All of Magnus Mills' darkly comic and hugely entertaining stories are here collected in one book for the first time.

    Being the opara of the family, Kingsley Ibe is entitled to certain privileges--a piece of meat in his egusi soup, a party to celebrate his graduation from university. As first son, he has responsibilities, too. But times are bad in Nigeria, and life is hard. Unable to find work, Kingsley cannot take on the duty of training his younger siblings, nor can he provide his parents with financial peace in their retirement. And then there is Ola. Dear, sweet Ola, the sugar in Kingsley's tea. It does not seem to matter that he loves her deeply; he cannot afford her bride price. It hasn't always been like this. For much of his young life, Kingsley believed that education was everything, that through wisdom, all things were possible. Now he worries that without a "long-leg"--someone who knows someone who can help him--his degrees will do nothing but adorn the walls of his parents' low-rent house. And when a tragedy befalls his family, Kingsley learns the hardest lesson of all: education may be the language of success in Nigeria, but it's money that does the talking. Unconditional family support may be the way in Nigeria, but when Kingsley turns to his Uncle Boniface for help, he learns that charity may come with strings attached. Boniface--aka Cash Daddy--is an exuberant character who suffers from elephantiasis of the pocket. He's also rumored to run a successful empire of email scams. But he can help. With Cash Daddy's intervention, Kingsley and his family can be as safe as a tortoise in its shell. It's up to Kingsley now to reconcile his passion for knowledge with his hunger for money, and to fully assume his role of first son. But can he do it without being drawn into this outlandish mileu?

    At its outset, the Bishop of Iceland dispatches a young emissary to investigate certain charges against the pastor at Sn?fells Glacier, who, among other things, appears to have given up burying the dead. But once he arrives, the emissary discovers that this dereliction counts only as a mild eccentricity in a community that regards itself as the center of the world and where Creation itself is a work in progress.What is the emissary to make, for example, of the boarded-up church? What about the mysterious building that has sprung up alongside it? Or the fact that Pastor Primus spends most of his time shoeing horses? Or that his wife, Ua (pronounced “ooh-a,” which is what men invariably sputter upon seeing her), is rumored never to have bathed, eaten, or slept? Piling improbability on top of improbability, Under the Glacier overflows with comedy both wild and deadpan as it conjures a phantasmagoria as beguiling as it is profound.

    A portrayal of contemporary Ghanian urban society and working class lives.

    Translated by Gregory Rabassa."More than a prelude...the dazzling sense of place, the colorful idiosyncrasy of character are present for us to marvel over once again."--The New Republic"An openly political novel posing the people of the land against the forces of oppression...it has the virtues of wit and compassion and reveals the foundation upon which the later novels were constructed."--Jonathan Yardley, Washington Star"One Hundred Years of Solitude is just around the rain-drenched corner."--Boston Globe

     EMP No Power An EMP explodes over Washington DC and the world comes to screeching halt. As society falls into dismay, Harper Murphy, a skilled army quartermaster/single mother, charges headlong into the escalating chaos to save the only thing she holds dear: her son. In a world rife with chaos, how far would a mother go to protect her family? Hideaway Losing power was only the beginning, now one couple must work together to survive James and Marla Weller are preparing for a relaxing weekend, when an unexpected blackout spreads far beyond their St. Louis suburb and starts a devastating chain reaction. But the disabled power grid was only the beginning of a national nightmare as their vehicles and cell phones won’t function either. A series of building explosions rock downtown, leading to a mandatory evacuation. Amid the chaos, the young couple must make a decision on where to go. A possible solution emerges when a self-proclaimed survivalist offers them refuge in his remote cabin far from the city and away from the chaos. But James and Marla soon discover that survival isn’t as clear as they think, and that escape can lead to dangers all its own.

    Two gorillas are descending the side of a New York high-rise. Can that be? But this is only the beginning of Stephen Dobyns's dazzling new novel. Part quest (in pattern), part comic book (in tone), and chiefly an exploration of a young man's search for his missing fiancee, it deals with such matters as heroes, good and evil, wrestling, kidnapping, and subplots from the Brothers Grimm - all as regarded by an omniscient "camera eye." Come see Michael Marmaduke as he progresses from confused innocence to darker self-knowledge; meet Rose White and her sister Violet, along with Deep Rat, cops Brodsky and Gapski, and Primus Muldoon, manipulator of men, who calls on Nietzsche to draw aside the veil of illusion we hide behind. Stephen Dobyns has invented a compelling world where fun and puns mingle with daring make-believe, and larger-than-life characters play out the crucial human questions: How do we live? How do we handle our demons?

