Literary Realism

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.

The incomparable Jonathan Lethem returns with nine brilliant stories that prove he is a master of the short form as well as the novel.Jonathan Lethem stretches new literary muscles in this scintillating new collection of stories. Some of these tales - such as "Pending Vegan", which wonderfully captures a parental ache and anguish during a family visit to an aquatic theme park - are, in Lethem's words, "obedient (at least outwardly) to realism."

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.

At the dawn of the 20th century, a young Lebanese adventurer leaves the Levant to explore the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan.

The late Nobelist's masterpiece takes a candid look into the lives of Holocaust survivors during the late 40s. Set in New York City, Shadows on the Hudson, Volume 2, the second in a four volume audiobook series, draws us into the intertwined lives of a circle of prosperous Jewish refugees.

Bay Singer has bigger secrets than most. Not that she knows about them. Her mother, Nan, is sure that the burden of those secrets would be too much, and that's why she never told anyone the truth... not even Bay. There's a lot that Nan has kept quiet over the years, especially those times with Mavis and Ruthie - times that were dark and full of guilt. But some secrets have a power all their own, and Nan realizes she needs Mavis and Ruthie now more than ever.

A literary jigsaw puzzle of a debut novel set in Colombia during the peak of its decades-long conflict, and in New York City. While her parents are away, a teenager finds herself home alone, with the household staff mysteriously gone, no phone connection, and news of an insurgency on the radio - and then she hears a knock at the door.

Only very special people are chosen by children's author Laura White to join 'The Society', an elite group of writers in the small town of Rabbit Back. Now a 10th member has been selected: Ella, literature teacher and possessor of beautifully curving lips. But soon Ella discovers that the Society is not what it seems. What is its mysterious ritual, 'The Game'? What explains the strange disappearance that occurs at Laura's winter party, in a whirlwind of snow? Why are the words inside books starting to rearrange themselves?

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.

After 10 years, Hansel Nothing returns to his boyhood home, unable to remember anything that has happened to him since he left. Back home, he stays in Zerostrata, a treehouse in the backyard. The Nothing family is as dysfunctional and depressed as ever. His mother keeps a cat on her head and incessantly munches prescription medication. His father has left the house to pursue a career as a superhero. His brother wants to be the dad's superhero sidekick and thinks he can fly. Hansel's life is changed forever when he meets Gretel, a free-spirited woman who runs naked through the woods every night....

Irgendwo im Süden, im Herzen der Stadt, wo die Menschen arm sind und das Gesetz der Straße gilt: Hier wachsen Mimmo, Cristofaro und Celeste auf. Sie haben Träume und Hoffnungen, obwohl ihnen der kindliche Blick längst abhanden gekommen ist. Mimmos Vater, der Fleischer des Viertels, betrügt seine Kunden mit einer präparierten Waage. Cristofaros Vater, ein Trinker, schlägt seinen Sohn jeden Abend. Und Celestes Mutter Carmela, die Prostituierte des Viertels, schickt ihre Tochter auf den Balkon, wenn sie ihre Freier empfängt.

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.

Aimee Bender’s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman’s children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

Everyone else knows the truth about you. Now you can know it, too. That's the slogan. The product: a junky contraption that tattoos personalized revelations on its users' forearms. It's an old con, playing on the fear that we are obvious to everybody except ourselves. This particular one's been circulating New York since the 1960s. The ad works. And, oddly enough, so might the device....

With over 10 million copies sold, bestselling author Robert James Waller returns with the haunting, evocative story of a small town, a beautiful and mysterious woman, and the man forever changed by both.

A blue girl lives in the woods, eating secrets baked into moon pies and shaking up a small lakeside town. In this small lakeside town, mothers bake their secrets into moon pies they feed to a silent blue girl. Their daughters have secrets too - that they can’t sleep, that they might sleep with a neighbor boy, that they know more than they let on. But when the daughters find the blue girl, everyone’s carefully held silences shake loose. 

Jailbird. Klepto. Spectacular failure to launch. Nicole Wood’s sticky fingers have earned her many names, but it’s not that she’s stealing—some objects just need to be moved elsewhere, and the universe has chosen her to do it. Still, being a relocator of objects isn’t easy. With her marriage on the rocks, no real-world skills, and the threat of prison hanging over her head, Nicole is determined to change her ways.

The Host in the Attic by Rohan Quine is a hologram of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, digitised and reframed in cinematic style, set in London’s Docklands in a few years’ time. Brilliant software engineer Rik and executive Jaymi work at digital agencies in London (surely unaware that their fates are destined to echo those of Basil and Dorian, respectively the painter and the subject of Wilde's novel). Rik uses Jaymi’s appearance as the model for a cutting-edge interactive hologram that navigates the Web in enhanced ways, tailored to every user....