"Sophie is an amateur naturalist with a rare genetic gift: the ability to see a marvelous kingdom of invisible, sentient creatures that share a vital, symbiotic relationship with humankind. To record her observations, Sophie creates a personal bestiary and, as she relates the strange abilities of these endangered beings, her tales become extraordinary meditations on love, sex, evolution, extinction, truth, and self-knowledge"--

" A comic, bittersweet tale of family evocative of The Yiddish Policemen's Union and Everything Is Illuminated Alexander "Sasha" Karnokovitch and his family would like to mourn the passing of his mother, Rachela, with modesty and dignity. But Rachela, a famous Polish e;migre; mathematician and professor at the University of Wisconsin, is rumored to have solved the million-dollar, Navier-Stokes Millennium Prize Problem. Rumor also has it that she spitefully took the solution to her grave. To Sasha's chagrin, a ragtag group of socially challenged mathematicians arrives in Madison and crashes the shiva, vowing to do whatever it takes to find the solution-even if it means prying up the floorboards for Rachela's notes. Written by a trained geophysicist, this hilarious and multi-layered debut novel brims with colorful characters and brilliantly captures humanity's drive not just to survive, but to solve the impossible"--

"Jonathan Shaw's Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist is a surreal, multi-generational roller coaster ride through the underbelly of modern culture, charting the course of a life measured by extremes, and all the people, places, and events that shaped that life into a survivor's tale of epic proportions. In its pages, Shaw takes the reader deep, not only into the recesses of his extraordinary mind and adventures, but also into the strange and magical process of memoir-writing itself. If truth is indeed stranger than fiction, then, as Shaw's friend and literary mentor Charles Bukowski once told him, much of this book would have to be lived before it could be written. In that sense, Scab Vendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist is much more than a fascinating chronicle of a popular outlaw artist's creative evolution. It is a multicolored, cinematic, modern-day Odyssey, written in blood, ink, and tears--a kaleidoscopic, visionary roadmap to the journey of the human soul."--Page 4 of cover.

In the past hundred years, since the publication of Bram Stoker's infamous book, no literary figure has enjoyed a more horrific resiliency than Count Dracula. In film, television, novels, and short stories, he keeps coming back to life, fed by the vital imaginative energies of a world-wide audience that cannot seem to resist his abominable charms. Aristocratic and urbane, deeply erotic and profoundly evil, Dracula's bloodsucking savagery has cast a mesmerizing fascination not only over his victims but over his readers as well. And, as Leonard Wolf suggests, "Vampire fiction...exerts an amazing pull on readers for a reason that we may find disturbing. The blood exchange—the taking of blood by the vampire from his or her victim is, all by itself, felt to be a singularly symbolic event. Symbolic and attractive!" Now, in Blood Thirst: One Hundred Years of Vampire Fiction, Leonard Wolf brings together thirty tales in which vampires of all varieties make their ghastly presence felt—male and female, human and non-human, humorous and heroic—all of them kin to the dreadful bat. From Lafcadio Hearn, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, Edith Wharton, August Derleth, and Ray Bradbury to such contemporary masters as Anne Rice, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, and Woody Allen, and in settings as diverse as rural New England and outer space, this collection offers readers a dazzling compendium of vampire stories. Wolf organizes the collection into six categories—The Classic Adventure Tale, The Psychic Vampire, The Science Fiction Vampire, The Non-Human Vampire, The Comic Vampire, and The Heroic Vampire—which allows readers to see the many guises Dracula's descendants have assumed and the many ways they can be interpreted. In his penetrating introduction, Wolf argues that such an arrangement enables us to see the evolution of the vampire from an unmitigated evil to a creature we are more likely to identify with. "In a century in which God and Satan have become increasingly irrelevant in the popular arts, there has been an accompanying secularization of the vampire idea. And, as the stories in Blood Thirst will show, sympathy for the vampire has grown as we have become increasingly interested in the workings of the mind." Indeed, the vampire's ability to change over time, to draw into itself such a richness of symbolic meanings, to conjure itself into so many diabolical shapes, may account for the enduring appeal of the literature written about it. Here, then, is a definitive collection for aficionados and novices alike, and whether readers find the vampires who inhabit these pages sympathetic or horrific, psychologically intriguing or spiritually repellent, morbidly seductive or comically absurd, Blood Thirst gives us all something to sink our teeth into.

