The hyperactive love child of Page Six and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? caught in a tawdry love triangle with The Fan. Even Kitty Kelly will blush.

Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell-All is a Sunset Boulevard–inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of rat-tat-tat  name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list; and a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond.

Our Thelma Ritter–ish narrator is Hazie Coogan, who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie”  Kenton—veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart (and boudoir). Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity tell-all memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman–penned musical extravaganza; as the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans—and for posterity.

Tell-All is funny, subversive, and fascinatingly clever. It’s wild, it’s wicked, it’s  bold-faced—it’s vintage Chuck.

To read an excerpt from the first two chapters of Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk, click HERE.

Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (born February 21, 1962) is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher. Palahniuk began writing fiction in his mid-thirties. By his account, he started writing while attending writer's workshops, hosted by Tom Spanbauer, which he attended to meet new friends. Initially, Palahniuk struggled to find a literary agent and went without one until after the publication of Fight Club. Palahniuk's books prior to Lullaby have distinct similarities. The characters are people who have been marginalized in one form or another by society, and who react with often self-destructive aggressiveness (a form of story that the author likes to describe as transgressive fiction). Starting with Lullaby, his novels have been satirical horror stories. When not writing fiction, Palahniuk tends to write short non-fiction works. Working as a freelance journalist in between books, he writes essays and reports on a variety of subjects; he sometimes participates in the events of these writings, which are heavy in field research. He has also written interviews with celebrities, such as Juliette Lewis and Marilyn Manson. These works appear in various magazines and newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times and Gear magazine. Some of these writings have shown up in his book Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories. Palahniuk also includes some non-fiction factoids within his fictional works. According to the author, these are included in order to further immerse the reader in his work. The content of Palaniuk's works has earned him a reputation as a nihilist. Palahniuk however rejects this label, claiming he is a romantic, and that his works are mistakenly seen as nihilistic because they express ideas that others do not believe in. Palahniuk has won the following awards: the 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award (for Fight Club), the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel (for Fight Club), the 2003 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award (for Lullaby). He was also nominated for the 1999 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel for Survivor and for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for Lullaby in 2002 and Haunted in 2005. He lives near Vancouver, Washington.

Would you like to read this book? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE. 

From the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to the lavish parlors of New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century, the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende (Inés of My Soul, The House of the Spirits, Portrait in Sepia) tells the story of a mulatta woman, a slave and concubine, determined to take control of her own destiny.

Book synopsis:

Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarité -- known as Tété -- is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tété finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves. 

When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it’s with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father’s plantation, Saint Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy. It will be eight years before he brings home a bride -- but marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined. And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenaged slave.

Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of the intertwined lives of Tété and Valmorain, and of one woman’s determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circumstances.

To read an excerpt from Island Beneath the Sea, click HERE.

Isabel Allende Llona (born 2 August 1942) is a Chilean writer. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is one of the best-known women writers in Latin America. She is largely famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits (La casa de los espíritus) (1982) and City of the Beasts (La ciudad de las bestias) (2002), which have been commercially very successful. Allende has been described as "the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author." Her novels often focus on the experiences of women, are sometimes based on her own experiences, and weave myth and realism together. She has lectured and toured widely, and has taught literature at many American colleges. Having adopted American citizenship in 2003, she currently resides in California with her husband. She is of Basque, Spanish and Portuguese descent.

Would you like to read this novel? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

The triumphant conclusion to the trilogy that began with A Star Called Henry.

After spending thirty years in America, Henry Smart returns to Ireland in this moving finale to his story.

At the end of Oh, Play That Thing, the second volume of Roddy Doyle's trilogy about Henry Smart, Henry, his leg severed in an accident with a railway boxcar, crawls into the Utah desert to die — only to be discovered by John Ford, who's there shooting his latest Western. Ford recognizes a fellow Irish rebel and determines to turn Henry's story — a boy volunteer at the GPO in 1916, a hitman for Michael Collins, a republican legend — into a film. He appoints him "IRA consultant" on his new film, The Quiet Man.

