Books with category ✍️ Literary Fiction
Displaying books 1-48 of 51 in total

The Wedding People

2024

by Alison Espach

The Wedding People is a propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself.

Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other. In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

The God of the Woods

2024

by Liz Moore

From the New York Times bestselling author of Long Bright River, an immersive, propulsive novel about a missing child whose disappearance sends shockwaves through three very different worlds—an opulent Adirondack summer estate, the rustic teen summer camp that operates in its shadow, and the blue-collar community that serves them both.

When Barbara Van Laar is discovered missing from her summer camp bunk one morning in August 1975, it triggers a panicked, terrified search. Losing a camper is a horrific tragedy under any circumstances, but Barbara isn't just any camper; she's the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the camp—as well as the opulent nearby estate and most of the land in sight. And this isn't the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared in this region: Barbara's older brother also went missing fourteen years ago, never to be found. How could this have happened yet again?

Liz Moore weaves a richly textured drama, both emotionally nuanced and propelled by a double-barreled mystery. The God of the Woods is a story of love, inheritance, identity, and second chances, a thrillingly layered drama about the tensions between a family and a community, and a history of secrets that will not let any of them go.

Yellowface

2023

by R.F. Kuang

Yellowface has been described as 'A riot' by PANDORA SYKES, 'Razor-sharp' by TIME, 'A wild ride' by STYLIST, 'Darkly comic' by GQ, and 'Satirical and humorous' by COSMOPOLITAN. It introduces us to Athena Liu, a literary darling, and June Hayward, literally nobody.

When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. With a blend of dark humour, as evidence threatens June's stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves, leading to deadly consequences. What happens next is entirely everyone else's fault.

Signal Fires

2022

by Dani Shapiro

Signal Fires weaves the lives of two families across fifty years, revealing the profound connections between them. Under an ancient oak on Division Street, retired doctor Ben Wilf and ten-year-old genius Waldo Shenkman share a moment beneath the stars, unaware of their intertwined destinies.

In a world where secrets and lies intertwine, the Wilfs and the Shenkmans are brought together by unforeseen forces. As the narrative spans the cosmos and half a century, these families are bound by the gravity of their shared history.

Signal Fires is an urgent and compassionate tale of kinship, remembrance, and the ties that bind us together. Dani Shapiro crafts a masterful story that illuminates the heart's capacity to heal itself through connections that transcend time and space.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

2022

by Gabrielle Zevin

In this exhilarating novel, two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

2022

by Gabrielle Zevin

In this exhilarating novel, two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

Trust

2022

by Hernan Diaz

Trust is a sweeping puzzle of a novel about power, greed, love and a search for the truth that begins in 1920s New York. Can one person change the course of history? A Wall Street tycoon takes a young woman as his wife. Together, they rise to the top in an age of excess and speculation. Now a novelist is threatening to reveal the secrets behind their marriage. Who will have the final word in their story of greed, love and betrayal?

Composed of four competing versions of this deliciously deceptive tale, Trust by Hernan Diaz brings us on a quest for truth while confronting the lies that often live buried in the human heart.

An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception.

Disorientation

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou is an outrageously hilarious and startlingly tender debut novel that captures a Taiwanese American woman's coming-of-consciousness amid chaos on a college campus.

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is on a mission to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and move away from reading about 'Chinese-y' things. However, years of grueling research have left her with nothing but a junk food addiction and stomach pain. When Ingrid stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives, she believes she's found her escape from academic hell. But she's about to discover she's in over her head. Her attempts to decipher the note's message lead to a shocking revelation that turns her academic life and her understanding of the world outside upside down.

Joined by her friend Eunice Kim and pursued by her rival Vivian Vo, Ingrid finds herself on a wild ride of mishaps and misadventures, ranging from book burnings and hallucinations to protests and propaganda. As Ingrid's life spirals out of control, she begins to question her relationships with white men and white institutions, and ultimately, she must confront herself.

