New Literary Fiction

October 2002: Another weekend in the small fishing village in New Jersey. Five years after the events of the last book, can the Belford residents move on with their lives after what's happened in their past?

Nate Myers graduated from UCLA medical school at the top of his class, ready to follow in the footsteps of his father, a superstar cardiothoracic surgeon. Six years later, Nate's career is being ruined by a malpractice suit. Questioning himself for the first time, he retreats to a Montana cattle ranch to visit his uncle and gain perspective. There he meets a beautiful young woman named Avelina who teaches him more than he ever knew about matters of the heart.

1946: At the apogee of the American Century, the confidence inspired by victory in World War II has spawned a culture of suffocating conformity in thrall to the cult of masculine privilege. In the hardscrabble industrial city of Trenton, New Jersey, a woman made strong by wartime factory work kills her army veteran husband in a domestic brawl, disposes of his body, and assumes his identity. As Abe Kunstler, he secures a job in a wire rope factory, buys a car, and successfully woos Inez, an alcoholic dime dancer. He makes a home with her, but for Abe, this is not enough: to complete his transformation, he needs a son.

When Sy Levin, a high school teacher beset by alcohol and bad decisions, leaves the city for the Pacific Northwest to start over, it's no surprise that he conjures a vision of the extraordinary new life awaiting him there: "He imagined the pioneers in covered wagons entering this valley for the first time. Although he had lived little in nature Levin had always loved it, and the sense of having done the right thing in leaving New York was renewed in him."

Journalist Paige Keller, while recovering at a remote resort from an overseas assignment, is drawn into a community dominated by a fundamentalist church, a family of real estate developers, and a group of environmentalists, all in conflict over control of the valley's future. She goes undercover to discover what lies beneath the church's rituals and sacred ceremonies, but the more she learns, the deeper the valley's mysteries and seductions become.

Bordertown: a city on the Border between the human world and the elfin realm. A place where neither magic nor technology can be counted on, where elf and human kids run away to find themselves. The Way from our world to the Border has been blocked for 13 long years. Now the Way is open once again—and Bordertown welcomes a new set of seekers and dreamers, misfits and makers, to taste life on the Border.

Down on his luck and still pining for his ex-wife, South Carolina taxidermist Romie Futch spends his evenings drunkenly surfing the Internet before passing out on his couch. In a last-ditch attempt to pay his mortgage, he replies to an ad and becomes a research subject in an experiment conducted by the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tony Grams comes to America at the start of the 20th century, set on becoming a new man. Driven to leave poverty behind, he lands a job at the Ford Motor Company that puts him at the center of a daring social and economic experiment.

Looking for a strong woman to take on the Apocalypse? They survived the solar flare. They survived without power. They survived bandits. But can they survive a dictator who is determined to become the king of their state? Allison and her community have worked together to build a life after the flare. Can a ruthless man and the inmates he freed from the local prison take away everything they worked for?

Jane has just received some terrible news. A phone full of missed calls and sympathetic text messages seems to indicate that her husband, Jim, a chaplain at the hospital where she works as a surgeon, is dead. Only, not quite—rather, his head has been removed from his body and cryogenically frozen. Jim awakes to find himself in an altogether unique situation, to say the least: his body gone but his consciousness alive, his only companion a mysterious disembodied voice.

A common man of modest means, world-weary George McLast decides to forget all his problems and take the trip he and his beloved wife had only dreamed about before she passed away three years earlier. Despite all the unnerving feelings he's been getting in his chest, his son's disapproval, and his precarious financial situation, he sets out across America following the same route John Steinbeck took in 1959 with his pet poodle Charley.

A questo autore dall'inconfondibile vena pessimista e cruda, dall'originale scrittura raffinata e apparentemente naturale, tratta dal linguaggio parlato, ma piena di intrusioni e slanci d'autore, appartiene una serie di romanzi dimenticati, a metà tra il romanzo criminale e il western. A questo filone, quasi sfociante nel dramma antirazzista, che allora furoreggiava in certo cinema e in certo teatro americano alla Tennessee Williams, appartiene "Rossa".

Sissily is driving cross-country with a much older man called Ezzy. On their way to California to begin a life together, he insists on stopping at his family ranch outside Liberty, Kansas, to visit his mother, Mrs. Svoboda. This family reunion is a painful reminder for Sissily of the rumors about the scandal that led to her running away from home, but while Mrs. Svoboda is a domineering figure, Sissily sees a woman who harbors secrets of her own.

In this captivating collection from the Shaanxi region, considered the cradle of Chinese civilization, twenty disparate and unique voices come together to show a China caught between new-world advancements and old-world traditions. From the homeland of China’s first dynasty and the world-famous terra-cotta warriors, these tales show rugged rural life colliding with fast-paced city life; hollow arranged marriages juxtaposed with torrid forbidden love affairs; and the vanity of newly minted millionaires clashing with the desperation of the poor.

The National Book Award finalist for Refund returns with a new collection of stories that boldly examines the changes in American culture over the last two years through the increasing presence of violence, bigotry, sexual harassment, and the emotional costs of living under constant threat. In the title story, the competition between two middle school cellists is affected by a shooting at their school, and it is only years later that they realize how the intrusion of violence affected the course of their lives.

Lucas and Margo are fed up. Margo is a brilliant programmer tired of being talked over as the company’s sole black employee, and while Lucas is one of many Asians at the firm, he’s nearly invisible as a low-paid customer service rep. Together, they decide to steal their tech startup’s user database in an attempt at revenge. The heist takes a sudden turn when Margo dies in a car accident, and Lucas is left reeling, wondering what to do with their secret—and wondering whether her death really was an accident.

Elizabeth Blau upended her life in the city to move to the Middle of Nowhere and start over. She reconnects with her estranged brother and begins her new life. First, Elizabeth lands a great job, then a date, and her luck seems to change for the better. But when the man’s body is found mangled in a ravine, the murder rocks the small town as fault descends upon the Blau Family.

In middle England, Juliette, Sophie, Ann, Evelyn and Will are in the final year of studying for an English degree. Will it all go to plan, with the expectation of success weighing heavily on their shoulders? And will they be fulfilled both academically and personally?

Jeder der drei Romane der "New-York-Trilogie" wirkt zunächst wie eine klassische, spannungsgeladene Kriminalgeschichte, die den Leser mit raffiniert ausgelegten "Ködern" in den Bann zieht. Aber bald scheinen die vordergründig logischen Zusammenhänge nicht mehr zu stimmen. Die Rollen der Täter und der Opfer, der Verfolger und der Verfolgten verschieben sich auf rätselhafte Weise. Schritt für Schritt wird der Beobachter - der Detektiv, Autor, Leser - aus seiner sicheren Distanz gelockt und in ein Spiel mit seinen eigenen Erwartungen verstrickt.

A young Puritan woman gives birth to an illegitimate child in 17th-century New England and must endure public condemnation and the burden of a terrible secret.