The Dead Republic opens in 1951 with Henry returning to Ireland for the first time since his escape in 1922. With him are the stars of Ford's film, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and the famous director himself, "Pappy," who, in a series of intense, highly charged meetings tries to suck the soul out of Henry and turn it into Hollywood gold-dust.

Ten years later Henry is in Dublin, working in Ratheen as a school caretaker, loved by the boys, who call him "Hoppy Henry" on account of his wooden leg. When Henry is caught in a bomb blast, that wooden leg gets left behind. He soon finds himself a hero: the old IRA veteran who's lost his leg to a UVF bomb. Wheeled out by the Provos at funerals and rallies, Henry is to find he will have other uses too, when the peace process begins in deadly secrecy...

In three brilliant novels, A Star Called Henry, Oh, Play That Thing and The Dead Republic, Roddy Doyle has told the whole history of Ireland in the twentieth century. And in the person of his hero, he has created one of the great characters of modern fiction.

Excerpt

To read an excerpt from The Dead Republic, click HERE.

“Doyle is a stellar storyteller. . . . Doyle exhibits a peerless ear for cynicism as he grapples with the violence and farce of Irish history.”
— Publishers Weekly

Author's biography:

Roddy Doyle (born 8 May 1958 in Dublin) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter.  He is the author of eight novels, a collection of stories, and Rory & Ita, a memoir of his parents. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Booker Prize in 1993. Doyle grew up in Kilbarrack, Dublin. He now resides in Dublin. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993. During this period, one of his pupils was Enda Walsh. He established a creative writing centre, Fighting Words, which opened in Dublin in January 2009. It was inspired by a visit to his friend Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia project in San Francisco. Fighting Words is open to students of all ages, and a core principle is that all tutoring in creative writing is provided free.

Would you like to read this novel? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE. 

Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, Girl in Translation is an inspiring debut about a young immigrant in America, a smart girl who, living a double life between school and sweatshop, understands that her family’s future is in her hands.

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life—the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition—Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself, back and forth, between the worlds she straddles.

Through Kimberly’s story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and a world only half understood, Girl in Translation is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant—a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.

Jean Kwok was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Brooklyn as a young girl. Jean received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and completed an MFA in fiction at Columbia. She worked as an English teacher and Dutch-English translator at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and now writes full-time. She has been published in Story magazine and Prairie Schooner.

 

Would you like to read this book? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE. 

“As well as providing a history of post-abolition Jamaica, The Long Song is beautifully written, intricately plotted, humorous and earthy. In patois-inflected prose, Levy conjures the greed and licentiousness of the island’s sugar impresarios and heiresses as they indulge vast meals and sexual gropings—before casting Jamaica aside like a sucked orange. Those who enjoyed Small Island will love The Long Song, not just for the insights on the ‘wretched island,’ but as a marvel of luminous storytelling.” 
—Ian Thomson, Financial Times

Small Island introduced Andrea Levy to America and was acclaimed as “a triumph”. It won both the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and has sold over a million copies worldwide. With The Long Song, Levy once again reinvents the historical novel.

Told in the irresistibly willful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her “Marguerite.”

Resourceful and mischievous, July soon becomes indispensable to her mistress. Together they live through the bloody Baptist war, followed by the violent and chaotic end of slavery. Taught to read and write so that she can help her mistress run the business, July remains bound to the plantation despite her “freedom.” It is the arrival of a young English overseer, Robert Goodwin, that will dramatically change life in the great house for both July and her mistress. Prompted and provoked by her son’s persistent questioning, July’s resilience and heartbreak are gradually revealed in this extraordinarily powerful story of slavery, revolution, freedom, and love. 

To read Foreword and an excerpt from Chapter One, click HERE.

You can also read an essay "The writing of The Long Song" by clicking HERE.


Andrea Levy was born in London in 1956, almost a decade after her parents emigrated to England from Jamaica. She began writing in her mid-thirties and is the author of several short stories and novels, including Small Island, which won both the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best. Her novels concentrate on the experiences of black Britons. Her novel 'Small Island' has been made into a BBC drama which was televised on BBC in December 2009. Levy is of primarily Afro-Jamaican descent. Levy has a Jewish paternal grandfather and a Scottish maternal great-grandfather. She lives in London. 

