The Inner Circle
Medical clinic CEO Edmund Summerfield was once held in high regard throughout his wealthy community. Unfortunately, his ranking has recently fallen due to the difference in political views between Edmund and the group of ultra-conservative group of men who belong to the same country club. Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges that loom in the near future, the Summerfield family is not about to give up their dedication to maintaining freedom and democracy in the face of the increasingly alarming positions of the far right. But little do they know just how difficult their fight will be. Concerned about the undeniable signs of authoritarianism and the ongoing assault upon democratic principles, Edmund and his two children, Nancy and Lionel, band together with like-minded friends and begin their commitment to work against political extremism. With no time to lose and the country on the brink of economic calamity, the Summerfields immerse themselves in meetings with other compassionate intellectuals concerned with the future of their country. Unfortunately, their well-intended journey has now led them into the midst of an adversarial relationship with elitist conservatives who seek limitless wealth and political power. In this dramatic tale, a political saga slowly unfolds as the Summerfields act on their unselfish intentions to serve the common good, never giving up hope that their beloved nation will, as always, rise up to meet its challenges and threats.
The Inner Circle
Medical clinic CEO Edmund Summerfield was once held in high regard throughout his wealthy community. Unfortunately, his ranking has recently fallen due to the difference in political views between Edmund and the group of ultra-conservative group of men who belong to the same country club. Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges that loom in the near future, the Summerfield family is not about to give up their dedication to maintaining freedom and democracy in the face of the increasingly alarming positions of the far right. But little do they know just how difficult their fight will be. Concerned about the undeniable signs of authoritarianism and the ongoing assault upon democratic principles, Edmund and his two children, Nancy and Lionel, band together with like-minded friends and begin their commitment to work against political extremism. With no time to lose and the country on the brink of economic calamity, the Summerfields immerse themselves in meetings with other compassionate intellectuals concerned with the future of their country. Unfortunately, their well-intended journey has now led them into the midst of an adversarial relationship with elitist conservatives who seek limitless wealth and political power. In this dramatic tale, a political saga slowly unfolds as the Summerfields act on their unselfish intentions to serve the common good, never giving up hope that their beloved nation will, as always, rise up to meet its challenges and threats.
The Unseen
For a brief explosive period in the mid-1970s, the young and the unemployed of Italy's cities joined the workers in an unexpectedly militant movement known simply as Autonomy (Autonomia). Its "politics of refusal" united its opponents behind draconian measures more severe than any seen since the war. Nanni Balestrini, the poet of youth rebellion, himself a victim of that repression, has invented a remarkable fictional form to express the hopes and conflicts of the movement. In spare but vivid prose, The Unseen follows Autonomy's trajectory through the eyes of a single working-class protagonist--from high-school rebellion, squatting and attempts to set up a free radio station to arrest and the brutalities of imprisonment. This is a powerful and gripping novel: a rare evocation of the intensity of commitment, the passion of politics.
Phineas Finn
The second novel in Trollope's Palliser series, Phineas Finn's engaging plot embraces matters as diverse as reform, the position of women, the Irish question, and the conflict between integrity and ambition. Through the engaging figure of the handsome Irishman Phineas Finn, Trollope explores the realities of political life, and the clash between compromise and conviction, that is as topical today as it was in the 1860s. In his introduction, Simon Dentith looks at the British political context and the interwoven strands of politics, the rights of women, and their struggle for equality in marriage. He also considers the novel's interesting publishing history and Trollope's own parliamentary ambitions. One appendix outlines the internal chronology of the series, providing a unique understanding of the six novels as a linked narrative, and a second appendix describes the passage of the second Reform Act of 1867, a controversial measure that extended the franchise and was the subject of heated Conservative and Liberal debate. In addition, there is a biography of Trollope and a chronology of his life as well as extensive notes.
Phineas Redux
The fourth of Trollope's Palliser novels, Phineas Redux is one of his most spellbinding achievements. Trollope shows a remarkably prescient sense of the importance of intrigue, bribery, and sexual scandal, and the power of the press to make or break a political career. He is equally skilled in portraying the complex nature of Phineas's romantic entanglements with three powerful women: the mysterious Madame Max, the devoted Laura Kennedy, and the irrepressible Lady Glencora (now Duchess of Omnium). In his introduction, John Bowen highlights the weaving of public events and private passions in the book, the strength of the female characters, and the analogies, both subtle and comic, between the different kinds of action (politics, hunting, romance) that the book contains. An appendix outlines the internal chronology of the series, providing a unique understanding of the six novels as a linked narrative. In addition, the book features a compact biography of Trollope and a chronology charts his life against the major historical events of the period. Numerous notes explain political, cultural, and social allusions.
