"The attractive redhead at the A&P checkout counter opens her checkbook and begins writing a check, unaware that she's signing her own death warrant. The man behind her in the dark overcoat memorizes the address on her check. When she leaves the A&P, he follows her home. In the next few weeks he tracks her every move - and when she rebuffs his advances, he stabs her. Five women, chosen at random, fall victim to a man the press dubs the Hyena. The NYPD has no leads until young Babette Watson walks into homicide detective Max Segal's office. She tells him she's had disturbing visions of all the crimes before they happened. Dubious, Max takes a chance in believing the pretty psychic, and it isn't long before they're on the Hyena's trail. But the Hyena knows they're tracking him, and it won't be long before he strikes." -- Back cover

In writing Le Livre de Promethea Hélène Cixous set for herself the task of bridging the immeasurable distance between love and language. She describes a love between two women in its totality, experienced as both a physical presence and a sense of infinity. The result is a stunning example of Pecriture feminine that won kudos when published in France in 1983. Its translation into English by Betsy Wing will extend the influence of a writer already famous for her novels and contributions to feminist theory. In her introduction Betsy Wing notes the contemporary emphasis on "fictions of presence." Cixous, in The Book of Promethea, works to "repair the separation between fiction and presence, trying to chronicle a very-present love without destroying it in the writing."

Phil Ockerman has fallen hard for Bertha Strunk after meeting her at a tango lesson held in a church crypt. Phil and Bertha are each recently separated, and both their Suns are squared by Neptune. Bertha also bears a strong resemblance to the 17th-century Venetian singer and composer Barbara Strozzi—with whom Phil happens to be obsessed—to the point where Phil is no longer sure where Barbara stops and Bertha begins. On their first serious date, Phil and Barbara watch The Rainmaker , a tale of a battered wife and the murder of an ex-husband. Phil begins to suspect as to whether Barbara's choice of film is entirely innocent, however, when afterwards he finds himself carrying around a potential murder weapon. Navigating several subway lines and considerable planetary activity, this intriguing romance tangos its way through a world of infidelity, artificial eyeballs, baseball bats, and music without missing a daring, seductive step.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ego must be in want of a woman to cut him down to size... Sharp, witty Jasmin Field has her own column in a national magazine and has just landed the coveted role of Elizabeth Bennet in a one-off fundraising adaptation of Pride and Prejudice . Better yet, the play's director, Hollywood heart-throb and Oscar-winner, Harry Noble, is every bit as obnoxious as she could have hoped. Which means a lot of material for her column. And a lot of fun in rehearsals. And then disaster strikes. Jazz's best friend abandons her for a man not worthy to buy her chocolate, her family starts to crumble before her eyes and her award-winning column hits the skids. Worse still, Harry Noble keeps staring at her. As the lights dim, the audience hush and Jazz awaits her cue, she realises two very important things, one: she can't remember her lines, and two: Harry Noble looks amazing in breeches...

When the genteely impoverished and rebellious Evelyn marries the charming Emil, scion of a privileged Sinhalese family, she thinks that her dream of a life in England can now at last come true. So the family travel, with their young son Milton, from Ceylon to Tilbury Docks. But this is England in the 1950s and, no matter how hard Evelyn wishes that it would, England does not take kindly to strangers, especially families who are half black and half white. A profound and moving novel, this is the story about the search to feel at home in your own skin.

Israel, 1970s. Lily, a young emigrant student exploring the wonders and terrors of her new land, finds the man of her dreams -- Ami, a former actor. Handsome, intelligent, and exciting, but like his beautiful, disintegrating country, Ami has a terrible flaw -- he is an army interrogator. As Ami and Lily's unexpected passion grows, so too does the shadow that hangs over them. They must face the unspeakable horrors of Ami's work and their uncertain future. While set in the '70s, Ten Thousand Lovers is a brilliant and terrifyingly contemporary tale of passion, suffering, and the transcending power of love.

