In danger of losing the Aquitaine territory, England sends Geoffrey Chaucer, protégé of the king's son, to France. As a poet on a diplomatic mission, Chaucer must persuade one of the most important noblemen of the region to remain loyal to England's king. But Henri, Comte de Guyac, whose wife Chaucer had previously fallen in love with when he was held prisoner by Henri, is not exactly neutral in his feelings for Chaucer. Wondering how he will feel when he sees Rosamund, the Comte's wife, Chaucer reaches de Guyac's castle and is greeted by turmoil. His mission is further complicated when Henri is killed during a boar hunt. Chaucer soon realizes the Comte's death is no hunting accident and that he must solve the murder before returning home. Enemies and suspects abound, from a troupe of travelling players to factions within the castle itself. Chaucer finds himself in the midst of a brightly colorful puzzle that turns him into a fugitive in a foreign country, unsure who his friends and enemies really are.

    Boril Krustev, former rock star and middle-aged widower who is driving aimlessly to outrun his grief, picks them up and accompanies them on their journey. It doesn’t take them long to figure out they’re connected to each other by more than their need to travel—specifically through Boril’s daughter, whose actions damaged each of the characters in this novel. Co-winner of the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers Contest, A Short Tale of Shame marks the arrival of a new talent in Bulgarian literature with a novel about the need to come to terms with the shame and guilt we all harbor.

    The phenomenally popular, New York Times bestselling satirist whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution calls, “Stephen King with a whoopee cushion and a double-espresso imagination” has already lampooned Shakespeare, San Francisco vampires, marine biologists, Death…even Jesus Christ and Santa Claus! Now, in his latest masterpiece, Sacré Bleu, the immortal Moore takes on the Great French Masters. A magnificent “Comedy d’Art” from the author of Lamb, Fool, and Bite Me, Moore’s Sacré Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter as he joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed “suicide” of Vincent van Gogh.

    1 New York Times bestseller Beautiful Ruins, a father-son story that underscores why Jess Walter is not only among the funniest writers working today but among the most bighearted and humane.Jay is nothing like his hard-drinking, skirt-chasing, blue-collar dad. He’s college-educated, works as a graphic designer, prefers white wine to whiskey, and is gay—a fact that’s been lost, with so much else, in the growing fog of his father’s dementia. When the woman with whom his dad has lived for decades throws him out (thanks to a little neighborly infidelity), Jay moves his dad to Boise to live with him—at least temporarily—until he can find an eldercare facility for the old man. But the search turns out to be far more complicated than Jay realized—what place will not only care for his dad but let him be who he imperfectly is, bad habits and all? The answer to that question takes father and son to a 1950s-style motor inn, the Town & Country Senior Inn, where the only therapy on offer is nostalgia and happy hour starts at 3:30.In turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Town & Country describes a son’s greatest act of tolerance and acceptance in a world—a distinctly American one—that hasn’t always shown him the same. It’s a story, as only Jess Walter could write it, about all the ways we cannot help but love each other even when, owing to political, regional, and generational divisions, we do not, and maybe cannot, understand each other.

    They’re humorous, odd, and full of all the unreasonable truth of love. This book is the real thing.” —Publishers Weekly Weise’s collection “examines the daily life and consciousness of a speaker with a disability willing to confront all taboos associated with sex, intimacy, identity, gender, and love.” - Coldfront MagazineThe Los Angeles Times described Jillian Weise's debut poetry collection as "a fearless dissection of the taboo and the hidden." In this second collection she forwards her bold, sexy poetics by chronicling an affair with a man she names "Big Logos." These poems throw into question sex, the law, identity, sentiment, and power, shifting between lyric and narrative, hyper-realism and magical realism, fact and fiction.I've Been Waiting All NightI reckon you were asleep with your girlbefore the phone rang. Make something up.I've been waiting all night to tell youabout the couple in post-War France,the woman fresh in her graveand the man who didn't like his mistress dead,no sir, and so exhumed her, to the dismayof his wife, who had him arrestedfor the stink he made.She was reburied, returned to the dead.After jail, he dug her up to fuck again.Attached suction cups and crafteda wig from a broom. You can go now.I'm more in the mood than you're used to.Jillian Weise—an above-the-knee amputee with a computerized prosthetic—identifies as a cyborg and has discussed the identity in essays for the New York Times and Drunken Boat. Her books include The Amputee's Guide to Sex (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and The Colony (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press, 2010). She is an assistant professor at Clemson University, a contributing editor at the South Carolina Review, and co-director of the Annual Clemson Literary Festival.