 

Would you like to read this novel? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

“Brilliant plotting, haunting characters, and an elegiac tone distinguish this dazzling novel…Contemporary fiction at its best – accessible, breathtaking, and heartbreaking.”

The prizewinning author of The Odd Sea and The Lost Legends of New Jersey offers this dazzling and moving novel about a family's mysterious past.

As a child, Beverly Rabinowitz fled Europe with her mother during World War II.  Almost half a century later, while vacationing in Florida with her boyfriend and his son, a chance encounter leads to a strangely lucid moment in which she senses that her father, long believed to have been killed during the war, is close by. It’s the first of many seemingly random events that are guiding Beverly, and the people in her life, toward a startling discovery.

Over the course of Frederick Reiken’s provocative, intricate novel, Beverly will learn that her story is part of something larger, and brilliantly surprising. Because her story is not hers alone, but also that of a comatose teenage boy in Utah, an elusive sixties-era fugitive, an FBI agent pursuing a twenty-year obsession, a Massachusetts veterinarian who falls in love on a kibbutz in Israel, and a host of other characters.

Day For Night illuminates how disparate, far-flung people can be connected, and how the truth of those bonds can upend entire lives. Each chapter is a small universe of its own, and together they form a dazzling whole.

Gliding effortlessly across time and space, in settings that range from Florida to New Jersey to the Caribbean and the Dead Sea, Day For Night builds toward moments of revelation, when refugees from their own lives, or from history’s cruelties, come together in unpredictable and extraordinary ways.

Frederick Reiken is an American author from New Jersey. He attended The Pingry School, Princeton University and the University of California at Irvine. His debut novel, The Odd Sea, won the Hackney Literary Award for a first novel and was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize. It was cited as one of the best first novels of the year by Library Journal and Booklist. His follow-up, The Lost Legends of New Jersey, was a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and a Best Book of the Year for both the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. His short stories have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, Gulf Coast, and the Western Humanities Review, and his essays have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle. Formerly a news reporter, columnist, and nature writer, he currently serves as the director of the graduate program in writing at Emerson College. The London Telegraph recently listed him as one of “10 rising literary stars of 2010.” He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.

Would you like to read this novel? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

From the two-time Booker Prize–winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America.

 

Olivier is an aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer and twice Olivier's age,  always wanted to be an artist but has ended up a servant. Starting on different sides of history, their lives will be permanently joined by an enigmatic, one-armed Marquis. 

When Olivier sets sail for the New World — ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution — Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. 

As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and together — in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands — a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the adventure of American democracy — in theory, in practice, and in ongoing argument. 

Parrot and Olivier in America is a dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous journey, brilliantly evoking the Old World colliding with the New. Above all, it is a wildly funny and deeply tender portrait of two men who come to form an almost impossible friendship, and a completely improbable work of art.

 

To read an excerpt from Chapter One, click HERE.

Peter Philip Carey (born 7 May 1943) is an Australian novelist and short story writer. He is one of only two writers, the other being South African born J. M. Coetzee, to have won the Booker Prize twice. In May 2008 he was also nominated for the "Best of the Booker Prize". He has also won the Miles Franklin Award three times. He collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders. Currently, he is the executive director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.

Would you like to read this book? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

An extraordinarily appealing story collection about the heartbreaking and sublime moments of girlhood and womanhood from the award-winning, bestselling author of The God of Animals.

 

Aryn Kyle was born in Peoria, Illinois, and grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado.  Her debut novel, The God of Animals was an international bestseller and the winner of an American Library Association’s Alex Award, a PNBA Award, an MPIBA Award, and others.  The God of Animals was chosen as a Book Sense Pick, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers title, and was named by Amazon as the Number One Fiction Debut of 2007.  Aryn’s short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Best American Short Stories 2007, Best New American Voices 2005, and elsewhere.  Aryn is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a National Magazine Award in fiction.  She lives in New York City.

 

Would you like to read this book? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

It seems like just another quiet night at Elaine's. Stone Barrington and his former cop partner Dino are enjoying their drinks when in walks former client and all-around sad sack Herbie Fisher… with a briefcase full of cash and in need of a lawyer.

