Winter Literary

Wylodine comes from a world of paranoia and poverty - her family grows marijuana illegally, and life has always been a battle. Now she’s been left behind to tend the crop alone. Then spring doesn’t return for the second year in a row, bringing unprecedented, extreme winter. With grow lights stashed in her truck and a pouch of precious seeds, she begins a journey, determined to start over away from Appalachian Ohio. But the icy roads and strangers hidden in the hills are treacherous.

Jen has reached her early 30s and has all but abandoned a once-promising painting career when, spurred by the 2008 economic crisis, she takes a poorly defined job at a feminist nonprofit. The foundation's ostensible aim is to empower women, but staffers spend all their time devising acronyms for imaginary programs, ruthlessly undermining one another, and stroking the ego of their boss, the larger-than-life celebrity philanthropist Leora Infinitas.

Forced to abandon his wife and child, Harry Cane signs up for emigration to the newly colonized Canadian prairies. His allotted homestead in a place called Winter is a world away from the golden suburbs of turn-of-the-century Edwardian England. And yet it is here, isolated in a seemingly harsh landscape, under the threat of war, madness, and an evil man of undeniable magnetism, that the fight for survival will reveal in Harry an inner strength and capacity for love beyond anything he has ever known before.

Idaho Winter is a boy who, through no fault of his own, is loathed by everyone in the town where he lives - his father feeds him roadkill for breakfast, the crossing guard steers cars toward him as he crosses the road, and parents encourage their children to plot cruelly against him. Then he meets a young girl named Madison who empathizes with his suffering, opening a terrible world of pain in him. When Madison is attacked by dogs meant to harm Idaho, Idaho gets up and runs home, changing the course of the entire story.

The author of Break in Case of Emergency follows up her the “extraordinary debut” (The Guardian) with a moving novel about motherhood and marriage, adolescence and bodily autonomy, family and love, religion and sexuality, and the delicate balance between the purity of faith and the messy reality of life.

În Brooklynul înzăpezit, o tamponare ușoară în trafic declanșează o neașteptată poveste de iubire târzie. Richard Bowmaster, un profesor universitar ipohondru și solitar, lovește mașina condusă de o guatemaleză, Evelyn Ortega, care trăiește și lucrează ilegal în casa unui afacerist dubios. Ceea ce la început pare un accident minor ia o turnură neașteptată când tânara, în mod evident terorizată, sună la ușa lui Richard. Speriat, acesta cere ajutorul Lucíei Maraz, proaspăta lui chiriașă și colegă, o chiliană greu încercată de viață, dar voluntară și optimistă.

Classical guitarist Satoshi Makino has toured the world and is at the height of his career when he first lays eyes on journalist Yoko Komine. Their bond forms instantly. Upon their first meeting, after Makino’s concert in Tokyo, they begin a conversation that will go on for years, with long spells of silence broken by powerful moments of connection. She’s drawn by Makino’s tender music and his sensitivity, and he is intrigued by Yoko’s refinement and intellect. But neither knows enough about love to see it blooming nor has the confidence to make the first move.

New England in December is a special world. Wreath-topped lampposts shine, balsam garland drapes across picket fences, and fresh snow dusts the land. Then there are the decorated houses: saltboxes, Victorians, farmhouses, Tudors. Tiny lights shimmer on front porches; candles glow in paned windows. But one imposing stone colonial towers dark in the night. Since moving to town, Millie Ives has heard hushed whisperings of that house - and of the mysterious man who lives and works there. A chance happening leads Millie to this Mr. Winter's spellbinding shop just past the bell tower.

Ulli is a young woman, half English and half German, squatting in a dismal, empty Berlin apartment one year after the war has ended. She's scraping together a living as an interpreter between Berlin-based GIs and the wide-eyed local girls eager to meet them. One night Ulli meets two American soldiers: Leo, handsome and ambitious and desperate to escape his small-town upbringing, and intellectual, asthmatic Isaac, whose refugee parents had fled Russia and then Paris for New York. Winter Kept Us Warm follows Ulli, Leo, and Isaac through the next six decades of their lives - from Berlin to postwar Manhattan, 1960s Los Angeles, and Morocco.

Welcome to Mattagash, Maine, a town where everyone's personal lives are as entwined as their family trees. On the day of the first snowfall, the residents brace themselves for the long winter ahead. Mere survival will be hard; dealing with each other is another story. As winter settles in, various Mattagashians careen from conundrum to conundrum, trying to save dying small businesses, caring for crabby loved ones, and cruising through town, stirring up gossip any way they can get it.

Since the first ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ issue in 1983, Granta has championed the work of authors who have changed the landscape of British literature. In 1983, featured writers included Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Martin Amis and Pat Barker, among many others. Subsequent editions have highlighted the work of Zadie Smith, Nicola Barker, Ben Okri, Jeanette Winterson and others. In 2023, they will introduce listeners around the world to a cohort of outstanding new British voices.

Every day, Cole Roberts reminds himself that life wasn’t always this bleak. He was once passionately in love with Erin. Sam used to be an artistic and lively kid. That was before Brenna disappeared. Every day it gets worse. Erin drinks wine out of the bottle and spends her days with a tormented expression, searching the web for signs of their daughter. Sam hides in his room and rarely speaks. And Cole works himself to a stupor for a paycheck a fraction of the size of his old salary. Until one day, a phone call changes everything.

Ralph, Marnie and Oliver once knew each other as childhood friends. Now they meet again in Ralph's secluded cottage to share the precious days that Ralph has left.

While the title novella of Dubus' Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection's opening story strikes a much darker tone.

Thirty-four-year-old Angie Dugan struggles with many things - anxiety, her career as a social worker in a retirement home, and her difficult family. Her biggest struggle, though, is finding love. When she meets Matt, she's swept away by his attention. As issues from his past come up, she wonders if she can trust him. Should she break it off, or give him another chance? In the end, all she can do is listen to her heart, and evaluate what she wants most.

Caught somewhere between love, hate, and indifference, Emily Bowen’s marriage is hanging on by a thread. After being let go from his job, her husband pulled away from her, and the distance continues to grow during their family’s sabbatical in Switzerland. With their relationship as cold as the wind baying outside, Emily finds unexpected warmth in a man from her past. As she contemplates seizing the connection she’s been craving, Emily must decide if she’s willing to sacrifice the life she’s built for an unseen future.

1910: people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city's medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army, and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition.

As the dark specter of the Nazis settles over Germany, two wealthy and educated brothers are suddenly thrust into the rising tide of war. Karl, a former soldier and successful businessman, dutifully answers the call to defend his country, while contemplative academic Gerhard is coerced into informing for the Gestapo. Soon the brothers are serving in the SS, and as Hitler's hateful agenda brings about unspeakable atrocities, they find themselves with innocent blood on their hands.

Gripping and atmospheric, Winter in Tabriz tells the story of four young people living in 1970s Iran during the months immediately prior to the revolution and the choices they have to make as a result of the ensuing upheaval. The lives of Damian and Anna, both from Oxford University, become enmeshed with two Iranians - Arash, a poet, and his older brother, Reza, a student sympathetic to the problems of the dissident writers in Iran and a would-be photojournalist, interested in capturing the rebellion on the streets.

In 1911, a young John Shaw from South Carolina had his first taste of flying. In 1926, two years after the plane crash death of his best friend, he attempted a solo flight record in a refitted 1923 Curtiss Jenny. Then, with half the journey completed, his plane was caught in a storm, went down, and for 17 years he was listed as missing, presumed dead. The Longest Winter is a work of fiction, the tale of one man's life. His story is one of despair and courage, tragedy and triumph.