Random House 2015 Literature Catalog by Random House

New & Recommended Books for Course Adoption

E R U T A LITER 2015

FEATURING

FRANCO MORETTI offers his philosophy of “distant reading” YANNIS RITSOS on maintaining humanity through language

GARY SHTEYNGART on growing up as an “other” in the U.S. REBECCA MEAD’s highly personal tribute to George Eliot’s Middlemarch

ANTHONY MARRA on writing about the darkness and humanity in war-torn Chechnya Also includes: A letter from the editor of The Wall: A Novel by H. G. ADLER A new collection of all of TRUMAN CAPOTE’s short fiction

www.randomhouse.com/academic |

LITERATURE 2015

NEW & RECOMMENDED BOOKS FOR COURSE ADOPTION FEATURED TITLES

CONTENTS

RUBY by Cynthia Bond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 O, AFRICA! by Andrew Lewis Conn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 THE FRANGIPANI HOTEL by Violet Kupersmith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA by Anthony Marra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 J by Howard Jacobson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 THE SCAPEGOAT by Sophia Nikolaidou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 THE SHOAH TRILOGY by H. G. Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 EVERY DAY IS FOR THE THIEF by Teju Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 AGOSTINO by Alberto Moravia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 FOREIGN GODS, INC. by Okey Ndibe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 THE RISE & FALL OF GREAT POWERS by Tom Rachman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS by Max Brooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH by Rebecca Mead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 LITTLE FAILURE by Gary Shteyngart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 DISTANT READING by Franco Moretti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 JIMMY’S BLUES AND OTHER POEMS by James Baldwin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

SUBJECT CATEGORIES American Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2–23 British & Irish Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24–29 World Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30–51 Graphic Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52–54 Essays, Belle Lettres, & Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55–59 Biography & Memoir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60–66 Short Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66–69 Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70–71 Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72–75 Reference & Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76–77 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78–79

LEGEND HC = Hardcover TR = Trade Paperback MM = Mass Market EB = e-Book NCR = No Canadian Rights EXAMINATION COPIES

Examination copies are available to instructors seeking titles to review for adoption consideration. The exam copy prices are as follows: $3.00 for each paperback priced under $20.00, and 50% off the retail price for all hardcovers and paperbacks priced at or over $20.00. Examination copies are limited to ten per instructor per school year and can only be mailed to valid U.S. addresses. To order, use the order form at the back of this catalog. Examination copies must be prepaid with a check or money order made payable to Random House LLC, or order online at www.randomhouse.com/academic/examcopy. Offer only valid in the United States. All requests are subject to approval and availability. Please allow 2–4 weeks for delivery.

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HIGHLIGHTS DISTANT READING by Franco Moretti Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

Moretti applies unorthodox concepts such as z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients to the study of literature. Here, he explains his groundbreaking critical approach. See page 70.

DIARIES OF EXILE by Yannis Ritsos Winner of a 2014 PEN Literary Award for Best Poetry in Translation

Made up of three diaries of poetry written while Ritsos was a political prisoner during the Greek Civil War, this volume confirms his stature in modern Greek poetry. See page 75.

LITTLE FAILURE by Gary Shteyngart A New York Times Notable Book and a Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year Selected for Common Reading at Brooklyn College

Novelist Shteyngart’s memoir relates his immigrant experience with humor and insight. This is a resonant story of family, exile, and coming of age. See page 62.

THE WALL by H. G. Adler Translated by Peter Filkins Arthur Landau, a Holocaust survivor, grapples with his nightmarish memories, eventually finding meaning for his life in his family and his work. See page 32.

A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA by Anthony Marra Winner of the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Prize

In this acclaimed debut, doctors in Chechnya risk everything to save a hunted child. See page 8.

MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH by Rebecca Mead A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice

Blending biography, criticism, and memoir, Rebecca Mead explores how Middlemarch has shaped her life, and how it has been variously interpreted for more than 100 years. See page 60. For additional titles, go to: w w w.randomhouse.com/academic

AMERICAN LITERATURE

RUBY: A NOVEL

by Cynthia Bond

Nominated for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize

he minute she’s able, Ruby Bell flees the suffocating 1930s East Texas town in which she grew up and sets her sights on the bright lights of 1950s New York. However, the death of a childhood friend eventually compels Ruby to return home. This fateful trip back to Texas forces her to relive the devastating violence that colored her past. Full of life, elegantly written, and suffused with the pastoral beauty of the rural South, Ruby is a novel of passion and courage. Utterly transfixing, with unforgettable characters, riveting suspense, and breathtaking, luminous prose, Ruby offers an unflinching portrait of man’s dark acts and the promise of the redemptive power of love.

Hogarth • HC • 978-0-8041-3909-0 352 pp. • $25.00/$29.00 Can. Exam Copy: $12.50 DO NOT ORDER PAPERBACK BEFORE 2/10/2015

Hogarth • TR • 978-0-8041-3911-3 352 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

“Channeling the lyrical phantasmagoria of early Toni Morrison and the sexual and racial brutality of 20th-century east Texas, Cynthia Bond has created a moving and indelible portrait of a fallen woman . . . Bond traffics in extremely difficult subjects with a grace and bigheartedness that makes for an accomplished, enthralling read.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Bond’s prose is evocative of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, paying homage to the greats of Southern Gothic literature.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Reading Cynthia Bond’s Ruby you can’t help but feel that one day this book will be considered a staple of our literature, a classic.” —Edwidge Danticat, author of Claire of the Sea Light

CYNTHIA BOND has taught writing to homeless and at-risk youth throughout Los Angeles for more than fifteen years. She attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, then moved to New York and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A PEN/Rosenthal Fellow, Bond founded the Blackbird Writing Collective in 2011. At present, Bond works as a writing consultant and teaches therapeutic writing at Paradigm Malibu Adolescent Treatment Center.

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BOOK EXCERPT from Ruby by Cynthia Bond

Chapter One

WISHBONE

RUBY BELL was a constant reminder of what could befall a woman whose

shoe heels were too high. The people of Liberty Township wove her into cautionary tales of the wages of sin and travel. They called her buck-crazy. Howling, half-naked mad. The fact that she had come back from New York City made this somewhat understandable to the town. She wore gray like rain clouds and wandered the red roads in bared feet. Calluses thick as boot leather. Hair caked with mud. Blackened nails as if she had scratched the slate of night. Her acres of legs carrying her, arms swaying like a loose screen. Her eyes the ink of sky, just before the storm. That is how Ruby walked when she lived in the splintered house that Papa Bell had built before he passed. When she dug into the East Texas soil under moonlight and wailed like a distant train. In those years, after her return, people let Ruby be. They walked a curved path to avoid her door. And so it was more than strange when someone walked the length of Liberty and brought a covered cake to the Bells’ front porch. Ephram Jennings had seen the gray woman passing like a haint through the center of town since she’d returned to Bell land in 1963. All of Liberty had. He had seen her wipe the spittle from her jerking lips, run her still beautiful hands over the crust of her hair each day before she’d turned the corner in view of the town. He’d seen her walking like she had some place she ought to have been, then ﬁve steps away from P & K Market, stand pillar still, her rain cloud body shaking. Ephram had seen Miss P, the proprietor of the store, walk nonchalantly out of her door and say, “Honey, can you see if I got the rise in these rolls right?” Ephram watched Ruby stare past her but take the brown sack ﬁlled with steaming yeast bread. Take it and walk away with her acres of legs carrying her, while Miss P said, “You come on back tomorrow, Ruby Bell, and help me out if you get the chance.” Ephram Jennings had watched this for eleven years. Seen her black-bottomed foot kick a swirl of dust in its wake. Every day he wanted nothing more than to put each tired sole in his wide wooden tub, brush them both in warm soapy water, cream them with sweet oil and lanoline and then slip her feet, one by one into a pair of red-heel socks.

Copyright © 2014 by Cynthia Bond All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

O, AFRICA!: A NOVEL

by Andrew Lewis Conn

Hogarth • HC • 978-0-8041-3828-4 384 pp. • $25.00/$29.95 Can. Exam Copy: $12.50

novel that recalls Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, O, Africa! follows two filmmakers on an unlikely journey while exploring the complexities of race, class, sexuality, and success in early twentieth century America. In the summer of 1928, twin brothers Micah and Izzy Grand are at the pinnacle of their movie-making careers. From their roots as sons of Brooklyn immigrants, they have risen to become kings of silent comedy—with the brash, bloviating Micah directing and calling the shots, while his retreating brother skillfully works behind the lens. But when Micah’s penchant for gambling, and his interracial affair with Rose combine to threaten his livelihood and his life, he finds himself in need of a quick escape. As the ascent of the talkies looms on the horizon, the brothers’ producer offers them an opportunity that couldn’t be better timed: travel to Africa to compile stock footage of the exotic locales, as well as film a new comedy in the jungle. Together with an unlikely crew of producers, stars, and hangers-on, the Grands set out for Malwiki, where among the tribesmen they each discover unforeseen truths about themselves, their lovers, and the meaning of the movies. Moving from the piers of Coney Island to Africa’s veld, and further to the glitter of early Hollywood, O, Africa! is an epic tale of self-discovery, the constraints of history and prejudice, and the stubborn resolve of family and friendship in the face of tragedy. “[In] the tradition of maximalist Jewish fiction practiced by Howard Jacobson, Gary Shteyngart and Michael Chabon. . . . Continually surprising . . . [And] stuffed with themes about time and space, assimilation, language, mysticism, technology, and the American dream.” —Chicago Tribune

ANDREW LEWIS CONN has written essays, short fiction, and reviews for The Believer, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, and the Indiana Review among others, and attended writers residencies at Yaddo and Ledig House in Hudson, NY. Conn’s previous novel, P, was chosen as a best book of the summer of 2003 by Salon, Time Out New York, The Oregonian, and Nerve; one of the best books of the year by the Village Voice and the Austin Chronicle; and long-listed as “one of the best books of the millennium (so far!)” by The Millions.

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BOOK EXCERPT from O, Africa! by Andrew Lewis Conn

LOUDER THAN WORDS. “ACTION,” his brother says in a whisper, followed by a knock on the piano crate. Then again, this time louder, “Action,” trailed by a tapping on the trunk: one, two, three. “C’mon, kid, we’re ready!” It was hot inside the Bechstein box, and Izzy, with his claustrophobia and nerves, wasn’t doing well. Wedged in a contortionist’s pose, the cameraman’s limbs wrapped round the Bell & Howell—one glove on the hand crank as controlled as a butler winding a clock after putting out the last light, the other jamming a tripod leg into a corner of the crate with the force of a fisherman spearing a swordfish. As he peered through the lens turret poking out of the hole that’d been cut from the side of the box, it occurred to Izzy—Isidor Grand, the more sober, reflective, and retiring of the twins—that his position pressed inside the dark black box was not dissimilar to the workings of the human eye, with its iris, cornea, pupil, and lens functioning in concord, gathering images, bringing them into focus, inscribing scenes on the black retinal wall, and propelling them back out into the world for the purpose of inspection, investigation, joy. Apart from the heat, which was stifling, and the dark, which was terrifying, Izzy enjoyed remaining hidden, preferring to concede the center of attention to Micah—his red-haired brother with his rooster raucousness, Cheshire teeth, and Barnum whiffs of sawdust and hucksterism—Micah, the movie director, who enjoyed nothing more than racing around a set, distressed sandwich in one hand, megaphone in the other, carrying on five conversations at once, giddy from the fumes coming off his own moxie, lack of sleep, and professional charm. This was no set, however. This was Coney Island. At the beginning of summer. On a Sunday.

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

THE FRANGIPANI HOTEL: FICTION

by Violet Kupersmith

Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-0-8129-9331-8 256 pp. • $25.00/$29.95 Can. Exam Copy: $12.50 DO NOT ORDER PAPERBACK UNTIL 2/10/15

Spiegel & Grau • TR • 978-0-8129-8347-0 256 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

beautiful young woman appears fully dressed in an overflowing bathtub at the Frangipani Hotel in Hanoi. A jaded teenage girl in Houston befriends an older Vietnamese gentleman she discovers naked behind a dumpster. A trucker in Saigon is asked to drive a dying young man home to his village. A plump Vietnamese-American teenager is sent to her elderly grandmother in Ho Chi Minh City to lose weight, only to be lured out of the house by the wafting aroma of freshly baked bread. In these evocative and always surprising stories, the supernatural coexists with the mundane lives of characters who struggle against the burdens of the past. Based on traditional Vietnamese folktales told to Kupersmith by her grandmother, these fantastical, chilling, and thoroughly contemporary stories are a boldly original exploration of Vietnamese culture, addressing both the immigrant experience and the lives of those who remained behind. Lurking in the background of them all is a larger ghost—that of the Vietnam War, whose legacy continues to haunt us. Violet Kupersmith’s voice is an exciting addition to the landscape of American fiction. With tremendous depth and range, her stories transcend their genre to make a wholly original statement about the postwar experience. “[A] sparkling debut . . . These are stories written from wildly different perspectives, and yet the ghosts feel vitally familiar. There’s a lightness of touch to these stories, which are playful and wise, an astonishing feat for a young writer who graduated from Mount Holyoke College three years ago.” —Chicago Tribune “What is most haunting in Kupersmith’s nine multilayered pieces are not the specters, whose tales are revealed as stories within stories, but the lingering loss and disconnect endured by the still living. . . . [A] mature-beyond-her-years debut.” —Library Journal (starred review)

www.violetkupersmith.com VIOLET KUPERSMITH graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2011 and then spent a year in Vietnam on a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship. She is currently at work on her next novel.

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BOOK EXCERPT from The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith

BOAT STORY

“HERE, con, I cut up a đu đủ just for you.”

“Oh no, Grandma, I—” “It’s very ripe!” “Gra—” “And very good for you too!” “Grandma! You know I can’t eat papaya. It makes my stomach hurt.” “Tck! It goes in the trash can then. Such a waste.” “Wait! Why can’t you eat it? Or feed it to Grandpa?” “Grandpa and I are sick of it—we’ve eaten nothing but đu đủ for two straight days because I bought six from that Chinese grocer out in Bellaire last week and now they’re starting to go bad.” “Ha! Why did you buy so many?” “I was hoping for visitors to share them with. But no one comes to see me. Everyone is too busy—so American! Always working, working, and no time for Grandma. Not even your mother stopped by this week. And the only reason you’re here is a silly high school project.” “All right, all right. But I’m only gonna eat a bit, okay? Just this little piece right here. And then we’ll do the interview . . . Oh God, it’s so slimy . . .” “Wonderful! Yes, chew, chew—” “You don’t need to tell me to chew!” “It’s disgusting to speak with your mouth full, con. Chew, chew. Swallow! See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? And it will make your hair shiny and give you good skin. Have another piece.” “My stomach feels weird already, Grandma. But I’ll have one more piece while you talk, deal?” “Oh, making deals now, hah? And I thought you weren’t sneaky like the other grandchildren. You’ll start gambling next. What kind of story did you want me to tell you, con?”