But while he’s trying to fend off Herbie, Stone is propositioned by another potential client, this one a bit more welcome. A beautiful MI6 agent, Felicity Devonshire has a missing persons case she needs solved—and she knows from experience how very useful Stone can be.

Stone’s investigation takes him into the posh world of embassy soirees and titled privilege, where high society meets government intrigue. And when trouble follows him from his luxurious Manhattan brownstone to his tranquil summer home in Maine, Stone has to decide what to do with the explosive information he’s uncovered.

 

To listen to an audio excerpt, click HERE. 

Stuart Woods (born January 9, 1938 in Manchester, Georgia) is an American novelist. Woods has published forty-one novels in a twenty-eight year career, and has now had twenty-six consecutive New York Times best sellers. In the past he has written two novels a year and has increased that to three novels a year, at the request of his publishers. He publishes each year in January, April and September. Woods is a licensed, instrument-rated private pilot, Woods' most prolific series of novels focus on Stone Barrington, a former NYPD detective turned lawyer who is of counsel to a prestigious law firm and handles cases with which the firm does not wish to be publicly associated. The novels are noted both for a strong cast of recurring characters such as Barrington's ex-partner Dino Bacchetti, frequent use of the New York restaurant Elaine's as a setting and Stone's frequent exploits with women, travel and fine dining. Stone, like Woods, is also an experienced pilot and frequent references are made to his aircraft.

Would you like to read this novel? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE. 

The first part of an unforgettable epic family saga about the sacrifices every mother makes for her daughter and the very nature of unconditional love. On the eve of the First World War, fiery Marta Schneider leaves Switzerland and her difficult childhood behind, determined to find a new life on her own terms. Barely out of her teens, Marta is haunted by a devastating loss that fuels her ambition to one day own a hotel. From the cramped quarters of a French housekeeping school to the portrait-lined halls of a stately English manor, Marta becomes a hard working domestic who has little time to dwell on what might have been.  Instead, she draws her strength from what could be. Then, Marta meets Niclas Waltert, a man just as determined as she to forge a better life in a new place. Niclas captures her heart and together they endure the harshness of life as tenant farmers on the vast prairies of Winnipeg, Canada, before following the promise of the American dream and migrating to the agriculturally rich Central Valley of California.  Marriage and motherhood bring both joy and heartbreak, as Marta must surrender her long-held ambitions for the sake of her husband and children, including her daughter, Hildemara, upon whose shoulders her own hopes now squarely rest. Only the strong survive and Marta is determined to raise a daughter as strong as she.  But as Hildie reaches young womanhood and another war is fast approaching, those hopes become too heavy a burden for Hildie to bear. Born with a heart to serve others, Hildie pursues her calling as a nurse, something Marta can’t understand. Marta’s years of hardnosed parenting have left Hildie still hungry for her mother’s love…and now for her mother’s respect. Amid the drama of WWII, Hildie falls in love and begins a family of her own. She wants her daughter, Carolyn, never to doubt her love—but the challenges of life conspire against her vow and the only person who can come to her aid is the person she remains so desperate to please: Marta, her mother. With hallmark touches of brilliant prose and gripping characterizations, Her Mother’s Hope is a rich, moving epic about faith and dreams, heartache and disappointment, and ultimately the resilience and tenacity of love.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Francine Sandra Rivers (born 1947) is an American author of fiction with Christian themes, including inspirational romance novels. Prior to becoming a born-again Christian in 1986, Rivers wrote historical romance novels. She is best known for her inspirational novel Redeeming Love, while another novel, The Last Sin Eater has become a feature film. Rivers has been honored with many awards, including the Christy Award, the ECPA Gold Medallion, and the Holt Medallion. Rivers is also a member of the Romance Writers of America's Hall of Fame. She has won four RWA RITA Awards, the highest award given in romantic fiction. Her first RITA was for Best Historical Romance in 1986 for Not So Wild a Dream. Her subsequent ones, in 1995, 1996, and 1997, have been for Best Inspirational Romance. Francine Rivers is married to Rick Rivers and they live together in northern California (where the action in many of her contemporary novels is set). They have three children: Trevor, Shannon, and Travis; and five grandchildren.