Disorientation is a searing satire of privilege and power in America, a deep dive into personal complicity, and a compelling story of unspoken rage. Elaine Hsieh Chou presents a provocative question: Who gets to tell our stories, and how does the narrative shift when we take the reins?

Small Things Like These

2021

by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family.

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.

Beautiful World, Where Are You

2021

by Sally Rooney

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in.

Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

The Prophets

A novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.

Isaiah was Samuel’s and Samuel was Isaiah’s. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel’s love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation’s harmony.

With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr. fiercely summons the voices of slaver and the enslaved alike to tell the story of these two men.

Sorrow and Bliss

2020

by Meg Mason

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going.

Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.

By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.

The Book of Longings

2020

by Sue Monk Kidd

An extraordinary story set in the first century about a woman who finds her voice and her destiny, from the celebrated number one New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings.

Raised in a wealthy family in Sepphoris with ties to the ruler of Galilee, Ana is rebellious and ambitious, a relentless seeker with a brilliant, curious mind and a daring spirit. Defying the expectations placed on women, she engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes secret narratives about neglected and silenced women. When she meets the eighteen-year-old Jesus, each is drawn to and enriched by the other's spiritual and philosophical ideas. He becomes a floodgate for her intellect, but also the awakener of her heart.

Grounded in meticulous historical research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus’s life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring account of one woman’s bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her, while living in a time, place, and culture devised to silence her.

The City We Became

2020

by N.K. Jemisin

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones.

The City We Became

2020

by N.K. Jemisin

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones.

The Place on Dalhousie

'You look the type to break your father’s heart.'

'Yeah, but he broke mine first.'

When Rosie Gennaro first meets Jimmy Hailler, she has walked away from life in Sydney, leaving behind the place on Dalhousie that her father, Seb, painstakingly rebuilt for his family but never saw completed. Two years later, Rosie returns to the house and living there is Martha, whom Seb Gennaro married less than a year after the death of Rosie’s mother. Martha is struggling to fulfil Seb’s dream, while Rosie is coming to terms with new responsibilities.

And so begins a stand-off between two women who refuse to move out of the home they both lay claim to. As the battle lines are drawn, Jimmy Hailler re-enters Rosie’s life. Having always watched other families from the perimeters, he’s now grappling, heartbreakingly, with forming one of his own.

An unforgettable story about losing love and finding love; about the interconnectedness of lives and the true nature of belonging, from one of our most acclaimed writers.

Anxious People

Anxious People is a poignant comedy about a crime that never took place and a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air. It cleverly weaves together the lives of eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.

The narrative unfolds at an apartment open house that becomes a life-or-death situation when the failed bank robber takes everyone hostage. The hostages include a retired couple addicted to home renovations, a wealthy banker too busy to care for others, a young couple expecting their first child and struggling with agreement, and an octogenarian unafraid of a gunpoint threat. With each character harboring secrets and grievances, they all crave some form of rescue.

Surrounded by authorities and media, these strangers reveal surprising truths about themselves. Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People explores the power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope in the most anxious of times.

Trust Exercise

2019

by Susan Choi

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it's not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Kentukis

Casi siempre comienza en los hogares. Ya se registran miles de casos en Vancouver, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Oaxaca, y se está propagando rápidamente a todos los rincones del mundo. Los kentukis no son mascotas, ni fantasmas, ni robots. Son ciudadanos reales, y el problema —se dice en las noticias y se comparte en las redes— es que una persona que vive en Berlín no debería poder pasearse libremente por el living de alguien que vive en Sídney; ni alguien que vive en Bangkok desayunar junto a tus hijos en tu departamento de Buenos Aires. En especial, cuando esas personas que dejamos entrar a casa son completamente anónimas.

