New Literary Fiction

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face-to-face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

The "Viy" is a monstrous creation of popular fancy. It is the name which the inhabitants of Little Russia give to the king of the gnomes, whose eyelashes reach to the ground. The following story is a specimen of such folklore. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

In the final years of his life, Chekhov produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces and some of the most highly regarded works in Russian literature. With the works collected here, Chekhov moved away from the realism of his earlier tales - developing a broader range of characters and subject matter, while forging the spare minimalist style that would inspire such modern short-story writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

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.

After a lucrative television writing career comes to an abrupt end, ex–high school teacher Ray Mitchell returns to the New Jersey city of his birth—to rethink his life, reconnect with his teenage daughter and to spread the wealth on the housing project that reared him. He begins teaching again, embarks on an affair with a married woman from the old neighborhood and becomes a mentor to a former student recently released from jail. Then, disaster: he is found beaten nearly to death in his own apartment.

Somewhere in the United Kingdom, an eight year old boy is removed from his home in the middle of the night. He is a victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each group representing a different personality type.

Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth; and the defiant Hester Prynne, who, unwilling to name her partner in adultery, is condemned to wear a scarlet "A" on the breast of her gown for the remainder of her life.

Meet the Laments—the affably dysfunctional globetrotting family at the center of George Hagen’s exuberant debut novel. Howard is an engineer who dreams of irrigating the Sahara and lives by the motto “Laments move!” His wife Julia is a fiery spirit who must balance her husband’s oddly peripatetic nature with unexpected aspirations of her own. And Will is the “waif with a paper-thin heart” who is given to Howard and Julia in return for their own child who has been lost in a bizarre maternity ward mishap.

After moving past her painful breakup with Xander years ago, Ivy was poised to become the next big name in music, when suddenly she withdrew from the limelight - the same day she announced her engagement to her controlling agent, Damon Wolf. Xander knows he should keep his distance. But once they're on the road, he can't resist pursuing her for a second chance. Yet a jealous Damon can't let her go - and he's keeping dangerous secrets that could destroy them all.

Jewell Parker Rhodes follows up her acclaimed Voodoo Dreams with a present-day mystery surrounding the gifts of an ancestor of the Voodoo Queen. Doctor Marie Levant can't explain why she's drawn to New Orleans, or why it's comforting and unsettling at the same time. And she can't shake her haunting dreams. But when she delivers a dead woman's baby, Marie knows malevolent forces are at work, and it's up to her to stop them.

It is summer of 1885. The Strauss brothers are staying in London as part of a concert tour. The planned performance in one of the largest concert halls in the Empire is at jeopardy, when a crime occurs involving Johann's violin. His desperate brother Eduard reaches out to Sherlock Holmes for help.

In part one, Stanley, an out of work tech writer, gets a short-term contract job across the country. Of the three areas he feels give meaning to life—family, work, and religion—he is going to leave the only one of the three which has meaning to him, family, to go be "just a tech writer" at "just another company".

Bruno "Fence" Washington survived the apocalypse - emerging from a Sedona cave into a strange and terrible new world... 50 years later. Now, scouring for answers about the malevolent Strangers, the former extreme sportsman encounters a woman who calls to his every desire.

Anjali Bose is Miss New India. Born into a traditional lower-middle-class family and living in a backwater town with an arranged marriage on the horizon, Anjali's prospects dont look great. But her ambition and fluency in language do not go unnoticed by her expat teacher, Peter Champion. And champion her he does, both to other powerful people who can help her along the way and to Anjali herself, stirring in her a desire to take charge of her own destiny.

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.

Three Lives continues the theme of T. Lobsang Rampa's previous book, I Believe, in that it is a further statement of his personal belief in life after death, and his thoughts on the nature of the afterlife. Free from prejudice, free the the dogmas of organized religion, Dr. Rampa's beliefs have been formed by years of study and experience - years of offering comfort and inspiration to his countless followers all over the world.

Twelve little oddities - an assortment of the bizarre, unexpected, charming, unsettling, and downright peculiar. Into darkness or light, there are many ways to escape.

Alles über den berühmten jungen Zauberer, seine Fans und seine magische Erfolgsgeschichte...

When the story opens, the eponymous hero of Rudolfo Anaya's novel is in an ambulance en route to a hospital for crippled children in the New Mexican desert. A poor boy from Albuquerque, 16-year-old Tortuga takes his name from the odd, turtle-shaped mountain that is rumored to possess miraculous curative powers. Tortuga is paralyzed, and not even his mother's fervent prayers can heal him. But under the mountain's watchful gaze, with the support of fellow patients, he begins the Herculean task of breaking out of his shell and becoming whole again.

In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science-fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript. Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious manuscript written by none other than Adana Moreau. With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Adana’s son in New Orleans, but as Hurricane Katrina strikes, they must head to the storm-ravaged city.