated into several languages, and short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and publications including Granta.Trade Review“Even when nothing is happening in Jones’s fiction, a lot is happening, and the natural settings are bountifully alive.” —Publishers Weekly “[The Long Dry] seethes with the brutal squelch of farming, breeding, bleeding, death, and soars with moments of shuddering human frailty and grace.” —Boston Globe “The Long Dry… proves that Jones has long been consistent (and consistently good) in his stylistic and thematic wheelhouse. This novel… leaves little question as to why Jones has been called `one of the most distinctive new voices in British fiction.’” —Rain Taxi “Jones’ books are fistfuls of raw earth… [The Long Dry] has a poetic, elemental feel that’s enlivening even when the mood is at its lowest ebb.” —Star Tribune “Jones’s lines propel us, enthrall us, and break our hearts.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn “Not since I first encountered Faulkner has a writer so impressed me with his rural wisdom. Set in the Welsh countryside, The Long Dry is at once profound and plainspoken, feral and fierce, tender and true. This book is a revelation, and Cynan Jones is a prophet of the wonderfully strange.” —Peter Geye “The light in this dark tale . . . comes via its language. Jones writes about this mucky, perilous landscape with a simplicity and passion that evoke Seamus Heaney’s poetry.” —Kirkus Reviews “This is a beautiful little novel that leaves the reader reeling with the powerful emotions it manages to render in such a short space and with such sparse language.” —Cleaver “Have you ever wanted to live in the country? Warning: this book is not about life in the country. It’s about life. And death. It will make you cry, both because of the things that happen in it and because of the astoundingly unassuming language in which it is written. Read this book.” —Annie Bishai, Harvard Book Store

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Book Synopsis"Fluid and poetic as well as terrifying." —New York Times Book Review "Dazzling . . . a seamless mixture of magic realism, satire and futuristic fiction." —San Francisco Chronicle "Impressive . . . a flight of fancy through a dreamlike Brazil." —Village Voice "Surreal and misty, sweeping from one high-voltage scene to another." —LA Weekly "Amuses and frightens at the same time." —Newsday "Incisive and funny, this book yanks our chains and makes us see the absurdity that rules our world." —Booklist (starred review) "Expansive and ambitious . . . incredible and complicated." —Library Journal "This satiric morality play about the destruction of the Amazon rain forest unfolds with a diversity and fecundity equal to its setting. . . . Yamashita seems to have thrown into the pot everything she knows and most that she can imagine—all to good effect." —Publishers Weekly A Japanese man with a ball floating six inches in front of his head, an American CEO with three arms, and a Brazilian peasant who discovers the art of healing by tickling one's earlobe, rise to the heights of wealth and fame, before arriving at disasters—both personal and ecological—that destroy the rain forest and all the birds of Brazil. Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award.

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Book Synopsis"Fiercely satirical. . . . Yamashita presents [an] intricate plot with mordant wit." —New York Times Book Review "A stunner. . . . An exquisite mystery novel. But this is a novel of dystopia and apocalypse; the mystery concerns the tragic flaws of human nature." —Library Journal (starred review) "Brilliant. . . . An ingenious interpretation of social woes." —Booklist (starred review) "Yamashita handles her eccentrics and the setting of their adventures with panache. David Foster Wallace meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez." —Publishers Weekly Irreverently juggling magical realism, film noir, hip hop, and chicanismo, Tropic of Orange takes place in a Los Angeles where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of the Harbor Freeway. Hemmed in by wildfires, it's a symphony conducted from an overpass, grandiose, comic, and as diverse as the city itself. Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award.

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Book Synopsis"Verónica Gerber writes with a luminous intimacy; her novel is clever, vibrant, moving, profoundly original. Reading it made me feel as if the world had been rebuilt." —Francisco Goldman"From the very beginning, Verónica Gerber set out to write a novel that would end up at a loss for words. She alone could achieve this feat: because she's a visual artist who takes everything she reads in as concentric circles threaded with color, and because she writes essays on painters who write across canvasses and writers who paint plots from the realities of life. . . . She alone could bring the necessary silence to a novel so perfect it ended up leaving me speechless as well." —Jorge F. HernándezHow do you draw an affair? A family? Can a Venn diagram show the ways overlaps turn into absences, tree rings tell us what happens when mothers leave? Can we fall in love according to the hop skip of an acrostic? Empty Set is a novel of patterns, its young narrator's attempt at making sense of inevitable loss, tracing her way forward in loops, triangles, and broken lines.Verónica Gerber Bicecci is a visual artist who writes. In 2013 she was awarded the third Aura Estrada prize for literature. She is an editor with Tumbona Ediciones, a publishing cooperative with a catalogue that explores the intersections between literature and art.

