You won't have read anything quite like this before!In the 1970's, three boys from the wrong side of Glasgow formed an unbreakable friendship. One little brother tagged along for the ride. Decades later, he and the remaining Musketeer have the opportunity to set things right: to give a girl called Kat Farthing the chance of a better life. A gifted martial artist and long-time carer to her debt-ridden, alcoholic mother, Kat's had to grow up fast. She got her first black belt at ten and her first job at eleven. She didn't have a lot of time for school. When she’s eighteen, she defends herself from a sexual predator and lands the chance of a better life… and a vicious, vindictive enemy who’ll stop at nothing to keep her down. But he hasn’t come across a woman like Kat before. Strong, sexy, loyal and caring, she's one of a kind.**ADULTS ONLY: contains strong language, sex and violence**

    Isolated and estranged in a small town in the harsh Karoo desert, her only real companions are her diary and her housemaid, and later the housemaid's daughter, Ada. When Ada is born, Cathleen recognizes in her someone she can love and respond to in a way that she cannot with her own family.Under Cathleen's tutelage, Ada grows into an accomplished pianist and a reader who cannot resist turning the pages of the diary, discovering the secrets Cathleen sought to hide. As they grow closer, Ada sees new possibilities in front of her—a new horizon. But in one night, everything changes, and Cathleen comes home from a trip to find that Ada has disappeared, scorned by her own community. Cathleen must make a choice: should she conform to society, or search for the girl who has become closer to her than her own daughter?Set against the backdrop of a beautiful, yet divided land, The Housemaid's Daughter is a startling and thought-provoking novel that intricately portrays the drama and heartbreak of two women who rise above cruelty to find love, hope, and redemption.

    Essays from a tiny diner in the middle of the country.These are stories of love and adaptation at the broad intersection of commerce and community, and of how a pandemic changed everything and nothing about us.

    With an unforgettable comic touch, Bank skillfully teases out issues of the heart, puts a new spin on the mating dance, and captures in perfect pitch what it's like to be a young woman coming of age in America today.

    But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s most subtlest and effective achievement to date.

    His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life-path on which their father set them, destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods.The Emperor’s Blades — Three siblings: Kaden, the heir to the Unhewn Throne, has spent eight years sequestered in a remote mountain monastery. An ocean away, Valyn endures the brutal training of the Kettral. At the heart of the empire, Adare hunts those who murdered her father.The Providence of Fire — Kaden infiltrates the Annurian capital, while Adare flees the Dawn Palace in search of allies to challenge the coup against her family. As armies prepare to clash, the threat of invasion compels the rival forces to unite. Unknown to Adare, Valyn has allied with the invading nomads.The Last Mortal Bond — The ancient csestriim are back to finish their purge of humanity; armies march against the capital; capricious gods walk the earth in human guise, but the imperial siblings at the heart of it all soon understand that there may be no reconciling their conflicting visions of the future.

    I am, however, never sure if this conclusion is without some blemish, some residue, however faint; an ounce of madness. To certain inconclusive degrees, it is clear that some of my disappointments awaited me, gathering rust, years before I was born. I have reason to suspect you will find this tale unusual, but not without beauty. Threads of a spider's web perhaps, to be unwound, cautiously, a thread at a time. This is the story of a dreamer, 'an average man, ' singled out by fate for an uncertain life. Jailed for 18 years under apartheid for unspecified sins, he emerges into a world that has no place for him. His fluctuating fortunes land him on the unpredictable, bitter-winter streets of Johannesburg, where 'harmlessness' is an 'unfortunate trait, ' but tempestuous skylines offer space to breathe. A trumpet and an indigent dog are his accomplices in survival. But, it is his obsessive love for the erratic, hard-hearted Desiree that remains the one constant in his life and impels his search for the elusive meaning of existence. Through his protagonist - the trumpet-playing philosopher poet - author Nthikeng Mohlele weaves unique magic with words, posing powerful questions in his inimitably individualistic and evocative style. Behind this story of love, music and the eternal quest, lies an artistic sensibility as generous as it is complex. The prose is rich in texture, the final effect melancholy and comic in equal proportions. -- J.M. Coetzee, recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature and two-time winner of the Booker Pri