    In the meantime, miles away, his clan's peaceful existence is devastated by an attack from an unknown cannibalistic species, the Baal. Some of the clan are killed but many more are taken as prey by the Baal to their lands beyond the ice wall. When Golau leads a rescue mission north, Inter species alliances are forged with the Neanderthal and barriers are broken down as the struggle for survival intensifies. Meanwhile back in the clan, hunger and tragedy force the remaining clan members to embrace strange new ideas from a lowly teenage girl and a mentally challenged boy.A final bloody confrontation ensues, but not before Golau unveils the strange ancestry of the Neanderthal, a horrifying, truth about the Baal, and the uncertain future of humanity.

    Edith Wharton and Henry James wrote about the American girl abroad, but it was Elaine Dundy’s Sally Jay Gorce who told us what she was really thinking. Charming, sexy, and hilarious, The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status when it was first published and it remains a timeless portrait of a woman hell-bent on living.“I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm).” –Groucho Marx[The Dud Avocado] is one of the best novels about growing up fast..." -The Guardian“A cheerfully uninhibited...variation on the theme of the Innocents Abroad...Miss Dundy comes up with fresh and spirited comedy....Her novel is enormous fun—sparklingly written, genuinely youthful in spirit.” —The Atlantic

    Delaney is one of them."When you meet Delaney Robinson, she is a two-year-old with a serious attachment to her wonderful great-grandmother, who guides her through life with the wisdom of a nonagenarian. Margaret's reminiscences, along with the rest you will read, tell the story of how this adorable little girl came to be.There is murder, mayhem, humor, romance--and a bit of heartbreak. The stories are about her parents, grandparents, distant ancestors, and family friends, from Delaney's Irish forebears and how they settled in Alabama to a chapter written entirely from the point of view of a Confederate battle sword hanging on her grandfather's wall.

    Where clumps of evergreens meet wild ponies, oyster-shell roads, tumble-down houses, unwanted pregnancies, murder, storm-making and dark magic in the marshes. . . Situated off the coast of Virginia's Chesapeake Bay, the group of islands known as the Shore has been home to generations of fierce and resilient women. Sanctuary to some but nightmare to others, it's a place they've inhabited, fled, and returned to for hundreds of years. From a half-Shawnee Indian's bold choice to flee an abusive home only to find herself with a man who will one day try to kill her to a brave young girl's determination to protect her younger sister as methamphetamine ravages their family, to a lesson in summoning storm clouds to help end a drought, these women struggle against domestic violence, savage wilderness, and the corrosive effects of poverty and addiction to secure a sense of well-being for themselves and for those they love.Together their stories form a deeply affecting legacy of two barrier island families, illuminating 150 years of their many freedoms and constraints, heartbreaks, and pleasures. Conjuring a wisdom and beauty all its own, The Shore is a richly unique, stunning novel that will resonate with readers long after turning its final pages, establishing Sara Taylor as a promising new voice in fiction.

    A heart-breaking saga for all fans of Dilly Court and Val Wood. In the drab Yorkshire town of Garsthwaite, Lacey Barraclough works hard in the textile mill, determined to fight for improvements to the dismal working conditions she and her fellow weavers face. But she hadn't reckoned on falling in love with the boss's son, Nathan. Nathan returns her love, but to succeed they must overcome the class divide, as well as persuade their families that their love for each other is real. Before Nathan and Lacey can make a life together, World War I breaks out and Nathan enlists to fight. When Nathan heads off to the Front, he takes Lacey's dreams with him, and she must find a new way to face the future. As hard times come to Garsthwaite, will there be a home for the returning heroes to come back to? And for those men who do make it back from France, can they ever outrun the horrors they have witnessed, and learn to love again?

    It’s a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow … different.

    fogIt's been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dodgy dentists.In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .hang on. . .what

    In the 1970s in Northern California a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is shattered by an incident of violence that sets fire to the rest of their lives. Divisadero takes us from San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada's casinos and eventually to the landscape of southern France. As the narrative moves back and forth through time and place, we find each of the characters trying to find some foothold in a present shadowed by the past.

    When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.

    Quinn must learn how to exist in his mother's troubled world, without being consumed by her selfishness. Written with fervor and affection for a wounded past, Lyla is an intense and personal epic about a restless woman, and the children caught in her spurring draft. Set during the Great Depression, on the upper coast of Florida, this touching story is about growing up in an achingly anguished household, and finding a way to survive. A stirring memoir that delivers the reader to a sepia-tinted world that is heartbreaking, at times shocking, and triumphant.