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Book SynopsisFrom the singularly inventive mind of Rikki Ducornet, Trafik is a buoyant voyage through outer space and inner longing, transposing human experiences of passion, loss, and identity into a post-Earth universe. Quiver, a mostly-human astronaut, takes refuge from the monotony of harvesting minerals on remote asteroids by running through a virtual reality called the Lights, chasing visions of an elusive red-haired beauty. Her high-strung robot partner, Mic, pilots their Wobble and entertains himself by surfing records of the obliterated planet Earth stored on his Swift Wheel for Al Pacino trivia, recipes for reconstituted sushi, and high fashion trends. But when an accident destroys their cargo, Quiver and Mic go rogue, setting off on a madcap journey through outer space toward an idyllic destination: the planet Trafik.Trade Review“In a future where all that’s left of Earth are the records of random trivia, a human-ish astronaut and her robot companion decide to abandon their mission. . . . On this journey, the two will confront the biggest questions about existence, identity, and experience: What makes a human? Where does consciousness reside? It could all become very serious, if Ducornet weren’t so skilled in absurdity.” —Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed “Illustrative of the dream logic of surrealist novels, Nadja, Hopscotch, or Leonora Carrington’s Hearing Trumpet. All in all, the result is essential Ducornet, obscure and extravagant. This space operetta shouts like Ubu Roi. Ducornet delivers a fascinating addition to her incredible practice. A Jupiter fuse against the void.” —Joseph Houlihan, Chicago Review of Books “A winsome space picaresque in which surreality piles upon surreality. . . . A longtime master of the extraordinary sentence, Ducornet has outdone herself here, blending SF’s penchant for invented jargon with her own queer linguistic egalitarianism. . . . in a primordial soup of possibility. This slender book captivates with its ferocious curiosity, quick wit, and ultimately tender generosity. Carried along by the bumptious rollick of its language, this tale is full of sound and fury, signifying literally everything." —Kirkus, starred review “Ducornet dazzles with this whirlwind jaunt through a far-future universe, told in jargon-studded prose that turns gonzo science into gleeful lyricism. . . . Ducornet remains a fantastic stylist.” —Publishers Weekly “I loved this mind-bending little trek across the universe. Thoroughly delightful, poignant, funny, and sweet, like if Italo Calvino wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in a series of pointed vignettes, it’s the perfect amount of quarantine-relatable loneliness and existential spiraling, combined with escapism and optimism. It’s like watching a dream come true.” —Rachel S., Harvard Bookstore for Buzzfeed “A highly literate science fiction quest narrative, a 21st-century version of Calvino's Cosmicomics. . . . Trafik is a compact singularity that explodes in a Big Bang of creativity.” —James Crossley, Madison Books “A perfectly strange and surreal book, dreamlike and fun.” —Sarah Cassavant, Subtext Books “Surrealism meets space opera in Trafik, Rikki Ducornet’s startlingly original look at a post-human and non-human pairing wandering through space while obsessed with the scattered fragments of a world they never knew. At once funny and absurd, Trafik peers at our own time through the lens of the future to reveal what we should regret losing and what would be better gone.” —Brian Evenson Praise for Brightfellow: “Ms. Ducornet’s novel about a man who ‘cannot fathom the bottomless secret of his own existence’ casts a lingering spell.” —New York Times “In tracing the shape of what is left behind, Ducornet lends dignity to the universal plight of vanished illusions.” —Los Angeles Times “Bursting with vivid imagery, beautiful language, heartbreaking characters. . . .Ducornet’s tale is unique and captivating.” —Booklist “A portrait of a surreal community that defies easy categorization. . . . An endless delight at the sentence level.” —Kirkus “Ducornet has written the oddest of varsity novels, one that anchors its charming caprice, philosophical fancy, and thriller-like pace to the psychological horror that lurks just beyond childhood innocence.” —Publishers Weekly Praise for Rikki Ducornet: “Ducornet is a novelist of ambition and scope.” —The New York Times “Linguistically explosive. . . . One of the most interesting American writers around.” —The Nation “Pick up a book by the award-winning Ducornet, and you know it will be startling, elegant, and perfectly formed.” —Library Journal “Storytelling that enchants the senses.” —The Boston Globe “Ducornet is a writer of extraordinary power, in whose books ‘rigor and imagination’ (her watchwords) perform with the grace and daring of high-wire acrobats.” —BOMB “Ducornet’s is a world of surfaces so rich and textured that notions of meaning and interpretation are subsumed under a lush and seductive prose that eventually inhabits readers’ minds.” —The Millions “[R]eveals strangeness in the most basic circumstances of life, flooding them in new light.” —Kenyon Review “Ducornet is a mad maestro of words.” —Seattle Weekly “Writer, poet, and artist Ducornet does things with words most authors would never even dream of.” —Men’s Journal "Rikki Ducornet is a magic sensualist, a writer's writer, a master of language, a unique voice." —Amy Tan “It is Rikki Ducornet’s magic to be able to coax an entire universe—‘restless beyond imagining, a universe of rock and flame, whose nature is incandescence’—out of the modest and often grim contours of one man’s life.” —Kathryn Davis “Netsuke comes at the summit of Rikki Ducornet’s passionate, caring, and accomplished career. Its readers will pick up pages of painful beauty and calamitous memory, and their focus will be like a burning glass; its examination of a ruinous sexual life is as delicate and sharp as a surgeon's knife. And the rendering? The rendering is as good as it gets.” —William Gass “Rikki Ducornet can create an unsettling, dreamlike beauty out of any subject. In the heady mix of her fiction, everything becomes potently suggestive, resonant, fascinating. She exposes life’s harshest truths with a mesmeric delicacy and holds her readers spellbound.” —Joanna Scott “Rikki Ducornet is imagination's emissary to this mundane world.” —Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books