THE NEW VOICES IN LITERATURE AWARD FINALIST A WILLIAM FAULKNER COMPETITION SEMI-FINALIST " a marvelous collage of history, politics, mystery and romance." Pat Averbach, Director, Chautauqua Writers Center When Taiwanese millionaire Ko-sa Ong shows up in Washington with Jade Phoenix by his side, Nick Malter, his best friend, and his lost "Angel" would all rather be in some other country. But Taiwan is no ordinary country in the 1970s. Against all odds, Ko-sa has everything he could want except a son and a nation. Jade Phoenix has nothing after her father, a senior Nationalist general, commits suicide. Nick Malter, an American reporter, peers under the veils that cloak the Chinese and their women. Love blooms in a wilderness of misunderstanding. Ko-sa and Nick share an abiding hatred of Chiang Kai-shek and the cynical American Secretary of State who would forever deny the Taiwanese their country. They risk all for each other, but both give up everything for the love of Jade Phoenix. A stroke of the pen shatters dreams of nationhood and foreign devils challenge ancient Chinese customs in this extraordinary cross-cultural adventure. Betrayal and trust forge uncontrollable urges, fierce loyalties, and love that extends beyond life itself.

Now in paperback and "brimming with wondrous surprises . . . There's magic in The Pinch " ( The Boston Globe ) Steve Stern's prodigious imagination finds a wondrous home in the Pinch, a once-thriving Jewish community in Memphis. The Pinch revolves around a single enchanted day containing years, during which the antics of a group of Jewish mystics threaten to ravage the life of general store proprietor Pinchas Pin with miracles, and his nephew Muni's ardor for an alluring tightrope walker collides with his passion for chronicling the wonders of North Main Street. Their stories, gleaned by a hapless bookseller from a fabulist history book, transform the fate of the neighborhood. Now in paperback, The Pinch is a sparkling reminder that Steve Stern is one of our most talented and inimitable storytellers. "[A] big, rangy, saturated, antic new novel, a Pynchonian tragicomedy . . . Stern, an ebullient maestro of words and mayhem, wonder and conscience, orchestrates a cacophonous, whirling, gritty, tender, time-warping saga that encompasses a cavalcade of horror, stubborn love, cosmic slapstick, burlesque humor, and a scattering of miracles." -- Booklist (starred review) "Weird and wonderful . . . [ The Pinch is] a backdrop to Stern's poignant and antic drama, a playground on which his exuberant, larger-than-life characters can run wild . . . The Pinch is composed of . . . perfectly calibrated moments, all of which pulse with a dynamic inventiveness." -- Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR Ellen Trawton is running away from it all - quite literally. She is due to get married to a man she doesn't love, her job is dragging her down and her interfering mother is getting on her nerves. So she escapes to the one place she know her mother won't follow her - to her aunt's house in rural Ireland. Once there, she uncovers a dark family secret - and a future she never knew she might have. Meanwhile, Caitlin Macausland is mourning the future she can never have. She died tragically in what the village thinks is suspicious circumstances, and now she is stuck in a limbo, unable to move on. ***PRAISE FOR SANTA MONTEFIORE*** ‘Nobody does epic romance like Santa Montefiore’ JOJO MOYES ‘An enchanting read overflowing with deliciously poignant moments’ DINAH JEFFERIES on Songs of Love and War ‘Santa Montefiore hits the spot for my like few other writers’ SARRA MANNING ‘One of our personal favourites’ THE TIMES on The Last Secret of the Deverills ‘Accomplished and poetic’ Daily Mail ‘Santa Montefiore is a marvel’ Sunday Express And between the two of them is an old lighthouse - the scene of so much tragedy. Can each woman find the peace she so desperately longs for? And can they find the way to live again?

"This vast, rich family saga is set in the crowded courtyards of Jewish Baghdad before World War I. Sami Michael portrays a family exploding with power struggles and intrigue, seductions and betrayals, witches and hunchbacks, ghouls and spirits of flesh and blood. At the centre is Victoria, a woman of character who stands head and shoulders above the courtyard's tumult and dissipation. Victoria is the daughter of the head of the tribe, enslaved to the needs of her family as are all the women of the courtyard. She has been on love with her cousin Rafael since childhood and her story, told from the distance of an old-age home in Israel, is the story of their lifelong relationship, fraught with lies and humiliation, hope and heartache, and stubborn, enduring love." -- Inside front jacket flap

Moses Wine's plans to get closer to his sons and to find love and freedom are delayed by a double murder case involving a guerilla journalist, an old Jewish gangster, Cuban exiles, and the mysterious Sexual Liberation League

One of the hallmarks of French author Patrick Modiano's writing is a singular ability to revisit particular motifs and episodes, infusing each telling with new detail and emotional nuance. In this evocative novel the internationally acclaimed author takes up one of his most compelling themes: a love affair with a woman who disappears, and a narrator grappling with the mystery of a relationship stopped short. Set in mid-sixties Paris, After the Circus traces the relationship between the narrator, a young man not quite of legal age, and the slightly older, enigmatic woman he first glimpses at a police interrogation. The two lovers make their uncertain way into each other's hearts, but the narrator soon finds himself in the unsettling, ominous presence of others. Who are these people? Are they real, or simply evoked? Part romance, part detective story, this mesmerizing book fully demonstrates Modiano's signature use of atmosphere and suggestion as he investigates the perils and the exhilaration of young love.

