World Fiction

Eve Babitz captured the voluptuous quality of LA in the 1960s in a wildly original, totally unique voice. These stories are time capsule gems, as poignant and startling today as they were when published in the early 1970s. Eve Babitz is not well known today, but she should be. Her firsthand experiences in the LA cultural scene, translated into haunting fiction, are an unforgettable glimpse at a lost world and a magical time.

New York Times best-selling author Catherine Anderson pens riveting historical romances. Loretta Simpson lost her parents to a daring Comanche raid seven years ago - and now she lives as a mute with her extended family. Meanwhile, Comanche Hunter of the Wolf sees her as the embodiment of an ancient prophesy and chooses her for marriage. Still fearful of his tribe, Loretta soon finds her will bending, even as conflict between their two peoples intensifies.

Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.

A Zuni Indian boy dies in a bizarre ritual slaying - and his best friend, a Navajo youth, is missing. Navajo police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn tracks the friend from Zuni village to Navajo hogan, from anthropological dig to hippie commune, across the desert of New Mexico and Arizona.

The system came. The apocalypse ended. Now new worlds have merged with Earth. For Bain Lee, it means leveling his Ocularist class beyond its previous limits. With this strange class and the ability to see into the inner workings of the system, he may find the magic skills needed to earn his redemption. Not only that, but he might discover the secret behind the system itself.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why.

World of the Changed completely modified human consciousness. The incredible graphics that worked even on the simplest of phones. The intuitive interface that made the game accessible for absolutely anyone. The aggressive marketing campaign that put news about the game on every TV, every phone, every tablet. By the time the launch was a few days away, an entire army of fans was out there waiting for just one thing: Hour X. That was what the mysterious developers were calling the release time.

Andrew has one chance to pull himself up from his humble beginnings and make something of himself. He has been found to have a spark of magic deep within himself. To bring it forth, he must first learn to summon the familiar. He must use every drop of his magic to search the Lands of Mist and find the one meant for him. The one he will be bonded to for life. The one who is actually capable and willing to make all his dreams possible. Andrew may be small now, but he has big dreams.

When a mysterious woman requests a custom katana, Eizo's passion is ignited. There's just one problem—the client is a demon, and her people have had a complicated and historically violent relationship with humans. Since Eizo desires a peaceful life, can his conscience withstand forging a god-tier weapon for humanity's former enemy? Along with a new commission, Forge Eizo also receives a new family member: an adorable drake called Krul! Unfortunately, navigating wingless dragon ownership isn't the only trial ahead.

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

Shattergirl, Earth's first lesbian guardian - a brilliant but aloof alien superheroine who can hurl and destroy large objects - is refusing to save people and has gone off the grid. Lena Martin, the street-smart tracker with a silver tongue and a disdain for the rogue guardians she chases, has only days to bring her home. As the pair clash heatedly, masks begin to crack and brutal secrets are exposed that could shatter them both.

The vampires have broken our tentative truce and are threatening to destroy my pack. At the center of their scheme is Sky, an enigmatic lone wolf, who they believe is a weapon that can be used against us. Nothing about the quiet, doe-eyed brunette screams "danger" or "ruthless weapon." And that's the problem. My wolf's instinct says to protect her, especially after a necromancer tries to kill her, the vampires repeatedly attempt to abduct her, and we receive a dire warning about her.

Three remarkable journeys into the stars: Worlds of Exile and Illusion includes Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions. These three spacefaring adventures mark the beginning of grand master Ursula K. Le Guin’s remarkable career. Set in the same universe as Le Guin’s groundbreaking classics The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, these first three books of the celebrated Hainish series follow travelers of many worlds and civilizations in the depths of space.

Mirror World is stirring, about to embrace the new global changes of its map. Everyone is getting ready to colonize No-Man's Lands. The strongest clans send their best fighters on recon missions, impatient to make stakes for the juiciest locations. Market prices have taken to the sky like flocks of scared pigeons. New alliances are struck while mercenaries upgrade their armor and grind edges on their swords. Their time is looming. A war is coming to Mirror World.

Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws listeners into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

As a police launch speeds across Miami's Biscayne Bay - with officer Nestor Camacho on board - Tom Wolfe is off and running. Here is a big, panoramic story of the new America, as told by our master chronicler of the way we live now. Based on the same sort of detailed, on-scene, high-energy reporting that powered Tom Wolfe's previous best-selling novels, Back to Blood is another brilliant, spot-on, scrupulous, and often hilarious reckoning with our times.

On the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square, but suddenly, violence erupts - a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she resigns herself to never seeing him again. Until, more than 60 years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century.

The auto age is defunct. Buicks, Chryslers, and Pontiacs disfigure the landscape. Vines sprout in Manhattan. Wolves are seen in downtown Cleveland. And psychiatrist, mental hospital outpatient, and inventor Dr. Tom More has created a miraculous instrument: the ontological lapsometer, a kind of stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he plans to cure mankind’s spiritual flu. But first, he must survive Moira, Lola, and Ellen - and discover why so many living people are actually dead.

The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.

Fifteen years after losing most of his family to a devastating, pudding-related tragedy, Simon Debovar has settled into a life of self-imposed exile from the stinking, selfish morass of humanity. Content that his daily highlights will include hazelnut coffee, a long bath, and the occasional jar of olives, his life is completely upturned by the discovery that his ornate living room carpet is the deciding factor in a bet between God and Satan.