    The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is the novel that catapulted Ayi Kwei Armah into the limelight. The novel is generally a satirical attack on the Ghanaian society during Kwame Nkrumah’s regime and the period immediately after independence in the 1960s. It is often claimed to rank with Things Fall Apart as one of the high points of post-colonial African Literature.

    It is on New Year's Eve, courtesy of his stalled car, that he meets Rachel, a young sculptress who becomes the great love of his life, a love greater for being unfulfilled. He finds himself captivated by Rachel and drawn into a close friendship with her husband. As their friendship develops, Chris must reconcile himself to an unaccustomed type of intimacy but one that inevitably threatens this precarious triangular relationship. Woven through this is the story of his life and of a lifetime's loving. For he has known many women. As it becomes clear that this book is the final writing act of Chris's creative life, so we understand that these recollections are an attempt to bring order to an otherwise chaotic existence. Before I Forget is the history of a life set against the history of a nation, and the history of a transforming love.

    A figure of speech inwhich a part is used for the whole, as in the screen for movies.From Charlie Kaufman, perhaps the most distinctive screenwritingvoice of our generation, comes a visual and philosophicadventure of epic proportions. Much as he did with hisgroundbreaking scripts for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation,and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman twists andsubverts the form and language of film as he delves into themind of a man who, obsessed with his own mortality, sets outto construct a massive artistic enterprise that could give somemeaning to his life. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman,Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener,Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, HopeDavis, and Tom Noonan, and directed by Kaufman,Synecdoche, New York is an epic story of grand artistic ambitionsand creative madness.This Newmarket Shooting Script® Book includes:Exclusive introduction by Charlie KaufmanComplete Shooting ScriptExclusive Q&AColor photo sectionComplete cast and crew credits

    A collection of short stories written by various African writers.

    An adoring little sister, their traditional parents, and a host of aunties and cousins make Morayo's home their own. So there's nothing unusual about her charming but troubled cousin Bros T moving in with the family. At first Morayo and her sister are delighted, but in her innocence, nothing prepares Morayo for the shameful secret Bros T forces upon her. Thrust into a web of oppressive silence woven by the adults around her, Morayo must learn to fiercely protect herself and her sister from a legacy of silence many women in Morayo's family share. Only Aunty Morenike—once shielded by her own mother—provides Morayo with a safe home and a sense of female community that sustains her as she grows into a young woman in bustling, politically charged, often violent Nigeria.

    In the pressurized atmosphere of oppression and intimidation they are simply trying to live and love - and remain friends. But in a world where each day brings a new betrayal, hope is hard to cling on to. Anthills of the Savannah (1987), Achebe's candid vision of contemporary African politics, is a powerful fusion of angry voices. It continues the journey that Achebe began with his earlier novels, tracing the history of modern Africa through colonialism and beyond, and is a work ultimately filled with hope.

    'Highliners' is the commercial fishermen's term for their own elite, the skippers and crews who bring in the biggest hauls. Set in Kodiak, Highliners brings into sharp relief the lives of the men and women who make their living catching salmon, king crab, halibut, and shrimp off the coast of Alaska. Hank Crawford comes to Kodiak as a college student to work in the canneries during the summer. But he is inexorably drawn to the water and to the hard, often brutal existence of the fishermen, and ultimately, he joins their ranks. Highliners chronicles Hank's journey from greenhorn to highliner, and the triumphs and tragedies of the people he comes to know so well. (6 X 9, 408 pages, maps, illustrations)

    But Faber's radically inventive style fastens all fifteen stories into a compelling collection deserving of the high praise it garnered in the United Kingdom. One surreal story, "Fish," projects a futuristic world populated with fish swimming in the air. As sharks hover in abandoned corners and human zealots of the Church of the Armageddon loose their fanaticism on the innocent, it's a mother's full-time job to protect her young daughter. The title story, "Some Rain Must Fall," tells of a substitute schoolteacher called on in a crisis, and as she encourages her pupils to express their feelings, we learn the source of the class's trouble: a devastating act that resonates with contemporary America. As Garth Morris wrote in the Mail on Sunday (London), "these are well-crafted pieces of quiet forlorn intensity in a very real world."