The three pieces gathered in The Strange Case of Rachel K roughly map the genesis of Rachel Kushner's fiction. From the fate of a conquistador in "The Great Exception," to the illegal radio broadcasts and then bombs in "Debouchment," to a Havana courtesan's "strange" case, these stories build into a vision of Cuba that is black-humored, brutal, and beautiful. In this collection, which "overflows in atmosphere as it shows off the burgeoning talent of one of our best writers" (NPR), Rachel Kushner is forging her own original path into the wilds of contemporary fiction.

"Superb...a series of masterly drawn glimpses into the storymaking art of one of Africa's great modern literary geniuses." -Alan Cheuse, NPR A selection of short stories written to date by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, Life Times reveals her acute understanding of human nature and paints a fascinatingly original portrait of South Africa. Whether focusing on politics, sexuality, race, love, or loss, Gordimer maps out the terrain of human relationships with razor-sharp psychological insight and a stunning lack of sentimentality. Complex and multifaceted, her stories challenge us, time and again, to examine the conflict between our actions and our unspoken desires. This powerful collection, which includes two new stories, is a testament to Gordimer's literary genius and the ongoing power and relevance of her vision.

From the author of The New York Times #1 best-selling novel The Carpetbaggers comes a tale of violence, sex, betrayal, revenge and intrigue. The Adventurers is a story of revolution and danger in the sultry jungles of South America.As a young boy, Diogenes Alejandro Xenos (¿Dax¿) witnesses the brutal rape and murder of his mother and sister by government troops¿experiencing the drama of revolution, loss, and tragedy firsthand. He is sent to Europe by the victorious rebel leader to rebuild his country¿s diplomatic and financial status post-revolution, and is immediately thrown into the elite environment of Europe¿s jet set society of international bankers and diplomats.Outwardly, Dax lives a life of privilege as one of the continent¿s most sought-after, hedonistic playboys¿wanted by men and women alike, but for very different reasons. Inside, however, he channels his fear, anger and hatred for the new regime, which he realizes is as corrupt as the old, into a desire to disrupt the status quo. Once a favorite of the general-turned-dictator, Dax quickly becomes an outlaw in his own country, living on the fringes of society as a rebel hell-bent on a new revolution.This epic tale of escape from the horrors of a third world regime is one of Harold Robbins' most ambitious novels ever, combining his trademark sensuality with political intrigue, a globe-spanning variety of exotic locales, and themes that never seem to change¿political intrigue, greed, power, money, violence, sex and betrayal.With Dax Xenos, Robbins thrills and excites us with one of his most memorable and intriguing characters¿a flawed and complicated hero.The Adventurers was one of Robbins¿ most successful novels, spending 41 weeks on The New York Times best sellers list. Today, this novel easily proves that Robbins¿ compelling prose still has the power to surprise, titillate, and move readers.

The final volume in a trilogy beginning with Umbrella and followed by Shark , Phone tells the story of two men: Zack Busner and Jonathan De'Ath. Busner is a psychiatrist who has made his name through his unorthodox treatment of psychological damage, such as administering LSD to World War II PTSD-sufferers. But now Busner's own mind is fraying: Alzheimer's is shredding his memory and his newest possession is a shiny smartphone given to him by his autistic grandson Ben. Meanwhile, Jonathan De'Ath, aka "the Butcher," is an MI6 man who remains a mystery even to those closest to him. Perhaps there is only one person who thinks of him with tenderness, a man he keeps top secret, encrypted in the databanks of his steely mind: Colonel Gawain Thomas, husband, father, highly trained tank commander, and Jonathan De'Ath's long-time lover. As Busner's mind totters and Jonathan and Gawain's affair teeters, they come to face the interconnectedness of all lives, online and off, while an irritating phone continues to ring. . . . ring. . . . ring. . . .