Donald
As America's most infamous former Secretary of Defense lies poised to unleash his wistful recollections and rewriting of the war on terror, authors Eric Martin and Stephen Elliott humbly submit their take to the historical record: Donald. What would happen if Donald Rumsfeld, former defense secretary and architect of the war on terror, was abducted at night from his Maryland home, held without charges in his own prison system, denied a trial, and kept in a place where no one could find him, beyond the reach of the law? Donald is a high-wire allegory that answers this question, in equal parts breakneck thriller and gradual descent into madness. But it is also a novel rooted in the harrowing stories of real people caught in America's military campaigns. And while there are those who would try to convince us that war is full of uncertainty?of knowns and unknowns?Donald reminds us that there remain things we know to be wrong.
The Hunt for the President Wife
In The Hunt for the President織s Wife, a dazzling young nun takes on an urgent and daring political mission for the CIA. In the midst of its human trafficking operations, an American crime family unknowingly seizes at the international border the incognito wife of the Presidente of the Republic of Mexico, creating a catastrophic political crisis. Sister Maria Camarillo--a beautiful young nun with unique and highly developed investigative skills--is swiftly appointed a CIA Special Agent charged with finding and rescuing the missing Senora Ruiz. The Hunt for the President織s Wife takes you where you織ve never been in electrifying scenes of Sister Maria facing off with the lecherous whoremaster of the Maids Club prostitution network and boldly confronting the scheming Presidente Felipe de Ruiz as she fights to preserve her sexual innocence, rescue Senora Ruiz and save America from a tidal wave of panic-stricken border-crashing refugees fleeing a bloody Mexican Civil War.A SIZZLING POLITICAL THRILLER! ARE YOU GAME?A provocative read for you and your friends.Visit the author at www.Authorsden.com/richardleeorey
The Hunt for the President Wife
In The Hunt for the President織s Wife, a dazzling young nun takes on an urgent and daring political mission for the CIA. In the midst of its human trafficking operations, an American crime family unknowingly seizes at the international border the incognito wife of the Presidente of the Republic of Mexico, creating a catastrophic political crisis. Sister Maria Camarillo--a beautiful young nun with unique and highly developed investigative skills--is swiftly appointed a CIA Special Agent charged with finding and rescuing the missing Senora Ruiz. The Hunt for the President織s Wife takes you where you織ve never been in electrifying scenes of Sister Maria facing off with the lecherous whoremaster of the Maids Club prostitution network and boldly confronting the scheming Presidente Felipe de Ruiz as she fights to preserve her sexual innocence, rescue Senora Ruiz and save America from a tidal wave of panic-stricken border-crashing refugees fleeing a bloody Mexican Civil War.A SIZZLING POLITICAL THRILLER! ARE YOU GAME?A provocative read for you and your friends.Visit the author at www.Authorsden.com/richardleeorey
Freedom
Bestselling authors bring together a thought-provoking collection of short stories, each inspired by one of thirty human rights adopted by the United Nations and promoted by Amnesty International. Freedom is a mix of thoughtful, serious, funny, and thrilling stories that harness the power of literature to celebrate--and affirm--our shared humanity. Published in association with Amnesty International, an array of internationally acclaimed & award-winning writers remind us these fundamental freedoms - ratified in 1948 - are just as crucial to protect and uphold today as ever. The United Nations took a moral stand against human rights crimes and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a proclamation of thirty rights that belong to us all, starting memorably with Article 1: "All human beings are born free and equal." Amnesty International is one of several international organizations promoting UDHR. It is a world-leading grassroots human rights organization & a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. Authors include: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Kate Atkinson, Ishmael Beah, Paulo Coelho, Nadine Gordimer, Marina Lewycka, Henning Mankell, Yann Martel, Rohinton Minstry, David Mitchell, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates.
