It's 4 a.m. and dawn is about to break over the Lovelace estate. Cathy Mason drags herself out of bed as she swelters in her overheated bedroom - the council still haven't turned the radiators off despite temperatures reaching the 30s. In a kitchen across London, Home Secretary Peter Whiteley enjoys the tea that his security detail left for him before he joins his driver and heads to Parliament, whilst his new police chief, Joshua Yares, clears his head for his first day with a run. All three will have reasons to recollect this morning as their lives collide over ten days they will never forget. Ten Days takes an unflinching look at how lives are ruined and careers are made when small misjudgements have profound effects on frustrated communities and damaged individuals. Gillian Slovo's game-changing novel about political expediency and personal disenfranchisement is as page-turning as it is culturally significant.

"We all know what Rainbow is," began Lamondois. "Rainbow is a planet colonized by science and designed for physical experiments." "The Far Rainbow was written at one breath, it is full of dynamics and genuine dramatism." - Literary Gazette "Science-fiction stories by the Strugatsky brothers are philosophical pieces. They are full of action but each action is clearly imbued with speculation." - Neva Magazine "Take the Far Rainbow, for instance. 'Authentic' is the word, and this is rather unusual where science fiction is concerned." - The Young Guard Magazine The brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky have chosen different careers. Arkady is a linguist and Boris an astronomer. Perhaps it is this divergence of interest which has helped them to describe the world of the far future so vividly. The brothers Strugatsky are among the most prominent Soviet science-fiction writers. They have written a number of works in the genre.

"Something big stands between Amélie and Vincent: life Amélie and Vincent meet as students at the Sorbonne at the end of the 1980s. It's love at first sight for both, but neither dares confess their feelings to the other. Neither of them feels like they are 'good enough', no one makes the first move, or is courageous enough to take hold of the joy before them... They agree to meet again, but the young woman is late. And in those few minutes, it's not just a date she misses out on, but her entire life. The young man and woman get swept up by life as it carries them towards fates they no longer control, jobs they didn't choose, marriages and relationships that become rocky. Life that takes them down paths, through doors, into hallways, for ten, twenty or thirty years... It is the story of two lives in parallel across the decades, the story of Amélie and Vincent's relationships and careers, the story of chance encounters that bring them together again and again. But is it ever the 'right' time for this thwarted love?"--Amazon.com.

The most important new literary journal to emerge since Granta, Open City has published some of the best work by major writers and artists such as Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Jeff Koons, David Foster Wallace, Irvine Welsh, Terry Southern, Patrick McCabe, Sam Lipsyte, and David Berman. Edited by the writers Thomas Beller and Daniel Pinchbeck and originally published by the late Robert Bingham, writing from Open City has been included in many prestigious anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Known for launching the careers of today's best new writers, the editors are also committed to printing important unpublished work by writers from past eras, such as Richard Yates, Delmore Schwartz, Jim Thompson, Cyril Connolly, Edvard Munch, and Gregor von Rezzori. With its innovative and daring mix of the old and the new, Open City combines undiscovered writing by classic authors with a fascinating portrait of a literary generation in the making.

Ziff: A Life? is the latest tour de force by an extraordinary novelist with explosive verbal energy and intelligence, sexual sensibility, and drive, who has been acclaimed by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Wallace Stegner. Who is Arthur Ziff? One of our greatest living writers or an impertinent provocateur? A true literary master or a clever tactician who seduces the reading public? It is narrator Danny Levitan’s job to find out who Ziff really is, in a compelling novel about the writing life that is at once comic and provocative, producing a memorable reading experience. Sensational publishing and serious literature collide when Levitan, a has-been writer, is offered a hefty advance to write a biography of Ziff, the scourge of myriad Jewish-American readers and a titan among the world’s literary giants. For years, Ziff has been sharing secrets, manuscripts, and sexual escapades with his longtime and less successful friend Danny. But, old friendships aside, Ziff hardly welcomes an incendiary study of his life, and is determined to thwart Danny, with legal roadblocks and personal humiliation. Danny must decide whether to accept the advance and risk the rollercoaster of recriminations that will surely follow. He recounts with humor and often wrenching anguish his journey of discovery into the land of Ziff, and the hard-won truths he finds there—original insights into a man who has crafted his novels, often savagely, from the lives of his friends, including Danny’s life. An unabashed look at the ruthless forging of literary careers and a heady brew of books within a book, Ziff: A Life? will enthrall readers of great fiction everywhere and anyone eager for a peek through the keyhole of contemporary literary celebrity.