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From the beloved bestselling author of Home Safe and The Year of Pleasures, comes a wonderful new novel about women and men reconnecting with one another—and themselves—at their fortieth high school reunion.

To each of the men and women in The Last Time I Saw You, this reunion means something different—a last opportunity to say something long left unsaid, an escape from the bleaker realities of everyday life, a means to save a marriage on the rocks, or an opportunity to bond with a slightly estranged daughter, if only over what her mother should wear.

As the onetime classmates meet up over the course of a weekend, they discover things that will irrevocably affect the rest of their lives. For newly divorced Dorothy Shauman, the reunion brings with it the possibility of finally attracting the attention of the class heartthrob, Pete Decker. For the ever self-reliant, ever left-out Mary Alice Mayhew, it’s a chance to reexamine a painful past. For Lester Heseenpfeffer, a veterinarian and widower, it is the hope of talking shop with a fellow vet—or at least that’s what he tells himself. For Candy Armstrong, the class beauty, it’s the hope of finding friendship before it is too late.

As Dorothy, Mary Alice, Lester, Candy, and the other classmates converge for the reunion dinner, four decades melt away: Desires and personalities from their youth reemerge, and new discoveries are made. For so much has happened to them all. And so much can still happen.

In this beautiful novel, Elizabeth Berg deftly weaves together stories of roads taken and not taken, choices made and opportunities missed, and the possibilities of second chances.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Elizabeth Berg is an American nurse turned writer, born on December 2, 1948 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, now living in Chicago, earlier in Boston. She studied English at the University of Minnesota, but later ended up with a nursing degree. Her writing career started when she won an essay contest in Parents magazine. All since her debut as a novelist in 1993, her novels have sold in large numbers and have received several awards and nominations, even though some critics have tagged them as sentimental. Open House was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for an Abby Award. Her bestsellers also include The Year of Pleasures, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, and Dream When You’re Feeling Blue. Berg has been honored by both the Boston Public Library and the Chicago Public Library and is a popular speaker at various venues around the country. 

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Their chuckles are audible over the speakerphone. ‘Are you serious?’

Would you like to read this novel? You can buy it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

—Prologue

A rising star who has garnered some of Europe’s most important literary prizes, Juli Zeh has established herself as the new master of the philosophical thriller. With In Free Fall, she now takes us on a fast-paced ride through deadly rivalry and love’s infinite configurations.

Against the backdrop of Germany and Switzerland, two physicists begin a dangerous dance of distrust. Friends since their university days, when they were aspiring Nobel Prize candidates, they now interact in an atmosphere of tension, stoked by Oskar’s belief that Sebastian fell into mediocrity by having a family. When Sebastian’s son, Liam, is apparently kidnapped, their fragile friendship is further tested. Entrusted with uncovering the truth, Detective Superintendent Schilf discerns a web of blackmail, while at the same time the reality of his personal life falls into doubt. Unfolding in a series of razor-sharp scenes, In Free Fall is a riveting novel of ideas from a major new literary voice. With the recent success of works in translation, such as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire, Zeh is poised to take off.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Juli Zeh (born on June 30, 1974 in Bonn) is a German novelist. Her first book was Adler und Engel (in English: Eagles and Angels), which won the 2002 Deutscher Bücherpreis for best debut novel. She traveled through Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2001, which became the basis for the book Die Stille ist ein Geräusch. Her other books are Das Land der Menschen, Schilf, Alles auf dem Rasen, Kleines Konversationslexikon für Haushunde, Spieltrieb and Ein Hund läuft durch die Republik. Juli Zeh has lived in Leipzig since 1995. Zeh studied human rights law in Passau and Leipzig, passing the Zweites Juristisches Staatsexamen - comparable equivalent to the U.S. bar exam - in 2003. She also has a degree from the Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig.

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Tragedy hits the Allenhouse family on a hot summer night in Ohio when a mother of four vanished. Eight-year-old Vada virtually grew up overnight and raised her three younger sisters while her father lost himself in his medical practice in the basement of their home.

