The characters in this extraordinary debut collection fi nd themselves caught between commitment and responsibility. In one story, a wife struggles to care for her adulterous husband after a car accident. In another, a husband finds himself drawn to his wife's former lover. In language that is eloquent and precise, these stories speak to the mysteries of friendship and marriage. This startling and powerful collection is illuminated by keen insight and hope.

A panda family does not eat meat, apples, or hay like the other animals in the zoo, but instead loves to munch on bunches of bamboo.

In this powerfully affecting novel—by the author of The Pawnbroker—Joe Berman, an immigrant at eighteen, fifty-nine now, and a hard-working Connecticut plumber, faces the loss of his deeply loved wife. The months that follow, months of wrath and rebellion during which he fights his way to a new idea of life, death, and God, are part of Berman's human season. But so are the years behind him, vividly evoked as the narrative travels back into the past.

Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to save the planet before 10 pm (9:30 on school nights)... It's Maximum Boy! It's April Fools! Over and over and over again... That's right, some evildoer is playing pranks across the entire country! There are whoopee cushions on school buses. Silly glasses on the faces of Mount Rushmore. This prankster is pulling off some pretty peculiar plots! But who better to put a stop to these childish stunts than our eleven-year old superhero? In fact, he's already got some suspects. Like Super Sid -- the all-too-perfect superhero that everyone loves to hate. Or could there be a new bully at the heart of all this mischief and mayhem? Maximum Boy is on the case!

When a woman's body is discovered in the wardrobe warehouses of Israel Television, brooding police superintendent Ohayon embarks on a tangled and bloody trail of detection through the corridors and studios of Israel's official television station and, especially, through the relations, fears, loves, and courage of the people who make the station what it is. It is a journey that brings into question the very ideals upon which Ohayon--and indeed the entire nation--was raised, ideals that may have led to terrible crimes.--From publisher description.

As she lay on her deathbed, Stella Folger had some things to say to her husband. Like "You should paint the living room. I noticed there were brown spots on the ceiling." And "Be sure to take the car in for a tune-up every three months." In life, Stella always took care of business. In death, she's doing the same. Because Stella is communicating with Roger from her hotel room in Heaven-and it seems that entering paradise hasn't made her any less bossy. The truth is, she still cares about Roger. She worries about him. She loves him-so much, in fact, that she's determined to find him a new wife, someone to take care of him like she did. But as the celestial matchmaking progresses, one thing becomes clear: according to his departed wife, no woman on earth could be good enough for Roger Folger...

Love stories. Celestria always spends her summer holiday at Pendrift Hall, the rambling, shabby Cornish mansion adorned with wisteria and clematis that has been home to the Montague family for generations. In the summer of 1958, the highlight is a lavish ball in honour of Archie Montague's fiftieth birthday, and the beautiful girl, on the cusp of womanhood, is looking forward to practising her flirtation skills on the Wilmotte boys. But what is supposed to be a night of celebration ends in catastrophe. As a result, Celestria's grandfather encourages her to play detective, to seek out an explanation for the bewildering events. The quest takes her to the heel of Italy, to the rugged beauty of Puglia and the cool cloisters of the Convento di Santa Maria del Mare. Here Celestria meets an enigmatic stranger and confronts unwelcome truths about her family - and about herself. Once she has done so, she is able to transform herself from selfish girl to mature woman and save the family home.

"A story of love, obsession, and betrayal from "the most important Italian creative writer [of the twentieth] century."—The Times [London]When Silvio, a rich Italian dilettante, and his beautiful wife agree to move to the country and forgo sex so that he will have the energy to write a successful novel, something is bound to go wrong: Silvio's literary ambitions are far too big for his second-rate talent, and his wife Leda is a passionate woman. Antonio, the local barber who comes every morning to shave Silvio, sparks off this dangerously combustible situation when Leda accuses him of trying to molest her. Silvio obstinately refuses to dismiss him, and the quarrel and its shattering consequences put the couple's love to the test.Alberto Moravia earned his international reputation with frank, finely-observed stories of love and sex at all levels of society. In this new English translation of Conjugal Love, he explores an imperiled relationship with his customary unadorned style, psychological penetration, and narrative art.