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Book SynopsisThe selected early poems by Mark Doty including the complete texts of Turtle, Swan and Bethlehem in Broad Daylight for which Mr. Doty has contributed a new introduction.Trade ReviewPraise for Mark Doty and Paragon Park "A new book of poems – or of anything – by Mark Doty is good news in a dark time. The precision, daring, scope, elegance of his compassion and the language in which he embodies it are a reassuring pleasure."—W. S. Merwin "If it were mine to invent the poet to complete the century of William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, I would create Mark Doty just as he is, a maker of big, risky, fearless poems in which ordinary human experience becomes music."—Philip Levine "With his clarity of vision and great heart, Doty stands among us as an emblematic and shining presence."—Stanley Kunitz

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Book SynopsisSet in the blood-drenched chaos of Beerlight, "a blown circuit, where to kill a man was less a murder than a mannerism," Dante Cubit and his pill-popping sidekick, the Entropy Kid, waltz into First National Bank with some serious attitude and a couple of snub guns. Murderous, trigger-happy cops, led by the doughnut-chomping redneck police chief, arrive in force, firing indiscriminately into the crowd gathered outside. Surrender or capture is out of the question. Dante's beloved, the murderous assassin Rosa Control , packing a not-so-small arsenal , prowls the streets, trying to engineer her man's escape. Will Dante slip past the forces of corruption and disorder to join his Rosa? What happens next is a tangled mess of reality and virtual reality.

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Book SynopsisWhen the murder of a woman is reported to the Shanghai police while Inspector Chen is on vacation, Sergeant Yu is forced to take charge of the investigation. The victim, Yin Lige, a novelist known for her banned book, has been found dead in her tiny, humble room off the stairwell of a converted multi-family house. It seems that only a neighbor could have committed the crime, for the building is kept locked at night. But there is no apparent motive. Sergeant Yu tries to unravel the reclusive woman’s past and begins to realize it may have larger political implications. The Cultural Revolution might be more than 30 years in the past, but its effects can still be felt at every level of Chinese society.

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Book Synopsis“A rich and unusual mystery, with suspense enough for the most confirmed addict.” —Los Angeles TimesPugilism, a brutal form of bare-knuckle boxing, is forbidden by law in late Victorian England, but Sergeant Cribb discovers evidence that it continues in secret, finding a corpse whose hands were “pickled” for fighting. A young constable called Henry Jago is sent to infiltrate the gang, which he has to submit to a rigorous programme of purging, pickling and training. But Jago is endangered when more murders ensue and Cribb must intervene at a perfectly crucial time to prevent young Jago from being battered to death.

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Book Synopsis“Here’s charm and delight. A puzzle postlude to Three Men in a Boat.” —The TimesLondon, 1889: After Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian bestseller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. When an elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackerey are called to investigate. They uncover strange parallels with the enormously popular Victorian novel, but nobody will take them seriously. Following their instincts, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

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Book SynopsisA group of avengers set out on a mission to find and assassinate escaped Nazi war criminals.

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Book SynopsisTranslation of nineteenth-century novel of life in a still-feudal Moravian village. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) is Austria's most important nineteenth-century woman writer, but her works have remained largely unknown to English speakers, even her most important, the compelling Their Pavel, firstpublished serially in 1887. Based on a true incident, Their Pavel investigates the troubled social relations of a Moravian village that is endowed with the right of local governance but steeped in the habits of its feudalrelationship to the local barony. The novel explores the parallel fates of the children of a hanged murderer and thief. Milada, the appealing and alert daughter, is adopted on a whim by the aging baroness, while Pavel, the awkwardand taciturn son, is thrown upon the uncertain mercy of the village, but both suffer the stigma of their father's crime. In her sometimes grimly humorous picture of village life, the author spares neither the Catholic Church northe landed aristocracy nor the villagers themselves. Lynne Tatlock is Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington Universityin St. Louis.Trade ReviewEbner-Eschenbach's story of the slow and indefatigable rise of the orphaned son of an executed murderer, who is reared by his village only out of a sense of its legal obligation, is consistent with prevailing Victorian and Hapsburg era literary tastes. This highly readable rendition preserves both the spirit and the tenor of the original. Not a book just for students and scholars of literature, readers of all backgrounds and tastes should enjoy it. * CHOICE *Still captivates the reader... * SEMINAR *Tatlock succeeded admirably in paralleling the native idiom to reflect the local setting by flavoring her English text in changing moods. * GERMANIC NOTES & REVIEWS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Translator's Note Their Pavel Notes

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Book SynopsisFirst English translation of the final work of Theodor Fontane, one of Germany's most significant novelists. Theodor Fontane (1819-98), widely regarded as Germany's most significant novelist between Goethe and Thomas Mann, pioneered the German novel of manners and upper-class society, following a trend in European fiction of the period.The Stechlin is Fontane's last book and his political testament. Like Effi Briest, his great work on the place of women in Bismarck's empire, it is set at the apex of the Wilhelmine era, both in Berlin and on the estate of a Prussian Junker on the shores of Lake Stechlin. It is a significant historical and cultural document, probably the finest chronicle of the lifestyle of the German upper classes in the late nineteenth century; Fontane portrays the best in the life and ways of the passing Prussian aristocracy, while describing his hopes for the future of Germany and its nobility, which were never to be fully realized. Although this novel has been translated into many languages, it has never before been available in English; this edition thus fills an important gap in the significant works of European literature accessible to English readers.Trade ReviewZwiebel has produced a masterpiece in this translation of Fontane's last major work. * GERMANIC NOTES AND REVIEWS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Castle Stechlin Wutz Convent To the Egg Cottage Election in Rheinsberg-Wutz On Mission in England Engagement: Christmas Excursion to Stechlin Wedding Sunset But Stay a While - Deth - Burial - New Days Notes