The Reform Plan
A devoted high school history teacher, Mr. Besserian enjoys motivating his students at the highly diverse Fillmore High School and tries hard to make his subject matter interesting. His efforts have earned him the Teacher of the Year Award and the respect of the faculty, not to mention the students themselves. But at a staff meeting, Besserian learns of the proposed academic improvement plan for Fillmore High that may fundamentally alter the school-and not for the best. Simply named the Reform Plan, it calls for community involvement on such a large scale that it will virtually turn the school into its own independent city, as well as impose corporate values on the students themselves. Besserian isn't at all sure this is such a wise idea and decides to unearth the truth behind the project by assigning his history class to research it. Besserian and his students start digging into the plan and uncover disturbing and dangerous information that underscores the precarious level of academic instruction in the school. The more they uncover, the more Besserian realizes that greed and corruption are the backbone of the supposed "Reform Plan." But can a lone teacher and a group of students possibly stop the juggernaut of Fillmore High's reform before it destroys the school's very foundation?
The Reform Plan
A devoted high school history teacher, Mr. Besserian enjoys motivating his students at the highly diverse Fillmore High School and tries hard to make his subject matter interesting. His efforts have earned him the Teacher of the Year Award and the respect of the faculty, not to mention the students themselves. But at a staff meeting, Besserian learns of the proposed academic improvement plan for Fillmore High that may fundamentally alter the school-and not for the best. Simply named the Reform Plan, it calls for community involvement on such a large scale that it will virtually turn the school into its own independent city, as well as impose corporate values on the students themselves. Besserian isn't at all sure this is such a wise idea and decides to unearth the truth behind the project by assigning his history class to research it. Besserian and his students start digging into the plan and uncover disturbing and dangerous information that underscores the precarious level of academic instruction in the school. The more they uncover, the more Besserian realizes that greed and corruption are the backbone of the supposed "Reform Plan." But can a lone teacher and a group of students possibly stop the juggernaut of Fillmore High's reform before it destroys the school's very foundation?
Paying Back Jack
Christopher G. Moore's prize-winning series of crime novels set in Bangkok has been translated into eleven languages and critically acclaimed around the world. Featuring Vincent Calvino, a disbarred American lawyer working as a PI in the dangerous and steamy Thai capital, the books offer gripping plots, fascinating characters, and unparalleled insight into one of the world's most entrancing cities. In Paying Back Jack, Calvino agrees to follow the "minor wife" of a Thai politician and report on her movements. His client is Rick Casey, a shady American whose life has been darkened by the unsolved murder of his idealistic son. But what seems to be a simple surveillance job pulls Calvino into a quest for revenge, as well as a perilous web of political allegiance. Calvino narrowly escapes an attempt on his life and then avoids being framed for a murder only through the calculated lever-pulling of his best friend, Thai police colonel, Pratt. But unknown to our man in Bangkok, in an anonymous apartment tower in the center of the city, a two-man sniper team awaits its shot, a shot that will change everything. Paying Back Jack is classic Christopher G. Moore: densely-woven, eye-opening, and riveting.
Waterloo
Nick Lasseter is in a slump--as a reporter for the Waterloo Weekly, and in every other part of his life as well. When he grudgingly agrees to write a piece about a rising female Republican legislator, he stumbles onto a political fight in which the good guys and bad guys start to seem interchangeable. And not even the deceased can be relied upon to stick to their stories when Nick gets involved with a political insider. As they search the dim depths of a civic past that's anything but dead and buried, they find that some things never change--things like the moral ambiguity of practical politics and the sad, hilarious cluelessness of young men in love. Bittersweet and biting, elegiac and sharply observed, Waterloo is a portrait of a generation in search of itself--and a love letter to the slackers, rockers, hustlers, hacks, and hangers-on who populate Austin, Texas--from a formidable new intelligence in American fiction.
No Space for Further Burials
"[Feryal] Ali Gauhar's epistolary approach highlights not only the horrifying but also the withering monotony of prison life . . . it's a haunting and important read, as the war continues eight years later, without more of an end-or sense-in sight." --Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago "Profoundly touching . . . Feryal Ali Gauhar questions us and forces us to face our responsibilities as universal citizens. In a mirror effect, she makes us see the image of a world that has become its own tormentor." --Yasmina Khadra, author of The Swallows of KabuSet in Afghanistan in late 2002, No Space for Further Burials is a chilling indictment of the madness of war and our collective complicity in the perpetuation of violence. The novel's narrator, a US army medical technician in Afghanistan helping "liberate" the country from the Taliban, has been captured by rebels and thrown into an asylum. The other inmates are a besieged gathering of society's forgotten and unwanted refugees and derelicts, disabled and different, resilient and maddened, struggling to survive the lunacy raging outside the asylum compound. The novel becomes a powerful evocation of the country's desolate history of plunder and war, waged by insiders and outsiders, all fueled by ideology, desperation, and greed. This astonishingly powerful story unfolds the tragedy of Afghanistan, as told by the captive narrator, in hauntingly beautiful prose. While the characters try to cope with their individual destinies, the terrible madness of war is counterpointed with the poignancy of their lives and the narrator's own peculiar predicament--the "victor" now a victim, his ambivalence a metaphor for everything Afghanistan symbolizes.
