Cecilia is a surreal novella that delves deep into the intensity and eroticism of girlhood friendships, the ecstasy of desire and disgust, and matriarchal mythmaking. The story unfolds with Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor's office, reencountering Cecilia, a woman who has captivated her since their school days. As they coincidentally board the same bus, with each claiming not to be following the other, their chance meeting spurs a series of intensely vivid and corporeal memories.

In the midst of this defamiliarization, the narrator begins to see queerness itself as an alienation from normative time. Smart, subversive, and gripping, Cecilia takes readers on a winding, misty road trip through bodily transformation, inextricable histories of desire and violence, diaspora, and obsessive love.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is an electrifying, funny, and wholly original novel that heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction. The story follows Cyrus Shams, a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, who is guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings on a remarkable search for a family secret. This journey leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus grapples with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident, and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work at a factory farm. As a drunk, an addict, and a poet, Cyrus's obsession with martyrs drives him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death and toward his mother, through a painting that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, and others.

One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first century: the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, bestselling author Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, instead, he kept all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals across Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who served as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Breitwieser never stole for money. He displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed with remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a number of audacious thefts. However, these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.

Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon.

Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, and charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted.

As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence.

The Girls is a spellbinding and arresting coming-of-age story that paints an indelible portrait of girls, and the women they become, during a time when everything can go horribly wrong.

Stark, brooding, and enormously controversial when first published in 1905, this astonishing novel juxtaposes impressions of fin-de-siècle Stockholm against the psychological landscape of a man besieged by obsession.

Lonely and introspective, Doctor Glas has long felt an instinctive hostility toward the odious local minister. So when the minister’s beautiful wife complains of her husband’s oppressive sexual attentions, Doctor Glas finds himself contemplating murder.

A masterpiece of enduring power, Doctor Glas confronts a chilling moral quandary with gripping intensity.

It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.The Goldfinch combines vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.

Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, and leading thinkers. At the age of thirty-two in 1900, he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared.

An Indiana Jones with a camera, Curtis spent the next three decades traveling from the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Acoma on a high mesa in New Mexico to the Salish in the rugged Northwest rain forest, documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. It took tremendous perseverance - ten years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him into their Snake Dance ceremony. The undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate.

Eventually, Curtis took more than 40,000 photographs, preserved 10,000 audio recordings, and is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. In the process, the charming rogue with the grade school education created the most definitive archive of the American Indian.

His most powerful backer was Theodore Roosevelt, and his patron was J. P. Morgan. Despite friends in high places, he was always broke and often disparaged as an upstart in pursuit of an impossible dream. He completed his masterwork in 1930, when he published the last of the twenty volumes. A nation in the grips of the Depression ignored it. But today rare Curtis photogravures bring high prices at auction, and he is hailed as a visionary. In the end, he fulfilled his promise: He made the Indians live forever.

While Laila found herself blending in with the town, my obsession led me to the McAllister estate. Despite the warnings I was told about the estate, my curiosity grew and I became obsessed with the home as well as the inhabitants inside.

In the end, it took two idiots to bite me and one to dig me up. I had no idea what was going to happen to me from this point on, but I did know there wasn't a choice; it was inevitably going to happen.

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. 

The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

Su nombre despierta terror en el corazón de los hombres. A lo largo de siglos, se le ha considerado un mito. Ahora, alguien se atreve a buscarlo a través de los rincones más oscuros de Europa y Asia y buceando en lo más remotos pasajes de la historia.

Durante años, Paul fue incapaz de contarle a su hija la verdad sobre la obsesión que ha guiado su vida. Ahora, entre sus papeles, ella descubre una historia que comenzó con la extraña desaparición del mentor de Paul, el profesor Rossi. Tras las huellas de su querido maestro, Paul recorrió antiguas bibliotecas de Estambul, monasterios en ruinas en Rumania, remotas aldeas en Bulgaria... Cuanto más se acercaba a Rossi, más se aproximaba también a un misterio que había aterrorizado incluso a los poderosos sultanes otomanos, y que aún hace temblar a los campesinos de Europa del Este. Un misterio que ha dejado un rastro sangriento en manuscritos, viejos libros y canciones susurradas al oído. Para Paul y su hija llegar al final dela búsqueda puede significar un destino mucho peor que la muerte. Porque a cada paso que dan, se convencen más de que él les está esperando. Y en sus corazones, retumba una pregunta angustiosa... ¿Es posible que la tumba de Vlad el Emperador esconda algo más que el cuerpo de un asesino legendario?

Rose Feller is thirty; a successful lawyer with high hopes of a relationship with Jim, Mr Not-Quite-Right, a senior partner in her firm. The last thing she needs is her messed-up, only occasionally employed sister Maggie moving in: drinking, smoking, stealing her money - and her shoes - and spoiling her chance of romance. If only Maggie would grow up and settle down with a nice guy and a steady job.

Maggie is drop dead gorgeous and irresistible to men. She's going to make it big as a TV presenter, or a singer...or an actress. All she needs is a lucky break. What she doesn't need is her uptight sister Rose interfering in her life. If only Rose would lighten-up, have some fun - and learn how to use a pair of tweezers.

Rose and Maggie think they have nothing in common but a childhood tragedy, shared DNA and the same size feet, but they are about to find out that they're more alike than they'd ever believe.