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Book SynopsisVisigoth is a portrait of the American male—gritty, violent, and fascinating. The protagonists in this collection of stories come from all walks of life—hockey players, middle managers, political hopefuls, and wayward husbands—but all share a tendency to turn towards violence when life begins spinning out of control. In "The Flyweight," an all-star high-school wrestler struggles with his own success and the expectations of others when he begins hearing voices after a schizophrenic breakdown. "Visigoth," the title story, depicts a college hockey player unable to understand that his relationship with an English professor is over. The novella "The Free Fall" focuses on a cycle of escalating violence in small farming and mining towns and the effect that it has on the main character and his family. Sharp, inquisitive, and witty, Visigoth challenges the reader to question the popular glory of violence in all its manifestations.

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Book Synopsis“Aquaboogie is a love story in fragments . . . A book by a writer whose love for her characters infuses her work with the dignity and urgency they so clearly deserve.” —The New York Times Book Review Full of defiance and tenderness, Aquaboogie chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the residents of Rio Seco. In “Aquaboogie,” art student Nacho finances his class out East by working as a janitor, subject to torment by his white coworkers. In “Back,” elderly Pashion sleeps wrapped around the body of her dying husband L. C., all the while recalling their 49 years of marriage and thinking about the sleeping pills she has secreted away for when life becomes unbearable. In “The Box,” Shawan carries her radio everywhere; since her best friend was gunned down, music is the only thing that can get her through the day. In these and other stories in this powerful collection, the author gives voice to those on the margins while demonstrating her great affection for her characters.

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Book SynopsisImmediately captivating, Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles introduces readers to Finley, an investigator of indiscernible origins and prowess who is assigned to a mysterious Professor Uppal and his puppets. The nature of the investigation isn't clear, but Finley nonetheless forges ahead, with occasional assistance from her colleagues Murphy, The Lamb, and Binelli, as well as the professor's beautiful daughter and her sinister boyfriend. The investigation circles in on itself until Finley realizes that she may be close to discovering the truth about her forgotten life. Both whimsical and deeply serious, Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles casts a shadow that touches on literary novels, noir, and philosophical pursuits, bringing them all into the singularity of existence itself.Trade Review"Henehan weaves a delicious plot of self-discovery as if in a dreamlike state. Each new development reveals a change in Finley's own existence and resets the very world of the novel itself." --BUST "There is a noirish tinge to the plot, which involves a secretive investigation; the heroine, Finley, is certainly hardboiled, the characters she encounters mysterious in their motivations--but the tone is closer to Lewis Carroll than Raymond Chandler. (Alice in Wonderland-like touches include a Quadrille, a rum-raisin cake, and satirical absurdities including send ups of communes and performance art.) The meandering narrative is subordinate to sprightly wordplay and stylistic elegance, but contextual meaning isn't sacrificed... Funny, fanciful, and kinetic, this work earns its place in any collection of experimental fiction." --Foreword "In playfully measured prose, Henehan's poignant farce evokes Beckett and her world is as funny and inventive as that of George Saunders, but her bold voice and tenderness make for something entirely original, entertaining, and well worth the read." --Booklist "An impressionistic tale propelled by Henehan's gorgeously arch prose and a constant stream of droll humor. There's no doubt that Henehan is a talent."--Publishers Weekly "A very intriguing novel filled with insistent rhythms and syntactical playfulness. Henehan's precision and obvious delight with language make the voice of this novel wonderful company. One is reminded of certain European writers like Beckett or Bernhard, but Henehan has also made something--funny, ominous--of her own."--Sam Lipsyte "Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles is not just smashingly titled, it is also beautifully, madly, electrically alive. Beware of its puppets. Watch out for Murphy. Keep track of The Lamb. Consider Uppal. Question Finley. Here is worthy work for the fingers, the heart, the eyes, the mind."--Laird Hunt, author of Ray of the Star and The Impossibly "Kira Henehan has reached into the wheezing carcass of the traditional detective story and relieved it of all its bones and logic. The result is a novel unlike anything I've read before: hilarious, severe, baffling, and sometimes so far over my head that I can only see a distant glow."--Ben Marcus, author of Notable American Women

