Kurt Janisch is an ambitious, but frustrated country policeman. Things are not going right in his life - at least not fast enough. But a country policeman gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty - particularly women. Lonely, middle-aged women, women with a bit of property perhaps...Matters go from bad to worse: for Kurt Janisch, for the women who fall for him. Someone sees too much, knows too much. Soon there's a body in a lake and a murderer to be caught. A thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, "Greed" is Elfriede Jelinek's most accessible novel since "The Piano Teacher". But, as always, Jelinek gives the reader a lot more to think about: the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden and inadequacy of our everyday words, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, the impossibility of life without relationships. A meditative reflection on ageing, "Greed" is another chapter in Jelinek's chronicling of her love/hate relationship with Austria.

"Eighty-three-year-old Harvey Franklin never thought he would find love again after losing his wife of more than fifty years. Spending his days walking his beloved poodle in Central Park, he has gotten used to the idea of being alone. Everything changes the morning he meets eighty-year-old Sarah Silverman. Romance blooms between the two and they quickly become entangled in a passionate love affair. When Sarah reveals her husband's battle with dementia, things become complicated"--back cover.

Drawing on her experience as an adult literacy tutor, Judith Frank's first novel traces the difficult and sometimes hilarious connection between two butches of different generations - a middle-class, thirty-something adult literacy teacher and her older, working-class student. With a disparate group of adult learners as the backdrop, Frank examines, with warmth and wit, the relationship between education and gender, class, and racial identity. With Crybaby Butch, Judith Frank creates a deeply human, bravely unsentimental story while at the same time investigating the meaning of butch identity as it reinvents itself from one generation to the next. ~ Carol Anshaw

First published in 1966, A Conference of Victims charts the corrosive power of guilt and loneliness, showing how one terrible act can possess a family Hal O. Costigan, candidate for Congress, is the kind of man people envy. He has a loving wife, a supportive family, and a devoted mother. Friendly, intelligent, successful, he is a man on the rise—until he is caught in an affair with a high school girl and commits suicide. On election day the reporters have forgotten him, and the radio doesn't mention his name. Around Hal's hometown, however, a handful of people continue lives that will be forever haunted by his memory. Naomi who is thrown nearly out of her mind by her brother’s suicide questions even her own reason for living. Gina Berriault’s work as a storywriter of great psychological empathy and extraordinary elegance and subtlety was celebrated widely at the end of her life and, with this reissue of one of her more celebrated short novels, her work can be discovered by a new generation of readers.

Married (again) and divorced (again), Isadora Wing is a single parent with an adorable daughter, an irritating ex-husband, and a startling assortment of suitors: an unorthodox rabbi, a poetic disc jockey, the son of a famous sex therapist, and WASPily handsomest of all: Berkeley Sproul III. Isadora and Berkeley meet at a health club, and he's fourteen years her junior. Of course their affair is tortuous and sexy, but is it love? Or does the stud just want a free trip to Venice, compliments of a famous author? Either way, Erica Jong wrote this romance with "a mixture of eloquence and savage wit as good as anything she has ever written," said The Wall Street Journal.

'Brilliantly clever . . . mercilessly funny.' - Kenneth Allsop, Daily Mail 'One of the most brilliantly written books since the war.' - Ian Fleming, Sunday Times ' A] clever and pitiless novel.' - Neil Ascherson, Observer ' An] extremely promising and funny first novel.' - New Yorker 'I laughed until I cried. Benedictus is a dazzling new wit and a blazing new talent.' - Patrick Dennis David Benedictus was only twenty-three when his shock-filled, highly controversial first novel was published in 1962. In The Fourth of June , Benedictus shows what it was like to have attended Eton College, one of England's most prestigious schools. Among its hallowed buildings, a boy is savagely beaten into paralysis by his House Captain, a bishop spends his evening spying on a chaplain's half-dressed daughter, and a housemaster is seduced by a desperate mother. Condemned by some reviewers as a farrago of sex, snobbery, and sadism, The Fourth of June nonetheless met with rave reviews from other critics, who proclaimed Benedictus one of the most promising new novelists of his generation, and went on to be a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. This new edition, the first in more than 30 years, includes an introduction by the author.

Three immigrant girls from different parts of the world meet and become close friends in a small New Jersey town where their mothers have found domestic work, but their relationships are tested when one girl's mother is accused of stealing a precious heirloom.

