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If a Stranger Approaches You
Stories
Kasischke's first collection of short stories, after numerous novels and poetry collections, reveals the unexpected within characters' domestic lives.
News and Reviews
Kevin Keller
Welcome to Riverdale
Recently elected as class president and struggling with the challenges of a first summer job, a first date, and an upcoming prom, gay teen Kevin Keller asks for advice from romantically challenged friends Archie and Jughead while outmaneuvering the schemes of Cheryl Blossom.
News and Reviews
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.
News and Reviews
The Dinner
Meeting at an Amsterdam restaurant for dinner, two couples move from small talk to the wrenching shared challenge of their teenage sons' act of violence that has triggered a police investigation and revealed the extent to which each family will go to protect those it loves.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Jackal's Share
Corporate espionage, art smuggling, and murder mark the second novel from the author of The Silent Oligarch. Ben Webster, former journalist and current corporate spy, has been hired to clear the reputation of an Iranian-born philanthropist, but as Webster follows the man's trail through London, Dubai, Marrakech and Tehran, he finds more danger than redemption.
News and Reviews
Vampires In The Lemon Grove
Stories
A new collection of stories by the author of Swamplandia! features a varied cast of characters, including a pair of centuries-old vampires whose relationship is tested by a sudden fear of flying, a dejected teen who communicates with the universe through objects from a sea gull nest, and a massage therapist who heals a tattooed veteran by manipulating the images on his body.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Fall of the Stone City
During World War II, an Albanian town is invaded by Nazis, who are wined and dined by a town resident. The next morning, the Nazis have vanished, leaving behind a mystery that slowly must be unraveled. Translated by John Hodgson.
News and Reviews
Tenth Of December
A collection of stories includes "Home," a wryly whimsical account of a soldier's return from war; "Victory Lap," a tale about an inventive abduction attempt; and the title story, in which a suicidal cancer patient saves the life of a young misfit.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Gone Girl
After a woman disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, her diary reveals hidden turmoil in her marriage. Her husband, desperate to clear himself of suspicion, realizes that something more disturbing than murder may have occurred.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Flight Behavior
Bored housewife Dellarobia Turnbow is tired of living in poverty on a failing farm, and she's frustrated by her marriage to the boy who got her pregnant in high school. Then one day, as she's hiking through rural Tennessee on her way to meet a lover, she witnesses a miraculous event on an Appalachian mountainside. The beautiful, ominous vision ignites a media and religious firestorm that changes her life forever. Barbara Kingsolver addresses rural life, climate change and environmental stewardship in this story of personal awakening.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Round House
When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, 13-year-old Joe Coutts sets out with his three friends to find the person who destroyed his family.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
A Memory Of Light
In the conclusion to the Wheel of Time series, all of humanity is in peril as Rand al'Thor moves forward to break the seals on the Dark One's prison, and the Last Battle will determine the fate of the world.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Insane City
Seth Weinstein is on his way to his destination wedding in Florida. He has survived an airport prank by his groomsmen, and he thinks it's going to be smooth sailing from now on. Little does he know what's in store: Russian gangsters, angry strippers, a pimp as big as the Death Star, a desperate Haitian refugee and her two children on the run from some very bad men, and an 11-foot albino Burmese python named Blossom.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Twelve Tribes Of Hattie
In 1923, 15-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. Captured here in 12 luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother's monumental courage and the journey of a nation.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Sweet Tooth
Recruited into MI5 against a backdrop of the Cold War in 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome, a compulsive reader, is assigned to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer whose politics align with those of the government.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
This Is How You Lose Her
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao presents a lyrical collection of stories that explore the heartbreak and radiance of love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal and the echoes of intimacy.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Paris Wife
The Paris Wife follows the life of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, as she navigates 1920s Paris.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Death Comes To Pemberley
Pemberley is thrown into chaos after Elizabeth Bennett's disgraced sister Lydia arrives and announces that her husband, Wickham, has been murdered.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
In a thought-provoking, coming-of-age novel, teenager Charlie struggles to cope with the complex world of high school. He deals with the confusions of sex and love, the temptations of drugs and the pain of losing a close friend and favorite aunt.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Canada
