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St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
by Karen Russell
In these ten glittering stories, debut author Karen Russell takes us to the ghostly and magical swamps of the Florida Everglades. Here wolf-like girls are reformed by nuns, a family makes their living wrestling alligators in a theme park, and little girls sail away on crab shells. Filled with stunning inventiveness and heart, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves introduces a radiant new writer.
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That Summer in Paris
by Abha Dawesar
From the award-winning author of Babyji comes an utterly seductive tale of an aging writer whose involvement with a young woman forces him to face the eternal question of love. Prem Rustum, a famous but reclusive Indian author, has spent most of his life consumed with writing. Feeling the weight of his seventy-five years, he resolves to put down his pen and live a little. He ventures online where he finds Maya, an aspiring young novelist who has boldly posted her admiration for Prem's work. Captivated by her charm, Prem decides on impulse to join her in the City of Light. During the summer that follows, Maya brings Prem into direct confrontation with his mortality and desires through the awakening of new longings and the rekindling of old ones. Written with sureness of style and tempo, That Summer in Paris reflects on how art informs love, and love, literature.
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Field Notes from a Catastrophe
by Elizabeth Kolbert
Long known for her insightful and thought-provoking political journalism, author Elizabeth Kolbert now tackles the controversial and increasingly urgent subject of global warming. In what began as groundbreaking three-part series in the New Yorker, for which she won a National Magazine Award in 2006, Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric and political agendas to elucidate for Americans what is really going on with the global environment and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet. Now updated and with a new afterword, Field Notes from a Catastrophe is the book to read on the defining issue and greatest challenge of our times.
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The Life & Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
by Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."
Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson's earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young
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Burma Boy
by Biyi Bandele
It's winter 1944 and the Second World War is entering its most crucial stage. A few months ago Ali Banana was apprenticed to a whip-wielding blacksmith in his rural hometown; now he's behind enemy lines, trekking through the Burmese jungle, a private in Thunder Brigade. He is fourteen years old. Led by the scarred, charismatic Sergeant Damisa, Thunder Brigade has been given orders to go behind enemy lines and wreak havoc. But the jungle is a treacherous place, riddled with Japanese snipers, infection and disease. As torrential rains turn the landscape into a mud-riven death trap, the losses mount up, Ali's sanity falters and troubling questions arise. Who, for instance, is 'Kingi Jogi'? What does his empire stand for? And what does it all mean for Banana, the men of Thunder Brigade and for their inspirational general? Burma Boy is a story of the adventure of war and the terrible consequences of that adventure. Biyi Bandele's novel is a meticulously researched, elegantly written tribute to the Africans who fought in the Second World War - detailing the madness, the horror, the sacrifice and the dark humour of its most vicious battleground.
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Young Turk
by Morris Farhi
Against the backdrop of Nazism, in a multi-racial Turkey giving sanctuary to many of Europe's fleeing Jews, a group of teenage friends struggles to understand events while reeling from (and relishing) the sexual and emotional discoveries of adolescence. An alluring woman initiates Mustafa and his classmates in the carnal delights of rose petal jam; Musa discovers the hard facts of reaching manhood when he is expelled from the women's baths; Bilal, a 14-year-old Jewish boy, sets off for Greece to rescue his mother's sister; and a circus orphan known only as 'Girl' falls head over heels for the new trapeze artist. Young Turk is a wise, craftily spun and spine-tinglingly erotic tale of love, courage and the forging of conscience.
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Lost Bodies
by Francois Gatheret
One solitary thought in order to survive in the stupor of the heat: evening always comes. There is always an end. Think only of that. Don't think. In a desert prison camp, a man is rotting, half-alive, at the bottom of a well. Andres has been there, held in horrific conditions, for many years. Around him, other men are similarly imprisoned, guarded by a handful of soldiers. On the outskirts of the fort, Tamia, a young woman, hides behind rocks, hoping to hear news of her lover who is thought to be a prisoner. After months of furtive meetings with one of the guards she has seduced, she eventually learns that her man died months ago. That same night, she finds Andres making his escape. After years of solitary confinement, he looks more dead than alive. She decides to help him and leads him to a ruined village where an old woman gives them shelter. With Tamia's care, Andres gradually recovers, and a strong bond grows between them. Later, the couple have an affair and take refuge in the city with Tamia's family. Andres' terrorist past comes to light while Tamia discovers the unbelievable truth about her dead lover. Lost Bodies is both a heartbreaking love story and a searing tale of terrorism and political repression in North Africa.
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Europe at War
by Norman Davies
The conventional narrative of the Second World War is well known: after six years of brutal fighting on land, sea and in the air, the Allied Powers prevailed and the Nazi regime was defeated. But as in so many things, the truth is somewhat different. Bringing a fresh eye to bear on a story we think we know, Norman Davies forces us to look again at those six years and to discard the usual narrative of Allied good versus Nazi evil, reminding us that the war in Europe was dominated by two evil monsters - Hitler and Stalin - whose fight for supremacy consumed the best people in Germany and in the USSR. The outcome of the war was at best ambiguous, the victory of the West was only partial, its moral reputation severely tarnished and, for the greater part of the continent of Europe, 'liberation' was only the beginning of more than fifty years of totalitarian oppression. 'Davies writes with real knowledge and passion.' - Michael Burleigh, "Evening Standard". 'Punchy and compelling' - Noel Malcolm, "Sunday Telegraph".
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The Lizard Cage
by Karen Connelly
Teza once electrified the people of Burma with his protest songs against the dictatorship. Arrested by the Burmese secret police in the days of mass protest, he is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement, cut off from his family and contact with other prisoners. Enduring the harsh conditions with resourcefulness, Buddhist patience and humour, he searches for news and human connection in every being and object that is grudgingly allowed into his cell. Despite his isolation, Teza has a profound influence on the world of the cage. He inspires the conscience-ridden senior jailer to radical change. His very existence challenges the brutal authority of Handsome, the junior jailer. Even though his server, the criminal Sein Yun, sees compromising the singer as a ticket out of jail, Teza befriends him, risking falling into the trap of forbidden conversation, food and the most dangerous contraband of all, paper and pen. Lastly there's Little Brother, an orphan child growing up inside the walls. Teza and the boy are prisoners of different orders, but their extraordinary friendship frees both of them in utterly surprising ways. Overturning our expectations, Karen Connelly presents us with a mystifying world that celebrates the human spirit, and spirit itself, in the midst of injustice and violence.
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Also Available in Paperback Now:
Alan Weisman: The World without Us
Irwin Welsh: If You Liked School You'll Love Work
Rose Tremain: The Road Home
Nicholas Shakespeare: Secrets of the Sea
Ceridwen Doven: Blood Kin
Amy Bloom: Away
Matt Ruff: Bad Monkeys
Lucy Wadham: Greater Love
Elif Shafak: The Bastard of Istambul
Mohsin Hamid: The Reluctant Fundamentalist |
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