“I’m after the big one.” “Oh dear.” “Leaving Vietnam. The boat journey. That’s what I want to write about.” “Ask your mother.” “I did, but she was too young when it happened. She only remembers the refugee camp and arriving in Houston.” “Ask your father then.” “He came over on a plane in the eighties, and that’s not half as exciting. That’ll get me a B if I’m lucky. But your boat person story? Jackpot. Communists! Thai pirates! Starvation! That’s an A-plus story.” “Oh, is that what it is?” “Mom said you don’t like talking about the war, but I should know about my past, shouldn’t I? That’s what this school project is about— learning your history, exploring your culture, discovering where you came from, that kind of thing.” “You really want to know the country you came from?” “Yes.” “And you want a story about me on a boat?” “Yes!” “Fine. I will tell you a boat story. It begins on a stormy day at sea.” “Wait, wait! Let me get my pencil . . . Okay, go!” “The waves were vicious, the wind was an animal, and the sky was dung-colored.” “Hang on a second. Where were you?” “On the boat, of course.” “Well yeah, but is this 1975? We are talking about 1975, right?” “Child, when you’re my age you don’t bother remembering years.” “But this is at the very end of the war?” “Did that war ever really end, con?”

Excerpted from The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith. Copyright © 2014 by Violet Kupersmith. Excerpted by permission of Spiegel & Grau. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA

by Anthony Marra

WINNER OF THE: National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Prize Carla Furstenberg Cohen Fiction Award Commonwealth Club of California Book Award Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

FINALIST FOR THE:

National Book Awards Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize New York Public Library’s Young Lion Fiction Award PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers Award Selection for the ALA Notable Adult Books

T Hogarth • TR • 978-0-7704-3642-1 416 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

wo doctors risk everything to save the life of a hunted child in this acclaimed debut about love, loss, and the unexpected ties that bind us together. In a small rural village in Chechnya, 8-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as Russian soldiers abduct her father in the middle of the night and then set fire to her home. When their lifelong neighbor finds Havaa hiding in the forest, he makes a decision that will forever change their lives. “Extraordinary . . . a 21st-century War and Peace . . . Marra seems to derive his astral calm in the face of catastrophe directly from Tolstoy.” —Madison Smartt Bell, The New York Times Book Review “[Marra’s] ambitions are Tolstoyan, and he brings stylistic virtuosity to the prose, giving us lyric passages saturated with intelligence and psychological insight. By the end of the novel, we love the characters and grieve with them, and rejoice with the ‘immense, spinning joy’ that is the novel’s final note.” —2012 Whiting Writers’ Awards, Selection Committee

www.anthonymarra.net ANTHONY MARRA is the winner of a Whiting Award, Pushcart Prize, and the Narrative Prize. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Prize and the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction, as well as the inaugural 2014 Carla Furstenberg Cohen Fiction Award. Marra’s novel was a National Book Award longlist selection as well as a shortlist selection for the Flaherty-Dunnan first novel prize. In addition, his work has been anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he now teaches as a Jones Lecturer in Fiction. He has lived and studied in Eastern Europe, and now resides in Oakland, CA. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is his first novel.

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A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

MY INTEREST IN CHECHNYA began when I was in college. I spent a semester of my junior year in St. Petersburg, where I lived down the street from a Russian military academy. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-old cadets, dressed in sky-blue uniforms, marched in formation around the neighborhood each afternoon. Several blocks away, outside a metro station, men a few years older than the cadets gathered to panhandle at rush hour. These men also wore military uniforms, though theirs weren’t as clean or so neatly pressed. A number had lost their legs and wore hemmed trousers. These men were Russian veterans of the Chechen conflict that the cadets might one day join. When the cadets marched passed, they stared at the veterans as if peering into their own uncertain futures, while the veterans looked back with pity. What was it, besides a few years and a few feet of concrete, that separated these two groups of young men? The answer was Chechnya, a place that I went on to research, travel through, and write about in my novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Most present-day first-year students learned to read the newspaper around the same time that religious extremism and its attendant acts of terror and war became headline news across the country. But for all we know about the combatants and ideologues, we rarely glimpse the lives of the civilians populating the landscapes where much of this violence unfolds. What’s it like to be an ordinary civilian, neither overly religious nor overly political, caught between the gears of history? How do we differentiate between right and wrong when the moral compass is recalibrated to point to survival? How can you change your life and your country when you are among those furthest from the source of political power but closest to its consequences? These are some of the questions posed in A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. When I began working on the book, I doubted a novel set in Chechnya would find much of a readership. So it’s been a surprise and privilege to see it taken up by readers across the country, taught in colleges and universities, and even purchased by President Obama. I’ve received kind and generous notes from survivors of the Chechen conflict, from journalists, and from Americans who have never been abroad. The most common reaction I’ve received from readers has been a variation on: “I didn’t think I would recognize myself in characters whose lives are so vastly different from mine.” This is one of the main reasons I believe my novel would make a good candidate for a literature course or a common reading program. If adopted, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena would ask students to empathize with geopolitically and culturally remote characters who struggle with the same fundamental moral questions we all face. While rooted in Chechnya, the themes and concerns that grow from the novel are universal. When I was in St. Petersburg, I remember leaving particularly good classes feeling as if the professor had tugged on the margins of my vision, making the world I saw larger, more complex, more mysterious. I deeply hope you will finish A Constellation of Vital Phenomena with a similar feeling. —Anthony Marra

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS by Matt Bell

n this mythical debut novel, a newly married couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply and build a house where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world.

“For readers weary of literary fiction that dutifully obeys the laws of nature, here’s a story that stirs the Brothers Grimm and Salvador Dali with its claws. . . . [A]s gorgeous as it is devastating.” —The Washington Post Soho Press • TR • 978-1-61695-372-0 • 336 pp. • $15.00/$15.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

TELL THE WOLVES I’M HOME: A NOVEL by Carol Rifka Brunt

Named “One of the Best Books of the Year” by The Wall Street Journal; Kirkus Reviews; Booklist; and School Library Journal • Winner of the Alex Award

n Brunt’s literary debut, the only person who has ever truly understood 14-year-old June Elbus is her uncle. When he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart. “Transcendent . . . Peopled by characters who will live in readers’ imaginations long after the final page is turned, Brunt’s novel is a beautifully bittersweet mixture of heartbreak and hope.” —Booklist (starred review) Dial Press Trade Paperback • TR • 978-0-8129-8285-5 • 384 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

BLACK MOON: A NOVEL by Kenneth Calhoun

n a world taken over by insomnia, Biggs is one of the few who can still sleep. His wife has succumbed, gone mad, and run away. Desperate to find her, Biggs ventures out into this bizarre new world. Weaving Biggs’ story with others, Calhoun’s hallucinatory debut is a depiction of a world gripped by madness.

“Calhoun’s literary dystopia, which features beautiful writing, arresting imagery, and powerful metaphors, will appeal to fans of Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles. . . . A deeply lyrical exploration of humanity at the extremes.” —Library Journal (starred review) Hogarth • HC • 978-0-8041-3714-0 • 288 pp. • $24.00/$27.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S & OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS: TWO NOVELS by Truman Capote

ewly repackaged, this volume contains the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms, Capote’s debut novel. Of all his characters, Capote once said, Holly Golightly was his favorite. The hillbilly-turned-Manhattanite at the center of Breakfast at Tiffany’s shares not only the author’s philosophy of freedom but also his fears and anxieties. Other Voices, Other Rooms, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, begins as 13-year-old Joel, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to rural Alabama to live with his estranged father, who is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his eccentric family and finds a kindred spirit in a defiant little girl.

Modern Library • HC • 978-0-8129-9436-0 • 304 pp. • $21.00/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $10.50 For more books by Truman Capote, go to http://tinyurl.com/qbasof8

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

READY PLAYER ONE: A NOVEL by Ernest Cline

Winner of the Alex Award • A School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Young Adults • Selected for Common Reading at Bethel College, Kansas State University, and University of Massachusetts—Amherst

eady Player One is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut. Part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera, it is set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

“Ready Player One is more than a paperback adventure story; it unites the past and present under an overarching concern about technology’s place in our future.” —Jeanne Horrigan, Director of New Students Orientation, University of Massachusetts—Amherst Broadway • TR • 978-0-307-88744-3 • 384 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY: A NOVEL by Michael Chabon Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

he American epic of two boy geniuses is newly updated with special bonus material by Michael Chabon. It’s 1939 and America is in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books. Sammy Clay is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in his aloof, artistically gifted cousin, Joe Kavalier, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. “The depth of Chabon’s thought, his sharp language, his inventiveness, and his ambition make this a novel of towering achievement.” —The New York Times Book Review Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8358-6 • 704 pp. • $17.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Michael Chabon, go to http://tinyurl.com/lo54a5l

A THOUSAND PARDONS: A NOVEL by Jonathan Dee

n a single afternoon, everything the Armsteads have built together unravels. Thrust back into the working world, Helen finds a job in public relations and relocates with their daughter, discovering along the way that she has an indispensable gift in the world of image control: She can convince arrogant men to admit their mistakes, spinning crises into second chances. Dee’s tale of self-invention and public scandal raises a trenchant question: What do we really want when we ask for forgiveness?

“Dee continues to establish himself as an ironic observer of contemporary behavior. . . . The plot is energetic. . . . But most compelling is the acuteness of the details.” —The Atlantic Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8338-8 • 240 pp. • $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Jonathan Dee, go to http://tinyurl.com/n33rlev

BROTHERLY LOVE: A NOVEL by Pete Dexter

n Philadelphia in 1961, a division of power exists between the Italian mobs and the predominantly Irish labor leaders. When the youngest daughter of union man Charley Flood is accidentally killed by one of the Mafia’s cops, it is the beginning of a suicidal chain of retaliation. “Gut-wrenching . . . a taut, gripping narrative that memorably examines the dark wellsprings of human behavior.” —Publishers Weekly Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8734-8 • 288 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

GOD’S POCKET: A NOVEL by Pete Dexter

Now a Motion Picture

PETE DEXTER

ecently back in print, God’s Pocket is the first novel from the National Book Award– winning author of Paris Trout. Young Leon Hubbard was arrogant and nearly psychotic. So when he was killed on a South Philadelphia construction site, everyone who knew him wanted to bury the bad news with the body. Everyone, that is, except for two people: Leon’s mother and the local columnist for the common man.

“God’s Pocket signs, snarls, mugs, wisecracks, buys you a drink, steals your wallet, and takes you home to meet the folks.” —Richard Price Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8736-2 • 288 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

PARIS TROUT: A NOVEL by Pete Dexter

Winner of the National Book Award

shocking crime eats away at the fabric of a small, southern town, exposing its hypocrisies and shattering the lives of its citizens. The crime is the murder of a 14-yearold black girl, and the killer is Paris Trout, a respected white citizen—a man without guilt. “A grim and fascinating novel filled with wonderfully comic touches, by a writer whose brilliant understanding of the Deep South has allowed him to capture much of its essence—its bitter class distinctions, its violence, its strangeness—with a fidelity of detail and an ear for speech that I have rarely encountered since Flannery O’Connor. A fine and engrossing work.” —William Styron Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8738-6 • 320 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

ANDREW’S BRAIN: A NOVEL by E. L. Doctorow

E. L. DOCTOROW

peaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, Andrew is unfurling the story of his life, his loves, and the tragedies that have led him to a mysterious act. As Andrew confesses, we are led to question what we know about truth and memory, about brain and mind, about each other and ourselves.

“Writing in concert with Twain, Poe, and Kafka, Doctorow distills his mastery of language, droll humor, well-primed imagination, and political outrage into an exquisitely disturbing, morally complex, tragic, yet darkly funny novel of the collective American unconscious and human nature in all its perplexing contrariness.” —Booklist (starred review) Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8098-1 • 240 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

CITY OF GOD: A NOVEL by E. L. Doctorow

t the heart of this book is a detective story centered around a cross that vanishes from an Episcopal church in lower Manhattan, only to reappear on the roof of an Upper West Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery—and by the maverick rector and the young rabbi investigating the strange act of desecration—is a well-known novelist, whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age. “A grander perspective on the universe . . . a novel that sets its sights on God.” —The Wall Street Journal Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8589-4 • 288 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by E. L. Doctorow, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mm3l4cz

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

CARTWHEEL: A NOVEL by Jennifer duBois

JENNIFER duBOIS

hen Lily arrives in Buenos Aires for her semester abroad, she is enchanted by everything she encounters. Five weeks later, her roommate Katy is found brutally murdered in their shared home—and Lily is the prime suspect. As the case takes shape— revealing deceptions, secrets, and suspicious DNA—Lily appears alternately sinister and guileless through the eyes of those around her. “The writing in Cartwheel is a pleasure—electric, fine-tuned, intelligent, conflicted. The novel is engrossing, and its portraiture hits delightfully and necessarily close to home.” —The New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice) Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8582-5 • 416 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

A PARTIAL HISTORY OF LOST CAUSES by Jennifer duBois

Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize for Debut Fiction

long-lost letter links two disparate characters, each searching for meaning against seemingly insurmountable odds. This debut novel explores the power of memory, the depths of human courage, and the endurance of love as a woman leaves everything behind and travels to Russia to seek out the answer to a profound question—How does one proceed in a lost cause?—from a man she has never met. “Terrific . . . In urgent fashion, duBois deftly evokes Russia’s political and social metamorphosis over the past thirty years through the prism of this particular and moving relationship.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Dial Press Trade Paperback • TR • 978-0-8129-8217-6 • 400 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

KEEPING BEDLAM AT BAY IN THE PRAGUE CAFÉ: A NOVEL by M. Henderson Ellis

ohn Shirting had a beloved job as a barista at a coffee chain, until he was deemed “too passionate” and was fired. Shirting makes it his mission to break into a new market, and make freshly postcommunist Prague safe for free-market capitalism. It’s not long before his grasp on his mission and, indeed, his sanity, comes undone. “In creating Shirting, Ellis has enriched the literature of estrangement and given us a marvelous portrait of post-communist Prague. . . . This novel is a worthy addition to both expatriate writing and Czech storytelling, managing also to reflect . . . profound insights into the ideologies of the last century.” —Andrei Codrescu, author of So Recently Rent a World New Europe Books • TR • 978-0-9825781-8-6 • 256 pp. • $14.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by M. Henderson Ellis, go to http://tinyurl.com/kq4nvyh

THE LIFE WE BURY: A NOVEL by Allen Eskens

ollege student Joe Talbert must interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. He meets Carl Iverson, a dying Vietnam veteran who has been medically paroled to a nursing home after spending thirty years in prison for rape and murder. As Joe writes about Carl’s valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction.

