Literary Fiction Political

Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic 18-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, in the US in the summer before university. Dmitry is a charming sociopath, who develops a fascination with his autodidactic philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig.

Once a promising actor, Tim Brettigan has gone missing. His father thinks he may have seen him among some homeless people. And though she knows he left on purpose, his mother has been searching for him all over the city. She checks the usual places and stum­bles upon a local community group with lofty goals and an enigmatic leader who will alter all of their lives. Christina, a young woman rapidly becoming addicted to a boutique drug that gives her a feeling of blessedness, is inexplicably drawn to the same collective by a man who’s convinced he may start a revolution.

Max Bowman has been gone for a long time. So long that he’s lost his home, his love, his money and most of his memories. Now, the Russian Rat Pack is hunting him down. A dog puppet with Lego blocks for teeth is barking out strange warnings. His weird brother is hiding something in the basement. And the woman Max left behind is involved with a crooked lobbyist whose menace is almost as big as his stomach, as well as the stunning secret he’s got under wraps. Oh yeah. And Donald Trump is also now president.

Thirty years after its great triumph in Vietnam, the US has again become mired in an endless foreign war overseas. Stories of super soldiers known as the Volunteers tuck in little American boys and girls every night. Yet domestic politics are aflame. Violent protests erupt throughout the nation; an ex-military watchdog group clashes with police while radical terrorists threaten to expose government experiments within the veteran rehabilitation colonies. Halfway between war and peace, the Volunteers find themselves waiting for orders in the vast American city-state, Empire City.

In the 99th district of a sprawling labour camp, the Author, Musician, Scholar, Theologian and Technician - and hundreds just like them - are undergoing Re-education, to restore their revolutionary zeal and credentials. In charge of this process is the Child, who delights in draconian rules, monitoring behaviour and confiscating treasured books. But when bad weather arrives, followed by the ‘three bitter years’, the intellectuals are abandoned by the regime and left on their own to survive.

One autumn night, as a grad student named Matthew is walking home from the subway, a handsome skateboarder catches his eye. Leif, mesmerizing and enigmatic, invites Matthew to meet his friends, who are experimenting with tarot cards. It's easier to know what's in other people's minds than most people realize, the friends claim. Do they believe in telepathy? Can they actually do it? Though Matthew should be writing his dissertation on the poetry of kingship, he soon finds himself falling in love with Leif - a poet of the internet age.

Amy Waldman, who reported from Afghanistan for the New York Times after 9/11, has created a taut, propulsive novel about power, perspective, and idealism, brushing aside the dust of America's longest-standing war to reveal the complicated truths beneath. A Door in the Earth is the rarest of books, one that helps us understand living history through poignant characters and unforgettable storytelling.

Nelson Algren was a renowned writer, known for his penetrating and influential social novels such as The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side. Originally published in 1935, Somebody in Boots was Algren’s first novel, based on his experiences living in Texas during the Great Depression. A wonderful companion to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, this new edition of Somebody in Boots features an introduction by Colin Asher, the author of a biography of Algren.

Fred is the sole offspring of Lenny Snyder, the famous (or notorious) pied piper of the counterculture, and in middle age he hates being reminded of it. But neither can he ignore any longer his psychedelically bizarre childhood. From infancy, for instance, he was called Freedom (in fact his given name) not only by those who should have known him but also by members of the burgeoning movement led by his father, who happily exploited having his wife and his toddling, then walking and talking, and finally observant son in tow.

Antonio M. Lugo Olea supo encender la imaginación y la esperanza de millones de mexicanos ofreciendo una lucha frontal contra la corrupción, la impunidad y la delincuencia organizada. También prometió hacer lo posible por terminar con la pobreza, la marginación y la injusticia. Los ciudadanos, hartos de gobiernos de ineptos y ladrones, con su voto llevaron a AMLO a la presidencia del país. Por si fuera poco, su partido también consiguió una avasalladora mayoría en el Congreso, vital para apoyarlo en todos sus proyectos.

