Literary Fiction Political

Lincoln is the cornerstone of Gore Vidal’s fictional American chronicle, which includes Burr; 1876; Washington, D.C.; Empire; and Hollywood. It opens early on a frozen winter morning in 1861, when President-elect Abraham Lincoln slips into Washington, flanked by two bodyguards. The future president is in disguise, for there is talk of a plot to murder him. During the next four years there will be numerous plots to murder this man who has sworn to unite a disintegrating nation.

When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty.

World War II is nearly over. For the Russians the enemy is no longer Nazi Germany but the American behemoth that threatens to topple the Communist revolution. Deep within the walls of the Kremlin, Stalin's top man hatches a brilliant plan that will alter the course of postwar history - and it's all based on a deception as simple as the shell game.

For Marty Dworkin and his band of young Trotskyist dreamers in Buffalo, New York, the vision of a just, socialist world crumbles with the rise of Stalin and the chaos of World War II. In the two decades that follow, Dworkin and his idealistic colleagues strive to establish a new political party and battle through unexpected trials with family, work, aging, and the changing world. They run up against an increasingly conservative America and a thriving materialism directly opposed to their own fervent beliefs. They emerge humbled, but still hopeful, into the 1960s, when civil rights struggles and anti-war radicalism move to center stage.

Ha Jin displays his impressive storytelling gifts in this richly textured examination of contemporary China in 1989. Professor Yang, a respected literature scholar, suffers a stroke and is confined to a hospital bed. Now Jian Wan, Yang’s brightest student and future son-in-law, must suspend his rigorous studies to care for his mentor. Jian dutifully keeps watch as Yang begins raving madly, often pleading with unseen tormentors. Has Yang lost his grip on sanity, or is he no longer capable of hiding deeply buried, painful secrets?

In an imaginary Nigeria, a cunning entrepreneur is selling body parts stolen from Dr. Menka's hospital for use in ritualistic practices. Dr. Menka shares the grisly news with his oldest college friend, bon viveur, star engineer, and Yoruba royal, Duyole Pitan-Payne. The life of every party, Duyole is about to assume a prestigious post at the United Nations in New York, but it now seems that someone is deter­mined that he not make it there. And neither Dr. Menka nor Duyole knows why, or how close the enemy is, or how powerful.

Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign.

Haunted all her life by feelings of terror and emptiness, 49-year-old Urania Cabral returns to her native Dominican Republic - and finds herself reliving the events of 1961, when the capital was still called Trujillo City and one old man terrorized a nation of three million. Rafael Trujillo, the depraved ailing dictator whom Dominicans call the Goat, controls his inner circle with a combination of violence and blackmail. There is a conspiracy against him, and a Machiavellian revolution already underway.

From the former communications director for the White House and current political media strategist comes a suspenseful and smart novel about the first female president and all dramas and deceptions she faces both in politics and in love. Eighteen Acres, a description used by political insiders when referring to the White House complex, follows the first female President of the United States, Charlotte Kramer, and her staff as they take on dangerous threats.

There is a saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world's sturdiest aircraft, carrying Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988?

Was it because of: mechanical failure; human error; the CIA's impatience; a blind woman's curse; generals not happy with their pension plans; the mango season? Or could it be your narrator, Ali Shigri?

Historia de un amor imposible, Las batallas en el desierto es un magistral audiolibro que involucra otros aspectos como la corrupción social y política, el inicio del Mexico moderno y la desaparición del país tradicional, y el rescate de las memorias individuales y colectivas de una ciudad a la que José Emilio Pacheco ama profundamente, pero recrea sin nostalgia y denuncia de manera implacable.

It is 1988 and Saul Adler, a narcissistic young historian, has been invited to Communist East Berlin to do research; in exchange, he must publish a favorable essay about the German Democratic Republic. As a gift for his translator's sister, a Beatles fanatic who will be his host, Saul's girlfriend will shoot a photograph of him standing in the crosswalk on Abbey Road, an homage to the famous album cover. As he waits for her to arrive, he is grazed by an oncoming car, which changes the trajectory of his life--and this story of good intentions and reckless actions.

Already an international sensation and prize-winning best seller in France, an evocative coming-of-age story of a young boy, a lost childhood, and a shattered homeland. Burundi, 1992. For 10-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expatriate neighborhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister Ana, is something close to paradise. These are carefree days of laughter and adventure - sneaking Supermatch cigarettes and gorging on stolen mangoes - as he and his mischievous gang of friends transform their tiny cul-de-sac into their kingdom.

Look Who's Back is a cutting satire on modern media-bloated, celebrity-obsessed society, seen through the eyes of Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. It is the Summer of 2011 and things have changed - no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognizes his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman.

Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .

Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch has spent all his 60 years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for 40 of them, their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he's had plenty of reasons not to be: chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive.

The Dolan brothers live by their wits, jumping freight trains, and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While 16-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his dashing older brother Gig dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar, and who introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: A wealthy mining magnate who will stop at nothing to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.

Ravaged by the Change, an island nation in a time very like our own has built the Wall - an enormous concrete barrier around its entire coastline. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself.

A student at the University of Baghdad must return to his small village home when the Americans invade Iraq. There, he witnesses American soldiers kill the benign village idiot, bomb a wedding, and finally, terrorize his family in his own home. Consumed by the desire for vengeance, the youth leaves for the city, where he is taken in by a radical group.

Special agent Jericho Quinn is a wanted man. Suspected of murder and marked for death by a network of conspirators embedded in the White House, Quinn knows he has to get out of the country--fast--before a team of contract killers find him and his daughter. To set things right at home, he'll have to take a nonstop flight from Anchorage, Alaska, to Vladivostok, Russia, aboard a massive Airbus A380. But soon after takeoff, it becomes apparent that Quinn and his daughter picked the wrong plane.