“Allen Eskens delivers a mesmerizing debut, unfolding decades of secrets in a rewarding tale of redemption.” —Julie Kramer, author of Delivering Death Seventh Street Books • TR • 978-1-61614-998-7 • 303 pp. • $15.95/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ by F. Scott Fitzgerald

oosely inspired by a summer he spent as a teenager working on a ranch in Montana, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is Fitzgerald’s hallucinatory paean to the American West and all its promises. It’s the story of John T. Unger, a young Southerner who goes to Montana for summer vacation with a wealthy college classmate. But the classmate’s family proves to be much more than simply wealthy: they own a mountain made entirely of one solid diamond, and they’ve gone to dreadful lengths to conceal their secret.

Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-220-8 • 80 pp. • $10.00/$10.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by F. Scott Fitzgerald, go to http://tinyurl.com/nucgez9

SONGS OF WILLOW FROST: A NOVEL by Jamie Ford

rom the bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet comes a muchanticipated second novel set in Depression-era Seattle: a mother-and-son story about love, hope, and the power of forgiveness. Shifting between the Great Depression and the 1920s, Ford takes readers on an emotional journey of discovery that will resonate with anyone who has ever longed for the comforts of family and a place to call home.

“Ford’s boundless compassion for the human spirit, in all its strengths and weaknesses, makes him one of our most unique and compelling storytellers.” —Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand Ballantine Books • TR • 978-0-345-52203-0 • 352 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Jamie Ford, go to: http://tinyurl.com/k7kl5qn

MIDNIGHT IN EUROPE: A NOVEL by Alan Furst

idely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel, author Alan Furst delivers a thriller of spies and espionage, in Paris, New York, and Madrid, on the eve of World War II. Cristián Ferrar is approached by the embassy of the Spanish Republic and asked to help a clandestine agency trying desperately to supply weapons to the Republic’s beleaguered army—an effort that puts his life at risk in the battle against fascism. “Furst is a master of mood, but, above all, he is able to show how the most personal of emotions—love, especially—drives the actions of men and women caught in a time of peril.” —Booklist (starred review) Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6949-1 • 272 pp. • $27.00/$32.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.50 For more books by Alan Furst, go to: http://tinyurl.com/m85h5zf

WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG: A NOVEL by Elizabeth Gaffney

coming-of-age story set in Brooklyn Heights during World War II and beyond, When the World Was Young will appeal to readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Rules of Civility. Reeling from an unexpected wartime tragedy and navigating an increasingly fraught landscape, Wally is forced to confront painful truths about the world—its sorrows, its prejudices, its conflicts, its limitations. But she also finds hope and strength in the unlikeliest places. “Dignified and fierce, a work of complex and unconventional beauty . . . Gaffney movingly explores wartime passions, the emotional sacrifices made by strong women on the home front, and the wounding power of secrets.” —Sheri Holman, author of The Dress Lodger Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6468-7 • 320 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 For more books by Elizabeth Gaffney, go to: http://tinyurl.com/n78pkep

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AMERICAN LITERATURE THE GHOST SHIFT: A NOVEL by John Gapper

apper’s new thriller takes readers inside the secretive and dangerous world of modern China. The body of a woman who worked at the factory of an American tech company near Hong Kong is found in the marshes, bearing odd markings. Mei is called to investigate— only to find that the dead woman’s face is identical to her own. At the same time, a retired American operative is secretly looking into the suicides among the factory’s employees. When he and Mei encounter each other, both are surprised to learn just how elusive the truth is. “An enlightening and grisly tale . . . tightly plotted and fast-paced.” —The New Yorker

Ballantine Books • HC • 978-0-345-52792-9 • 320 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 For more books by John Gapper, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kgjd92b

& SONS: A NOVEL by David Gilbert

panoramic and deeply affecting story of an iconic novelist, two interconnected families, and the heartbreaking truths that fiction can hide.

“A contemporary New York variation on The Brothers Karamazov, featuring a J. D. Salinger–like writer in the role of Father, and a protagonist who turns out to be as questionable a tour guide as the notoriously unreliable narrator of Ford Madox Ford’s classic The Good Soldier . . . a big, ambitious book about fathers and sons, Oedipal envy and sibling rivalry, and the dynamics between art and life, talent and virtue.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8435-4 • 480 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

IN THE HEART OF THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY: AND OTHER STORIES by William H. Gass Introduction by Joanna Scott

omprised of two novellas and three short stories, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country is set in the Midwest and exhibits William H. Gass’ characteristic and original verbal brilliance and philosophical acuity. The volume includes The Pedersen Kid, a story originally published a few years before Gass’ first novel Omensetter’s Luck. “. . . this collection defines Gass not as a special but as a major voice . . . . No writer I’ve ever read, not even Joyce, can celebrate his world with a more piercing sadness.” —Frederic Morton, The New York Times NYRB Classics • TR • 978-1-59017-764-8 • 272 pp. • $15.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by William H. Gass, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mxop9dt

ENON: A NOVEL by Paul Harding

Named “One of the Best Novels of the Year” by The Wall Street Journal; American Library Association; and Kirkus Reviews

he second novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers follows a year in the life of Charlie Crosby as he tries to come to terms with a shattering personal tragedy. Grandson of George Crosby (the protagonist of Tinkers), Charlie inhabits the same dynamic landscape of New England, its seasons mirroring his turbulent emotional odyssey.

“Harding conveys the common but powerful bond of parental love with devastating accuracy. . . . Enon confirms what the Pulitzer jury decided: Paul Harding—no longer a ‘find’—is a major voice in American fiction.” —Chicago Tribune Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8177-3 • 272 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON: A NOVEL by Adam Johnson

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

ak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. The boy becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his North Korean overlords to stay alive. He boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, a legendary actress.

“The single best work of fiction published [this year] . . . The book’s cunning, flair, and pathos are testaments to the still-formidable power of the written word.” —The Wall Street Journal Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8262-6 • 480 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

PYM: A NOVEL by Mat Johnson

ecently canned literature professor Chris Jaynes has just made a startling discovery: the manuscript of a crude slave narrative that confirms the reality of Edgar Allan Poe’s novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Determined to seek out the island that Poe describes, Jaynes convenes a crew to follow Pym’s trail to the South Pole. Thus begins an epic journey by an unlikely band of adventurers to Antarctica, beneath the surface of American history, and behind one of literature’s great mysteries.

“Johnson’s satirical vision roves as freely as Kurt Vonnegut’s and is colored with the same sort of passionate humanitarianism.” —Maud Newton, The New York Times Magazine Spiegel & Grau • TR • 978-0-8129-8176-6 • 384 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, see page 20. For more books by Mat Johnson, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ky7ulhq

REMEMBER ME LIKE THIS: A NOVEL by Bret Anthony Johnston

rom the chair of Harvard’s creative writing program comes a novel about a family brought back together after a missing son comes home. Johnston’s debut begins where other novels end, exploring not the crime of the abduction, but all of the unresolved questions about what really happens when a family’s prayers have finally been answered and togetherness restored.

“In this deeply nuanced portrait of an American family, Johnston fearlessly explores the truth behind a mythic happy ending. In Remember Me Like This, Johnston presents an incisive dismantling of an all-too-comforting fallacy: that in being found we are no longer lost.” —Alice Sebold Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6212-6 • 384 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 For more books by Bret Anthony Johnston, go to: http://tinyurl.com/pngvg83

THE DEAD DO NOT IMPROVE: A NOVEL by Jay Caspian Kang

hen struggling writer Philip Kim is dragged into a complex mystery after his neighbor is murdered, Sid Finch, a bitter homicide detective, and his phlegmatic partner, Jim Kim, land the case. Baffled, Philip becomes the focus of an elaborate, violent scheme that seems tied to his neighbor’s murder, and the cops think he might be involved. “[The Dead Do Not Improve is] seriously hilarious, heartbreakingly sentimental, and distressingly perceptive. If Joseph Heller and Raymond Chandler had once battled over who could write more like Tolstoy, then maybe there’d be something with which to compare this magnificent book.” —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-95389-6 • 272 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

THE DEVIL IN SILVER: A NOVEL by Victor LaValle

n Pepper’s first night in New Hyde Hospital’s mental ward, the Devil appears in the guise of an old man with a bison’s head and murderous intent. It’s no delusion—the Devil roams the halls terrorizing patients when the sun goes down. Pepper teams up with three other strangely lovable patients to battle the pill-pushing staff, one another, and their own minds, as they try to kill the monster that’s stalking them.

“It’s simply too bighearted, too gentle, too kind, too culturally observant and too idiosyncratic to squash into the small cupboard of any one genre, or even two.” —The New York Times Book Review Spiegel & Grau • TR • 978-0-8129-8225-1 • 432 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Victor LaValle, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kx4tl6a

I AWAIT THE DEVIL’S COMING by Mary MacLane Introduction by Jessa Crispin

Await the Devil’s Coming is the diary of a 19-year-old girl living in Butte, Montana in 1902. Written in raw prose that propelled the author to celebrity upon publication, the book has nevertheless been almost completely forgotten. MacLane is widely hailed as one of the earliest American feminist authors, and critics have praised her work for its daringly open and confessional style. Now with a new foreword, I Await the Devil’s Coming stands poised to renew its reputation as one of America’s earliest and most powerful accounts of feminist thought and creativity. Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-194-2 • 304 pp. • $16.00/$16.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Mary MacLane, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mz3ysa8

MACHIAVELLI: A RENAISSANCE LIFE by Joseph Markulin

he often-vilified Renaissance politico and author of The Prince comes to life as a diabolically clever, yet mild mannered and conscientious civil servant. Markulin presents Machiavelli’s life as a true adventure story, replete with violence, treachery, heroism, betrayal, sex, corrupt popes, and more. While sharing the stage with Florence’s Medici family, the nefarious and perhaps incestuous Borgias, the artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and the doomed prophet Savonarola, Machiavelli is imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately abandoned. Nevertheless, he remains the sworn enemy of tyranny and a tireless champion of freedom and the republican form of government.

Prometheus Books • TR • 978-1-61614-805-8 • 580 pp. • $21.95/$23.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00

THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD: A NOVEL by Laura McHugh

or fans of Gillian Flynn and Daniel Woodrell, a dark debut novel about two mysterious disappearances, a generation apart, and the meaning of family—the sacrifices we make, the secrets we keep, and the lengths we will go to to protect the ones we love.

“Gripping . . . Her prose will not only keep readers turning the pages but also paints a real and believable portrait of the connections, alliances, and sacrifices that underpin rural, small-town life.” —Library Journal (starred review) Spiegel & Grau • TR • 978-0-8129-8533-7 • 336 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

TIM O’BRIEN REISSUED IN PAPERBACK

GOING AFTER CACCIATO

NORTHERN LIGHTS

inner of the 1979 National Book Award, Going After Cacciato captures the mixture of horror and hallucination that marked the Vietnam War. In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris. In its evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, Going After Cacciato is about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.

riginally published in 1975, Tim O’Brien’s debut novel demonstrates the emotional complexity and enthralling narrative tension that later earned him the National Book Award. At its core is the relationship between two brothers: one who went to Vietnam and one who stayed at home. As the two brothers struggle against an unexpected blizzard in Minnesota’s remote north woods, what they discover about themselves and each other will change both of them forever.

“Stark . . . rhapsodic . . . It is a canvas painted vividly, hauntingly, disturbingly by Tim O’Brien.” —Los Angeles Times

“Haunting . . . Survival, courage, and heroes are examined beautifully and simply.” —Publishers Weekly

Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-7679-0442-1 • 352 pp. $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

IF I DIE IN A COMBAT ZONE BOX ME UP AND SHIP ME HOME

efore writing his awardwinning Going After Cacciato, Tim O’Brien gave us this personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman’s rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. “O’Brien brilliantly and quietly evokes the foot soldier’s daily life in the paddies and foxholes, evokes a blind, blundering war. . . . A personal document of aching clarity . . . A beautiful, painful book.” —The New York Times Book Review Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-7679-0443-8 • 224 pp. $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-7679-0441-4 • 372 pp. $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

TOMCAT IN LOVE

homas Chippering, a 6'6" professor of linguistics, is a man torn between two obsessions: a desperate need to win back his former wife, the faithless Lorna Sue, and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets. But there are complications, including Lorna Sue’s brother, Herbie, with whom she has an all-tooclose relationship, and the considerable charms of Chippering’s new love, the attractive, and of course already married, Mrs. Robert Kooshof, who may at last satisfy Chippering’s longing for intimacy. “Like all comic novels, Tomcat is a complex affair that invites a complex response and offers a complex reward.” —The New York Times Book Review Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-7679-0204-5 • 368 pp. $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

TIM O'BRIEN received the 1979 National Book Award in Fiction for Going After Cacciato. His novel The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize.

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AMERICAN LITERATURE ELDERS: A NOVEL by Ryan McIlvain

n his debut novel, Ryan McIlvain offers an unsparing portrait of two Mormon missionaries who approach their religion and their calling from vastly different points of origin. Elder McLeod is a brusque and forthright American nearing the end of his two-year-long mission in Brazil when he meets his new partner, Elder Passos, a devout Brazilian who found salvation and solace in the church after his mother’s early death. Their working relationship is frustrating and fruitless, until a couple seeking baptism into the Mormon Church offers them the opportunity to test both their faith and their friendship.

“A nuanced meditation on faith and commitment that has all the intensity of a stage play. Elders is a powerful and deeply moving debut.” —T. C. Boyle Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-95571-5 • 320 pp. • $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

AGAINST THE COUNTRY: A NOVEL by Ben Metcalf

or readers of literary Southern Gothic comes this deceptively humorous debut novel about growing up in the wilds of Virginia, from the former literary editor of Harper’s Magazine. Beginning with his parents’ decision to move away from the corrupting influences of the city, and to settle instead in rural Virginia, Metcalf ’s narrator leads the reader through a gallery of scabrous youths and callous adults driven mad by the stubborn soil of the New World.

Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6269-0 • 336 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00

THE TECHNOLOGISTS by Matthew Pearl

oston, 1868. When an unnatural disaster strikes the ships in Boston Harbor and an equally inexplicable catastrophe devastates the heart of the city, an anti-science backlash casts a pall over MIT and threatens its very survival. So the best and brightest from the Institute’s first graduating class secretly join forces to save lives and track down the truth. Also included is Pearl’s short story “The Professor’s Assassin,” featuring characters from The Technologists.

“The Technologists combines everything I love in a thriller: fascinating history, science, and a frightening mystery that demands to be solved.” —Tess Gerritsen, author of Last to Die Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-7803-2 • 576 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Matthew Pearl, go to: http://tinyurl.com/lg3oos6

NIGHT FILM: A NOVEL by Marisha Pessl

shley Cordova, the mysterious, gifted daughter of the reclusive film director Stanislas Cordova, is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Her death is ruled a suicide, but veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As McGrath tries to uncover the truth, he is drawn into a spellbinding quest which takes him into the underbelly of the Cordova family’s life. “Expands from a seemingly straightforward mystery into a multifaceted, densely byzantine exploration of much larger issues.” —Booklist (starred review) Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-7978-7 • 640 pp. • $18.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET by Edgar Allan Poe

stensibly, Poe’s only novella is a classic adventure story about a young boy who runs away to sea and encounters all the classic scenarios: mutinies, storms, shipwrecks, ravenous sharks, hostile natives. Poe drew on many contemporary accounts of exploration in the South Seas to give his story a sense of verisimilitude. But there are far deeper currents at work in the book than mere adventure: elements of the supernatural as the explorers near the South Pole, evocations of the protagonist’s experiences at sea that rival Poe’s best tales of horror, and a disturbing ending that continues to stir debate.

“It is Poe’s greatest work.” —Jorge Luis Borges Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-222-2 • 192 pp. • $12.00/$12.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For Pym by Mat Johnson, see page 16. For more books by Edgar Allan Poe, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mjnt2k7

MORT(E): A NOVEL by Robert Repino

race of intelligent ants have been silently building an army to eradicate humans. The final step in the Colony’s war effort is transforming surface animals into highfunctioning, two-legged beings who rise up to kill their masters. Former housecat turned war hero, Mort(e) is famous for taking on dangerous missions and fighting the human bio-weapon EMSAH. But the true motivation behind his recklessness is his search for a dog named Sheba. When he receives a mysterious message claiming Sheba is alive, he begins a journey that takes him to the heart of the Colony, where he will discover the source of EMSAH and the ultimate fate of all of Earth’s creatures. Soho Press • HC • 978-1-61695-427-7 • 368 pp. • $26.95/$26.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.50

CHINA DOLLS: A NOVEL by Lisa See

hree very different girls meet at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub in 1938. Grace, an American-born Chinese girl, has fled the Midwest and an abusive father. Helen is from a Chinese family with deep roots in San Francisco’s Chinatown. And Ruby is Japanese passing as Chinese. The girls become fast friends. But after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, paranoia and suspicion threaten to destroy their lives, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything.

“The depth of See’s characters and her winning prose make this book a wonderful journey through love and loss.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9289-2 • 400 pp. • $27.00/$32.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.50 For more books by Lisa See, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kj7pekh

HALF THE KINGDOM: A NOVEL A New York Times Notable Book by Lore Segal

t Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, doctors have noticed an uptick in Alzheimer’s patients. People who seemed lucid a day earlier show signs of advanced dementia. Is it normal or an epidemic? Is it a coincidence or a secret terrorist plot? “No one writes like Segal—her glittering intelligence, her piercing wit, and her dazzling insights into manners and mores, are a profound pleasure. From first to last I loved this wise and irreverent novel.” —Margot Livesey Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-392-2 • 176 pp. • $15.95/$15.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Lore Segal, go to: http://tinyurl.com/m3hcsrd

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

SISTERLAND: A NOVEL by Curtis Sittenfeld

minor earthquake rattles Kate, but it’s nothing compared to her identical twin sister, Vi—a self-proclaimed psychic medium—who appears on the morning news to predict a more powerful earthquake. Kate is mortified. More troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and truths about herself she’s long tried to deny. “Sisterland is a testament to the author’s growing depth and assurance as a writer.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8033-2 • 432 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Curtis Sittenfeld, go to: http://tinyurl.com/nlyok7q

THE FAMILY HIGHTOWER by Brian Francis Slattery

n 1968 two boys are born into a large family, both named for their grandfather, Peter Henry Hightower. One boy—Peter—grows up in Africa and ends up a journalist in Granada. The other—Petey—becomes a minor criminal, first in Cleveland and then in Kiev. In 1995, Petey runs afoul of his associates and disappears. But the criminals, bent on revenge, track down the wrong cousin, and the Peter in Granada finds himself on the run. He bounces from one family member to the next, piecing together his cousin’s involvement in international crime while learning the truth about his family’s complicated history.

“Expertly paced and beautifully detailed, The Family Hightower is a Ukrainian-American Godfather—a time-traveling, globetrotting crime saga spanning the last century, spiriting the reader from Morocco to Zimbabwe to Romania and always back home to strangely exotic Cleveland. Completely satisfying and completely brilliant.”—Stewart O’Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying and Last Night at the Lobster Seven Stories • HC • 978-1-60980-563-0 • 336 pp. • $27.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $14.00

THE BURGESS BOYS by Elizabeth Strout

ELIZABETH STROUT

he Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge returns with a novel about two brothers whose lives are irrevocably altered when they are called back to rural Maine by their sister, whose son is embroiled in a scandal of his own making. Catalyzed by the consequences of their nephew’s thoughtless prank, layers of family history are peeled away to reveal heartbreaking deception and loss that has informed both their personal and professional lives.

“The broad social and political range of The Burgess Boys shows just how impressively this extraordinary writer continues to develop.” —The Washington Post Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-7951-0 • 352 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

Now an H B O Series

live Kitteridge deplores the changes in both her little town of Crosby, Maine and the world at large, but doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her, including her adult child, who feels tyrannized by Olive’s irrational sensitivities, and her husband Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition—its conflicts, tragedies, joys, and the endurance it requires.

Movie Tie-In Edition: Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8763-8 • 304 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00 Original Edition: Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-7183-5 • 304 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Elizabeth Strout, go to: http://bit.ly/1FR07QF

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AMERICAN LITERATURE THE TIN HORSE: A NOVEL by Janice Steinberg

t has been more than 60 years since Elaine’s twin sister, Barbara, ran away, cutting off contact with her family forever. While sifting through old papers Elaine is stunned to find a possible hint to Barbara’s whereabouts all these years later. It pushes her to confront the fierce love and bitter rivalry of their youth during the 1920s and ’30s, in Los Angeles’, Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights.

“Steinberg’s quietly suspenseful novel is compelling by virtue of her sympathetic characters, vivid depiction of WWII-era Los Angeles, and pinpoint illuminations of poverty, anti-Semitism, family bonds and betrayals, and the crushing obstacles facing women seeking full and fulfilling lives.” —Booklist Random House • HC • 978-0-679-64374-6 • 352 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00

S.: A NOVEL by John Updike

. is the story of Sarah P. Worth, a modern spiritual seeker who has become enamored with a Hindu mystic. A native New Englander, she goes west to join his ashram in Arizona, and there struggles alongside fellow sannyasins (pilgrims) in the difficult attempt to subdue ego and achieve moksha (salvation, release from illusion). “S.” details her adventures in letters and tapes dispatched to her loved ones at home—messages cleverly designed to keep her old world in order while she creates a new one for herself. This is Hester Prynne’s side of the triangle described by Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter; it is also a burlesque of the quest for enlightenment, and an affectionate meditation on American womanhood.

Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-449-91212-6 • 272 pp. • $16.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by John Updike, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kfcm2lu

WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE: THE SPECIAL EDITION by Kurt Vonnegut Edited by Gregory D. Sumner

ne of Vonnegut’s most beloved books, this 1968 collection now appears in a special edition featuring ten never-before-seen drafts of the title story and an illuminating accompanying essay by noted Vonnegut scholar Gregory Sumner, which allow the reader to experience Vonnegut’s writing process in real time. Kurt Vonnegut was a dogged reviser, starting and restarting stories, tweaking phrases, changing names, adding and eliminating plot lines and characters, honing, one word at a time, the seemingly offhand voice that millions of readers would come to love. It is a rare and illuminating opportunity for readers to see first-hand the writing process of a literary great. “Kurt Vonnegut is, in my view, the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century.” —George Saunders Dial Press Trade Paperback • TR • 978-0-8129-9360-8 • 416 pp. • $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Kurt Vonnegut, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ohyswh3

LISETTE’S LIST: A NOVEL by Susan Vreeland

rom the internationally renowned author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue and Clara and Mr. Tiffany, a novel centered on the great artists Cézanne, Pissarro, Chagall, and Picasso—a story of art and life, love and loss, set against the backdrop of World World II. A young Parisian woman must move to Provence to take care of her husband’s ailing grandfather and discovers that, despite the horrors of war, the paintings of Cézanne, Pissarro, Chagall, and Picasso bring a fresh perspective and breathe new life into her, and allow her once again to experience love.

Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6817-3 • 432 pp. • $27.00/$32.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.50 For more books by Susan Vreeland, go to: http://tinyurl.com/oufyql5

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AMERICAN LITERATURE THE AGE OF MIRACLES: A NOVEL by Karen Thompson Walker

Selected for Common Reading at Northern Michigan University

n this debut novel of catastrophe and survival, growth and change, Julia awakens to discover that something has happened to the rotation of the earth. The days and nights are growing longer, gravity is affected, and the birds, the tides, human behavior, and cosmic rhythms are thrown into disarray. Julia faces surprising developments in herself, and her personal world: divisions widening between her parents, strange behavior by friends, the vulnerability of first love, a sense of isolation, and a rebellious new strength. “A genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, with impressive fluency and flair.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8294-7 • 304 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE MARTIAN: A NOVEL by Andy Weir

n this novel set in the near future, astronaut Mark Watney is one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, left behind by his crew, he’s sure he’ll be the first man to die there. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Author Andy Weir ultimately crafts a grippingly detailed, vividly original man-vs.-nature survival thriller—set on the surface of Mars.

“Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery. . . . Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling.” —Kirkus Reviews Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-553-41802-6 • 400 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

AUGUSTUS by John Williams Introduction by Daniel Mendelsohn

Winner of the National Book Award

n Augustus, his third novel, John Williams takes on an entirely new challenge, a historical narrative set in classical Rome, exploring the life of the founder of the Roman Empire. To tell the story, Williams turns to the epistolary novel, a genre that’s new to him, transforming and transcending it just as he did the western in Butcher’s Crossing and the campus novel in Stoner. Augustus is the final triumph of a writer who has come to be recognized around the world as an American master.

“The finest historical novel ever written by an American.” —The Washington Post NYRB Classics • TR • 978-1-59017-821-8 • 336 pp. • $15.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by John Williams, go to: http://tinyurl.com/o2rf3lu

MOTHER, MOTHER: A NOVEL by Koren Zailckas Winner of the Alex Award

n the debut novel by the author of the acclaimed coming-of-age memoir Smashed, Hurst family matriarch Josephine struggles to maintain her family’s impeccable façade. When a violent incident leads to a visit from child protective services, the truth about the Hursts might finally be revealed. In the spirit of classic suspense novels by Shirley Jackson and Daphne DuMaurier, Mother, Mother is the terrifying story of a mother’s love gone too far. “Zailckas crafts an intriguing mystery surrounding this family that will keep readers on edge as she slowly peels back layer after layer of deception.” —Booklist

Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-385-34725-9 • 400 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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BRITISH & IRISH LITERATURE

J: A NOVEL

by Howard Jacobson Finalist for the Man Booker Prize

Hogarth • HC • 978-0-553-41955-9 352 pp. • $25.00 /NCR Exam Copy: $12.50

an Booker Prize–winner Howard Jacobson’s brilliant and profound new novel, J, “invites comparison with George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World” (Sunday Times, London). Set in a world where collective memory has vanished and the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited, J is a boldly inventive love story, both tender and terrifying. Kevern Cohen doesn’t know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a word starting with a J. It wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the time or place to be asking questions. When the extravagantly beautiful Ailinn Solomons arrives in his village by a sea that laps no other shore, Kevern is instantly drawn to her. Although mistrustful by nature, the two become linked as if they were meant for each other. Together, they form a refuge from the commonplace brutality that is the legacy of a historic catastrophe shrouded in suspicion, denial, and apology, simply referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED. To Ailinn’s guardian, Esme Nussbaum, Ailinn and Kevern are fragile shoots of hopefulness. As this unusual pair’s actions draw them into ever-increasing danger, Esme is determined to keep them together—whatever the cost. In this stunning, evocative, and terribly heartbreaking work, where one couple’s love affair could have shattering consequences for the human race, Howard Jacobson gathers his prodigious gifts for the crowning achievement of his career. “J is a snarling, effervescent, and ambitious philosophical work of fiction that poses unsettling questions about our sense of history, and our self-satisfied orthodoxies. Jacobson’s triumph is to craft a novel that is poignant as well as troubling from the debris.” —Independent (UK)

For more books by Howard Jacobson, go to: http://tinyurl.com/pd9k3z2 HOWARD JACOBSON is the author of four works of nonfiction and several novels, including The Finkler Question, which won the Man Booker Prize; The Mighty Walzer, which won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic writing; and Who’s Sorry Now?, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He has a weekly column for The Independent and regularly reviews and writes for The Guardian, The Times, and The Evening Standard. Jacobson has also done several specials for British television. He lives in London.