    In A California Childhood he plays with the concept of memoir through personal snapshots, sketches, paintings, poems, and stories. “I was born in 1978 at Stanford Hospital and spent my first eighteen years in a single house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Palo Alto,” Franco writes in his introduction. Steve Jobs’s daughter and the grandson of one of the Hewlett-Packard founders may have both been in his graduating class, but just across the freeway from his home turf lay East Palo Alto, which in 1992 had the highest murder rate per capita in the country. For Franco, the terrain of his upbringing is fraught with the complication of a city divided. But within that diversity, universal aspects of adolescence rise to the surface, and those are the subjects at the heart of Franco’s work. Ultimately this is a portrait of a childhood brightened by California sunshine, but with trouble waiting in the shadows. At turns funny, dark, and emotional, the journey of this book delivers an undeniable immediacy. And at the end, the reader is left wondering just where the boundary lies between Franco’s art and his true life.

    Moving between different time periods and incorporating Inuit mythology, Schwartz offers a fresh perspective on the many challenges Henson confronted during his life. As a Member of early missions to the North Pole, Henson braved subzero temperatures and shifting sea ice. As an African American at the turn of the twentieth century, he also faced harassment and prejudice. Henson won a place on Arctic expeditions through skill and determination-though he didn't receive the same credit as his teammates. He also won the respect of the native peoples he met during his journeys-though he couldn't prevent the harm the expeditions caused them. More than a biography, First Man: Reimagining Matthew Henson is an artistic homage to Henson's accomplishments and the complicated realities of being a trailblazer in a society that didn't recognize black men as equals.

    Unfolding in a series of snapshots, Tessa Hadley’s moving novel follows Stella from the shallows of childhood, growing up with a single mother in a Bristol bedsit in the 1960s, into the murky waters of middle age.Clever Girl is a story vivid in its immediacy and rich in drama—violent deaths, failed affairs, broken dreams, missed chances. Yet it is Hadley’s observations of everyday life, her keen skill at capturing the ways men and women think and feel and relate to one another, that dazzles.

    With a foreword by Robert Shapard and an afterword by Christopher Merrill, this book brings you fresh approaches to an exacting form that demands precision, a species of brevity that is surprisingly expansive. Writers say the pieces are hard to compose, but readers say they are easy to appreciate, a pleasure to envision, a wonder to watch life spun out and painted in small places. Real and surreal, lyrical and prosaic, here are 135 stories by 89 authors, certain to make you think.

    Jenny confronts the frailty of family life while also vying for the attention of actor Tony Curtis and even a role in his movie. Smith delivers humor and honesty to her flawed characters with genuine Southern dignity.

    Eight months pregnant, Zodwa carefully guards secrets that jeopardize her life.Across the country, wealthy socialite Ruth appears to have everything her heart desires, but it's what she can't have that leads to her breakdown. Meanwhile, in Zaire, a disgraced former nun, Delilah, grapples with a past that refuses to stay buried. When these personal crises send both middle-aged women back to their rural hometown to lick their wounds, the discovery of an abandoned newborn baby upends everything, challenging their lifelong beliefs about race, motherhood, and the power of the past.As the mystery surrounding the infant grows, the complicated lives of Zodwa, Ruth, and Delilah become inextricably linked. What follows is a mesmerizing look at family and identity that asks: How far will the human heart go to protect itself and the ones it loves?

    A quartet of stories revolving around four men in Johannesburg: a statistician employed on the national census, an engineer out on the town with his council connections, an artist with an interest in genocide and curios, and a contractor who erects billboards on building sites; each tries to make sense of a changed world after the demise of apartheid.

    Told in monologues, speeches, soliloquies, sermons, letters, cards, and lists, FUN CAMP is a freewheelin summer camp novel smashed to bits. Spend a week with the young inhabitants of a camp bent on molding campers into fun and interesting people via pranks, food fights, greased watermelon relays. Along the way, you'll meet Dave and Holly, totalitarian head counselors who may be getting too old for this shit, Bernadette, a Luddite chaplain with some kids to convert, Billy, a first-timer tasting freedom, and Tad, a shaggy dude with a Jesus complex. Prank hard, joke loud, break a bone or two: Half a forest got burned down for you to live it up. FUN CAMP was a semi-finalist for the Lake Forest/&Now 2011-2012 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer's Residency Prize.