The Assassini


Thomas Gifford - 1990
    It is 1982.  In the Vatican, priestly vultures gather around the dying Pope, whispering the names of possible successors.  In a forgotten monastery on Ireland's gale-swept coast, a dangerous document is hidden, waiting to be claimed.  And in a family chapel in Princeton, New Jersey, a nun is murdered at her prayers.  Sister Valentine was an outspoken activist, a thorn in the Church's side.  When her brother, lawyer Ben Driskill, realizes the Church will never investigate her death, he sets out to find the murderer himself--and uncovers an explosive secret.The Assassini.  An age-old brotherhood of killers.  Once they were hired by princes of the Church to protect it in dangerous times.  But whose orders do they now obey?The Assassini marks the triumphant retum of a master at the peak of his powers--the first novel in more than a decade from the acclaimed author of The Wind Chill Factor.

The Death of Bunny Munro


Nick Cave - 2009
    An epic chronicle of one man's judgement and death, "The Death of Bunny Munro" is an achingly tender portrait of the relationship between father and son.

Julius Winsome


Gerard Donovan - 2006
    From the author of Schopenhauer's Telescope comes a beautiful and haunting novel of vengeance, literature, love, isolation, and man's tenuous grasp on reason.

The Death of the Adversary


Hans Keilson - 1959
    It is a tale of horror, not only in its evocation of Hitler's gathering menace but also in its hero's desperate attempt to discover logic where none exists. A psychological fable as wry and haunting as Badenheim 1939, The Death of the Adversary is a lost classic of modern fiction.

Deadwood


Pete Dexter - 1986
    Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.

The River King


Alice Hoffman - 2000
    The students at the prestigious prep school don't mix with locals. Even within the school, hierarchy rules as freshman and faculty members find out where they fit in and what is expected of them. But when a body is found in the river behind the school, a local policeman will walk into this enclosed world and upset it entirely. A story of surface appearances and the truths submerged below.

Cosmos


Witold Gombrowicz - 1965
    Two young men meet by chance in a Polish resort town in the Carpathian Mountains. Intending to spend their vacation relaxing, they find a secluded family-run pension. But the two become embroiled first in a macabre event on the way to the pension, then in the peculiar activities and psychological travails of the family running it. Gombrowicz offers no solution to their predicament.Cosmos is translated here for the first time directly from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt, translator of Ferdydurke.

The Jerusalem Diamond


Noah Gordon - 1979
    So when he’s asked to broker a deal that will return the legendary gemstone to Israel, he eagerly accepts.Arriving in the volatile Middle East, Hopeman soon discovers that his assignment will be anything but easy. Representatives of the Holy Land’s three major religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are all laying claim to the priceless jewel that once adorned the miter of Pope Gregory, and they will do anything to possess it.Partnering with Israeli government agent Tamar Strauss—a beautiful and courageous Yemenite war widow who inspires the visiting American’s passion as well as his respect—Hopeman is soon entangled in a web of mystery and intrigue that crosses continents and stretches back thousands of years. As the duo follows the twisting travels of the gem and the bloody conflicts it has ignited throughout its extraordinary past—a history that intertwines with Hopeman’s own family saga—the story of a breathtaking land and its people unfolds in all its drama and glory.

Devils in Daylight


Jun'ichirō Tanizaki - 1918
    Nevertheless, they stake out the secret location, and through tiny peepholes in the knotted wood, become voyeurs at the scene of a shocking crime…Atmospheric, erotic, and tense, Devils in Daylight is an early work by the master storyteller who “created a lifelong series of ingenious variations on a dominant theme: the power of love to energize and destroy” (Chicago Tribune).

Siegfried


Harry Mulisch - 2001
    He is later contacted by an elderly couple who believe he should hear their shocking story. As servants at the Berghof, Hitler's retreat during the war, they looked after Eva Braun and consequently became guardians of a shattering secret and unwilling participants in a terrible crime. Burdened by his new knowledge, Herter must decide what to do with it...

Affliction


Russell Banks - 1989
    A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.

Leave Her to Heaven


Ben Ames Williams - 1944
    Ellen’s beauty was radiant, and Harland had been so struck with her personality and the strength of her character that he knew he could never leave her. When he found that she returned his adoration, he could marry her with joy, bothered just momentarily by a strange premonition. It was only later, when the premonition became a horrifying reality, that he realized the glowing loveliness of the woman he had married was the true face of evil.

The Island of Second Sight


Albert Vigoleis Thelen - 1953
    Set in the years leading up to World War II, it is the fictionalized account of the time spent in Mallorca by the author and his wife, who experience the most unpredictable and surreal adventures, pursued all the while by Nazis and Francoists. And just as the chaos comes to seem manageable, the Spanish Civil War erupts. Drawing comparisons to Don Quixote and The Man Without Qualities, The Island of Second Sight is a novel of astonishing and singular richness of language and purpose. At once ironic and humanistic, hilarious and profoundly serious, philosophical and grotesque, The Island of Second Sight is a literary tour de force.Praise for The Island of Second Sight"A masterpiece...Fabulous in all senses of the word." —Iain Bamforth, Times Literary Supplement"A genuine work of art." —Paul Celan"[The Island of Second Sight] is comparable in profundity as well as in complexity to Mann's own Magic Mountain. It is in a class with two other massive German masterpieces...: Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil and Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities." —Allen Guttmann, Amherst Magazine"There is a widely held misconception that Germans have no sense of humor. Here is evidence to the contrary as Thelen, belatedly, through his translator, gets a chance to show the English speaking world." —Anthea Bell, Literary Review

The History of Bees


Maja Lunde - 2015
    William is a biologist and seed merchant who sets out to build a new type of beehive, one that will give both him and his children honor and fame.United States, 2007. George is a beekeeper fighting an uphill battle against modern farming, but he hopes that his son can be their salvation.China, 2098. Tao hand paints pollen onto the fruit trees now that the bees have long since disappeared. When Tao's young son is taken away by the authorities after a tragic accident, she sets out on a grueling journey to find out what happened to him.Haunting, illuminating, and deftly written, The History of Bees joins these three very different narratives into one gripping and thought-provoking story that is just as much about the powerful bond between children and parents as it is about our very relationship to nature and humanity.

Belle de jour


Joseph Kessel - 1928
    In a world that blurs the lines between feminism and female sexuality, Belle de Jour remains as vital and controversial today as it was in its 1960 debut.Severine Serizy is a wealthy and beautiful Parisian housewife, who loves her husband, but she cannot share physical intimacy with him, and her vivid sadomasochistic fantasies drive her to seek employment at a brothel. By day, she enacts her customers' wildest fantasies under the pseudonym "Belle de Jour"; in the evenings, she returns home to her chaste marriage and oblivious husband. Famous for its unflinching eroticism, Joseph Kessel's novel continues to offer an eye-opening glance into a unique female psyche.