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Book SynopsisEvery winter, Tommy Jack McMorsey watches the meteor showers in northern Minnesota. On the long haul from Texas to Minnesota, Tommy encounters a deluded Japanese tourist determined to find the buried ransom money from the movie Fargo. When the Japanese tourist dies of exposure in Tommy Jack's care, a media storm erupts and sets off a series of journeys into Tommy Jack's past as he remembers the horrors of Vietnam, a love affair, and the suicide of his closest friend, Fred Howkowski. Exploring with great insight and wit the ways images, stereotypes, and depictions intersect with, Extra Indians offers a powerful glimpse into contemporary Native American life.Trade Review"Exemplary. Gansworth delivers a messy and satisfying resolution. Longtime readers of Gansworth will recognize some characters from his previous work (Mending Skins; etc.), but the discoveries in this novel will delight new readers even more." --Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW "Gansworth will surely garner comparisons to Sherman Alexie for his wry wit and compassionate voice, but his ability to dissect multiple hearts in a single pierce, his precise reconstruction of each lost soul into something new and pure, sets him apart. This is familial redemption at its finest, which is to say agonizingly complex and wholly engaging." --Booklist "Gansworth has given us a beautiful story of the intersection of truth and fiction, family and forgiveness, and the inability to forgive. A powerful story; highly recommended for readers of popular fiction." --Library Journal "In exploring who his characters believe they are versus who they may really be, Eric Gansworth says as much about the constitution of family and America as he does about the construction of identity and the world. Spanning the war in Vietnam, life on the rez, and the Coen Brothers' Fargo, Extra Indians is both rollicking and tenderhearted. --Stewart O'Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster and Songs for the Missing "Gansworth's look at youthful folly and the damage that violence begets is fully drawn and beautifully written, almost ballad-like with its rueful tone." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "What seemingly begins as a road trip novel detours into a mysterious death and then comes around into a big-hearted novel about reservation life, the resonance of war even thirty years later, and the inescapability of one's past." --Time Out Chicago "A literary novel carrying themes that possess more true-to-life tangible strength than verifiable facts. By layering truth and fiction, Gansworth complicates the two, dislocating us along with his characters." --Philadelphia City Paper "With an exacting eye for images and ear for language, novelist Eric Gansworth has constructed a rich tapestry of interwoven narratives that speak to the contemporary Native American experience, both on and off the reservation." --Buffalo News

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Book SynopsisWe were exposed to these phenomena in order that we might learn something, but of course the lessons we learn are not always what was intended. So begins Matthew Garth's stor of the fall of 1962, when the shooting of a young woman on Thanksgiving Day sets off a chain of unsettling evens in Willow Falls, Minnesota. Matthew first sees Louisa Lindahl in Dr. Dunbar's home office, and at the time her bullet wound makes nearly as strong an impression as her unclothed body. Fueled over the following weeks by his feverish desire for this mysterious woman and a deep longing for the comfort and affluence that appears to surround the Dunbars, Matthew finds himself drawn into a vortex of greet, manipulation, and ultimately betrayal.Trade ReviewEsquire Top 9 Books of the Year Midwest Booksellers Choice Award Finalist Booklist Editor's Choice 2011 Best Book Publishers Weekly 20 Top Indie Sleeper Hits WBEZ Chicago Top 10 Books of 2011 "...powerful and exquisitely crafted...Watson's portraits of small town life and the people who live it--mostly during the 1940s and 1950s--are compassionate and true." --Steve Mills, Chicago Tribune's Printers Row "There are a handful of writers I push on everyone I meet, and Larry Watson is one of them. For the past twenty years has quietly penned some of the wisest, most powerful novels in my library, and I am thrilled to make room on the shelf for his latest, a gripping, poignant coming-of-age story that opens with a gunshot that will ultimately bury its bullet in your heart. American Boy is an American classic." --Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh "Larry Watson's latest book, American Boy, may be his best yet. With the patient skill of a seasoned writer, Watson tells an engaging coming-of-age story of a young man in Willow Falls, Minnesota during the 1960s. Youthful passions, heartbreaks, loyalties and moral uncertainties are all rendered in vivid color." --David Rhodes, author of Driftless "[Watson will] harvest a bumper crop of readers this autumn." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "[Watson] spins charm and melancholy around the same fingers, the result a soft but urgent rendering of a young man coming of age in rural America that is recognizable to even those of us who were never there." --Denver Post "Watson is sure-footed on familiar ground in American Boy... [he's] made something of a specialty of that space where teenagers struggle between hormonal urges and moral decisions as they grope toward adulthood. His evocation of that difficult passage feels as sure as his evocation of small-town life in the upper Midwest more than one generation ago... As convincing as it is lonely and bleak." --Billings Gazette "Elemental mystery...American Boy seems oddly 1930's in its noir-like soul. Early 60's optimism, Vietnam or pot doesn't touch this town. But perhaps that's the point--this place is that insular...This is a heroic coming of age story. I was riveted by its layered mystery." --Susan Weinstein, NotAnotherBookReview.blogspot.com "Watson has penned some of the best contemporary fiction about small-town America, and his new novel does not disappoint... With his graceful writing style, well-drawn characters, and subtly moving plot, Watson masterfully portrays the dark side of small-town America. Highly readable and enthusiastically recommended." --Library Journal (starred review) "Eighteen years ago, Milkweed published Watson's breakthrough novel, Montana 1948; now the author returns to Milkweed with another powerful coming-of-age story about a teenage boy [Matthew Garth] being shocked into maturity by a moment of sudden and unexpected violence... Like Holden Caulfield trying to catch innocent children before they fall off the cliff adjoining that field of rye, Matthew struggles to save the Dunbars and, in so doing, save himself. He fails, of course, but that's the point of much of Watson's always melancholic, always morally ambiguous fiction: coming-of-age is about failure as much as it is about growth." --Booklist (starred review) "Watson's new novel about a young man's coming-of-age in rural Minnesota during the early '60s never veers off course." --Publishers Weekly "Watson's sixth novel resonates with language as clear and images as crisp as the spare, flat prairie of its Minnesota setting... A vivid story of sexual tension, family loyalty and betrayal." --Kirkus "A true, realistic, and intelligent novel of a teen-aged Minnesota boy in the early 1960s, in which a woman with a gunshot wound captures young Matthew Garth's imagination and continues to hold it in a fierce grip. Young Matthew first encounters Louisa Lindahl in the office of the town doctor, at whose home he spends much of his time. Along the way, Matthew endeavors to work his way into Louisa's affections, while pursuing typical teenage pursuits with Johnny Dunbar, the doctor's son. While Matthew ultimately finds out the answers to most of the questions he has about this mysterious young woman, many of these answers aren't the ones he wants. Watson does a wonderful job of peering under the masks of these small town folks and helping us see what their real selves are." --Carl Hoffman, Boswell Book Company "Nobody knows the heartland better than Larry Watson and no one is better at conveying its stark landscape and the stark truths that can arise from living in it. The story of young Matt Garth in rural Minnesota in 1962 is not just one of coming of age but also of human frailty and life altering decisions. Watson perfectly evokes an era while telling a story that is timeless." --Bill Cusumano, Nicola's Books "Pure. Simple. Classic. Little more needs to be said about Larry Watson's utterly breath-taking coming-of-age novel featuring two high school chums, Johnny Dunbar and Matthew Garth. This novel takes a fresh look at that time of life, the teen years, when everything happens so suddenly and with such ferociousness: the fist crashing out of nowhere into your unsuspecting chin; the physical sick feeling as your heart breaks upon learning that 'your' girl isn't; that head-to-toe rush of hot blood as you gaze knowingly at your first love; the utterly helpless feeling as your vehicle spins round and round over the black ice. Yes, youth, a time of intensity, immediacy, raw emotions, and suddenness. We remember it well. Now Larry Watson captures it all in this wonderful novel, American Boy. This book will become--is--a classic. I recommend it without reserve to every reader who appreciates life and fine literature." --Nancy Simpson, Book Vault "[Watson] spins charm and melancholy around the same fingers, the result a soft but urgent rendering of a young man coming of age in rural America that is recognizable to even those of us who were never there." -- Denver Post

