Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer was one of the most widely and highly praised novels of 2015, the winner not only of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also the Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, the ALA Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Nguyen's next fiction book, The Refugees, is a collection of perfectly formed stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family.With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a... Views: 112
The only woman he's ever trusted is about to betray him... Luke Donovan is the irresistible bad boy every woman wants, and no woman can catch. Long term? Marriage? Children? No thanks, not interested. Until he meets Helena Montrey. There's something about her reserved manner and fresh-faced beauty that pulls him in, obliterates past notions of love and relationships and makes him want to commit—to her. Damn but he's finally fallen in love! Gone are the bad-boy ways and reckless wandering, replaced with professions of forever and a vow to become respectable. It's time to face up to past mistakes. Returning to his hometown of Reunion Gap and the family he deserted is the first step. Besides, Luke wants his family to meet Helena; the woman who changed his life. Too bad he doesn't know she's not who she says she is. After her fiancé's betrayal makes her question her ability to tell an honest man from a liar, Helena Montrey shies away... Views: 112
Herodotus tells us that not all of the three hundred Spartan warriors died at the hands of Xerxes, King of the Persians, in the battle of the Thermopylae: two were saved bringing a life-saving message back to the city... This is the saga of a Spartan family, torn apart by a cruel law that forces them to abandon one of their two sons - born lame - to the elements. The elder son, Brithos, is raised in the caste of the warriors, while the other, Talos, is spared a cruel death and is raised by a Helot shepherd, among the peasants. They live out their story in a world dominated by the clash between the Persian empire and the city-states of Greece - a ferocious, relentless conflict - until the voice of their blood and of human solidarity unites them in a thrilling, singular enterprise Views: 112
Emily thinks she's lost everything...until a mysterious painting leads her to what she wants most in the world. The new novel from the author of international bestsellers The Sweetness of Forgetting and The Life Intended shows why her books are hailed as "engaging" (People), "absorbing" (Kirkus Reviews) and "enthralling" (Fresh Fiction).Emily Lyons is used to being alone; her dad ran out on the family when she was a just a kid, her mom died when she was seventeen, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she's laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely at sea...until the day she receives a beautiful, haunting painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. That woman is recognizable as her grandmother—and the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, "He always loved her." Emily is hungry for roots and family, so she... Views: 112
Amazon.com ReviewMultiple time-lines and alternate branching destinies are more often associated with science fiction than horror, but in this first novel by an African-American woman, a man who has cheated death finds that his ability to walk through doorways in time brings dark forces into his life. Due employs a lucid, almost stately, prose style to evoke an escalating sense of menace toward a middle-class American family with connections to Ghana. Dreams? Madness? Ghosts? A racist killer? What is happening to these people? From Publishers WeeklyAlthough set largely in the black and Hispanic communities of Florida's Dade County, Due's first novel, a skillful blend of horror and the supernatural, poses questions about life and identity that transcend racial boundaries. Thirty years after he was saved from drowning by the beloved grandmother who died in his place, Hilton James has built a secure middle-class life for his African American family and saved a few lives himself through his social work in Miami's inner city. His comfortable existence is shattered when his wife, a judge, begins receiving racist death threats and he starts having nightmares of alternate life experiences so authentic that they begin to loosen his grip on reality. Is Hilton a latent schizophrenic, as his therapist thinks? Or are the dreams and death threats both signs of a cosmic scheme in which Hilton is meant to accept the death that he eluded before? The mystical explanation Due posits for Hilton's predicament, involving "travelers," or persons who unconsciously use dreams as "doorways" to elude fate and live in "the between" world, is not nearly as disturbing as her depiction of Hilton's gradual decline from caring husband and father to a man who lashes out in frustration against those he loves. Her sympathetic and credible portrait of Hilton as a man discomposed by his encounter with the unknown compensates for the novel's underdeveloped supporting cast. Due also subtly suggests the horrifying thought that pervades the story but is left tactfully unspoken: if each of us creates our own reality, then ultimately we are all alone in the world. $25,000 ad/ promo; author tour. U.K. and translation rights, HarperCollins; other rights, Marie Brown Associates. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 112
A USA TODAY BESTSELLING SERIES In the remote landscape near Death Valley, a group of special ops soldiers has gone rogue. As the army desperately tries to stop the senseless killings, Michael Tallon and Lauren Pauling find themselves the target of not only the deranged murderers, but the local sheriff, too. As the pace of the killing intensifies, the stakes get higher for Pauling and Tallon, leading to an unforgettable twist in this action-packed, no-holds-barred thriller. Views: 112
Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in the IndependentRudian Stefa is called in for questioning by the Party Committee. An unknown girl – Linda B. – has been found dead, with a signed copy of his latest book in her possession. Rudian remembers writing the dedication at the request of Linda's friend, who has since become his mistress but has now disappeared. He soon learns that Linda's family, considered suspect, were exiled to a small Albanian town far from the capital, and that the girl committed suicide.But what really happened to Linda B.? Through layers of intrigue, her story gradually unfolds: how she loved Rudian from a distance, and the risks she was prepared to take so that she could get close to him. A Girl in Exile is a stunning, deeply affecting portrait of life and love under surveillance, infused with myth, wry humour and the chilling absurdity of a paranoid regime. Views: 112
Soon to be the major motion picture Greyhound, a WWII naval thriller of "high and glittering excitement" (New York Times) from the author of the legendary Hornblower seriesThe mission of Commander George Krause of the United States Navy is to protect a convoy of thirty-seven merchant ships making their way across the icy North Atlantic from America to England. There, they will deliver desperately needed supplies, but only if they can make it through the wolfpack of German submarines that awaits and outnumbers them in the perilous seas. For forty eight hours, Krause will play a desperate cat and mouse game against the submarines, combating exhaustion, hunger, and thirst to protect fifty million dollars' worth of cargo and the lives of three thousand men. Originally published as The Good Shepherd and acclaimed as one of the best novels of the year upon publication in 1955, this novel is a riveting classic of WWII and naval warfare from one of... Views: 111