Spanning 30 years of American history, from the twilight of Kennedy’s Camelot to the days leading up to Bill Clinton’s election, We Are All Good People Here perfectly resonates with today’s fraught American political zeitgeist and asks us: why do good intentions too often lead to tragic outcomes? Can we separate our political choices and our personal morals? And is it possible to truly bury our former selves and escape our own history?

Twice a week, the president pilots his ultraluxury airship Trump Sky Alpha (seats start at $50,000), delivering, as he travels between D.C., New York City, and Mar-a-Lago, a streaming YouTube address to the nation, in which he trumpets his successes and blasts his enemies - until the day his words plunge the world into nuclear war. One year later, with 90 percent of the world's population destroyed, a journalist named Rachel has taken refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone.

When a grieving man searches for culpability in the death of his wife, a passenger on trains blown up by terrorists, he settles on a politician. The bombers, to his mind, were only the end point in a long chain of proximate causes – to blame them would be like blaming the trigger mechanisms on the bombs. The ultimate cause, he believes, the person responsible for first setting events into motion, is the politician whose policies and practices have had profound and violent impact abroad. And so it is only right, surely, that that politician is punished.

"Wenn Timur Vermes‘ Erstlingswerk böse, realistisch und komisch ist, so ist sein zweiter Geniestreich böser, realistischer und komischer." - Christoph Maria Herbst. Deutschland hat eine Obergrenze für Asylsuchende eingeführt, ganz Europa ist bis weit nach Nordafrika hinein abgeriegelt. Jenseits der Sahara entstehen riesige Lager, in denen Millionen von Flüchtlingen warten, warten, warten. So lange, dass man in derselben Zeit eigentlich auch zu Fuß gehen könnte, wäre das nicht der sichere Tod.

As a major hurricane threatens the northeast, math professor Gandalf Cohen is abducted by federal agents and flown to a secret interrogation center off the coast of Maine. Austin Coombs, a young local resident, is a newly hired civilian guard assigned to the detention center. Henry Ames, a man of personal secrets, is the FBI special agent in charge of Gandalf's case and doubts the professor's terrorist involvement; Tobias, his second-in-command, disagrees, preferring violent interrogation. As the hurricane slams the shore, conflict detonates and each character must choose a side.

He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate-justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet, and his plants....

When John Nelson abandoned his government job to join a scrappy band of activists, he didn't realize trying to save the world would be so hard. His ideals remain strong, but his optimism is wearing thin. Parts per Million, Julia Stoops' socially conscious, fast-paced debut novel, is set in Portland, Oregon, in 2002. As the trio dives into antiwar protests and investigates fraud at an elite university, Nelson falls in love with an unlikely houseguest, Deirdre, a photographer from Ireland - and a recovering addict.

Bluegrass musician, former journalist and editor, and now PhD in English, Mark Brumfeld has arrived at his 30s with significant debt and no steady prospects. His girlfriend Cassie - a punk bassist in an all-female band, who fled her Midwestern childhood for a new identity - finds work at a “new media” company. When Cassie refuses his marriage proposal, Mark leaves New York and returns to the basement of his childhood home in the Baltimore suburbs.

When Rebecca Laurelson is forced to leave her post as a trauma surgeon in an east African field hospital, she arrives at her aunt’s house on the Indian Ocean and is taken into the heart of a family she has never met before. It’s a world of all-night beach parties and constant cocktail receptions, and within its languorous embrace her attraction for her much younger cousin grows. But these gilded lives and their fellow white Africans on the coast are under threat - Islamist terror attacks are on the rise and Rebecca knows more about this violence than she is prepared to reveal.

Paris Metro is the gripping story of an American journalist compelled to reexamine her convictions as terrorism threatens to engulf her family. It's 2015, and Kit is living in Paris, estranged from her Iraqi diplomat husband and raising their teenage son, Ahmed. When Charlie Hebdo is attacked and a cartoonist friend of hers is killed, and then terrorists storm the Bataclan, Kit's Parisian world is shattered. As she is drawn back into reporting, she begins to suspect that Ahmed may be running with the terrorists.