Los personajes de esta novela encarnan el costado más real —y a la vez imprevisible— de la compleja relación que tenemos con la tecnología, renovando la noción del vouyerismo y exponiendo al lector a los límites del prejuicio, el cuidado de los otros, la intimidad, el deseo y las buenas intenciones. Kentukis es una novela deslumbrante, que potencia su sentido mucho más allá de la atracción que genera desde sus páginas.

A Place for Us

A moving portrait of what it means to be an American family today, a novel of love, identity and belonging that eloquently examines what it means to be both American and Muslim.

An Indian-Muslim family is preparing for their eldest daughter's wedding. But as Hadia's marriage - one chosen of love, not tradition - gathers the family back together, there is only one thing on their minds- can Amar, the estranged younger brother of the bride, be trusted to behave himself after three years away? A Place for Us tells the story of one family and all family life- of coming to terms with the choices we make, of reconcingly past and present and of how the smallest decisions can lead to the deepest betrayals.

The Overstory

2018

by Richard Powers

The Overstory, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us.

This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

An American Marriage

2018

by Tayari Jones

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.

Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.

The End We Start From

2017

by Megan Hunter

In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family is forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.

This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world—of new life and new hope—sings with love.

Temporada de huracanes

Con un ritmo y un lenguaje magistrales, Fernanda Melchor, autora de Falsa liebre explora en esta obra las sinrazones que subyacen a los actos más desesperados de barbarie pasional. Una novela cruda y desgarradora en la que el lector quedará envuelto, atrapado por las palabras y la atmósfera de terrible, aunque gozosa, fatalidad.

Un grupo de niños encuentra un cadáver flotando en las aguas turbias de un canal de riego cercano a la ranchería de La Matosa. El cuerpo resulta ser de la Bruja, una mujer que heredó dicho oficio de su madre fallecida, y a quienes los pobladores de esa zona rural respetaban y temían. Tras el macabro hallazgo, las sospechas y habladurías recaerán sobre un grupo de muchachos del pueblo, a quienes días antes una vecina vio mientras huían de casa de la hechicera, cargando lo que parecía ser un cuerpo inerte.

A partir de ahí, los personajes involucrados en el crimen nos contarán su historia mientras los lectores nos sumergimos en la vida de este lugar acosado por la miseria y el abandono, y donde convergen la violencia del erotismo más oscuro y las sórdidas relaciones de poder. 

The Idiot

2017

by Elif Batuman

The Idiot, a novel by Elif Batuman, is a portrait of the artist as a young woman, exploring the themes of self-discovery and inventing oneself. Set in the year 1995, when email was a new phenomenon, we follow Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, as she begins her freshman year at Harvard. Without any preconceived plans, she enrolls in classes on unfamiliar subjects, forges a friendship with the charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate Svetlana, and, almost by chance, starts corresponding with Ivan, a Hungarian mathematics student.

Despite their limited face-to-face interactions, Selin and Ivan develop a complex relationship through their email exchanges, with each message adding new and mysterious layers to the act of writing. As the school year concludes, Ivan departs for Budapest, and Selin embarks on a teaching assignment in the Hungarian countryside, a position arranged by one of Ivan's friends. Her journey also includes a two-week sojourn in Paris with Svetlana.

Unlike the typical narratives of American college students abroad, Selin's experiences in Europe lead her on an introspective journey. She confronts the bewildering and exhilarating turmoil of first love and comes to an important realization: she is destined to become a writer. The Idiot is a candid reflection on the complexities of becoming an adult, filled with exquisite emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and a writing style that captures the unpredictable nature of memory itself.

Umami

2016

by Laia Jufresa

Ana quiere plantar una milpa en su traspatio, en plena Ciudad de México. Pero en la tierra hay altos contenidos de plomo y la privada donde vive está plagada de ausencias. Su hermana murió, sus papás están de luto y sus hermanos de campamento; su única amiga se fue a buscar a quien la abandonó cuatro años atrás. Menos mal que queda Alfonso.

