Literary Realism

Jaymi is an independent games designer living on Electra Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Opposed to him are his former colleagues at Bang Dead Games. Their mounting competitiveness regarding his own extravagant game creation reaches a point where they attack him physically with a flying drone.

In a Jerusalem both ancient and modern, where the First Temple squats over the populace like a Trump casino, where the streets are literally crawling with prophets and heathen helicopters buzz over Old Testament sovereigns, two young poets are about to have their lives turned upside down. Struggling Jeremiah is worried that he might be wasting his time trying to be a writer; the great critic Broch just beat him over the head with his own computer keyboard.

Most of the things Pillow really liked to do were obviously morally wrong. He wasn't an idiot; clearly it was wrong to punch people in the face for money. But there had been an art to it, and it had been thrilling and thoughtful for him. The zoo was also evil, a jail for animals who'd committed no crimes, but he just loved it. The way Pillow figured it, love wasn't about goodness, it wasn't about being right, loving the very best person, having the most ethical fun. Love was about being alone and making some decisions.

This collection of eight stories paints a vivid image of people who don't do what you might expect them to living on the fringes in America. Not stories of triumph over adversity but something completely other. Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods' characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong - often the places where they were born. In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.

It’s 1984 in Los Angeles. Jake Maldemer’s first book, Tales from the Back of a Bus, is a hit. It's a darkly comic, genre-bending roman à clef in which aspiring writer Jack Moses meets an odd little man name Kobold who keeps randomly feeding him handwritten horror stories as they travel across Los Angeles in the back of an RTD bus. Just as the life of Jake’s storybook-self gets stranger and more chaotic, so does Jake’s real life.

A bold novel that reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literature - Captain Ahab and Ishmael of Moby-Dick. At the end of a long journey, Captain Ahab returns to the mainland to confront the true author of the novel Moby-Dick, his former shipmate, Ishmael. For Ahab was not pulled into the ocean’s depths by a harpoon line, and the greatly exaggerated rumors of his untimely death have caused him grievous harm - after hearing about Ahab’s demise, his wife and child left Nantucket for New York, and now Ahab is on a desperate quest to find them.

In the wake of World War I in the small, Southern town of Bellhaven, South Carolina, the town folk believe they've found a little slice of heaven in a mysterious chapel in the woods. But they soon realize that evil can come in the most beautiful of forms. The people of Bellhaven have always looked to Ellsworth Newberry for guidance, but after losing his wife and his future as a professional pitcher, he is moments away from testing his mortality once and for all. Until he finally takes notice of the changes in his town...and the cardinals that have returned.

Set against the backdrop of Argentina's Dirty War and infused with magical realism, The Blue Line is a breathtaking story of love and betrayal by one of the world's most renowned writers and activists. Ingrid Betancourt, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Even Silence Has An End, draws on history and personal experience in this deeply felt portrait of a woman coming of age as her country falls deeper and deeper into chaos.

In this masterful debut, an award-winning writer and first-rate storyteller explores the tenuous bonds of family - fathers and sons, husbands and wives - as they are tested by the sometimes brutal power of love. In each of the stories in this remarkable collection, David James Poissant delivers a moving portrayal of a relationship in turmoil. His strikingly true-to-life characters have reached a precipice, chased there by troubles of their own making. Some stand frightened, some ready to fight. Some seek atonement, others the atonement that is owed them.

Orphaned into an unforgiving foster home and raised as an outsider, Weird-Eye shoulders her unflattering nickname. She relies on her vivid imagination to sustain her work as a midwife bringing newborns into the world while World War II overruns her native Finland, desecrating life. She finds herself drawn to the handsome, otherworldly Johannes Angelhurst, a war photographer working for the SS.

Lydia is having a party - it's a party she hosts every year for six women friends who treasure the midwinter bash. Over a table laden with a feast of food and wine, the women revel in sharing newsy updates, simmering secrets, and laughter. As this particular evening unfolds, Lydia prepares to make a shattering announcement. Lydia's announcement shocks them all, they rediscover the enduring bonds of friendship and find their lives changing in unexpected ways.

For seven-year old Angela, happiness is exploring the lush countryside around her home in western Ukraine. Her wild imagination takes her into birds and flowers, and into the waters of the river. All that changes when, one morning, she sees her mother crying. As she tries to find out why, she is drawn on an extraordinary journey into the secrets of her family, and her mother's fateful choices.

The protagonist, Jesús, is ugly. Extraordinarily ugly. He is so ugly that his friends and relatives are convinced that behind that ugliness there must be something else. A malefic power or possibly a momentous fate. The truth is that fairly special things happen wherever Jesús is. His biological father is a mystery. His half-sister is a child-prodigy who excels at everything she does, his mother becomes the president of the country, his best-friend Vero is a computer tycoon, his brother-in-law also makes it in politics...But for all the success around him he still feels unsettled.

The ancient city burns and a thief named Omari leads the survivors into uncharted desert to a legendary place he doesn't believe exists. As the caravan struggles with nature and treachery, Omari must decide between love and the people's survival in this romantic tale of adventure, destiny and desert magic.

Raising the literary bar to a new level, Jerome Charyn re-creates the voice of Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City police commissioner, Rough Rider, and soon-to-be 26th president through his derring-do adventures, effortlessly combining superhero dialogue with haunting pathos. Beginning with his sickly childhood and concluding with McKinley's assassination, the novel positions Roosevelt as a "perfect bull in a china shop," a fearless crime fighter and pioneering environmentalist who would grow up to be our greatest peacetime president.

It’s the 1950s, and Lorrie is unimpressed when her family moves to the remote Scottish island where her grandad runs a whisky distillery. She befriends Sylvie, the shy girl next door: ‘The slightest smile from Sylvie was a fluffy elephant at the fair. It had to be won with a clear aim,’ writes Lorrie. Yet fun-loving Lorrie isn’t sure Sylvie’s is the friendship she wants to win.

Ésta es la historia de una mujer que es, en realidad, dos mujeres: Marina Espinosa, casada con un médico prominente y dedicada a la vida doméstica; y Xian, su alter ego, más libre y misteriosa. Un accidente automovilístico abre la puerta a un universo en el que Marina no se había atrevido a entrar. Abandona a su marido y la vida anodina que lleva. Se esconde en un hotel viejo, donde va desempolvando cartas o inmortalizando en su laptop situaciones que transcurren en distintas épocas o tiempos simultáneos; fragmentos de noticias; datos históricos; pasajes de orfandad y maltrato.

What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart? These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado’s strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically.

A surgeon flees a scandal in the city and accepts a job at a village clinic. He buys antibiotics out of pocket, squashes roaches, and chafes at the interventions of the corrupt officer who oversees his work. But his outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery, they tell the surgeon that they have been offered a second chance at living if the surgeon can mend their wounds before sunrise.

A writer in a purgatory bar, an art-collecting housewife who time travels, a movie production assistant with stigmata, a codependent AA sponsor, a sex addict, a movie star with issues, a two-time liver transplant recipient, and an abusive TV costumer who gets what’s coming to her: All connected to one another but completely and utterly alone.