The Grand Master
A scandalous coverup that includes the President's wife (a woman with ambitions of her own) and the mysterious deaths of everyone who comes too close to the truth, makes The Grand Master a riveting tale of conspiracy and espionage.Senator Bobby Hart agrees to look into the rapidly covered up murder of the President by a pricey call girl and finds he has become a target in an international plot directed by one of the world's wealthiest, and most mysterious, men.Dodging gunmen in the back alleys of Paris, the Senator traces his way to the source of the operation, only to find out that the one he suspects to be pulling the strings has, in reality, a completely different plan...
Exiles in the Garden
"A master American novelist." --Vanity Fair "One of the most astute writers of American fiction" (New York Times Book Review) delivers the resonant story of Alec Malone, a senator's son who rejects the family business of politics for a career as a newspaper photographer. Alec and his Swiss wife, Lucia, settle in Georgetown next door to a couple whose 矇migr矇 gatherings in their garden remind Lucia of all the things Americans are not. She leaves Alec as his career founders on his refusal of an assignment to cover the Vietnam War -- a slyly subversive fictional choice from Ward Just, who was himself a renowned war correspondent. At the center of the novel is Alec's unforeseen reckoning with Lucia's long-absent father, Andre Duran, a Czech living out the end of his life in a hostel called Goya House. Duran's career as an adventurer and antifascist commando is everything Alec's is not. The encounter forces Alec to confront just how different a life where things -- "terrible things, terrible things" -- happen is from a life where nothing much happens at all. Once again, "Ward Just writes the kind of books they say no one writes anymore: smart, well-crafted narratives -- wise to the ways of the world -- that use fiction to show us how we live" (Joseph Kanon, Los Angeles Times).
Estrella distante/ Distant Star
El delirante y perturbador misterio de un impostor El narrador vio por primera vez a aquel hombre en 1971 o 1972, cuando Allende era a繳n Presidente de Chile. Escrib穩a poemas distantes y cautelosos, seduc穩a a las mujeres y despertaba en los hombres una indefinible desconfianza. Volvi籀 a verlo despu矇s del golpe, pero en ese momento ignoraba que aquel aviador, que escrib穩a vers穩culos de la Biblia con el humo de un avi籀n de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y el poeta, eran uno, y el mismo. Y as穩 nos es contada la historia de un impostor, de un hombre de muchos nombres, sin otra moral que la est矇tica, dandy del horror, asesino y fot籀grafo del miedo, artista b獺rbaro que llevaba sus creaciones hasta sus 繳ltimas y letales consecuencias. Novela clave en la obra de Roberto Bola簽o, Estrella Distante es, adem獺s de un apasionante thriller intelectual, una escalofriante investigaci籀n sobre la mentalidad fascista y sus efectos en la sensibilidad literaria. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship.The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime. The narrator, unable to stop himself, tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down, and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive, mocking humor sparkles within Bolano's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolano's world there's a big graveyard and there's a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel By Night in Chile as "a tale of terror, a situation comedy, and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.") Many Chilean authors have written about the "bloody events of the early Pinochet years, the abductions and murders," Richard Eder commented in the The New York Times: "None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolano."
The Unpossessed City
A gripping novel about the dangers and draws of contemporary Russia--from the author of The Geographer's Library With The Geographer's Library, Jon Fasman made an "inventive and spirited" debut (The New Yorker) that landed him on The New York Times bestseller list. Every bit as dazzling, The Unpossessed City takes readers into the Wild East that is Russia today. There we meet Jim Vilatzer--an American expat whose Russian language skills land him a job interviewing former inmates of the Gulag and ensnare him in a web of deceit involving the CIA, Russia's Interior Ministry, and Central Asian arms dealers selling the most dangerous technologies to the highest bidder. From its brooding portrayal of Moscow to its riveting pace, The Unpossessed City is an atmospheric triumph in the tradition of Donna Leon's novels of Venice.