Alfonso es un antropólogo especializado en alimentación prehispánica. Es viudo y dueño de la privada Campanario. Él mismo la diseñó a partir de un esquema de la lengua humana y dio a las casas el nombre de cada uno de los cinco sabores que percibimos: Dulce, Salado, Amargo, Ácido y Umami.

En duelo, los habitantes de la privada desearían echar el tiempo atrás. Tejida al revés, esta novela se los permite. Mientras Ana remueve la tierra y clava las semillas, sus vecinos hurgan en el pasado. Pero el traspatio de la memoria está minado con preguntas: ¿Quién fue mi mujer? ¿Por qué se fue mi mamá? Y, ¿cómo es posible que se ahogara una niña que sabía nadar? Umami constituye una propuesta literaria original en su afán por explorar la amplia gama de sensaciones y emociones que el ser humano -en distintas etapas de la vida- experimenta.

Space Invaders

Space Invaders is a dreamlike evocation of a generation that grew up in the shadow of a dictatorship in 1980s Chile. It tells the story of a group of childhood friends who, in adulthood, are preoccupied by uneasy memories and visions of their classmate, Estrella Gonzlez Jepsen. In their dreams, they catch glimpses of Estrella's braids, hear echoes of her voice, and read old letters that eventually, mysteriously, stopped arriving.

They recall regimented school assemblies, nationalistic class performances, and a trip to the beach. Soon it becomes clear that Estrella's father was a ranking government officer implicated in the violent crimes of the Pinochet regime, and the question of what became of her after she left school haunts her erstwhile friends. Growing up, these friendsfrom her pen pal, Maldonado, to her crush, Riquelmewere old enough to sense the danger and tension that surrounded them, but were powerless in the face of it.

They could control only the stories they told one another and the "ghostly green bullets" they fired in the video game they played obsessively. Nona Fernández, one of the leading Latin American writers of her generation, effortlessly builds a choral and constantly shifting image of young life in the waning years of the dictatorship. In her short but intricately layered novel, she summons the collective memory of a generation, rescuing felt truth from the oblivion of official history.

Greek Lessons

Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, as he is also grappling with his own plight—losing his sight.

For her, the pain is multifaceted: the loss of both her mother and custody of her nine-year-old son within a short span of time. For him, it stems from growing up between Korea and Germany, the conflict between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing independence. Yet, through their shared suffering, they form a profound connection. Their voices intersect with startling beauty as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

Greek Lessons is a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

2010

by Haruki Murakami

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is Haruki Murakami's deep dive into the very nature of consciousness. This new translation presents a narrative that intertwines two parallel stories to draw readers into a mind-bending universe. The tale features an eclectic mix of characters including Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and a host of thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters.

The novel emerges as a work that is both hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind. Murakami's inventive storytelling zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and unicorn skulls, John Coltrane and Lord Jim, uniting East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.

The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka, which was first published in 1915. It tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition.

The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered. The text was first published in the October issue of the journal Die weißen Blätter under the editorship of René Schickele. The first edition in book form appeared in December 1915 in the series Der jüngste Tag, edited by Kurt Wolff.

With a length of about 70 printed pages over three chapters, it is the longest of the stories Kafka considered complete and published during his lifetime. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

In Edinburgh in the 1930s, the Lennox family is having trouble with their youngest daughter. Esme is outspoken, unconventional, and repeatedly embarrasses them in polite society. Something will have to be done.

Years later, a young woman named Iris Lockhart receives a letter informing her that she has a great-aunt in a psychiatric unit who is about to be released. Iris has never heard of Esme Lennox. What could Esme have done to warrant a lifetime in an institution? And how is it possible for a person to be so completely erased from a family's history?

Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.

Gifts

In this beautifully crafted novel, Ursula K. Le Guin writes of the proud cruelty of power, of how hard it is to grow up, and of how much harder still it is to find, in the world's darkness, gifts of light. Scattered among poor, desolate farms, the clans of the Uplands possess wondrous gifts: the ability—with a glance, a gesture, a word—to summon animals, bring forth fire, move the land. Fearsome gifts: They can twist a limb, chain a mind, inflict a wasting illness. The Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another.