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BOOK EXCERPT from J by Howard Jacobson

ARGUMENT THE WOLF AND THE TARANTULA

A GRAY WOLF fell into conversation with a tarantula. “I love the

chase,” the gray wolf said. “Myself,” said the tarantula, “I like to sit here and wait for my prey to come to me.” “Don’t you ﬁnd that lonely?” the wolf asked. “I could as soon ask you,” the tarantula replied, “how it is that you don’t get sick of taking your wife and kids along on every hunt.” “I am by temperament a family man,” the wolf answered. “And what is more there is power in numbers.” The tarantula paused to crush a passing marmoset then said he doubted the wolf, for all the help he received, would ever be as successful a huntsman as he was. The wolf wagered a week’s catch on his ability to outhunt the tarantula and, returning to his lair, told his wife and children of the bet. “You owe me,” he told the tarantula when they next met. “And your proof?” “Well I expect you to trust my word, but if you don’t, then go ahead and search the wilderness with your own eyes.” This the tarantula did, and sure enough discovered that of all the wolf ’s natural prey not a single creature remained. “I salute your efﬁciency,” the tarantula said, “but it does occur to me to wonder what you are going to do for sustenance now.” At this the gray wolf burst into tears. “I have had to eat my wife,” he admitted. “And next week I will start on my children.” “And after that?”“After that?” “After that I will have no option but to eat myself.” Moral: Always leave a little on your plate.

Copyright © 2014 by Howard Jacobson All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Hogarth, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

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BRITISH & IRISH LITERATURE ONE FAT ENGLISHMAN by Kingsley Amis Introduction by David Lodge

he hero of One Fat Englishman, a literary publisher and lapsed Catholic escaped from the pages of Graham Greene to the campus of Budweiser College in provincial Pennsylvania, is philandering, drunken, bigoted, and very, very fat, not to mention in a state of continuous rage against everything, not the least his own overgrown self. In America, Roger must deal with not-so-obliging suburban housewives, aspiring Jewish novelists who as good as clean his clock, bad cigars, and America itself.

“This comic masterpiece about the 1950s crashing drunkenly into the consumerist 1960s is one of Amis’ greatest and most caustic performances.” —Kirkus Reviews NYRB Classics • TR • 978-1-59017-662-7 • 192 pp. • $14.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Kingsley Amis, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mnwpefn

DARK EDEN: A NOVEL by Chris Beckett

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for the Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year

art parable, part coming-of-age story, this acclaimed book is set in an original alien world of dark, sinister beauty. On a sunless planet called Eden, a young hero breaks the laws, shatters society, and, in the process, changes history. By abandoning the old ways, he discovers the truth about this strange world. “A linguistic and imaginative tour de force.” —The Guardian (U.K.) Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-8041-3868-0 • 448 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Chris Beckett, go to: http://tinyurl.com/k7wyow6

THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED: A NOVEL by John Boyne

ritten in Dickensian prose, This House Is Haunted is an homage to the classic nineteenth-century ghost story. Set in Norfolk in 1867, Eliza Caine responds to an ad for a governess position, but when she arrives she is greeted by the two children now in her care, with no adult present to represent her mysterious employer. From the moment Eliza rises the following morning, her every step seems dogged by a malign presence that lives within the walls. Eliza realizes that if she and the children are to survive its violent attentions, she must first uncover the hall’s long-buried secrets and confront the demons of its past. Other Press • TR • 978-1-59051-679-9 • 304 pp. • $14.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by John Boyne, go to: http://tinyurl.com/n7lgvuq

BLOOD AND BEAUTY: THE BORGIAS by Sarah Dunant

hen Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia buys his way into the papacy as Alexander VI, the charismatic, consummate politician with a huge appetite for women and power knows that it will take his entire family to ensure his triumphant legacy as pope. His eldest son Cesare, with his cold intelligence and even colder soul, is Rodrigo’s greatest—though increasingly unstable—weapon. Lucrezia, Rodrigo’s beloved, beautiful daughter, is his prime dynastic tool. Stripping away the myths around the Borgias, Blood and Beauty breathes life into this astonishing family and celebrates the raw power of history itself. “Dunant transforms the blackhearted Borgias and the conniving courtiers and cardinals of Renaissance Europe into fully rounded characters, brimming with life and lust.” —The New York Times Book Review Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8161-2 • 544 pp. • $16.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Sarah Dunant, go to: http://tinyurl.com/nx2o4do

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BRITISH AMERICAN & IRISH LITERATURE

THE PANOPTICON: A NOVEL by Jenni Fagan

aised in foster care from birth, 15-year-old Anais has been let down by just about every adult she has ever met. Now a counterculture outlaw, she knows she can only rely on herself. In the Panopticon, a home for chronic juvenile offenders, Anais finds herself part of an ad hoc family and begins to take her first steps toward friendships, taking charge of her own fate and discovering the depth of her own strength.

“Fagan has created a feisty, brass-knuckled yet deeply vulnerable heroine. . . . Her novel is by turns gritty, unnerving, exhausting, [and] ferocious. . . . A deeply felt and genuinely affecting novel.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Hogarth • TR • 978-0-385-34795-2 • 320 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

WAKE: A NOVEL by Anna Hope

ope’s debut unfolds over the course of five days, as three women must deal with the aftershocks of World War I and its impact on the men in their lives. The lives of these women are braided together, their stories gathering power as the ties that bind them become clear. “Hope creates a vibrant physical and emotional landscape in which her leading characters, and a sea of others, move irresistibly into the future, some having found resolution, others still in search. Fresh, confident, yet understated, Hope’s first work movingly revisits immense tragedy while also confirming her own highly promising ability.” —Kirkus Reviews Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9513-8 • 304 pp. • $26.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $13.00

WITTGENSTEIN JR: A NOVEL by Lars Iyer

he unruly undergraduates at Cambridge have a nickname for their new lecturer: Wittgenstein Jr. He’s a melancholic, tormented genius who seems determined to make them grasp the very essence of philosophical thought. As the students try to discover what they have to gain from their experience, they realize their teacher is struggling to survive.

“Iyer already has a reputation for combining brainy dialogue with madcap action, but the triumph of his latest (and best) novel is that the cartoon turns out to have real substance.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Melville House • HC • 978-1-61219-376-2 • 240 pp. • $23.95/$23.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 For more books by Lars Iyer, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kr6qy82

THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY: A NOVEL by Rachel Joyce

rom the award-winning novelist of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes this unique and separate love story set alongside that of Harold Fry, about Queenie Hennessy, the friend who inspired Harold’s incredible journey. When Queenie is told she has only days to live, she sends a letter in which she bids goodbye to Harold Fry. It is a letter that inspires an unlikely walk, a cast of well-wishers, and the examination of many lives unlived. But there is a second letter—a longer, quieter, more complicated letter that she will never send. It is this letter that reveals the shocking and beautiful truth of Queenie’s life. DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 2/10/15

Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9667-8 • 384 pp. • $25.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $12.50 For more books by Rachel Joyce, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mkoeuvd

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BRITISH & IRISH LITERATURE

BINGO’S RUN: A NOVEL by James A. Levine

ingo, a young drug runner from the largest slum in Nairobi, spends his days making deliveries for a local drug lord. After witnessing a murder, Bingo is sent to live in an orphanage and is adopted by a wealthy American woman, who may not be who she seems to be. As Bingo is swept into a web of lies and trickery, he must rely on his own code of moral conduct in order to survive.

“One of those rare books that infuse a potentially difficult subject with intimacy, tenderness, and humor. Social commentary, gritty comedy, and pure cinematic adrenaline meet in an utterly compelling novel with a voice all its own.” —Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-1-4000-6883-8 • 304 pp. • $24.00/$27.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 For more books by James A. Levine, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ngg63su

HOW TO TEACH YOUR CHILDREN SHAKESPEARE Edited by Ken Ludwig Introduction by John Lithgow

en Ludwig devised his methods while teaching his own children, and his approach is friendly and easy to master. Beginning with memorizing short specific passages from Shakespeare’s plays, this method instills children with cultural references they will utilize for years to come. Ludwig’s approach includes understanding the time period and implications of Shakespeare’s diction as well as the invaluable lessons behind his words and stories. Colorfully incorporating the history of Shakespearean theater and society, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare guides readers on an informed and adventurous journey through the world in which the Bard wrote. “Don’t be fooled by the title. This book is for anyone who wants to brush up on Shakespeare.” —Kirkus Reviews Broadway • TR • 978-0-307-95150-2 • 368 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

NOUGHTIES: A NOVEL by Ben Masters

n this thoroughly modern coming-of-age story, Eliot Lamb—for all his mastery of literary theory, postmodern novels, and classic poetry—is about to be dragged into adult life, whether he likes it or not. About to graduate from Oxford, Eliot knows he’ll have to confront his feelings for Ella, an Oxford classmate whose passion for literature matches his own, as well as Lucy, his first love, whose ominous phone calls and text messages are threatening to unravel him. And then there’s the tragic secret he’s been hiding all this time, which is about to find its way out and send his night into serious turmoil.

Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-95568-5 • 320 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE BONE CLOCKS: A NOVEL by David Mitchell

he first novel in four years from the award-winning writer of Cloud Atlas, which will celebrate its tenth anniversary in 2014. The Bone Clocks is a genre-bending mix of the supernatural, sci-fi, horror, social satire, and realism that weaves six narratives and spans from 1984 to the 2030s, telling the tale of a secret war between a cult of soul-decanters and the small group of vigilantes who try to take them down.

“The most consistently interesting novelist of his generation.” —Time Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6567-7 • 640 pp. • $30.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $15.00 For more books by David Mitchell, go to: http://tinyurl.com/oevlt3x

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BRITISH AMERICAN & IRISH LITERATURE

COLUM McCANN

LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

n the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974 and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in critically-acclaimed novelist Colum McCann’s portrait of a city and its people.

“A shimmering, shattering novel. In McCann’s wise and elegiac novel of origins and consequences, each of his finely drawn, unexpectedly connected characters balances above an abyss, evincing great courage with every step.” —Booklist (starred review) Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-7399-0 • 400 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

TRANSATLANTIC by Colum McCann

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Named “One of the Best Books of the Year” by Kirkus Reviews

he National Book Award–winning novelist’s bestseller is a story of dark and light, men and women, history and past, fiction and fact. Bearing witness to the history-making moments of Frederick Douglass, John Alcock and “Teddy” Brown, and George Mitchell, and braiding their stories together into one epic tale, are four generations of women from a matriarchal clan, beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan.

“One of the greatest pleasures of TransAtlantic is how provisional it makes history feel, how intimate, and intensely real. . . . Here is the uncanny thing McCann finds again and again about the miraculous: that it is inseparable from the everyday.” —The Boston Globe Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8192-6 • 336 pp. • $16.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 To watch Colum McCann’s talk from the 2014 First-Year Experience® Conference, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mzrljwr

THE QUICK: A NOVEL by Lauren Owen

wen’s debut starts in London, 1893. James, a shy would-be poet, takes up lodging with a dissolute young aristocrat and vanishes without a trace. His sister Charlotte sets out to find him, and her search leads to one of the country’s pre-eminent and mysterious institutions: the Aegolius Club, whose members include the richest, most ambitious men in England. Trying to save James—and herself—from the Club’s designs, Charlotte uncovers a secret world at the city’s margins.

“Impressive . . . Owen proves a master at anticipating readers’ thoughts about future happenings and then crumbling them into dust. Her world building is exceptional, and readers will simultaneously embrace and shrink from the atmosphere’s elegant ghastliness.” —Booklist Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9327-1 • 544 pp. • $27.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $13.50

THE SPINNING HEART: A NOVEL by Donal Ryan

n the aftermath of Ireland’s financial collapse, dangerous tensions surface in an Irish town. As violence flares, the characters face a battle between public persona and inner desires. Through a chorus of unique voices, each struggling to tell their own kind of truth, a single authentic tale unfolds.

“[Ryan] credibly conveys the viewpoints of men and women of all ages in language distinct from one section to the next. . . . [T]his startling debut reads like a modern Irish twist on William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.” —Library Journal (starred review) Steerforth Press • TR • 978-1-58642-224-0 • 160 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Donal Ryan, go to: http://tinyurl.com/n8guael

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WORLD LITERATURE

THE SCAPEGOAT: A NOVEL

by Sophia Nikolaidou Translated by Karen Emmerich

he Scapegoat is based on the real, unsolved murder of American journalist George Polk in Greece in the forties. A Greek journalist is tried and convicted for the murder, but when he’s released, he claims his confession was the result of torture. In modern day Greece, a disaffected high school student is assigned to find the truth for a school project. Based on the real story of famed CBS reporter George Polk who was investigating embezzlement of U.S. aid by the right-wing Greek government, and told by key players in the story—the journalist’s Greek widow; the mother and sisters of the convicted man; the brutal Thessaloniki Chief of Police; a U.S. Foreign Office investigator—the modern day student is most affecting of them all as he questions truth, justice, and sacrifice.

Melville House • HC • 978-1-61219-384-7 320 pp. • $23.95/$23.95 Can. Exam Copy: $12.00

“Intricate and suspenseful . . . While we follow Nikolaidou’s deeply satisfying plot, she also slyly poses some of the large questions of contemporary life: How do we value the individual against the state? What causes are worth lying for? Is justice ever done?” —Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street “The book, with strong writing and the well-orchestrated voices of its many characters, dares to suggest correlations with the current Greek crisis.” —Ethnos

SOFIA NIKOLAIDOU was born in Thessalonika in 1968. She teaches literature and creative writing and writes criticism for various newspapers, including Ta Nea. She has published two collections of short stories and three novels, all of which have been translated into eight languages. Her last novel, Tonight We Have Friends, won the 2011 Athens Prize for Literature, and The Scapegoat was shortlisted for the 2012 Greek State Prize for Fiction. KAREN EMMERICH’s translations include Rien Ne Va Plus by Margarita Karapanou, Landscape with Dog and Other Stories by Ersi Sotiropoulos, I’d Like by Amanda Michalopoulou, and Poems (1945–1971) by Miltos Sachtouris.