"Twelve exquisitely written stories depicting the search for human connection and the attempt to fit in far from home. All the Shining People explores migration, diaspora, and belonging within Toronto's Jewish South African community, as individuals come to terms with the oppressive hierarchies that separate, and the connections that bind. Seeking a place to belong, the book's characters -- including a life-drawing model searching the streets for her lover; a woman confronting secrets from her past in the new South Africa; and a man grappling with the legacy of his father, a former political prisoner -- crave authentic relationships that replicate the lost feeling of home. With its focus on family, culture, and identity, All the Shining People captures the experiences of immigrants and outsiders with honesty, subtlety, and deep sympathy."--

Set in the Second World War, Between the Seasons of Happiness explores the relationships between three generations of the same family. Their lives and death reflect the changes and confusion of the time.

Guess Again is a rich and eclectic collection of exquisitely crafted short stories. Written with unsparing honesty, these stories vividly illustrate love's complexities, the intricacies of family relationships, struggles with sexual identity, and the specter of AIDS. Whether chronicling a dying man's acts of vandalism, a divorcée under house arrest, a Mormon couple's potluck dinner for their few homosexual acquaintances, or a young Los Angeles boy's sexual awakening, the stories in Guess Again are full of wit, subtlety, and emotional generosity.

Relationships are tricky, even for gods. As writer Alan Zelenetz begins his run scribing THOR, the son of Odin faces challenges ranging from cosmic-powered adversaries to the pains of love! Can Sif assimilate to life on Midgard with Dr. Don Blake? Thor's complicated relationship soon becomes even more so with the arrival of Dracula. Will Sif become the Lord of the Vampires' latest victim, turned to an undead existence of bloodsucking? And how will Jane Foster's return complicate matters? It's a love triangle, Asgardian-style! Plus: An Annual adventure gorgeously drawn by Bob Hall, a never-before reprinted THOR graphic novel and a host of material from the fan-favourite Official Handbook of The Marvel Universe! Collecting: Thor (1966) #328-336 and Annual #11, and Marvel Graphic Novel: Thor - I, Whom The Gods Would Destroy

From Library Journal In these slice-of-life stories, we join characters progressing through critical, often life-changing experiences. Their magnetism is powerful, for despite the brevity of our time together, we as readers get involved with them and are concerned about their outcome once the story ends. In fact, finding that two of the stories contain the same characters, we are grateful for a second chance to try to understand how they arrived at their present situation and what they will do. These characters remind us that relationships can be transient--certainly Cheuse's most common theme. Interestingly, the stories, some of which have been published earlier, contain an unsettling mixture of both hope and despair, as if Cheuse has not made his final decision regarding the nature of the human condition.- Dorothy Golden, Georgia Southern Coll., StatesboroCopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. Product Description Fourteen stories deal with the longing, insecurity, loneliness, and restlessness of those living in the new South

Revisits moments of the author's past to produce a spare yet moving reflection on the destructive underside of love, the dreams and follies of youth, the vagaries of memory, and the melancholy of loss. Writing from the perspective of an older man, the narrator relives a key period in his life through his relationships with several enigmatic women--Geneviève, Martine, Madeleine, a certain Madame Huberson--in the process unearthing his troubled relationship with his parents, his unorthodox childhood, and the unsettled years of his youth that helped form the celebrated writer he would become.

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.

A tale of small-town political and sexual intrigue. The hero is David Greene, a baseball player returning to his hometown in Cape Cod after a mediocre career and a failed marriage. He embarks on two affairs at once and runs for selectman.

Nine-year-old Tess has never seen anything like The Wild. An old bakery, converted into a home, it has a fireplace big enough to sit in, a garden with a badminton net and another one for vegetables. And then there's William, its owner. Single father of three, he cooks homemade ravioli, cuts trees down with a chainsaw and plays the guitar. When her mother, Francine, rents two rooms from him, Tess can hardly believe her luck. Her brother Jake, however, proves harder to convince. As the two grown-ups begin to fall for each other, Tess struggles to please the adults as well as win Jake round. But she finds that good intentions don't always bring happiness and that adults are disturbingly capable of making mistakes ...

"A breathtaking journey across Iran where war and superstition, jealousy and betrayal, and passion and loyalty rage behind the impenetrable walls of mansions and the crumbling houses of the Jewish Quarter. Against the tumultuous background of World War II, Dr. Yaran will find himself caught in the thrall of the anti-Semitic Governor General, the most powerful man in the country. Dr. Yaran falls in love with the Governor General's defiant wife, Velvet, upending not only the life of the doctor's beloved daughter, but the entire community. In his quest to save everything and everyone he loves, Dr. Yaran will navigate the intersections of magic, science, lust, and treachery. His sole ally is the Governor General's servant, an exotic eunuch, who will do anything to aid his mistress in her dangerous quest to attain forbidden love." --

A young Israeli intern vying for the position of surgeon learns that his internship has been terminated and he has been chosen to accompany the hospital administrator and his wife on a trip to India. There, the couple intend to retrieve their ailing daughter and bring her back to Israel. The long journey awakens urges in the young doctor that will threaten his carefully contained world.