Two young people, friends since childhood, decide not to use their gifts. One, a girl, refuses to bring animals to their death in the hunt. The other, a boy, wears a blindfold lest his eyes and his anger kill. Ursula K. Le Guin has delivered a story that captivates and draws the reader in. Fans of dark fantasy, such as Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, will relish this new work.

Gifts is an excellent read for teens of all interests. Fans of fantasy will be particularly drawn to it, but the world is grounded enough in earthly reality that it should appeal even to those who usually avoid the fantastical. Thought-provoking and suspenseful, with a dollop of action and romance, this novel is indeed a gift to its readers.

Cloud Atlas

2004

by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas, authored by David Mitchell, is a visionary novel that combines elements of adventure, mystery, and philosophical speculation. The narrative begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary traveling from the Chatham Isles to California. During his journey, he becomes acquainted with Dr. Goose, who treats him for a rare brain parasite.

The story then leaps to Belgium in 1931, where we meet Robert Frobisher, a disinherited composer who finds himself in the household of an ailing maestro. The narrative continues to shift, taking us to the West Coast in the 1970s with Luisa Rey, a reporter uncovering a conspiracy, and then to various other settings including a near-future Korean superstate and a post-apocalyptic Hawaii.

The unique structure of Cloud Atlas sees the narrative fold back on itself, with characters' fates intertwining across time and space. It's a novel that questions the nature of reality and identity, and how our actions reverberate through history. Mitchell's work is as playful as it is profound, earning it the status of a modern classic and a worldwide phenomenon.

Oryx and Crake

2004

by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride.

Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

The Eyre Affair

2002

by Jasper Fforde

Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing situation for the police.

Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! But that's just a prelude... Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel.

Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids...

Suspenseful and outlandish, absorbing and fun, The Eyre Affair is a caper unlike any other and an introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer and his singular fictional universe.

La sombra del viento

Un amanecer de 1945, un muchacho es conducido por su padre a un misterioso lugar oculto en el corazón de la ciudad vieja: el Cementerio de los Libros Olvidados. Allí encuentra La Sombra del Viento, un libro maldito que cambiará el rumbo de su vida y le arrastrará a un laberinto de intrigas y secretos enterrados en el alma oscura de la ciudad.

Ambientada en la enigmática Barcelona de principios del siglo XX, este misterio literario mezcla técnicas de relato de intriga, de novela histórica y de comedia de costumbres, pero es, sobre todo, una tragedia histórica de amor cuyo eco se proyecta a través del tiempo. Con gran fuerza narrativa, el autor entrelaza tramas y enigmas a modo de muñecas rusas en un inolvidable relato sobre los secretos del corazón y el embrujo de los libros, manteniendo la intriga hasta la última página.

Anil's Ghost

Michael Ondaatje, Booker Prize-winning author of The English Patient, delivers a compelling narrative in Anil's Ghost, a novel set against the backdrop of Sri Lanka's civil war. We follow Anil Tissera, a young Sri Lankan woman raised and educated in the West, who returns to her homeland as a forensic anthropologist for an international human rights group. Her mission: to uncover the origins of the systematic murders that are ravaging the country.

As Anil delves into a mystery that leads her into the realms of love, family, and identity, she is ensnared by an unknown enemy's plot, driving her to unlock the concealed history of her nation. The narrative unfolds amidst the rich tapestry of Sri Lanka's culture, ancient civilization, and evocative landscapes. Anil's Ghost stands out as Ondaatje's most potent novel to date, weaving a tale that is as much about the human condition as it is about a country in turmoil.

The Tombs of Atuan

When young Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away - home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. While she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe.