The triumphant follow-up to the bestsellingBee Season,Wickett’s Remedyis an epic but intimate novel about a young Irish-American woman facing down tragedy during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918. Wickett’s Remedyleads us back to Boston in the early part of the 20th century and into the world of Lydia, an Irish-American shop girl yearning for a grander world than the cramped confines of South Boston. She seems to be well on her way to the life she has dreamed of when she marries Henry Wickett, a shy medical student and the scion of a Boston Brahmin family. Soon after their wedding, however, Henry shocks Lydia by quitting medical school and creating a mail-order patent medicine called Wickett’s Remedy. And then just as the enterprise is getting off the ground, the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 begins its deadly sweep across the world, drastically changing their lives. In a world turned almost unrecognizable by swift and sudden tragedy, Lydia finds herself working as a nurse in an experimental ward dedicated to understanding the raging epidemic — through the use of human subjects. Meanwhile, we follow the fate of Henry’s belovedWickett’s Remedyas his one-time business partner steals the recipe and transforms it into QD Soda, a wildly popular soft drink. Based on years of research and evoking actual events,Wickett’s Remedyperfectly captures the texture of the times and brings a colourful cast of characters vividly to life, including a sad and funny chorus of the dead. With wit and dexterity, Goldberg has fashioned a novel that is both charming and grand.Wickett’s Remedyannounces her arrival as a major novelist. South Boston belonged to Lydia as profoundly and wordlessly as her thimble finger. Her knowledge of its streets was more complete than any atlas, her mental maps reflecting changes that occurred from season to season, day to day, and hour to hour. Each time she left 28 D Street — one among a row of identical triple-decker houses, the tenements lining the street like so many stained teeth — her route reflected this internal almanac. . . . For ten years this was enough. Then in fifth grade, Lydia saw a city map and realized her entire world was a mitten dangling from Boston’s sleeve. Across the bridge lay Washington Street — the longest street in all New England — which began like any other but then continued north, a single determined thread of cobblestone that wove itself through every town from Boston to Providence. Once Lydia saw Washington Street she knew she could not allow it to exist without her. —excerpt fromWickett's Remedy From the Hardcover edition.

It is time to elect a new abbess at the Convent of Crewe. There are two contenders: nuns Alexandra and Felicity. Alexandra is busy bugging the convent while Felicity calls the police when her love letters (to a young Jesuit priest) are stolen. A brilliant laugh-out-loud satire on the Watergate scandal.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.

"St. Urbain"' "s Horseman" is a complex, moving, and wonderfully comic evocation of a generation consumed with guilt - guilt at not joining every battle, at not healing every wound. Thirty-seven-year-old Jake Hersh is a film director of modest success, a faithful husband, and a man in disgrace. His alter ego is his cousin Joey, a legend in their childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Nazi-hunter, adventurer, and hero of the Spanish Civil War, Joey is the avenging horseman of Jake' s impotent dreams. When Jake becomes embroiled in a scandalous trial in London, England, he puts his own unadventurous life on trial as well, finding it desperately wanting as he steadfastly longs for the Horseman' s glorious return. Irreverent, deeply felt, as scathing in its critique of social mores as it is uproariously funny, "St. Urbain"' "s Horseman" confirms Mordecai Richler' s reputation as a pre-eminent observer of the hypocrisies and absurdities of modern life.

Jonathan Sweetwater has been blessed with money, a fulfilling career, great kids and Claire, his smart, gorgeous, sophisticated wife. But there is one thing Jonathan never had: a relationship with his father. Percival Sweetwater III has been absent from his son's life since Jonathan was nine years old. A five-term U.S. senator, now dead, Percy was beloved by presidents, his constituents, and women alike, especially the five women who married him after Jonathan's mother. Jonathan hasn't thought about Percy or the hole he left in his life for years. Dedicated to Claire and his family, he's nothing like his serial monogamist father. But then Jonathan discovers evidence that everything in his marriage may not be as perfect as he thought. Hurt and uncertain what to do, he knows that the only way to move forward is to go back. On this quest for understanding -- about himself, about manhood, about marriage -- Jonathan decides to track down his father's five ex-wives. His journey will take him from cosmopolitan cities to the mile-high mountains to a tropical island -- and ultimately back to confront the one thing Jonathan has that his father never did: home.