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A M E S S A G E F R O M T H E T R A N S L AT O R

THIS PAST WINTER, I taught a large lecture course titled “Reading the Greek Crisis” at the University of Oregon, which tried to place the current crisis in Greece in the context of a history of other crises, from the Axis Occupation to the Civil War to the dictatorship of 1967–1974. Our main objects of investigation were literary texts and films, but our exploration was also informed by texts from the fields of history, anthropology, legal studies, political science, and economics; we thought about the changing demographics of Greece, the various waves of immigration, emigration, and internal migration the country experienced in the 20th and 21st centuries, and the various ways that crisis—the Greek krisi, meaning both “crisis” and “judgement” or “decision”—manifests itself in literary and other cultural products. The Scapegoat would be a perfect book to serve as a centerpiece of this course—in fact, it was reading this novel in Greek that gave me the idea for the course in the first place. Nikolaidou’s novel sets up a parallel between the current financial, cultural, and even humanitarian crisis that Greece is undergoing and the experiences of political instability and informal occupation that marked the years of the Civil War and its aftermath. In The Scapegoat, the case of Manolis Gris—based on the actual framing of Greek journalist Grigoris Staktopoulos for the murder of CBS correspondent George Polk in 1948—becomes a lens through which to view the workings of international power and influence, and the scapegoating not just of Gris but of his homonymn, Greece itself. The novel would work particularly well in this course because it doesn’t just present the pre-history of the crisis, it explores the pedagogical worth of exploring these parallels. Roughly half of the book takes place in the present moment, and shows a young would-be high school dropout, Minas, investigating the unsolved murder case as a research project assigned by his history teacher, who hopes thus to re-engage Minas in his studies. Through this structural device, the book makes an argument, I think, both for alternative pedagogies and for the need for discussions of the current crisis not to focus on the present moment at the expense of the past, since the past remains an open file, its effects felt to this day. —Karen Emmerich, translator of The Scapegoat

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WORLD LITERATURE

THE SHOAH TRILOGY

by H. G. Adler Translated by Peter Filkins

Selected as one of Publishers Weekly’s “Best Books of 2014”

THE WALL: A NOVEL

old in a powerful stream-of-consciousness style, The Wall is the story of Arthur Landau, a Holocaust survivor struggling to leave behind the horrors of the past and find a foothold in the present. Arthur gradually learns to affirm his life once again through his family and work, a testimony to the human spirit that continues to persevere within him.

l Fina in k o B o lo g y Tri

“Masterful and utterly unique.” —The Jerusalem Post “H.G. Adler’s The Wall is a masterful portrait of a Holocaust survivor. . . . The writing is sonorous and so entirely devastating that the reader is compelled to pore over every word. One cannot begin to share this author’s anguish, but can participate in not allowing it to be forgotten.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9306-6 • 656 pp. $30.00/$35.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00

Also by H. G. Adler:

THE JOURNEY: A NOVEL

rom one of four known German-speaking, Jewish novelists who survived the Holocaust and wrote about it, The Journey is a devastating novel based on Adler’s own experience, prescient in the way it anticipates how future generations of writers would grapple with nearly unfathomable events. “The Journey is a tribute to the survival of art and a poignant teaching in the art of survival. I tend to shy away from Holocaust fiction, but this book helps redeem an all-but-impossible genre.” —Harold Bloom Modern Library • TR • 978-0-8129-7831-5 • 336 pp. $16.00/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

PANORAMA: A NOVEL

Afterword by Peter Demetz old in ten distinct vignettes, Panorama is a portrait of a place and people soon to be destroyed. It moves from pastoral World War I–era Bohemia to a German boarding school, through an infamous extermination camp, and finally to Josef’s self-imposed exile abroad.

“Remarkable . . . haunting . . . [Adler] provides an artful and brutal description of the LangensteinZweiberge concentration camp that nearly guarantees Panorama a place in the canon of Holocaust literature.” —San Francisco Chronicle Modern Library • TR • 978-0-8129-8060-8 • 480 pp. $16.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

H. G. ADLER was the author of twenty-six books of fiction, poetry, philosophy, and history. A survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, Adler later settled in England and began writing novels about his experience. Having worked as a freelance writer and scholar throughout his life, Adler died in London in 1988.

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A LET TER FROM THE EDITOR of The Wall by H.G. Adler

ON DECEMBER 2ND, 2014, Random House will publish the hardcover

edition of H.G. Adler’s The Wall, the final installment of Adler’s recently rediscovered Shoah trilogy. A native of Prague, H.G. Adler was sent to a Nazi labor camp in 1941. While interned, he collected hundreds of documents on the workings of the camp and secretly recorded his experiences on scraps of paper, at great risk to himself and his family. These materials would later become the basis for his monumental study, Theresienstadt 1941-1945, and for a trilogy of autobiographical novels, which are increasingly regarded by critics and scholars alike as lost classics of Holocaust literature. After losing his wife, mother, father, and sixteen other family members in the Holocaust, Adler settled in London, and began writing novels. Unfortunately, the very depiction of the Holocaust in fiction caused furious debate at the time (Adler and Theodor Adorno’s arguments on this subject are represented within The Wall’s pages), and delayed the publication of his novels. Despite the support of Heinrich Böll, Elias Canetti, Hermann Broch and others, the novels were published quietly, and remained unavailable to English readers until Peter Filkins discovered them in a Cambridge bookstore in 2001, and began to dig deeper into Adler’s life and work. Filkins’ masterful translations have since begun a major reassessment of the author. Panorama and The Journey, the first two books in this trilogy, were acclaimed as “modernist masterpieces” by The New Yorker, and Adler was compared in The New York Times Book Review to Joyce, Kafka and Gertrude Stein. Now Random House is publishing Adler’s magnum opus, The Wall, the work that German critics and Adler himself considered his crowning achievement. The book tells the story of Arthur Landau, a survivor of an historical atrocity living in exile after the war and struggling to leave behind the horrors of the past. Adler’s stream-of-consciousness style is at its height, as the everyday, quotidian domestic life of Arthur Landau is seamlessly interwoven with memories, nightmares, and phantasmagoria, in a kind of unfolding of thought with repeating themes and motifs. The book’s observations of the human predicament are profound, and it contains some of the most moving aphorisms I’ve ever read. I wanted to share this remarkable work with you—I hope you enjoy, and revel as I have, in the music of H. G. Adler’s language, and the power of his insight. —Sam Nicholson

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WORLD LITERATURE

EVERY DAY IS FOR THE THIEF: A NOVEL

by Teju Cole

young Nigerian living in New York City goes home to Lagos for a short visit, finding a city both familiar and strange. In a city dense with story, the unnamed narrator moves through a mosaic of life, hoping to find inspiration for his own. Along the way, the man reconnects with old friends, a former girlfriend, and extended family, taps into the energies of Lagos life—creative, malevolent, ambiguous— and slowly begins to reconcile the profound changes that have taken place in his country and the truth about himself. In spare, precise prose that sees humanity everywhere, interwoven with original photos by the author, Every Day Is for the Thief—originally published in Nigeria in 2007—is a wholly original work of fiction. “[Teju Cole’s] novels are lean, expertly sustained performances. The places he can go, you feel, are just about limitless.” —The New York Times “By turns funny, mournful, and acerbic . . . Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation.” —Salman Rushdie

Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9578-7 176 pp. • $23.00/$26.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.50 DO NOT ORDER PAPERBACK BEFORE 3/3/2015.

Random House • TR • 978-0-8129-8585-6 192 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Also by Teju Cole:

OPEN CITY: A NOVEL

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award • Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction) • A New York Times Notable Book

haunting debut about identity, dislocation, and history, Teju Cole’s Open City has much to say about our country and our world. Along the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius wanders, reflecting on his relationships, his recent breakup with his girlfriend, his present, his past. He encounters people from different cultures and classes who will provide insight on his journey—which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul. “[A] prismatic debut . . . beautiful, subtle, [and] original.” —The New Yorker Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8009-7 • 272 pp. $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Teju Cole, go to: http://tinyurl.com/lnf3a5d TEJU COLE was born in the United States in 1975 and raised in Nigeria. He is the author of Every Day Is for the Thief and Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Internationaler Literaturpreis, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the New York City Book Award, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His photography has been exhibited in India and the United States. He is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

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BOOK EXCERPT from Every Day Is for the Thief by Teju Cole

I WAKE UP LATE the morning I’m meant to go to the consulate. As I gather my documents just before setting out, I call the hospital to remind them I won’t be in until the afternoon. Then I enter the subway and make my way over to Second Avenue and, without much trouble, find the consulate. It occupies several floors of a skyscraper. A windowless room on the eighth floor serves as the section for consular services. Most of the people there on the Monday morning of my visit are Nigerians, almost all of them middle-aged. The men are bald, the women elaborately coiffed, and there are twice as many men as there are women. But there are also unexpected faces: a tall Italian-looking man, a girl of East Asian origin, other Africans. Each person takes a number from a red machine as they enter the dingy room. The carpet is dirty, of the indeterminate color shared by all carpets in public places. A wall-mounted television plays a news program through a haze of static. The news continues for a short while, then there is a broadcast of a football match between Enyimba and a Tunisian club. The people in the room fill out forms. There are as many blue American passports in sight as green Nigerian ones. Most of the people can be set into one of three categories: new citizens of the United States, dual citizens of the United States and Nigeria, and citizens of Nigeria who are taking their American children home for the first time. I am one of the dual citizens, and I am there to have a new Nigerian passport issued. My number is called after twenty minutes. Approaching the window with my forms, I make the same supplicant gesture I have observed in others. The brusque young man seated behind the glass asks if I have the money order. No, I don’t, I say. I had hoped cash would be acceptable. He points to a sign pasted on the glass: “No cash please, money orders only.” He has a name tag on. The fee for a new passport is eightyfive dollars, as indicated on the website of the consulate, but it hadn’t been clear that they don’t accept cash. I leave the building, walk to Grand Central Terminal, fifteen minutes away, stand in line, purchase a money order, and walk the fifteen minutes back. It is cold outside. On my return some forty minutes later, the waiting room is full. I take a new number, make out the money order to the consulate, and wait.

Excerpted from Every Day Is for the Thief by Teju Cole. Copyright © 2014 by Teju Cole. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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WORLD LITERATURE

AGOSTINO

by Alberto Moravia Translated by Michael F. Moore

NYRB Classics • TR • 978-1-59017-723-5 128 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

hirteen-year-old Agostino is spending the summer at a Tuscan seaside resort with his beautiful widowed mother. When she takes up with a cocksure new companion, Agostino, feeling ignored and unloved, begins hanging around with a group of local young toughs. Though repelled by their squalor and brutality, and repeatedly humiliated for his weakness and ignorance when it comes to women and sex, the boy is increasingly, masochistically drawn to the gang and its rough games. He finds himself unable to make sense of his troubled feelings. Hoping to be full of manly calm, he is instead beset by guilty curiosity and an urgent desire to sever, at any cost, the thread of troubled sensuality that binds him to his mother. Alberto Moravia’s classic, a startling portrait of innocence lost, was written in 1942 but rejected by Fascist censors and not published until 1944, when it became a best seller and secured the author the first literary prize of his career. Revived here in a new translation by Michael F. Moore, Agostino is poised to captivate a twenty-first-century audience. “The carnality that animates Agostino is naked and unashamed. But the reader who stays to its end will see that it is love with dross burned clean away.” —William DuBois, The New York Times “A brilliant novella . . . In the sober narrative of Agostino Moravia again dissected a mother–son relationship as the young protagonist of the novella made the joint discovery of sexuality (while his young, beautiful, sensuous mother became involved with a lover) and of class distinction, as the neglected boy took up with a band of working-class youth, whose sexual knowledge was far more advanced than his own. Their contempt for his innocence and their envy of his family’s wealth run through the story in a typically Moravian juxtaposition.” —William Weaver, The New York Review of Books

For more books by Alberto Moravia, go to: http://tinyurl.com/qenrt4v ALBERTO MORAVIA, born in Rome in 1907, was one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century. His novels, which include The Woman of Rome, The Conformist, Contempt, and Two Women, have been turned into films by Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard. He died in 1990.

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BOOK EXCERPT from Agostino by Alberto Moravia

DURING THOSE DAYS of early summer Agostino and his mother used to go out every morning on a bathing raft. The first few times his mother had taken a boatman, but Agostino so plainly showed his annoyance at the manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s presence that from then on the oars were entrusted to him. It gave him intense pleasure to row on that calm, transparent, early morning sea; and his mother sat facing him, as gay and serene as the sea and sky, and talked to him in a soft voice, just as if he had been a man instead of a thirteen-year-old boy. Agostinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mother was a tall, beautiful woman, still in her prime, and Agostino felt a sense of pride each time he set out with her on one of those morning expeditions. It seemed to him that all the bathers on the beach were watching them, admiring his mother and envying him. In the conviction that all eyes were upon them his voice sounded to him stronger than usual, and he felt as if all his movements had something symbolic about them, as if they were part of a play; as if he and his mother, instead of being on the beach, were on a stage, under the eager eyes of hundreds of spectators. Sometimes his mother would appear in a new dress, and he could not resist remarking on it aloud, in the secret hope that others would hear. Now and again she would send him to fetch something or other from the beach cabin, while she stood waiting for him by the boat. He would obey with a secret joy, happy if he could prolong their departure even by a few minutes. At last they would get on the raft, and Agostino would take the oars and row out to sea. But for quite a long time he would remain under the disturbing influence of his filial vanity. When they were some way from the shore his mother would tell him to stop rowing, put on her rubber bathing cap, take off her sandals and slip into the water. Agostino would follow her.

Excerpted from Agostino by Alberto Moravia; Translated by Michael F. Moore. Excerpted by permission of NYRB Classics, an imprint of New York Review Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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WORLD LITERATURE

FOREIGN GODS, INC.: A NOVEL

by Okey Ndibe

Soho Press • TR • 978-1-61695-458-1 352 pp. • $16.00/$16.00 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

Also by Okey Ndibe:

ARROWS OF RAIN Soho Press • TR • 978-1-61695-457-4 • 304 pp. $15.00/$15.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For full description, see page 47.

oreign Gods, Inc. tells the story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who sets out to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his home village and sell it to a New York gallery. Ike’s plan is fueled by desperation. Despite a degree in economics from an American college, his strong accent barred him from the corporate world. Forced to eke out a living as a cab driver, he is unable to manage the emotional and material needs of a temperamental African American bride and a widowed mother demanding financial support. When he turns to gambling, his mounting losses compound his woes. And so he travels back to Nigeria to steal the statue, where he has to deal with old friends, family, and a mounting conflict between those in the village who worship the deity and those who practice Christianity. Foreign Gods, Inc. is a meditation on the dreams, promises and frustrations of the immigrant life in America and the nature and impact of religious conflicts, as well as an examination of the ways in which modern culture creates or heightens infatuation with the “exotic,” including the desire to own strange objects and hanker after ineffable illusions. An exploration of the shifting nature of memory, Foreign Gods, Inc. is an important work of fiction that illuminates our globally interconnected world. “Unforgettable . . . Ndibe seems to have a boundless ear for the lyrical turns of phrase of the working people of rural Nigeria. . . . The wooden deity ‘has character, an audacious personality,’ says one non-African who sees it. So does Ndibe’s novel, a page-turning allegory about the globalized world.” —Los Angeles Times “We clearly have a fresh talent at work here. It is quite a while since I sensed creative promise on this level.” —Wole Soyinka, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

For more books by Okey Ndibe, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kevlqy9 OKEY NDIBE teaches African and African Diaspora literatures at Brown University. He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has taught at Connecticut College, Bard College, Trinity College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). He is also the author of Arrows of Rain and has served on the editorial board of Hartford Courant where his essays won national and state awards.