But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain. Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle has earned a treasured place on the shelves of fantasy lovers everywhere, alongside the works of such beloved authors as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

The God of Small Things

1997

by Arundhati Roy

The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love, The God of Small Things is set in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family -- their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). When their English cousin and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.

Wicked

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

The Virgin Suicides

The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters' breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.

The Memory Police

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses—until things become much more serious. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.

When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.

The English Patient

With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning.

The Secret History

1992

by Donna Tartt

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality, they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

Cien años de soledad

Cien años de soledad es una obra clave en la literatura hispanoamericana, una magnífica creación del escritor colombiano Gabriel Garcíaa Márquez. Reconocida como una de las más importantes novelas del siglo XX, esta obra se considera un pilar del realismo mágico, un estilo literario que mezcla lo maravilloso con la realidad.

La novela se centra en la historia de la familia Buendía a lo largo de siete generaciones, en el pueblo ficticio de Macondo. Este relato épico abarca diversos temas como el amor, la muerte, la soledad, la riqueza, la guerra y la paz, creando un universo literario donde lo cotidiano y lo fantástico se entrelazan de manera natural y poética.

Con su poderosa narrativa y su rica imaginación, Gabriel García Márquez teje una historia que no solo cuenta la vida de los personajes, sino que también refleja la historia y el espíritu de toda una época y cultura.

Los recuerdos del porvenir

1963

by Elena Garro

En 1963, cuatro años antes de la publicación de Cien años de soledad, apareció en México una novela singular, historia de amor sombría, misteriosa, que cambió el tono de la narrativa mexicana de tan profunda y sorprendente manera como Pedro Páramo de Juan Rulfo: Los recuerdos del porvenir.

La asombrosa novela de Elena Garro es gótica y barroca. Más que una crónica -que sí lo es, de la Revolución Mexicana y de la guerra de los Cristeros- es una nostalgia y una soledad, es la voz de un pueblo iluminado, hallado y perdido, que habla en una primera persona desesperanzada y triste.

Una familia y otra familia, más las amantes solitarias, el loco del pueblo, las cuscas, los soldados, las beatas, un cura y un sacristán, más un campanario y una joven endemoniada de amor por el general Francisco Rosas, constituyen los solistas, las parejas y las comparsas de esta bella, ebria y condenada Danza de la Muerte.

The Fellowship of the Ring

1954

by J.R.R. Tolkien

Begin your journey into Middle-earth with The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic adventure, The Lord of the Rings. Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of Power—the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plans for dominion is the One Ring—the ring that rules them all—which has fallen into the hands of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins.

In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

El túnel

Breve e intensa novela publicada en 1948, este logrado fruto de la denominada "literatura existencial" le dio a su autor un reconocimiento que traspasó las fronteras nacionales. El túnel es la mejor introducción al universo prodigioso de Ernesto Sábato; un clásico de las letras del continente, una historia sobre el drama del hombre arrojado en el sinsentido más doloroso: la conciencia de la nada.
El narrador describe una historia de amor y muerte en la que muestra la soledad del individuo contemporáneo. No están ausentes de esta trama policial y de suspenso, la locura y la increíble reflexión del protagonista, el pintor Juan Pablo Castel, debatiéndose por comprender las causas que lo arrastraron a matar a la mujer que amaba, María Iribarne, y que era su única vía de salvación. En este alucinante drama de la vida interior, seres intrincados en la bestial búsqueda de comprensión ceden a la mentira, la hipocresía y los celos desmedidos hasta el crimen más inexplicable. Aventura amorosa, aventura onírica, aventura del ser que dan testimonio de un asesinato, de cierta memoria culpable y de una valiente introspección.
Técnicamente perfecta y de lectura apasionante, El túnel excede el negativismo ácido de Sartre y la frenética huida hacia el vacío que plantea El extranjero de Camus, pero tiene de esos dos maestros literarios la impronta genial que hace de la escritura una radiografía del alma atormentada.

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