Now, Vada is a grown woman, still making her home with her father and sisters. Her days are spent serving as an errand girl for Cleveland’s fledgling amateur orchestra; her evenings with Garrison Walker, her devoted, if passionless, beau.

Dizzying change occurs the day the Brooklyn Bridegrooms come to town to play the Cleveland Spiders and a line drive wallops the head of a spectator. The fan is whisked to the Allenhouse parlor, and questions swirl about the anonymous, unconscious man.

Suddenly, the subdued house is filled with visitors, from a flirtatious, would-be sports writer to the Bridegrooms’ handsome star hitter to the guilt-ridden ballplayer who should have caught the stray shot. The medical case brings Dr. Allenhouse a frustration and helplessness he hasn’t felt since his wife’s disappearance. Vada’s sisters are giddy at the bevy of possible suitors. And Vada’s life is awakened amid the super-charged atmosphere of romantic opportunity. 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Allison Pittman is the author of Stealing Home, the Crossroads of Grace series, and her non-fiction debut, Saturdays With Stella. A former high-school English teacher, she serves as director of the theater arts group at her church. Allison makes her home in Texas with her husband and their three boys. 

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Critically acclaimed author Pearl Abraham follows a young surfer/skater on a distinctly American spiritual journey that begins with Transcendentalism and countercultural impulses, enters into world mysticism, and finds its destination in Islam.

An avid, near six-foot-tall surfer, John Jude Parish cuts a striking figure on the beaches of the Outer Banks in North Carolina. When he isn’t on water, John lives on wheels, a self-described skate rat-grinding and kickflipping with his friends, and encouraged by his progressive parents. His hero is the great explorer, Richard Burton, his personal prophet is Bob Dylan, and his world is wide open — to new ideas, philosophies, and religions.

Through online forums and chat rooms, John meets a young woman from Brooklyn who spurs his interest in Islam and Arab literature. Deferring Brown University for a year, he moves to New York’s idyllic borough to study Arabic. Like Burton, John embraces the experience heart, body, and soul — to submit to Islam, practice the salaat, fast and meditate, dance with dervishes, and encounter the extraordinary. Burton lived the life of a 19th century adventurer, but he also penetrated the ancient wisdom of secret worlds. John will too — with unforeseen consequences.

Perched on the eve of September 11th, in the first year of the 21st century, American Taliban gives voice to the historical echoes that reveal the unknowable other as entirely familiar, even homegrown.

Pearl Abraham uses her gifts of psychological acuity and uncommon empathy to depict a typical upper-middle-class family snared by the forces of history, politics, and faith. Provocative, unsettling, and written in a brilliantly inventive refreshingly original voice, American Taliban is poised to become one of the most talked about novels of the year.

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Pearl Abraham is the author of The Seventh Beggar, Giving Up America, and The Romance Reader, and the editor of an anthology about Jewish heroines in literature, Een sterke vrouw, wie zal haar vinden?. Her stories and essays have appeared in newspapers, literary quarterlies and anthologies. Abraham teaches literature and creative writing at Western New England College and lives in both Springfield, MA, and New York City.

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Coming home from a Hawaiian vacation with her best girlfriends, Lucy Fisher is stunned to find everything she owns tossed out on her front lawn, the locks changed, and her fiancé’s phone disconnected—plus she’s just lost her job. With her world spinning wildly out of her control, Lucy decides to make a new start and moves upstate to live with her sister and nephew.

But then things take an even more dramatic turn: A fatal encounter with public transportation lands Lucy not in the hereafter but in the nearly hereafter. She’s back in school, learning the parameters of spooking and how to become a successful spirit in order to complete a ghostly assignment. If Lucy succeeds, she’s guaranteed a spot in the next level of the afterlife—but until then, she’s stuck as a ghost in the last place she would ever want to be.

Trying to avoid being trapped on earth for all eternity, Lucy crosses the line between life and death and back again when she returns home. Navigating the perilous channels of the paranormal, she’s determined to find out why her life crumbled and why, despite her ghastly death, no one seems to have noticed she’s gone. But urgency on the spectral plane—in the departed person of her feisty grandmother, who is risking both their eternal lives—requires attention, and Lucy realizes that you get only one chance to be spectacular in death. 