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Book SynopsisThe Village on Horseback features mesmerizing new work from the author of Samedi the Deafness and The Way Through Doors, one of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2009. This collection of new pieces by experimental writer Jesse Ball is a philosophical recasting of myth and legend. Unearthing parables from the compost heap of oral tradition, folklore, literature, and popular culture, The Village on Horseback can be read as a sort of fabulist's compendium by an author who has been called charming, lyrical, fanciful, and "disturbingly original."

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Book Synopsis"In The Road John Ehle's skill as a storyteller brings an early episode of road building in the North Carolina mountains to rich and vivid life. Hardship and humor, suffering and dreams are the balance for survival in a landscape that makes harsh demands on its intruders. Ehle lets us experience this place, people, and past in a fully realized novel."—Wilma Dykeman"The Road is a strong novel by one of our most distinguished authors. Muscular, vivid, and pungent, it is broad in historical scope and profound in its human sympathies. We welcome its return with warm pleasure."—Fred ChappellOriginally published in 1967, The Road is epic historical fiction at its best. At the novel's center is Weatherby Wright, a railroad builder who launches an ambitious plan to link the highlands of western North Carolina with the East. As a native of the region, Wright knows what his railway will mean to the impoverished settlers. But to accomplish his grand undertaking he must conquer Sow Mountain, "a massive monolith of earth, rock, vegetation and water, an elaborate series of ridges which built on one another to the top."Wright's struggle to construct the railroad—which requires tall trestles crossing deep ravines and seven tunnels blasted through shale and granite—proves to be much more than an engineering challenge. There is opposition from a child evangelist, who preaches that the railroad is the work of the devil, and there is a serious lack of funds, which forces Wright to use convict labor. How Wright confronts these challenges and how the mountain people respond to the changes the railroad brings to their lives make for powerfully compelling reading.The Author: A native of Asheville, North Carolina, John Ehle has written seventeen novels and works of nonfiction. His books include The Land Breakers, The Journey of August King, The Winter People, and Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. Among the honors he has received are the Lillian Smith Prize and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award.