The explosive debut novel - about family, power and privilege - from the creator of the award-winning Mad Men. Named a Barnes & Noble Best Book of the Year Mark and Karen Breakstone have constructed the idyllic life of wealth and status they always wanted, made complete by their beautiful and extraordinary daughter Heather. But they are still not quite at the top. When the new owners of the penthouse above them begin construction, an unstable stranger penetrates the security of their comfortable lives and threatens to destroy everything they've created.

Alex and Andrew are friends. And Barbara...Barbara is a goddess. Here is the eternal triangle, the story of three people in an unhappy tangle of emotions, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. Are any of them truly interested in reaching the ‘paradise’ they claim to be seeking, or are they actually trying to avoid it? In St. John’s hands, what is commonplace is transformed and transcendent. This is the work of an extraordinary writer.

A brawny, brilliant debut novel about the epic struggles of an immigrant son in a darkening world. Johannesburg, South Africa. The Great Depression. In this harsh new country, young Isaac Helger burns with fiery determination— to break out of the inner city, to buy his scarred mother the home she longs for, to find a way to realize her dream of reuniting a family torn apart. But there are terrible, unspoken secrets of the past that will haunt him as he makes his way through a society brutalized by racism, as he loses his heart to an unattainable girl from the city’s wealthiest heights and his every exit route from poverty dead-ends. When the threat of the Second World War insinuates itself with brutal force into Isaac’s reality, he will face the most important choice of his life . . . and will have to learn to live with the consequences. In this extraordinarily powerful novel, Kenneth Bonert brings alive the world of South African Jewry in all its raw energy and ribald vernacular. Comedic, searing, lyrical and with a snap-perfect ear for dialogue, The Lion Seeker is a profoundly moral exploration of how wider social forces shape us and shatter us, echoing through history with lessons that are no less relevant today than in the crucible of its time.

Loosely related to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island , Pussy, King of the Pirates is a grrrl pirate story that journeys from the most famous whorehouse in Alexandria though an unidentified, crumbling city that may or may not be sometime in the future, to Brighton Town, England, and, finally, to a ship headed toward Pirate Island, where the stories converge and the vision ends. Neil Gaiman, a close friend of Acker's, has written a new introduction to this anniversary edition. In typical Acker fashion, he's including a text exchange with one of Acker's fictional heroines, Janey Smith, along with stories of their friendship and what Acker would think of everything now, today, "as the world begins to burn."

The Image is a collection of twenty-two entertaining stories that range in time from the old days in Warsaw to recent years in America. The title story is haunted by a unique love that falls like a shadow between a newly married couple.

Pennsylvania farmer Amos Breed is joined by his son, Ben, and promoter Zachary Fraser--and, later, by Bernie Kasper--in turning an alligator-infested swamp into a vacation spa called Miami Beach

Finalist for the Baileys Women's Prize Annie McDee, thirty-one, lives in a shabby London flat, works as a chef, and is struggling to get by. Reeling from a sudden breakup, she’s taken on an unsuitable new lover and finds herself rummaging through a secondhand shop to buy him a birthday gift. A dusty, anonymous old painting catches her eye. After spending her meager savings on the artwork, Annie prepares an exquisite birthday dinner for two—only to be stood up. The painting becomes hers, and Annie begins to suspect that it may be more valuable than she’d thought. Soon she finds herself pursued by parties who would do anything to possess her picture: an exiled Russian oligarch, an avaricious sheikha, an unscrupulous art dealer. In her search for the painting’s identity, Annie will unwittingly discover some of the darkest secrets of European history—and the possibility of falling in love again.

When a Christian boy disappears in Kolvillag, a fictional town in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe in the 1920s, fanatics are quick to point a finger at the Jews, accusing them of tire age-old myth of ritual murder. There is tension in the air, and a pogrom threatens to surface. Suddenly, someone steps forward and confesses to a crime he did not commit in order to save his people from certain death. Moshe is a dreamer, a madman and a mystic, a man both revered and misunderstood by those around him. The community gathers to hear his last words, a plea for silence. Everyone present takes an oath: should anyone survive the impending tragedy, he is never to speak of the town's last clays and nights of error.Only one man survives. For fifty years Azriel keeps Iris oath to be silent about these horrific events, until he meets a man whose life depends on hearing the story. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.