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Laurie Notaro was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She packed her bags for Eugene, Oregon, once she realized that since she was past thirty, her mother could no longer report her as a teenage runaway. She is the author of The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club, Autobiography of a Fat Bride, I Love Everybody, We Thought You’d Be Prettier, and An Idiot Girl’s Christmas. She is currently at work on a plan B (to take effect when her book contract runs out,) which consists of options with minimum dander of office politics, including selling hot dogs at Costco, selling hot dogs from a street cart, selling hot dogs at high school football games, or being the Stop sign holder for road construction crews. She avoids raccoons both day and night and fully expects to be run out of her new hometown once this book is published. At press time, she is still married, her cat is still alive, and she has an adorably disobedient dog named Maeby, who wears sweaters and loves chicken strips. (Clearly, Notaro has no children.)

Sixteen year old Jess Parker has always been an outsider.  So when she receives an invitation to join The Cinderella Society, a secret society of the most popular girls in school, it’s like something out of a fairy tale.  Swept up by the Cindys’ magical world of makeovers, and catching the eye of her Prince Charming, Jess feels like she’s finally found her chance to fit in.

Then the Wickeds–led by Jess’s arch-enemy–begin targeting innocent girls in their war against the Cindys, and Jess discovers there’s more to being a Cindy than reinventing yourself on the outside.  She has unknowingly become part of a centuries-old battle of good vs. evil, and now the Cindys in charge need Jess for a mission that could change everything.

Overwhelmed, Jess wonders if The Cinderella Society made a mistake in choosing her.  Is it a coincidence her new boyfriend doesn’t want to be seen with her in public?  And is this glamorous, secret life even what she wants, or will she risk her own happy ending to live up to the expectations of her new sisters?

To read an excerpt, click HERE.

Kay Cassidy is the author of teen fiction she wishes was based on her real life. She is a former college cheerleader and sorority alum, an MBA and a member of Mensa. Kay is also the founder of the national Great Scavenger Hunt Contest reading program for kids and teens and the host of the inspirational Living Your Five Web project. She hopes that The Cinderella Society, her first novel, will inspire readers to embrace their inner Cindy.

In this breathtaking and beautiful novel, the #1 New York Times bestselling author Anna Quindlen creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.

Mary Beth Latham has built her life around her family, around caring for her three teenage children and preserving the rituals of their daily life. When one of her sons becomes depressed, Mary Beth focuses on him, only to be blindsided by a shocking act of violence. What happens afterwards is a testament to the power of a woman's love and determination, and to the invisible lines of hope and healing that connect one human being with another. Ultimately, as rendered in Anna Quindlen's mesmerizing prose, Every Last One is a novel about facing every last one of the things we fear most, about finding ways to navigate a road we never intended to travel, and about living a life we never dreamed we'd have to live, but find ourselves brave enough to try.

To listen to an audio excerpt, click HERE.

ANNA QUINDLEN is the author of several bestselling novels (Rise and Shine, Blessings, Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue), and non-fiction books (Good Dog. Stay., Being Perfect, Loud & Clear, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud, How Reading Changed My Life). She has also written two children's books (The Tree That Came to Stay, Happily Ever After). Her New York Times column "Public and Private" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Her column now appears every other week in Newsweek.

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey—named Beatrice and Virgil—and the epic journey they undertake together.

With all the spirit and originality that made Life of Pi so beloved, this brilliant new novel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey. On the way Martel asks profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.

To read an excerpt from Chapter One, click HERE.

Yann Martel (born June 25, 1963) is a Spanish-born Canadian author best known for the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi. The award-winning author of four books, the most recent of which is What Is Stephen Harper Reading?, Yann Martel is one of Canada's most interesting and surprising writers. Born in Spain in 1963, Yann grew up in various places as the son of diplomats. His parents now live in Montreal, where Yann visits regularly. He won the Journey Prize for the title story in The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios. Life of Pi was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It was the winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction as well as the Man Booker Prize. Yann lives with writer Alice Kuipers and their son, Theo, in Saskatoon.