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Book SynopsisCould you find the courage to do what’s right in a world on fire? Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist (Freeman) Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States. An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black messman’s life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese . . . a young black woman, widowed by the same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war . . . a black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion. Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. What does it take to change someone’s mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?Trade ReviewPraise for Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s novel THE LAST THING YOU SURRENDER:“Seamlessly integrates impressive research into a compelling tale of America at war—overseas, at home, and within ourselves, as we struggle to find the better angels of our nature. Pitts poignantly illustrates ongoing racial and class tensions, and offers hope that we can overcome hatred by refusing to sacrifice dignity.” —Booklist, starred review."The Last Thing You Surrender is a story of our nation at war, with itself as well as tyranny across the globe. It’s an American tapestry of hatred, compassion, fear, courage, and cruelties, leavened with the promise of triumph. A powerful story I will not soon forget.” —James R. Benn, author of the Billy Boyle WWII Mystery series “Leonard Pitts, Jr. does it again. He interweaves stories that grip you from beginning to end. Set during WWII, it shows how race relations in America haven't advanced much. The Last Thing You Surrender will have you entranced with the story, and it will stick with you even after you complete the last page.” —Southfield Public Library "I couldn't put it down, and it left me stunned! It’s such a harsh novel, yet at the same time, it’s a hopeful novel that is so relevant today. I'm already telling people about it.” —Pete Mock, McIntyre's Books, Pittsboro, North CarolinaPraise for Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s novel GRANT PARK:"Grant Park is layered, insightful, and passionate. Pitts's subtly explosive language grips readers with the delicate subject matter and earnestly implores them to understand that '[race] has always meant something and it always will.' The scars will remain, but stunningly powerful examinations like Grant Park can be the salve that helps heal open wounds." —Shelf-Awareness, starred review"Leonard Pitts has written a taut thriller that weaves together a stark look at America's tortured racial past with a fast-paced tale of terrorist conspiracy and love rekindled." —Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun Times“. . . these ideas [are] perennially salient, and doubly so today, given a growing litany of American sorrows, from Ferguson to Charleston and beyond. . . . lays bare the extent to which Americans, black and white, still struggle to articulate the basic elements of our shared past." — Vinson Cunningham, New York Times Book Review"The book is a page-turner, but also one that commands deep reflection on history, racism, and personal choices." —Blanca Torres, The Seattle Times"A novel as significant as it is engrossing." —Booklist, starred review"Pitts masterfully revisits [election night on November 4, 2008] and four decades of the civil rights struggle to create one of the most suspenseful and spectacular fictitious moments you'll experience this fall." —Patrik Henry Bass, Essence"Pitts does a skillful job of building tension in the novel's historical sections as well as on Election Day. . . . He also does something not every political thriller writer does: builds believable, complex characters." — Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times"[A] high-stakes, hard-charging political thriller. . . . The sharply etched characters, careful attention to detail, and rich newspaper lore propel Pitts's socially relevant novel." —Publishers Weekly"And then there are those thrills—gasping, mouth-gaping page-turners that author Leonard Pitts Jr. weaves through another realism: truthful, brutal plot-lines about racial issues of the last five decades, mulling over exactly how far we’ve really come. That makes this will-they-live-or-won't-they nail-biter into something that also made me think, and I absolutely loved it." —Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm Sez"An important book, one that honestly examines the current, tumultuous racial divide in our country and demands we not turn away from its harsh realities." —Amy Canfield, Miami Herald"Grant Park is a book that’s both socially relevant and a lot of fun." —NewCity"In the aftermath of this summer's racially motivated mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed white supremacist, there's near-eerie prescience in Pitts' historical novel. . .[Grant Park], with urgency and passion, makes readers aware that the mistakes of the past are neglected at the future's peril." —Kirkus Reviews"Grant Park is a monumental work, so all-encompassing in scope that reviewers will be hard-pressed to do it justice. Pitts’s passion for a solution holds strong to the end of his novel even as his central character seems to give up. Readers will find Grant Park is real." —Bookpleasures.com"Grant Park is a thriller, and readers will find themselves turning pages accordingly, although the interior stories of Bob and Malcolm regarding their younger selves may be the real action." —Brian Burnes, The Kansas City StarPraise for Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s previous novel FREEMAN:"A uniquely American epic. . . by a knowledgeable, compassionate and relentlessly truthful writer." —Howard Frank Mosher, Washington Post"A pretty powerful love story." —Audie Cornish, All Things Considered"Gorgeously written; a searing, wrenching read. Fans of Cold Mountain and Cormac McCarthy will love this story." —Jennifer Weiner, author of The Next Best Thing"Leonard Pitts has a passion for history and a gift for storytelling. Both shine in this story of love and redemption." —Gwen Ifill, PBS, author of The Breakthrough"Freeman is a myth of what’s humanly possible, a needed story about little-known heroism, and a shadow thrown forward to the struggles of American families in the 21st century." —John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer"A wonderful, moving, riveting novel." —Gabrielle Union, actress"Post-Civil War America is fertile ground for novelists, but few have tilled it with such grace and majesty as Leonard Pitts." —Herb Boyd, co-editor of By Any Means Necessary—Malcolm X: Real, not Reinvented"This book is an eye-opening commentary on devotion during this tangled chapter of American history." —Wendi Thomas, Memphis Commercial Appeal"Leonard Pitts, Jr. crafts a novel as well as the great storytellers of our time. Freeman captured my attention from the very first sentence and my heart throughout." —Sybil Wilkes, The Tom Joyner Morning Show"Freeman reminds us of our humanity." —Nancy Olson, owner of Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, North Carolina

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Book SynopsisTraces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghanistani youth and a servant''s son, in a tale that spans the final days of the nation''s monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. 40,000 first printing.