Would you risk everything for love? Bestselling children's book writer Angelica is amused and flattered at the attention of Jack, the owner of a vineyard in South Africa, whom she meets at a dinner party. With his easy charm and reputation as a ladies' man, Jack makes her feel good about herself -- surely it can't do any harm to indulge in a mild email flirtation? After all, she wouldn't risk her stable marriage and the happiness of her children. But things don't stop there, and when Angelica is sent to Cape Town for a book tour, the affair begins in earnest.

Annie Markham's true love, nineteen-year-old Jake Mead, ran away from their relationship when meddling godmother, Susannah, stepped in. Now it's seven years later and Annie's wealthy family is heading toward bankruptcy. Susannah brings in the best consultant in England to rescue their London public relations agency and, as the Fates have decreed, the genius turns out to be Jake, who is out for revenge.

"Pale Blue Ink in a Lady's Hand is, in many ways, a prequel to what is known as Holocaust literature. It involves a long-suppressed love triangle between Leonidas Tachezy, a high-level Austrian career bureaucrat, his younger, trophy wife Amelie, and a Jewish woman from his past, Vera Wormser, with whom he'd fallen in love when she was fourteen."--Page 4 of cover.

Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "an A-1 satire on urban living," William Herrick's Bradovich is now available as a New Directions paperbook. Stephen Bradovich--sculptor, widower, former pro ball player, sometime brawler. Why would this complexly human, anarchist protagonist receive a visit from two impassive, square-shouldered operatives with the alarmling news: "You are under surveillance pending review, that's the message The Authority sends you"? Praised for the compassion, humanism, and "truth-seeking" of his earlier novels, Herrick in Bradovich steps beyond the "lean and muscular prose" of his terrorist trilogy (Shadows & Wolves, Love & Terror, Kill Memory) and beyond the working-class realism that won The Present Tense/Joel H. Cavior Award for That's Life (in 1985) to a surreal--if still recognizable--New York where suddenly not only the improbable but the impossible can happen.

The Great American Novel (1923) is an experimental novel by William Carlos Williams. Although he is predominately known as a poet, Williams frequently pushed the limits of prose style throughout his career. In the defining decade of Modernism, Williams sought to try his hand at the so-called "Great American Novel," a concept fueling impassioned debate in academic and artistic circles nationwide. Far from conventional, Williams' novel is a metafictional foray into matters more postmodern than modern, a commentary masquerading as narrative and a satire of the all-American overreliance on cliché in form and content. "If there is progress then there is a novel. Without progress there is nothing. Everything exists from the beginning. I existed in the beginning. I was a slobbering infant. Today I saw nameless grasses--I tapped the earth with my knuckle. It sounded hollow. It was dry as rubber. Eons of drought. No rain for fifteen days. No rain. It has never rained. It will never rain." Williams' novel begins with the word and a birth. Language describes the experience of awakening to experience, of coming into consciousness as a living being in a living world. Using words from everyday speech, he builds a novel out of observations, a book that remains conscious of itself throughout. Like the child whose first experience with the written word often comes from names and slogans stretched over trucks and billboards, the reader eventually comes to accept their new reality, a world where people love and succeed and fail, where history and art intercede to make meaning where they can. The Great American Novel showcases Williams' experimental form, stretching the meaning of "novel" to its outermost limit. This edition of William Carlos Williams' The Great American Novel is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

"Thirteen stories by the author of the critically acclaimed The Genizah at the House of Shepher address universal themes of yearning and displacement, love, loss and the struggle to belong. A latter-day Jewish Odysseus spends his life planning an intricate journey to the Promised Land, while an English father stranded in London mourns for his faraway Italian son. A man without a past searches the world for potential relatives, while in the title story, a Jew and a Muslim cast adrift in a Yorkshire landscape find momentary sisterhood over a copy of the Koran. Blending irony with pathos, the mythical with the mundane, Kafka in Bronteland gives voice to a rich mix of characters living outside traditional patterns of identity in a world of complex migrations and tumultuous change."--