The Price of Everything
Stanford University student and Cuban American tennis prodigy Ramon Fernandez is outraged when a nearby mega-store hikes its prices the night of an earthquake. He crosses paths with provost and economics professor Ruth Lieber when he plans a campus protest against the price-gouging retailer--which is also a major donor to the university. Ruth begins a dialogue with Ramon about prices, prosperity, and innovation and their role in our daily lives. Is Ruth trying to limit the damage from Ramon's protest? Or does she have something altogether different in mind? As Ramon is thrust into the national spotlight by events beyond the Stanford campus, he learns there's more to price hikes than meets the eye, and he is forced to reconsider everything he thought he knew. What is the source of America's high standard of living? What drives entrepreneurs and innovation? What upholds the hidden order that allows us to choose our careers and pursue our passions with so little conflict? How does economic order emerge without anyone being in charge? Ruth gives Ramon and the reader a new appreciation for how our economy works and the wondrous role that the price of everything plays in everyday life. The Price of Everything is a captivating story about economic growth and the unseen forces that create and sustain economic harmony all around us.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The first published novel from the controversial Nobel Prize winning Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago. In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength. First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man's will to prevail over relentless dehumanization. Includes an Introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenkoand an Afterword by Eric Bogosian
Beijing Coma
Dai Wei, a PhD student and protestor in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, was caught by a soldier's bullet and fell into a deep coma. But as the millennium draws near, he begins to emerge from unconsciousness, and to sense the massive changes in his country. At once a powerful allegory of a rising China, and a seminal story of the Tiananmen Square protests, Beijing Coma is Ma Jian's masterpiece.
In the City of Fear
In this novel of political intrigue, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ward Just captures the best and brightest of Washington amid turmoil of the sixties and its repercussions twenty years later. In the City of Fear follows the intersecting lives of a good congressman, his good wife, and the good wife's lover, an infantry colonel whose memories of the war, and a secret plot concocted by the Washington power brokers to win it, are more than he can bear.
The Race
Can an honest man become president? In The Race, this timely and provocative novel from bestselling author Richard North Patterson, a maverick candidate takes on his political enemies and the ruthless machinery of American politics. Corey Grace--a handsome and charismatic Republican senator from Ohio--is plunged by an act of terrorism into a fierce presidential primary battle with the favorite of the party establishment and a magnetic leader of the Christian right. A decorated Gulf War Air Force pilot known for speaking his mind, Grace's reputation for voting his own conscience rather than the party line--together with his growing romance with Lexie Hart, an African-American movie star--has earned him a reputation as a maverick and an iconoclast. But Grace is still haunted by a tragic mistake buried deep in his past, and now his integrity will be put to the test in this most brutal of political contests, in which nothing in his past or present life is off-limits. Depicting contemporary power politics at its most ruthless, The Race takes on the most incendiary issues in American culture: racism, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, gay rights, and the rise of media monopolies with their own agenda and lust for power. As the pressure of the campaign intensifies, Grace encounters betrayal, excruciating moral choices, and secrets that can destroy lives. Ultimately, the race leads to a deadlocked party convention where Grace must resolve the conflict between his romance with Lexie and his presidential ambitions--and decide just who and what he is willing to sacrifice.
Cry Wolf
Cry Wolf is an Animal Farm for the 21st century: a brilliant allegory of the political challenges we face in post-9/11 America. The farm animals' struggle to maintain their way of life against an influx of change is a powerful commentary on the importance of balancing freedom with justice, and on how easily even the best of intentions can destroy a community too caught up with what is "fair" to do what is right. Lake's novel raises questions of in the heart of every devoted citizen: Does political correctness ever trump law? Should safety ever be compromised for the sake of inclusion? Are big government and judicial systems tools to create order, or do they provide chaos?
My Holocaust
Successful father-and-son business partners Maurice and Norman Messer know a good product when they see it. That product is the Holocaust--and they market it enthusiastically. Maurice is a survivor with a self-inflated personal history. Norman enjoys vicarious victimhood via the second-generation movement. And nothing will prevent them from pushing their agenda and reaping the rewards. Not guilt, pride, or ethics. Not the disappearance of Norman's daughter, Nechama, into the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz or her reemergence as Sister Consolatia of the Cross. Not even the violent takeover of America's most powerful Holocaust memorialization institution by an angry coalition of self-styled "victims" eagerly seeking Holocaust status.
