Reality is broken. At first, it looks like a disease. An epidemic that spreads through no known means, driving its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. But the force that’s sweeping the world is no pathogen. It’s just the first shock wave, unleashed by a stunning discovery—and what’s in jeopardy is not our minds but the very fabric of time itself.
In New York City, Detective Barry Sutton is closing in on the truth—and in a remote laboratory, neuroscientist Helena Smith is unaware that she alone holds the key to this mystery... and the tools for fighting back. Together, Barry and Helena will have to confront their enemy—before they, and the world, are trapped in a loop of ever-growing chaos.
Praise for Recursion: “An action-packed, brilliantly unique ride that had me up late and shirking responsibilities until I had devoured the last page... a fantastic read.”—Andy Weir, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian
“Another profound science-fiction thriller. Crouch masterfully blends science and intrigue into the experience of what it means to be deeply human.”—Newsweek
“Definitely not one to forget when you’re packing for vacation... [Crouch] breathes fresh life into matters with a mix of heart, intelligence, and philosophical musings.”—Entertainment Weekly
“A trippy journey down memory lane... [Crouch’s] intelligence is an able match for the challenge he’s set of overcoming the structure of time itself.”—Time
“Wildly entertaining... another winning novel from an author at the top of his game.”—AV Club
Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine her surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym and is whisked off to the hospital to find out that she's getting divorced, has three kids, and is actually thirty-nine. Now Alice must reconstruct a lost decade -- and try to reconstruct her life. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she's become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, she must discover if forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and if it's possible to start over.
Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation, there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann's Way.
Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age — satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in its response to the human condition — Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past recreated through memory.
For this complete, authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of À la recherche du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).
When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she’s in for a big surprise. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident—in a Mercedes no less—Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she’s about to find out just how much things have changed.
Somehow Lexi went from a twenty-five-year-old working girl to a corporate big shot with a sleek new loft, a personal assistant, a carb-free diet, and a set of glamorous new friends. And who is this gorgeous husband—who also happens to be a multimillionaire? With her mind still stuck three years in reverse, Lexi greets this brave new world determined to be the person she…well, seems to be. That is, until an adorably disheveled architect drops the biggest bombshell of all.
Suddenly Lexi is scrambling to catch her balance. Her new life, it turns out, comes complete with secrets, schemes, and intrigue. How on earth did all this happen? Will she ever remember? And what will happen when she does?
From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between.
The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end.
Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station. Her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out.
Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss, and the power of memory.
Ignorance is a brilliant novel set in contemporary Prague, crafted by the distinguished writer Milan Kundera. The story unfolds with a chance meeting between a man and a woman as they return to their homeland, which they had abandoned twenty years earlier when they chose to become exiles.
Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence, "their memories no longer match." We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion.
Only those who return after twenty years, like Ulysses returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance firsthand. Kundera is the only author today who can take dizzying concepts such as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transform them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.