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Book SynopsisInterconnected stories depicting the last years of a WWII bomber pilot, his relationship with his daughter as both child and adult, and his drift into infirmity and death. When life dwindles to its irrevocable conclusion, recollections are illuminated, even unto the grave. Such is the narrative of Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories , whose title is taken from a remote airfield in the American Southwest, and while the father recalls his flying days, his daughter–who nurses the old man–reflects as well. Pamela Ryder's stories vary in style and perspective, and time lines overlap as death advances and retreats. This unique and shifting narrative explores the complexities of a relationship in which the father–who has been a high-flying outsider–descends into frailty and becomes dependent upon the daughter he has never really known. The opening story, �Interment for Yard and Garden,� begins as a simple handbook for Jewish burial and bereavement, although the narrator cannot help but reveal herself and her motives. From there, the telling begins anew and unfolds chronologically, returning to the adult daughter's childhood: a family vacation in France, the grotesqueries of the dinner table, the shadowy sightings of a father who has flown away. A final journey takes father and daughter back to the Southwest in search of Paradise Field. Their travels through that desolate landscape foreshadow the father's ultimate decline, as portrayed in the concluding stories that tell of the uneasy transformation in the bond between them and in the transcendence of his demise. Taken together, the stories in Paradise Field are an eloquent but unsparing depiction of infirmity and death, as well as solace and provocation for anyone who has been left to stand graveside and confront eternity.Trade ReviewLet's not futz around. I'm old, a Jew, a man who, but for the fates in charge of the trivialities, might have been Ryder's father. Well, for all that, I am Ryder's father or, anyhow, a father of Ryder, and will, accordingly, go agreeably to my grave praising her name as if my doing so might work for my daughter the favor of the gods. Let me tell you - in the matter of my thinking what must be said when an occasion such as this has come to take me by the heart: it was with tears in my eyes that I made my way through the pages recording Ryder's mission to bury her dead in a manner unique among the methods practiced by humankind. Her art is water for the thirsty, sustenance for the deprived. I ask you, which of us is not perishing from the logic of the insufficiency woven into the world's conceivable answer to our unappeasable cries? Ryder, her soul, her sentences, they are one thing, and this totality is given as an exception - the valedictory gesture of a mensch, this Pamela Ryder, enacting her livelong promise via the ceremonies of Paradise Field. Listen to me - my daughter brings comfort, brings balm, brings the exhilarations of loving and kinship to all those who would, by words, be cured."" - Gordon Lish, author of Peru""Ryder writes with wit, brio, and laser-like honesty about her father - a man who, having eluded her for decades, is now at the end of his life. The Kafkaesque nature of caretaking and the obscene depredations of age are interlaced with a kind of cockeyed delight: eating a blintz in hell, regarding the clouds, giving death the (frail) finger. Ryder has both the ear of a poet and the soul of a warrior."" - Dawn Raffel, author of The Secret Life of Objects

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Book SynopsisThe Pet Thief is a dystopian fable of science, rebellion, humankind’s inhumanity, and the struggle for identity and survival in a post-human world.When scientists, the government, and venture capitalists conspire to hybridise humans with animals—cats, specifically—for organ harvesting, drug testing, and military applications, the experiment is an irredeemable failure, producing human-like beings with uncanny abilities who are nonetheless fundamentally defective.Oboy and his mentor/tormentor Freda are two wayward hybrids, “cat people,” who have escaped with others to the depths of a rundown European city being levelled for reconstruction. They are members of a street gang led by an ominous leader called Swan.Oboy is unable to think or speak except in mimicry, but he is a physical savant, which serves Freda’s mission. Enraged at what has been done to her, Freda wants to “rescue” every pet she can. When Oboy returns with a human baby after his first solo outing, their world and the truths of their existence come unravelled.

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Book SynopsisOn the surface a murder mystery—a detective’s search for the killer of five people in Denver—Expectation is also, among other things, a meditation on the relationship between language and music.In his newest novel, Jeffrey DeShell draws on the musical innovations of Arnold Schoenberg—by turns traditional, serial, and atonal—to inform his grammar and language. Moving progressively through specific Schoenberg compositions, DeShell complicates the surface of his text into lyrical derivatives, all the while drawing us into a murder mystery like no other as Detective Francisca Fruscella pursues both the killer and her own complicated personal history.By turns rapturous, rigorous, and gripping, Expectation is a thriller of another kind—and a bold venture to the limits of the mystery genre and language itself.Trade Review"With spare and rigorous brilliance, Jeffrey DeShell's Expectation reforms speech, narration, and the tropes of American noir through the spellbinding operations of a new Schoenbergian lingo, a hard-boiled sprechstimme, a talk as tough as Hammett, Cain, and Chandler’s, as singular and expressive as Pierrot Lunaire’s. DeShell's exploration of Viennese serialism’s effects on form and content succeeds mightily because, in the best tradition of experimentalism, its conclusion is not closure or confirmation, but a necessary reminder that everything, particularly language and its performance, could be otherwise, and that the complexities of otherwise can be as moving as hell." —Michael Mejia, author of Forgetfulness| “I have long admired Jeffrey DeShell's work because each novel is a fresh and entirely different, asking the reader to adopt a new theory of reading. The high-concept detective story that is Expectation reaches a moving musical climax in its final third that's not often seen in the prose of peers. But readers will be equally delighted to find in this work a memorable, compelling character--the widowed, driven, urbane Denver detective Francesca Fruscella. Her voice of voices drives this thoroughly satisfying novel.”—Ted Pelton, author of Malcolm & Jack and Bhang

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