Take one of the crowning musical geniuses of mid-Nineteenth Century Europe; surround him with enemies, some of whom are fiercely jealous of his talent, others in love with his beautiful wife, add several scoundrels, including a kleptomaniac music critic who ends up murdered under highly mysterious circumstances and there you have the world of Robert and Clara Schumann in the Germany of the 1850s, as told by the narrator, Dusseldorf's top detective, Inspector Hermann Preiss.

Product description Jenny Fox goes to South America to build a school in her grandfather’s country — but her summer adventure turns into much more than community service when she meets Nelson, the charismatic leader of the project. Jenny isn’t the only one with her eyes on Nelson. As she and her flirtatious rival get closer to Nelson, though, she discovers his dark side: an ugly prejudice against his country’s enemies across the border. She doesn’t want to lose him, but how can she accept his bigotry? While love and conscience clash inside her, a real war threatens to break out around her. This is a summer she’ll remember for the rest of her life. From Booklist "The teens' fiery arguments humanize the big questions, as Jenny witnesses the prejudice against the poorer and darker people who have lost their land, including the housekeeper who works for the volunteers but eats alone... Are the hostile guerrillas on the border terrorists or freedom fighters? Readers will join the discussion." -- Booklist

Melanie is a mother and a lover, middle-aged, eccentric, courageous, and often hilariously unpredictable. She’s also deeply scarred by her internment as a child in Drancy, a Nazi detention camp. Through the humanity and friendship of an English boy, Christopher Lewis, and her self-appointed protector, Jakob Bronski, Melanie managed to survive. Forty years later, Jakob, now a frail, well-known Soviet dissident, and Christopher, a writer who’s never forgotten the young Melanie, reenter her life. Memories of the past, coupled with her husband’s infidelity, upset Melanie’s precarious emotional stability, forcing her to confront the absurdity of trying to balance good and evil, guilt and love, duty and desire. With its finely drawn characters, rich humanity, and rare wit,Emotional Arithmeticis a novel of memory and hope, offering an unforgettable look at how the shadows of the past illuminate the present.

XYXX is a limited-edition anthology of erotic short fiction by acclaimed short story writer, Jonathan Papernick. The five stories in this collection are shot through with lust, adultery, desire, sex and all of the struggles and complications of eros in the modern world. Author Steve almond once wrote, "Papernick writes with tremendous passion about the downside of love, sex..." Papernick brings that passion to the page with the stories "We Were One," "What Is It Then, Between Us?" "In Flagrante Delicto," "The Cinq a Sept Girl," and the deeply personal lament, "Saudade." This collection features artwork by Aubrey Beardsley, Egon Scheile, and Max Ernst.

"My name is Jimmy Hendricks and I'm a recovering idiot." So begins John Blumenthal's third novel, the moving story of a small-town New England entrepreneur with a proble-matical name who reacts to the abrupt, unanticipated dissolution of his marriage by revisiting the past, and finds himself haunted by memories of three virgins, each of whom he tricked and betrayed twenty years before. Overcome by remorse and tantalized by curiosity, he vows to wipe the slate clean. The result is an ironic tale of deceit, suspense, love and redemption that transports readers back and forth through time, and ultimately suggests that the past is not necessarily prologue (along with answering the pressing question: What the hell is half a virgin?) John Blumenthal is the author of What's Wrong with Dorfman? and Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour. He has also written for television and is the co-author of the movies Blue Streak and Short Time. He currently contributes to The Huffington Post.

Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London, lives for sex. Or at least he lives for women. At present he loves four women - his mother, his wife Hazel, and his two daughters - and is in love with five more. Charlie Merriweather, on the other hand, nice Charlie, loves just the one woman, also called Charlie, the wife with whom he has been writing children's books and having nice sex for twenty years. Once a week the two friends meet for a Chinese lunch, contriving never quite to have the conversation they would like to have - about fidelity and womanising, and which makes you happier. Until today. It is Charlie who takes the dangerous step of asking for a piece of Marvin's disordered life, but what follows embroils them all, the wives no less than the husbands. And none of them will ever be the same again.