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BOOK EXCERPT from Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe

CHAPTER ONE

IKECHUKWU UZONDU, “Ike for short,” parked his Lincoln Continental cab at a garage that charged twelve dollars per hour. Before shutting off the engine, he looked at the car’s electronic clock. Nine forty-seven a.m.; it meant the gallery would have been open for a little less than an hour. Perfect, Ike thought, for he wished to be done transacting his business before the place started buzzing. He walked a block and a half to 19 Vance Street. Had a small animal been wedged in his throat, his heart could not have pounded more violently. The eave over the door bore a sign etched in black over a bluish background: foreign gods, incorporated. It was written in tiny, stylized lettering, as if intended to create a tactful anonymity. Few would stumble upon a store like this; it would be found, it seemed, only by habitués and devotees. Across the street was a bar. Ike contemplated a quick drink or two to calm his nerves. How odd to flack for a war god while jittery. Yet, to go in smelling of alcohol might also be a costly mistake. The gallery door clicked, and a tanned woman walked out. A squat carved statue was clutched close to her breast, held in a suckling posture. At the curb, a gleaming black BMW pulled up. She opened the rear door and leaned in, arched backside revealing the outline of her underwear. Her black high-heeled shoes were riveted with nodes of diamond. She strapped the deity in place with the seat belt and then straightened. The car’s front door was opened from inside. She lowered herself in, and the car sped off. Ike pulled at the gallery door—surprisingly light. A wide, sprawling space unfurled itself: gray marble floors, turquoise walls, and glass-paneled showcases. A multitude of soft, recessed lights accentuated the gallery’s dim, spectral atmosphere. In the middle of the room, slightly to the left of the door, a spiral staircase with two grille-work banisters rose to an upper floor. Ike knew from the New York magazine piece that people went upstairs only by invitation. And that those invitations went only to a small circle of long-term collectors or their designated dealers. There was an otherworldly chill in the air. There was also a smell about the place, unsettling and hard to name. Ike froze at the edge of the run of stairs that led down to the floor of the gallery. From the elevation, he commanded a view. The space was busy but not cluttered. Clusters of short, squat showcases were interspersed with long and deep ones. Here and there, some customers peered into the glass cases or pored over catalogs. In a matter of two, three weeks, his people’s ancient deity, Ngene, would be here, too. And it would enjoy pride of place, not on this floor, with the all-comers and nondescripts, but upstairs, in the section called Heaven. Ngene was a majestic god with a rich legend and history. How many other gods could boast of dooming Walter Stanton, that famed English missionary whose name, in the syllable-stretching mouths of the people of Utonki, became Su-tantee-ny? Excerpted from Foreign Gods, Inc. by Okey Ndibe Copyright © 2014 by Okey Ndibe. Excerpted by permission of Soho Press, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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WORLD LITERATURE

THE RISE & FALL OF GREAT POWERS: A NOVEL

by Tom Rachman

The Dial Press • HC • 978-0-679-64365-4 400 pp. • $27.00/NCR Exam Copy: $13.50

Also by Tom Rachman:

ooly Zylberberg, the American owner of an isolated bookshop in the Welsh countryside, conducts a life full of reading, but with little human contact. Books are safer than people, who might ask awkward questions about her life. She prefers never to mention the strange events of her youth, which mystify and worry her still. Taken from home as a girl, Tooly found herself spirited away by a group of seductive outsiders, implicated in capers from Asia to Europe to the United States. But who were her abductors? Why did they take her? What did they really want? There was Humphrey, the curmudgeonly Russian with a passion for reading; there was the charming but tempestuous Sarah, who sowed chaos in her wake; and there was Venn, the charismatic leader whose worldview transformed Tooly forever. Until, quite suddenly, he disappeared. Years later, Tooly believes she will never understand the true story of her own life. Then startling news arrives from a long-lost boyfriend in New York, resurrecting old mysteries and propelling her on a quest around the world in search of answers. “Rachman’s kaleidoscopic second novel demonstrates that one’s family is very often made up of the people you find and who find you along the way.” —Booklist

THE IMPERFECTIONISTS A NOVEL Dial Press Trade Paperback TR • 978-0-385-34367-1 304pp. • $16.00/NCR Exam Copy: $3.00

“This book is mesmerising: a thorough work-out for the head and heart that targets cognitive muscles you never knew you had. Thanks, though, to Rachman’s lightness of touch and quite considerable streaks of silliness, it feels much more like dancing than exercise.” —The Times (UK) “The haunting tale of a young woman reassessing her turbulent past . . . brilliantly structured, beautifully written.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

For more books by Tom Rachman, go to: http://tinyurl.com/povoxrn TOM RACHMAN was born in London and raised in Vancouver. A graduate of the University of Toronto and the Columbia School of Journalism, he has been a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, stationed in Rome. From 2006 to 2008, he worked as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. He lives in Rome.

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BOOK EXCERPT from The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

2011 HIS PENCIL wavered above the sales ledger, dipping toward the page as his statements increased in vigor, the pencil tip skimming the pad, then pulling up like a stunt plane, only to plunge at moments of emphasis, producing a constellation of increasingly blunt dots around the lone entry for that morning, the sale of one used copy of Land Snails of Britain by A. G. Brunt-Coppell (price: £3.50). “Take the Revolution,” he called out from the front of the bookshop. “The French see it completely differently than we do. They aren’t taught it was all chaos and Reign of Terror. For them, it was a good thing. And you can’t blame them. Knocking down the Bastille? The Declaration of Rights?” The thrust of his argument was that, when considering the French people and their rebellious spirit—well, it wasn’t clear what Fogg intended to say. He was a man who formed opinions as he spoke them, or perhaps afterward, requiring him to ramble at length to grasp what he believed. This made speech an act of discovery for him; others did not necessarily share this view. His voice resounded between bookcases, down the three steps at the rear of the shop, where his employer, Tooly Zylberberg—in tweed blazer, muddy jeans, rubber boots—was trying to read. “Hmm,” she responded, a battered biography of Anne Boleyn open on her lap. She could have asked Fogg to shush, and he would have obliged. But he reveled in pronouncing on grand issues, like the man of consequence he most certainly was not. It endeared Fogg to her, especially since his oration masked considerable self-doubt—whenever she challenged him, he folded immediately. Poor Fogg. Her sympathy for the man qualified him to chatter, but it made reading impossible. “Because, after all, the fellow who invented the guillotine was a man of medicine,” he continued, restoring books to the shelves, riffling their pages to kick forth the old-paper aroma, which he inhaled before pushing each volume flush into its slot. Down the three creaking steps he came, passing under the sign history—nature—poetry— military—ballet to a sunken den known as the snug. The bookshop had been a pub before, and the snug was where rain-drenched drinkers once hung their socks by the hearth, now bricked up but still flanked with tongs and bellows, festooned with little green-and-red Welsh flags and Toby jugs on hooks. An oak table contained photographic volumes on the region, while the walls were lined with shelves of poetry and a disintegrating hardcover series of Shakespeare whose red spines had so faded that to distinguish King Lear from Macbeth required much scrutiny. Either of these venerable characters, dormant on the overburdened shelves, could at any moment have crashed down into the rocking chair where Tooly sat upon a tartan blanket, which came in handy during winters, when the radiators trembled at the task ahead and switched off. She tucked back her short black hair, points curling around unpierced lobes, a gray pencil tip poking up behind her ear. The paperback she held before her aimed to discourage his interruptions, but behind its cover her cheeks twitched with amusement at the circling Fogg and his palpable exertion at remaining quiet. He strode around the table, hands in his trouser pockets, jingling change. (Coins were always plummeting through holes in those pockets, down his leg and into his shoe. Toward the end of the day, he removed it—sock coming half off—and emptied a small fortune into his palm.) “It behooves them to act decisively in Afghanistan,” he said. “It behooves them to.” Excerpted from The Rise & Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman Copyright © 2014 by Tom Rachman. Excerpted by permission of The Dial Press, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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WORLD LITERATURE

FIVE STAR BILLIONAIRE: A NOVEL by Tash Aw

TASH AW

novel about the New China by a prize-winning, critically acclaimed writer, Five Star Billionaire charts the overlapping journeys of five individuals living in Shanghai, an ever-changing city being transformed by a breakdown in social hierarchy and cultural norms. Just as the city is constantly reinventing itself, the characters themselves dream of being millionaires, finding love on the Internet, and bettering themselves. “Aw moves fluidly between past and present, creating a multilayered narrative about chasing, catching, and sometimes losing elusive opportunities.” —Library Journal (starred review) Spiegel & Grau • TR • 978-0-8129-8481-1 • 416 pp. • $16.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

MAP OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD: A NOVEL by Tash Aw

rom the author of the internationally acclaimed The Harmony Silk Factory comes an enthralling novel that evokes an exotic yet turbulent place and time—1960s Indonesia during President Sukarno’s drive to purge the country of its colonial past. A page-turning story, Map of the Invisible World follows the journeys of two brothers and an American woman who are indelibly marked by the past—and swept up in the tides of history.

“Reminiscent of Graham Greene . . . powerful and mesmerizing . . . haunting and memorable.”—The Guardian (U.K.) Spiegel & Grau • TR • 978-0-385-52797-2 • 336 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Tash Aw, go to: http://tinyurl.com/lu92asm

TRISTANO: A NOVEL by Nanni Balestrini Introduction by Umberto Eco

nspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde, Tristano was first published in 1966 in Italian, but only recently has digital technology made it possible to realize the author’s original vision. The novel is comprised of ten chapters and the fifteen pairs of paragraphs in each of them are shuffled anew for each published copy. Thus, no two versions are the same. The random variations between copies enact the variegations of the human heart, as exemplified by the lovers at the center of the story.

“Finally the historical impasse between literature and new media . . . turns into an opportunity to create something radically new.” —Aldo Nove, Il Sole 24 Ore Verso • TR • 978-1-78168-169-5 • 128 pp. • $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 For more books by Nanni Balestrini, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ltcterm

WHERE TIGERS ARE AT HOME by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès Translated by Mike Mitchell

inner of the Prix Médicis, this novel follows the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher across seventeen-century Europe and Eleazard von Wogau, a retired French correspondent, through modern Brazil. When Eleazard begins editing a strange, unpublished biography of Kircher, the rest of his life seems to begin unraveling. “Blas de Roblès simultaneously channels Umberto Eco, Indiana Jones, and Jorge Amado . . . what begins as a faux metabiography turns to picaresque adventure with erotic escapades, scams, and unexpected changes of fortune.” —Publishers Weekly Other Press • TR • 978-1-59051-676-8 • 830 pp. • $28.95/$34.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $14.50

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AMERICAN WORLD LITERATURE THE PEOPLE OF FOREVER ARE NOT AFRAID: A NOVEL by Shani Boianjiu

ael, Avishag, and Lea grow up together in a tiny, dusty Israeli village, attending a high school made up of caravan classrooms, passing notes to each other to alleviate the universal boredom of teenage life. When they are conscripted into the army, their lives change in unpredictable ways, influencing the women they become and the friendship that they struggle to sustain. “Eye-opening and brutally honest . . . In this gripping debut, [Boianjiu] weaves together the familiar coming-of-age milestones such as sexual initiation, the fierce bonds of friendship and the need for independence with the shocking realities of military life—even beyond the battlefield.” —BookPage Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-95597-5 • 368 pp. • $14.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

REASONS OF STATE by Alejo Carpentier Translated by Frances Partridge Introduction by Stanley Crouch

easons of State tells the tale of the dictator of a Latin American country who has been living in high-society Paris. When news of a coup at home reaches him, he rushes back and crushes it with brutal military force. But upon returning to Paris, he is given a chilly welcome and learns that photographs of the atrocities have been circulating among his well-to-do friends. Meanwhile, World War I has broken out and another rebellion forces the dictator back across the ocean. As he struggles with the Marxist forces beginning to find footing in his country and Europe is devastated, Carpentier constructs a biting satire of the new world order. Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-279-6 • 400 pp. • $16.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN: A NOVEL by Jennifer Clement

adydi was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. In Guerrero, Mexico, drug lords are kings. Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity, and fun in the face of tragedy. A portrait of women in rural Mexico and an exploration of the hidden consequences of an unjust war, Prayers for the Stolen is a story of friendship, family, and determination.

“Moving . . . Through a beautifully rendered poetic rhythm all her own, Clement tells a story of the often forgotten women who carry on through the drug wars.” —Kirkus Reviews Hogarth • TR • 978-0-8041-3880-2 • 240 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Jennifer Clement, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ofyjxn8

THE LULLABY OF POLISH GIRLS: A NOVEL by Dagmara Dominczyk

his debut novel traces the friendship of three best friends from their early teenage years in Kielce, Poland, to the loss of innocence that wrecks them, and the stunning murder that reaches across oceans to bring them back together after they’ve grown and long since left home. The Lullaby of Polish Girls captures the passion and drama of youthful friendship, the immigrant’s yearning to fit in, and the wistful transformation of young women coming of age.

“Striking and vivid . . . absolutely buzzing with energy . . . Dominczyk’s love for her complicated characters is apparent from the first page to the last.” —Emma Straub, author of Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures Spiegel & Grau • TR • 978-0-8129-8382-1 • 256 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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WORLD LITERATURE THE FIVE ACTS OF DIEGO LEÓN: A NOVEL by Alex Espinoza

cclaimed Latino author Alex Espinoza, whose writing Lisa See has called “fresh, magical, beautiful, and evocative,” returns with a novel set in Hollywood’s Golden Age, as a gifted and determined young man leaves Mexico—and everything he’s ever known—to follow his dreams. “A story that begins in revolutionary Mexico and travels to Hollywood during the film industry’s transition from silent films to talkies, The Five Acts of Diego León breaks greater silences—taboos of race and sexuality, of reinvention and assimilation.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6540-0 • 320 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 For more books by Alex Espinoza, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mwfhwqa

THE LOST SISTERHOOD: A NOVEL by Anne Fortier

rom the author of The New York Times bestseller Juliet comes a novel about a young scholar who risks her reputation—and her life—on a thrilling journey to prove that the legendary warrior women known as the Amazons actually existed. Sweeping from England to North Africa to Greece and the ruins of ancient Troy, and navigating between present and past, The Lost Sisterhood is a breathtaking, passionate adventure of two women on parallel journeys, separated by time, who must fight to keep the lives and legacy of the Amazons from being lost forever.