At the dawn of the Reagan era Martin Bauman, nineteen, clever, ambitious and insecure, is enrolled at a prestigious college with a hard-won place under the tutelage of the legendary and enigmatic Stanley Flint, a man who can make or break writing careers with the flick of a weary hand. Martin is poised on the threshold of the writing life, his twin desires to get into print and to find his way out of the closet. Moving through the century's most licentious decade - the decade of cocaine, wild parties, huge advances and the tragic comedown of AIDS - Martin matures from brilliant student to apprentice in a Manhattan publishing house to fully fledged member of the New York literary brat pack. Yet despite his apparent success, his emotional and creative desires refuse, stubbornly, to be satisfied and his every achievement is haunted by the austere and troubling image of literary perfection, his elusive mentor, Stanley Flint. Subtle, erotic, honest and funny, David Leavitt's deliciously sharp, multi-layered dissection of literary and sexual mores lays bare the life of the artist, in all his venal, envious, self-loathing, poignant glory.

Short stories summon up the tones and twists of contemporary marriages, careers, pleasures, and social quirks

The Devil's Knee : In the eighteen years that have passed since they were last seen, Larry "Tunafish" Tunig and Simon "Bull" Bronstien have left their criminal careers behind and have been living the quiet life in Mexico City. "Bull," overcome by remorse for past misdeeds, has sought solace in religion, changing his name back to Simon, growing a beard and attending daily services at the local synagogue. But the mob won't leave them alone. Larry and Simon are recalled from Mexico and moved into a Beverly Hills mansion, where Larry is to preside as the fourth husband of Joyce Adams, once a Las Vegas whore, now the widow of the mob's big boss. Larry's assignment: to keep cops and reporters from snooping around. But how do you stay inconspicuous when your new stepdaughter is becoming one of the nation's leading rock stars, your pacifist buddy has attacked and maimed an anti-Semitic orator in the street, and a contingent of tommygun-wielding mobsters has just prevented three drug-crazed hippies from blowing up your house?

"We cannot help wincing, cannot help feeling that the author has committed an error of taste, cannot help hoping with all the vigour at our command that his example will not be followed. [...] We are compelled by conviction to express in clear terms the disfavour with which we regard audacious enterprises such as the one undertaken by the author of this novel." -- The Literary World, May 25, 1900 "Richard Marsh, author of A Second Coming , is the author also of 'The Beetle' and 'The Crime and the Criminal.' This, therefore, is his third coming. If one wishes to read one of his books, let it be 'The Crime' or 'The Beetle.' It may be better than 'A Second Coming.' It cannot easily be worse." -- The Critic, July, 1900 A Second Coming (1900) was the first attempt at serious literature by popular novelist Richard Marsh, and when it was published by the influential London publisher Grant Richards, whose publishing house helped launched the careers of George Bernard Shaw, G. K. Chesterton, and James Joyce, it appeared Marsh was on his way toward success as a respected literary writer. But the reviews were uniformly negative, decrying the book as blasphemous, and Marsh's bold and fascinating work was declared a failure and quickly consigned to oblivion. In A Second Coming , Marsh imagines what would happen if the long-awaited second coming of Christ took place in present-day London. How would he be received in a modern, industrialized world that had begun to question the relevance of his teachings and had tacitly given up hope of his return? Surprising and thought-provoking, Marsh's novel and the questions it raises are perhaps as relevant as ever. This edition features the unabridged text of the novel, a reproduction of its original cover, and a new introduction by Paul Fox.