"I am Orpheus, the maker of songs. Great Apollo came to me often and instructed me in the art of melody so that what came from my lyre could touch the heart even of a stone, and when I went to my mother Calliope in her cave she taught me the secrets of making verses that would hold people entranced the way a magical spell might hold them. And so music has flowed from me all my life as though from an inextinguishable fountain, which is to say that there has been music in the world since the beginning of time and that music will endure to time's end, and beyond it to the moment of beginning again; and so it was that a shaggy-haired Thracian princeling entered into his role in the universe." Gifted with the golden lyre, Orpheus--rumored son of the god Apollo, and yet recognized as the heir of Oeagros, King of Thrace--tells us of the tale of his life as he writes songs throughout the known world. From his role as teacher and spiritual adviser to the Ciconian people, to the profound love and loss of his beloved Eurydice, to his quest with Jason and the Argonauts to claim the Golden Fleece, Orpheus' songs of his life experiences help him sculpt a world that, without his music, would be devoid of the passion and purpose only a muse of his power could provide. Aware of his own fate before he sets out, Orpheus nevertheless continues on the path pre-ordained for him, to discover if knowing your future prevents you from experiencing your present with a sense of wonder and immediacy that can allow Orpheus to connect with the lives around him in order to fulfill his destiny.

An exploration of fidelity and identity, Lopate's novel follows the lives of three young New Yorkers caught in a tangled love triangle. Eric, returning to the Big Apple after years on the west coast, becomes infatuated with his best friend, Jack's, girlfriend, Marie. When Marie returns Eric's affections, and Jack discovers the affair, all three adults must confront their identities and choices they've made.

When Ellen, a young hospital librarian, befriends Ben, a 69-year-old fitness instructor, their relationship blossoms. Soon, Ben moves in, along with gossip, speculation, and disapproval from both their families. And when a terrible accident and suspicious death rock their lives, Ellen and Ben's love must overcome the toughest test of all.

Kathi Kamen Goldmark's first novel, And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You, earned praise from an assortment of well-known authors including Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, Scott Turow, Judy Collins, Rita Mae Brown, Carl Hiaasen, and Roddy Doyle; and received positive reviews in O, the Oprah Magazine, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. Completed shortly before her untimely death from breast cancer, Goldmark's Her Wild Oats is a honky-tonk road story about two unlikely pals: A smart young woman, Arizona Rosenblatt, leaves home and her role as assistant to a high-powered Hollywood executive when she discovers her husband is having an affair with a woman from Jews for Jesus; and thirteen-year-old Otis Ray "Wild Oats" Pixlie, boy genius harmonica player. In the end, Otis Ray learns what it means to be an adult, Arizona discovers the life she wants, and they both figure out the true meaning of love and family.

Kat Roth and Mark Denham have plenty in common - they're CEOs of rival Seattle-area candy companies, they're both in feverish pursuit of number one status in the nation and they were both once married . . . to each other. Their brief venture into matrimony, an explosive mix of hot passion and all-out war, has made Kat and Mark wary of love and leery of the sparks between them. Push comes to shove when they finally give in to the heat. After several days of back-to-back lovemaking bouts, Kat convinces herself she's found the perfect solution to the seemingly bottomless pit of lust she feels for her ex - a passionate sex-only affair, avoiding all the messy complications of love. Then the night of the chocolate tasting, Kat experiences the ultimate betrayal . . . the two of them are locked up in her office by close friends who refuse to let them out until they resolve their differences. In a firefight of love and passion, Kat finally confesses her fears of failing at love. Mark admits his own fear that he doesn't know what real love is. They both realize that their verbal fireworks really drive them closer together. They agree to remarry, joining together physically and fiscally, in chocolate and in love.

'Count Dracula meets Bonnie Parker. What will they do together? The vampire you'd hate to love, sinister and debonair, sinks those eye teeth into Bonnie's succulent throat.' Is this the beginning of a sadistic relationship or simply an extract from a psychopath's diary? Either way it marks the beginning of a dangerous game that is destined to end in chilling terror and bloody murder.