Lost City Radio
"Daniel Alarcon writes about subterfuge, lies, and the arbitrary recreation of history with a masterful clarity. By accepting the premise that war is senseless, he goes on to make sense of the lives that are destroyed in its wake. Lost City Radio is both ambitious and resonant." -- Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and The Dutch HouseIn his critically acclaimed debut novel, award winning author Daniel Alarc籀n vividly portrays an anonymous nation searching for its identity at the end of a war with no clear right or wrong. For ten years, Norma has been the on-air voice of consolation and hope for the Indians in the mountains and the poor from the barrios--a people broken by war's violence. As the host of Lost City Radio, she reads the names of those who have disappeared--those whom the furiously expanding city has swallowed. Through her efforts lovers are reunited and the lost are found. But in the aftermath of the decade long bloody civil conflict, her own life is about to forever change--thanks to the arrival of a young boy from the jungle who provides a cryptic clue to the fate of Norma's vanished husband. Stunning, timely, and absolutely mesmerizing, Lost City Radio probes the deepest questions of war and its meaning: from its devastating impact on society to the emotional scarring each survivor carries for years after.
Measuring the World
Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann's brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment. Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napolean world.
The Zero
National Book Award Finalist "Political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark. Grade: A." --Entertainment WeeklyThe breakout novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter: In the wake of a devastating terrorist attack, one man struggles to make sense of his world, even as the world tries to make use of himBrian Remy has no idea how he got here. It's been only five days since terrorists attacked his city, and Remy is experiencing gaps in his life--as if he were a stone being skipped across water. He has a self-inflicted gunshot wound that he doesn't remember inflicting. His son wears a black armband and refuses to acknowledge that Remy is still alive. He seems to be going blind. He has a beautiful new girlfriend whose name he doesn't know. And his old partner in the police department, who may well be the only person crazier than Remy, has just gotten his picture on a box of First Responder cereal.And these are the good things in Brian Remy's life. While smoke still hangs over the city, Remy is recruited by a mysterious government agency that is assigned to gather all of the paper that was scattered in the attacks. As he slowly begins to realize that he's working for a shadowy intelligence operation, Remy stumbles across a dangerous plot, and with the world threatening to boil over in violence and betrayal, he realizes that he's got to track down the most elusive target of them all--himself. And the only way to do that is to return to that place where everything started falling apart.In the tradition of Catch-22, The Manchurian Candidate, and the novels of Ian McEwan, comes this extraordinary story of searing humor and sublime horror, of blindness, bewilderment, and that achingly familiar feeling that the world has suddenly stopped making sense.
Bartleby & Co.
In Bartleby & Co., an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: "I would prefer not to." Addressing such "artists of refusal" as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, Bartleby & Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is utterly engaging, a work of profound and philosophical beauty.
Whiteman
In an Ivory Coast village where Christians and Muslims are squaring off for war, against a backdrop of bloody conflict and vibrant African life, Jack Diaz--an American relief worker--and Mamadou, his village guardian, learn that hate knows no color and that true heroism waits where we least expect it. During lulls in the violence, Jack learns the cycles of Africa--of hunting in the rain forest, cultivating the yam, and navigating the nuances of the language; of witchcraft, storytelling, and chivalry. Despite the omnipresence of AIDS, he courts a stunning Peul girl, meets his neighbor's wife in the darkened forest, and desperately pursues the village flirt. Still, Jack spends many nights alone in his hut, longing for love in a place where his skin color excludes him. Brimming with dangerous passions and the pressures of life in a time of war, Whiteman is a stunning debut and a tale of desire, isolation, humor, action, and fear.
The Ministry of Pain
Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class--and pulls her dangerously close to another--which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.
The Dream Life of Sukhanov
Olga Grushin's astonishing literary debut has won her comparisons with everyone from Gogol to Nabokov. A virtuoso study in betrayal and its consequences, it explores--really, colonizes--the consciousness of Anatoly Sukhanov, who many years before abandoned the precarious existence of an underground artist for the perks of a Soviet apparatchik. But, at the age of 56, his perfect life is suddenly disintegrating. Buried dreams return to haunt him. New political alignments threaten to undo him. Vaulting effortlessly from the real to the surreal and from privilege to paranoia, The Dream Life of Sukhanov is a darkly funny, demonically entertaining novel.
