After his exasperated wife, Victoria, leaves him, Ed finds consolation where he has always found it, in his own rich and eccentric imagination. Pursued by the demons of his own obsession, Ed embarks on a quixotic quest to find Victoria. As he prowls the city’s parking garages and motel strips, Ed begins a journey back into his past and is forced – most reluctantly – to confront the web of lies and self-deceptions he has woven to keep reality at bay – until even his fantasies start to turn against him. Keenly observant, humane, and darkly comic, My Present Age is an irresistible story about what happens when an Everyman becomes a casualty of modern life.

    From his cult classic,  I Smell Esther Williams, to his wildly popular and insightful column "Wild Kingdom" appearing in Esquire magazine every month, Mark Leyner has been giving us up close and personal encounters of the most hilarious kind for over a decade.Now, in his new novel The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Leyner shares with us,  long last, the quintessential coming of age story that every writer, at some point, is compelled to tell.  In the novel we meet young Mark Leyner, 13-years-old to be exact, as he waits in a New Jersey prison to witness his father's execution.  Adolescence is never easy, and it just so happens that this junior high schooler is on deadline to turn in a screenplay for which he has already been awarded the Vincent and Lenore DiGiacomo/Oshimitsu Polymers America Award.  And, as it was for all of us during out teenage years, nothing seems to go as planned.Written as autobiography, screenplay and movie review, The Tetherballs of Bougainville twists three familiar narrative forms into an outlandishly compelling story.  Leyner's use of the media-driven formats brilliantly reflects our secret, shameful and hilarious desire to experience our private lives as mass entertainment.  The Tetherballs of Bougainville skewers and celebrates American pop culture in the late twentieth century.  Leyner's version of our lives is so deeply funny because it is so painfully true.From the Hardcover edition.

    She doesn't know how to deal with any of it-until she meets Francis. With a dead mother, a teardrop tattooed on his face, and a curiosity which is almost nosy, he has a lot to teach Sophie about losing someone and saving memories. They start out as friends, but soon Sophie realizes that Francis wants to be her boyfriend, too. Can Sophie give herself the permission to grow up? "Fast-paced, light, yet introspective, this novel of transition, love, and loss explores emotion while telling a fine story." (School Library Journal, starred review)

    At the time, the Germanic tribes were loosely allied, but they would unite for offensive or defensive warfare if they were threatened. The Roman Governor called Varus had been passing too many judgements upon the Germanic tribesmen, who too often saw their kinsmen and women either impaled or crucified. At an early age, three boys were taken to Rome for instruction in Roman Law, basic engineering, Latin, and learning to become officers serving with the Roman army to repay Rome for their education. After completing their training and at their mid to late teens, the boys were sent to their units. Over time, Arminius became disgusted with how the Romans treated people and resolved to throw them out of his county. In time Arminius met Thusnelda, who married him. Together, they became a thorn in the side of Rome. That resulted in Varus leading three entire legions against them. The legions were ambushed by a handful of Germanic warriors who destroyed all three roman legions and all of their supporting units. That totalled over 20,000 men. At the time, the Germanic woman had full equality with Germanic men. Women even sat on military councils, and often, their advice was sought by the male warriors. The woman would follow their men at a distance from them, but they were always close enough to their men to be able to lend assistance to them if needed. that often turned the tables of the fight and resulted in the Germanic woman being feared as such as the Germanic man by the Romans!

    What seems like a good deed however has a cruel payback andin a single moment, Kamran loses everything dear to him. This is whenMirza, in gratitude, takes Kamran under his wing and the young man getsdrawn into the mafia boss’s dangerous world of cops and rival gangsters,eventually taking over from him.Kamran also inherits Mirza’s philosophy that all of life’s problems can besolved through Ghalib¹s poetry.Soon, the innocent taxi driver has cops, criminals and even cabinetministers at his beck and call.And he has a new name—Ghalib Danger.

    In 1968, into the devastating, spare atmosphere of Labrador, Canada, a child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor fully girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret—the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and their trusted neighbor and midwife, Thomasina. Though Treadway makes the difficult decision to raise the child as a boy named Wayne, the women continue to quietly nurture the boy’s female side. And as Wayne grows into adulthood within the hypermasculine hunting society of his father, his shadow-self, a girl he thinks of as “Annabel,” is never entirely extinguished. When Wayne finally escapes the confines of his hometown and settles in St. John’s, the anonymity of the city grants him the freedom to confront his dual identity. His ultimate choice will once again call into question the integrity and allegiance of those he loves most. Kathleen Winter has crafted a literary gem about the urge to unveil mysterious truth in a culture that shuns contradiction, and the body’s insistence on coming home. A daringly unusual debut full of unforgettable beauty, Annabel introduces a remarkable new voice to American readers.

    From Carnegie Hall to the smoky jazz clubs of London, Body & Soul burns with passion and truth--at once a riveting, compulsive read and a breathtaking glimpse into a boy's heart and an artist's soul.

    Ivan Farrell is an astronomer, wife Polly a photographer, eight-year-old Charlie a budding biologist and 11-year-old Amanda a talented gymnast. And then one day, unimaginable tragedy strikes.

    On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.

    It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.--khaledhosseini.com

    Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

    Sixty miles away, Cory, a city kid on a fishing trip, survives a boating accident that takes his father’s life. Now two boys the same age have lost their fathers­ on the same day.The story bends and twists through eight years, revealing the true impact of this tragic coincidence. For the hard-luck young priest who brings the boys together, it takes beating alcoholism and re-examining his calling to discover true love and grace. For the reclusive widow trapped between emptiness and forbidden love, grace proves to be elusive. And for the boys who grow to become best friends and star teammates in college, the very existence of grace is something they couldn’t have disagreed on more.Fall to Grace is picturesque, spiritual, and reflective—while never forgetting its first obligation: to be a flat-out page-turner. The story takes you to the far edges of loss where love can do surprising things for those willing to reach again. And it reminds us, none too gently, that only angels fall from grace. The rest of us fall toward it.

    Few readers had heard of David Bezmozgis before May 2003, when Harper's, Zoetrope, and The New Yorker all printed stories from his forthcoming collection. In the space of a few weeks, America thus met the Bermans--Bella and Roman and their son, Mark--Russian Jews who have fled the Riga of Brezhnev for Toronto, the city of their dreams.Told through Mark's eyes, the stories in Natasha possess a serious wit and uniquely Jewish perspective that recall the first published stories of Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, not to mention the recent work of Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander, and Adam Haslett.

    Her obsession with the case intensifies with the abduction of her five-year old son. Ben Orton, an ex-SAS soldier metes out revenge on former members of the IRA who murdered his brother and are released as part of the Good Friday agreement. Living in a secluded location in Scotland, a stranger approaches Orton and blackmails him into joining The Disciples of Retribution, a select band of vigilantes. The abductors of the children share an unusual fantasy, their frightening and abnormal behaviour provoking punishment for the youngsters. Hush Little Children, a tale of revenge and indignity, will frighten and captivate you.

    His youthful desires are simple: he wants a suit to lure a girl—the fine-boned beauty Adelaide—and he knows exactly how much fish he has to catch to pay for it. Adelaide, however, has other dreams. She longs to escape the sea, the fish, and the stultifying community, but her need for refuge from her own troubled family leads her to Sylvanus and life in the neighboring port.Through this story of love, loss, and facing the inevitabilities of life in a floundering community, the sea is a potent presence, modernization ravaging its shores and bringing it to the cusp of cataclysmic change. Ultimately, Sylvanus Now is a story of redemption against all odds "in a world vanished, but brought vividly back to life in Morrissey's caring hands" (Quill and Quire).