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

"A sweeping personal retelling of African myths illustrated throughout with Rosales's...artwork"--Back cover.

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.

"Gail is in trouble at school. Saint Saviour's, the exclusive private girls school that she attends on a scholarship, cannot contain her. Impulsive, bored and looking for someone to adore, she is at that dangerous age when you want to be picked up by men and then driven home by your mother. Ezra is rich, powerful and at the top of his game. His comfortable middle age is tainted only by the knowledge that, in his heady youth, he'd loved new wave music and had people killed - and by his crushing anxieties about his teenage daughter, Agata. When Agata starts at Saint Saviour's, Gail and Ezra's paths cross, and with an unstoppable momentum, their lives intertwine in ways more dangerous than either could ever predict."--Provided by publisher.

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.

"Fresh from the enormous success of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart, Hurricane Clarice let loose something stormier in 1946 with her second novel, The Chandelier. In a body of work renowned for its potent idiosyncratic genius, The Chandelier in many ways has pride of place. "It stands out," her biographer Benjamin Moser noted, "in a strange and difficult body of work, as perhaps her strangest and most difficult book." Of glacial intensity, consisting almost entirely of interior monologues--interrupted by odd and jarring fragments of dialogue and action--the novel moves in slow waves that crest in moments of revelation. As she seeks freedom via creation, the drama of Virginia's isolated life is almost entirely internal: from childhood, she sculpts clay figurines with "the best clay one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold. She got a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world. How, how to explain the miracle..." While on one level simply the story of a woman's life, The Chandelier's real drama lies in Lispector's attempt "to find the nucleus made of a single instant ...the tenuous triumph and the defeat, perhaps nothing more than breathing." The Chandelier pushes Lispector's lifelong quest for that nucleus into deeper territories than any of her amazing works" --

“Extraordinary . . . No one but Chaim Potok could have written this strangely sweet, compelling, and deeply felt novel.”— The Cleveland Plain Dealer In his powerful My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok gave the world an unforgettable character and a timeless story that The New York Times Book Review hailed as “little short of a work of genius.” The Chicago Sun-Times declared it “a story that had to be told.” Now, Chaim Potok’s beloved character returns to learn, to teach, to dream, in The Gift of Asher Lev. Twenty years have passed. Asher Lev is a world-renowned artist living with his young family in France. Still, he is unsure of his artistic direction. Success has not brought ease to his heart. Then Asher’s beloved uncle dies suddenly, and Asher and his family rush back to Brooklyn—and into a world that Asher thought he had left behind forever. It is a journey of confrontation and discovery as Asher purges his past in search of new inspiration for his art and begins to understand the true meaning of sacrifice and the painful joy in sharing the most precious gift of all. Praise for The Gift of Asher Lev “A masterwork.” — Newsday “Rivals anything Chaim Potok has ever produced. It is a book written with passion about passion. You’re not likely to read anything better this year.” — The Detroit News “Fascinating.” — The Washington Post Book World “Very moving.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer

Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Rome, Tom Rachman’s wry, vibrant debut follows the topsy-turvy private lives of the reporters, editors, and executives of an international English language newspaper as they struggle to keep it—and themselves—afloat.Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. Kathleen, the imperious editor in chief, is smarting from a betrayal in her open marriage; Arthur, the lazy obituary writer, is transformed by a personal tragedy; Abby, the embattled financial officer, discovers that her job cuts and her love life are intertwined in a most unexpected way. Out in the field, a veteran Paris freelancer goes to desperate lengths for his next byline, while the new Cairo stringer is mercilessly manipulated by an outrageous war correspondent with an outsize ego. And in the shadows is the isolated young publisher who pays more attention to his prized basset hound, Schopenhauer, than to the fate of his family’s quirky newspaper.As the era of print news gives way to the Internet age and this imperfect crew stumbles toward an uncertain future, the paper’s rich history is revealed, including the surprising truth about its founder’s intentions.Spirited, moving, and highly original, The Imperfectionists will establish Tom Rachman as one of our most perceptive, assured literary talents --

No writer plunged more wholeheartedly into the chaotic energies of the 1960s than Norman Mailer, as he fearlessly revolutionized literary norms and genres to capture the political, social, and sexual explosions of an unsettled era. Here, for the first time in one volume, are his unforgettable books of the 1960s: two disruptive and visionary novels, and two radically innovative journalistic masterpieces. War hero, television star, existential hipster, seducer, murderer: such is the protagonist of An American Dream, Mailer's hallucinatory voyage through the dark night of an America awash in money, sex, and violence. In Why Are We in Vietnam? a motor-mouthed 18-year-old Texan on the eve of military service recounts with manic and obscene exuberance a grizzly bear hunt in Alaska that exposes the macho roots of the war. The acclaimed "non-fiction novel" The Armies of the Night (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award) and its follow-up Miami and the Siege of Chicago are on-the-scene, in-the-scene accounts of an antiwar march on the Pentagon and the party conventions of 1968, as Mailer casts himself as a player in the drama he reports, bringing a sharp and merciless eye on the decade's political upheavals.

New York City, the near future: Mitchell Zukor works on the cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility, and business is booming. A brilliant mathematician, he spends his days calculating worst-case scenarios for FutureWorld, a consulting firm that indemnifies corporations against potential disasters. As Mitchell immerses himself in the calculus of catastrophe, he exchanges letters with Elsa Bruner—a college crush with her own apocalyptic secret—and becomes obsessed by a culture's fears. When Mitchell's darkest predictions come true and an actual worst-case scenario engulfs Manhattan, he realizes that he is uniquely prepared to profit. But what will it cost him? Odds Against Tomorrow , hailed by Rolling Stone as "the first great climate-change novel," is an all-too-plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear. The future is not what it used to be.

First published in 1973 – and followed by Volume II in 1976 and Volume III in 1980 – this anthology has assumed classic status in the field of Egyptology and portrays the remarkable evolution of the literary forms of one of the world’s earliest civilizations. Volume I outlines the early and gradual evolution of Egyptian literary genres, including biographical and historical inscriptions carved on stone, the various classes of literary works written with pen on papyrus, and the mortuary literature that focuses on life after death. Introduced with a new foreword by Antonio Loprieno. Volume II shows the culmination of these literary genres within the single period known as the New Kingdom (1550-1080 B.C.). With a new foreword by Hans-W. Fischer-Elfert. Volume III spans the last millennium of Pharaonic civilization, from the tenth century B.C. to the beginning of the Christian era. With a new foreword by Joseph G. Manning.

Hold on tight for a literary thrill-ride into the wickedly clever, frightening, and exhilarating world of Top Suspense, a sizzling collaboration of twelve master storytellers at the peak of their powers in thirteen unforgettable tales. This pulse-pounding anthology - packed full of cold-blooded killers, erotic tension, shady private eyes, craven drug dealers, vicious betrayals, crafty thieves, and shocking twists - is only a taste of the thrills you will find in the breathtakingly original ebooks by these authors at www.topsuspensegroup.com. So sit back, bite down on a piece of strong leather, and prepare to get hit by some gale-force suspense and writing so sharp it will draw blood.