After his parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, 15-year-old Dell Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, who — unbeknownst to Dell — is hiding a dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell's quest to find grace and peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
The Language Of Flowers
A Novel
Victoria, the orphaned heroine of Vanessa Diffenbaugh's debut novel, is privy to a secret language of flowers that dates to Victorian England.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Fifty Shades Of Grey
Growing out of a piece of fan fiction that recast Twilight's Bella and Edward in sexier scenarios, Fifty Shades of Grey tells the steamy affair of a student journalist and an intriguing young entrepreneur.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Wolf Hall
Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter's efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price.NPR Bestseller, Literary Award Winner
News and Reviews
The Sense Of An Ending
Tony Webster is a retired divorced man in his mid-60s who, after receiving notice of an unexpected bequest, is pulled back into a "powerful recollection of strong emotions" from his past. This leads to a reassessment of the accuracy of his memories, a rueful realization of how much he'd gotten wrong, and a harsh re-evaluation of his passive approach to life.NPR Bestseller, Literary Award Winner
News and Reviews
The Night Circus
Waging a fierce competition for which they have trained since childhood, circus magicians Celia and Marco unexpectedly fall in love and share a fantastical romance that manifests in fateful ways.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Life Of Pi
After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan, a 450-pound Bengal tiger and Pi, a 16-year-old Indian boy. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary pieces of literary fiction of recent years.NPR Bestseller, Literary Award Winner
News and Reviews
The Snow Child
A childless couple working on a farm in the brutal landscape of 1920 Alaska discover a little girl living in the wilderness with a red fox and begin to love the strange, almost supernatural child as their own.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Rules Of Civility
A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multimillionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well and a single-minded widow. NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
In One Person
A tale inspired by the U.S. AIDS epidemic in the 1980s follows the experiences of individuals — including the bisexual narrator — who are torn by devastating losses, and whose perspectives on tolerance and love are shaped by awareness of what might have been.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
State Of Wonder
A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh must step out of her comfort zone when she is sent into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years — a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.NPR Bestseller
News and Reviews
Ten White Geese
Fleeing her marriage and her life in Amsterdam, an Emily Dickinson scholar rents a Welsh farm. The landscape is stark, the woman, wrapped in mystery, and the ten geese of the title? They're vanishing. Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer.
News and Reviews
Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
Gathers stories by Balzac, Poe, Collins, Bierce, Wells, Saki, Aiken, Hawthorne, and Lovecraft
News and Reviews
Farewell, Dorothy Parker
Violet Epps, who wields considerable influence as a Hollywood critic in spite of her insecurity, is approached by the ghost of Dorothy Parker. Dorothy wants help with moving to the afterlife; in exchange, she offers advice on how Violet can find the courage to speak out.
News and Reviews
Philida
When her master's son, the father of her four children, reneges on his promise to free her in 1832 South Africa, Philida, a slave, lodges a complaint against the family. After being sold to a new owner, she journeys to the north of Cape Town, where she tests the limits of her freedom.
News and Reviews
Coral Glynn
In the spring of 1950, Coral Glynn arrives at an isolated mansion in the English countryside to nurse the elderly Edith Hart. There, Coral meets Hart House's odd inhabitants: Mrs. Prence, the perpetually disgruntled housekeeper; and Major Clement Hart, her charge's war-ravaged son. When a child's game goes violently awry in the nearby woods, a great shadow descends upon its residents.
News and Reviews
Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti
The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments need a miracle, and Alice Bhatti may be just what they're looking for. She's the daughter of a part-time healer in the French Colony, Karachi's infamous Christian slum, and it seems she has, unhappily, inherited his part-time gift. With a bit of begrudging but inspired improvisation, Alice begins to bring succor to patients in the overflowing hospital.
News and Reviews
The Book Of Jonas
Jonas, a Muslim teenager, is 15 when his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in an unnamed country. With the help of an international relief organization, he is sent to America, where he struggles to assimilate. When he meets the mother of the U.S. soldier who saved his life, a shocking and painful secret from the past gradually surfaces.
News and Reviews
Enchantments
St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin's body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his 18-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin's healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to her son, the headstrong prince, Alyosha, who suffers from hemophilia. Soon after Masha arrives at the palace, the Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha find solace in each other's company.
News and Reviews
Revenge
Eleven Dark Tales
Murder, envy and machinations fill the sinister stories in this collection by Yoko Ogawa, award-winning author of The Housekeeper and The Professor. Translated by Stephen Snyder.