Tales of the Out & the Gone
Comprised of short fiction spanning the early 1970s to the twenty-first century-most of which has never been published-Tales of the Out & the Gone reflects the astounding evolution of America's most provocative literary anti-hero.The first section of the book, "War Stories," offers six stories enmeshed in the volatile politics of the '70s and '80s; the second section, "Tales of the Out & the Gone," reveals Baraka's increasing literary adventurousness, combining an unpredictable language play with a passion for abstraction and psychological exploration.Throughout, Baraka's unique and constantly changing literary style will educate readers on the evolution of one of America's most accomplished literary masters of the past four decades.
The Spider's House
Originally published in 1955, Paul Bowles's remarkable novel set in Fez, Morocco, during the last days of the French colonial empire, is an expansive piece of writing--vintage Bowles"With its atmosphere of sinister tension, its scenes of nationalist conspiracy and French police action, of escape and pursuit in the Arab quarter, The Spider's House reads for stretches like a first-class political thriller." -New York TimesThe dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures, recurrent themes of Paul Bowles's writings, are dramatized with brutal honesty in this novel set in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising. Totally relevant to today's political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, richly descriptive of its setting, and uncompromising in its characterizations, The Spider's House is perhaps Bowles's best, most beautifully subtle novel.
A Dry White Season
As startling and powerful as when first published more than two decades ago, Andr矇 Brink's classic novel, A Dry White Season, is an unflinching and unforgettable look at racial intolerance, the human condition, and the heavy price of morality. Ben Du Toit is a white schoolteacher in suburban Johannesburg in a dark time of intolerance and state-sanctioned apartheid. A simple, apolitical man, he believes in the essential fairness of the South African government and its policies--until the sudden arrest and subsequent "suicide" of a black janitor from Du Toit's school. Haunted by new questions and desperate to believe that the man's death was a tragic accident, Du Toit undertakes an investigation into the terrible affair--a quest for the truth that will have devastating consequences for the teacher and his family, as it draws him into a lethal morass of lies, corruption, and murder.
The Washingtonienne
The Capitol Hill aide who scandalized Washington, D.C., with her blog has now written a sharp, steamy, utterly unrepentant novel set against the backdrop of the nation's capitol. When Jacqueline Turner's fianc? gives her two days to move out of his apartment, she has no choice but to leave New York City and crash with her best friend in Washington, D.C. She needs an exciting new life--not to mention real employment. Where better to get a fresh start than the nation's capitol? Alas, D.C. turns out to be a lot more buttoned-up and toned down than she'd hoped. It's a town where a girl has to make her own excitement--and Jacqueline Turner is just the woman for the job. From the married presidential appointee who gives her cash after each tryst to the lascivious Georgetown lawyer who parades her around like something out of Pretty Woman, Jackie's roster of paramours grows so complicated that her friends ask her to start a blog so they can keep up. But in a small town like Washington, the line between private and public blurs very easily, and Jackie quickly realizes this blog idea may be more than she bargained for. Deliciously gossipy and impossible to put down, The Washingtonienne is every bit as steamy and outrageous as the real-life exploits that inspired it.
Let It Be Morning
Now a major motion picture from award-winning director Eran KolirinIn his searing new novel, the young Arab-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua introduces a disillusioned journalist who returns to his hometown, an Arab village within Israel, hoping to reclaim the simplicity of life among kin. But the prodigal son returns to a place where the people are petty and provincial and everything is smaller than he remembers. When Israeli tanks surround the village without explanation, the community devolves into a Darwinian jungle, and the journalist and his family must negotiate the fault lines of a world on the brink of implosion. With the enduring moral and literary power of Albert Camus and George Orwell, Let It Be Morning proves Sayed Kashua to be a fearless, prophetic observer of a political and human quagmire that offers no easy answers.
Noor
Sorayya Khan's debut novel is a powerful and poignant story of memory, family, tragedy, and forgiveness. Set in modern-day Islambad, Pakistan, the book depicts an extraordinary child who enables her mother, Sajida, and her grandfather, Ali, to confront the pasts they have chosen to suppress. Through Noor's artwork, her family members are transported through their haunted memories of the 1970 cyclone that claimed the lives of a million people and the violent atrocities of the 1971 conflict between East and West Pakistan that eventually created the independent country of Bangladesh. As Noor's drawings bring to life sights, sounds, smells, and sensations from the past, her family is forced to admit of the betrayals and disillusionments that they thought had been buried with time. Moving, heartbreaking, and unsettling by turns, Noor is a novel about the horrors of war, the power of forgiveness, and, most important, the strength of the human spirit.