“Magical, ambitious, and riveting, The Lost Sisterhood blends past and present to bring the myth of the ancient Amazons to life. . . . Anne Fortier’s tale of a young Oxford academic sent on a mysterious quest is a masterly combination of fast-paced adventure and grand epic.” —Kim Fay, author of The Map of Lost Memories Ballantine Books • HC • 978-0-345-53622-8 • 608 pp. • $27.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $13.50 For more books by Anne Fortier, go to: http://tinyurl.com/klmgnmu

STAY by Aislinn Hunter

tay follows Abbey, a young woman from Canada now living in a village outside Galway, who falls in love with Dermot, an older Irish man, in an unconventional, affectionate, but troubled relationship. The inhabitants of Dermot’s village form a riotous and poignant chorus, commenting on their rapidly changing world with wit and insight. This is a novel about history and obligation and, above all, the meaning of human connection in a land poised uneasily between past and present. Anchor Canada • TR • 978-0-385-68062-2 • 288 pp. • $17.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Aislinn Hunter, go to: http://tinyurl.com/o8wq4xs

THE HUNTING GUN by Yasushi Inoue Translated by Michael Emmerich

he Hunting Gun follows the consequences of a tragic love affair. Told from the viewpoints of three different women, this is a story of the psychological impact of illicit love. First viewed through the eyes of Shoko, who learns of the affair through reading her mother’s diary, then through the eyes of Midori, who had long known about the affair of her husband with Saiko, and finally through the eyes of Saiko herself. This novella is incredibly powerful, with universal resonance and a true modern classic of the 20th century.

Pushkin Press • TR • 978-1-78227-001-0 • 112 pp. • $16.00/$16.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Yasushi Inoue, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kvcqgsl

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AMERICAN WORLD LITERATURE THE WOMAN WHO BORROWED MEMORIES: SELECTED STORIES by Tove Jansson Translated by Thomas Teal and Silvester Mazzarella Introduction by Lauren Groff

he Woman Who Borrowed Memories is Tove Jannson’s first extensive collection of short stories in English. Jannson, author of the bestselling The Summer Book as well as a celebrated cartoonist, composed her short stories around her personal experiences, touching on island solitude and the dangerous pull of the artistic impulse. “It could be said that everything she wrote is, in one way or another, about the creative interactions between art and reality or art and nature.” —The Guardian New York Review Books • TR • 978-1-59017-766-2 • 304 pp. • $16.95/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Tove Jansson, go to: http://tinyurl.com/qjvd48l

THE METAMORPHOSIS by Franz Kafka Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Stanley Corngold

he Metamorphosis is the masterful story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic— meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis stands as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. This Modern Library edition collects Stanley Corngold’s acclaimed English translation along with seven critical essays by writers including Philip Roth, W. H. Auden, and Walter Benjamin, background and contextual material, and a new introduction from Corngold himself. Modern Library • TR • 978-0-8129-8514-6 • 368 pp. • $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Franz Kafka, go to: http://tinyurl.com/lr8gwoq

GILGI by Irmgard Keun

Translated by Geoff Wilkes

he never-before-translated story of a single, pregnant, and nervy young secretary making her way through a Germany succumbing to the Nazis. Gilgi is a secretary in a hosiery firm, although she doesn’t intend to stay there for long. But then she falls in love with Martin, a charming drifter, and leaves her job for domestic bliss—which turns out not to be all that blissful—and Gilgi finds herself pregnant and facing a number of moral dilemmas. Revolutionary at the time of its original publication in 1931 for its treatment of sexual harassment, abortion, single motherhood, and the “New Woman,” Gilgi is a novel about one woman’s path to maturity. Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-277-2 • 240 pp. • $16.00/$16.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Irmgard Keun, go to: http://tinyurl.com/myefogu

KINDER THAN SOLITUDE: A NOVEL by Yiyun Li

profound mystery is at the heart of this new novel by the celebrated winner of the PEN/ Hemingway, MacArthur “Genius,” and many other awards. Set in America and China, and moving back and forth through time, Kinder Than Solitude is the story of three people whose lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed. “There’s something about the poise, the tidiness, the seemingly effortless calm of Yiyun Li’s writing that makes it easy to see her as an author who, like Jhumpa Lahiri, employs a Chekovian neutrality. . . . But look again. . . . There’s a withering, vibrating sarcasm at work in the juxtaposition of national and personal tragedies.” —The New York Times Book Review Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8016-5 • 352 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Yiyun Li, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mffxzvl

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WORLD LITERATURE

THE DINNER: A NOVEL by Herman Koch Translated by Sam Garrett

HERMAN KOCH

wo couples meet for dinner. At first, the conversation is a gentle hum of small talk. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said. Each couple has a 15-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act, one that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

“A riveting, compelling, and a deliciously uncomfortable read. Like all great satire it is both lacerating and so very funny. . . . A wonderful book.” —Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap Hogarth • TR • 978-0-385-34685-6 • 320 pp. • $14.00/$16.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

SUMMER HOUSE WITH SWIMMING POOL: A NOVEL by Herman Koch Translated by Sam Garrett

Selected for Common Reading at Clarkson University

hen a medical mistake goes wrong and Ralph Meier, a famous actor, winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser is forced to conceal the error. Marc played a role in Ralph’s death, and he’s not exactly upset that the man is gone. Still haunted by his eldest daughter’s rape during their stay at Ralph’s summer house, Marc’s reasons for wanting Ralph dead become increasingly compelling as events unravel. “Koch tells a sinister tale through the eyes of a questionable narrator. . . . Koch’s deft and nuanced exploration of gender, guilt, and vengeance make his second novel . . . an absorbing read.” —Booklist Hogarth • HC • 978-0-8041-3881-9 • 400 pp. • $24.00/$27.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00

DIARY OF THE FALL: A NOVEL by Michel Laub Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

story of three generations: a man’s struggle for forgiveness; a father with Alzheimer’s, for whom recording every memory has become an obsession; and a grandfather who survived Auschwitz, filling notebooks with the false memories of someone desperate to forget. Michel Laub’s novel asks questions about history and identity, exploring that stories we choose to tell about ourselves and how we become the people we are.

“Finally, a novel about the relationship between Judaism’s past and present that explores new territory . . . . Diary of the Fall is a refreshingly honest and startlingly original book.” —Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season Other Press • HC • 978-1-59051-651-5 • 240 pp. • $20.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $10.00

THE FIRST TRUE LIE: A NOVEL by Marina Mander Translated by Stephen Twilley

eet Luca, a curious young boy living with his mother, a taciturn woman who “every now and then tries out a new father.” One February morning his mom doesn’t wake up to bring him to school, so Luca—with a father who’s long gone and driven by a deep fear of being an orphan—decides to pretend to the world that his mom is still alive.

“[A]t its best, Luca’s original voice will break your heart. Ultimately, Luca’s story offers a buoyant picture of hope in the face of disaster, and life in the face of death.” —Publishers Weekly Hogarth • TR • 978-0-7704-3685-8 • 144 pp. • $13.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN WORLD LITERATURE

I AM FORBIDDEN: A NOVEL by Anouk Markovits

osef, a Holocaust orphan, rescues Mila after her parents are killed in the wake of Nazi deportations. Josef helps Mila find safety with a leader in the Satmar community, in whose home Mila is raised as his own. Mila forms a fierce bond with her new sister Atara, but as they mature, Atara feels trapped by the restraints of Jewish fundamentalism, while Mila embraces her faith. When Josef returns and chooses Mila to be his bride, she strives to be an ideal wife, but a desperate choice after ten years of childless marriage threatens to separate her from everything—and everyone—she cherishes. “[A] sober, finely etched scrutiny of extreme belief set in a female context.” —Kirkus Reviews Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-98474-6 • 336 pp. • $14.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

OUR LADY OF THE NILE by Scholastique Mukasonga Translated by Melanie Mauthner

n her first novel, Scholastique Mukasonga immerses us in a school for young girls. The girls are sent to a high school perched on the ridge of the Nile in order to become the feminine elite of the country and escape the dangers of the outside world. The book is a prelude to the Rwandan genocide and unfolds behind the closed doors of the school— which becomes an existential microcosm of the true 1970s Rwanda. “Mukasonga expertly draws together all her threads and stories in climactic sequences to create a skillfully-orchestrated vision, both loving and fearful, of her beloved homeland ripped apart by vicious racial hatred.” —Shelf Awareness Archipelago • TR • 978-0-914671-03-9 • 240 pp. • $18.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

EVIL AND THE MASK: A NOVEL by Fuminori Nakamura Translated by Allison Markin Powell

hen Fumihiro Kuki is eleven, his elderly father tells him about a tradition in their wealthy family: a patriarch, when reaching the end of his life, will beget one last child to cause misery in a world that cannot be controlled or saved. From this point on, Fumihiro will be specially educated to learn to create as much destruction and unhappiness in the world around him as a single person can. But as his education progresses, Fumihiro begins to question his father’s mandate and starts to resist. “A hard-to-put-down novel of ideas and a savage comment on nihilism, both Japanese and global. . . . Shouldn’t be missed.” —Booklist (starred review) Soho Crime • TR • 978-1-61695-370-6 • 356 pp. • $15.95/$15.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Fuminori Nakamura, got to: http://tinyurl.com/kh7kgax

ARROWS OF RAIN: A NOVEL by Okey Ndibe

his debut novel from the author of the universally acclaimed Foreign Gods, Inc. examines a woman’s drowning and the ensuing investigation in an emerging African nation. The shocking revelations of Bukuru, the last man who spoke to the woman, land him in court. Alone and undefended, the last man to speak to her must calculate the cost of silence in the face of rampant corruption and state-sponsored violence against women. Okey Ndibe examines the erosion of moral insight in both public and private life, drawing out the complex factors behind the near-collapse of a nation.

“A blueprint for the second generation of African novelists.” —Ernest Emenyonu, author of Tales of Our Motherland Soho Press • TR • 978-1-61695-457-4 • 304 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Okey Ndibe, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kevlqy9

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WORLD LITERATURE

GIRL AT WAR: A NOVEL by Sara Novic

agreb, summer of 1991. Ten-year-old Ana Juric is a carefree tomboy who runs the streets of Croatia’s capital with her best friend, Luka, takes care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father. But as civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival. Part war saga, part coming-of-age tale, part story of love and friendship, Girl at War is a literary and suspenseful debut novel by a young writer whose work will appeal to readers of Anthony Marra, Téa Obreht, and Anthony Doerr. “An unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individual, Girl at War is a remarkable debut by a writer working with deep reserves of talent, heart, and mind.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 5/12/2015.

Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9634-0 • 336 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00

THE TIGER’S WIFE: A NOVEL by Téa Obreht

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction • Finalist for the National Book Award Selected for Common Reading at Georgetown University and New York University

n a Balkan country recovering from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her: the legend of the tiger’s wife.

“Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, The Tiger’s Wife is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination.” —The New York Times Book Review Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-385-34384-8 • 368 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE FORGIVEN: A NOVEL by Lawrence Osborne

ournalist and novelist Lawrence Osborne explores the repercussions of a random accident on the lives of Moroccan Muslims and Western visitors who converge in a luxurious desert villa for a decadent weekend-long party. “A sinister and streamlined entertainment in the tradition of Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh and the early Ian McEwan. . . . Mr. Osborne has a keen and sometimes cruel eye for humans and their manners and morals, and for the natural world. You can open to almost any page and find brutally fine observations. . . . surprising and dark and excellent.” —The New York Times Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-88904-1 • 304 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Lawrence Osborne, go to: http://tinyurl.com/onfoomm

CLARA: A NOVEL by Kurt Palka

hen Clara’s husband is called to serve in World War II, her life is forever changed. Throughout the war, its aftermath, and into the present, Clara must make choices and take risks that are as heroic and life-altering as any that men make in battle. Clara is a novel about family bonds and women’s deep friendships, about courage and the love that can endure even in unimaginable times. “Palka weaves an intimate tapestry. . . . Unflinching in its realism yet devoid of sensationalism, Clara showcases Palka’s great attention to detail, which enhances an already beautiful and deeply moving story of hope, love, and triumph.” —Booklist (starred review) Emblem Editions • TR • 978-0-7710-7132-4 • 384 pp. • $15.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN WORLD LITERATURE

THE GRAY NOTEBOOK by Josep Pla Translated by Peter Bush Introduction by Valenti Puig

he Gray Notebook, the most celebrated work of twentieth-century Catalan literature by Spain’s most prolific writer, Josep Pla, is admired as much for its distinguished prose as for its shrewd observation of human comedy, the city of Barcelona, and the people of the region.

“His complete works, published and republished over the years, contain marvelous descriptive passages that capture the landscape’s history and its complex topography at once.” —Words Without Borders New York Review Books • TR • 978-1-59017-671-9 • 656 pp. • $19.95/$22.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Josep Pla, go to: http://tinyurl.com/nomt4kw

KARL MARX AND WORLD LITERATURE by S. S. Prawer

rofessor S. S. Prawer’s highly influential work explores how the world of imaginative literature—poems, novels, plays—infused and shaped Marx’s writings, from his unpublished correspondence, to his pamphlets and major works. In exploring Marx’s use of literary texts, from Aeschylus to Balzac, and the central role of art and literature in the development of his critical vision, Karl Marx and World Literature is a forensic masterpiece of critical analysis.

Verso • TR • 978-1-84467-710-8 • 464 pp. • $29.95/$37.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00

THE SIEGE: A NOVEL by Arturo Pérez-Reverte Translated by Frank Wynne

uring the Napoleonic siege of Cádiz paranoia reigns, only to worsen when the bodies of murdered women begin to turn up in abandoned corners of the city. Police commissioner Rogelio Tizón’s determination to find the killer takes him on a twisting path through the intertwined lives of those trapped together in the city.

“Bold . . . The Siege is Pérez-Reverte’s best yet. . . . An ambitious intellectual thriller peopled with colorful rogues and antiheroes, meticulous in its historical detail, with a plot that rattles along to its unexpected finale. It’s hard to think of a contemporary author who so effortlessly marries popular and literary fiction as enjoyably as this.” —The Observer Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6968-2 • 624 pp. • $28.00/$34.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $14.00 For more books by Arturo Perez-Reverte, go to: http://tinyurl.com/p6mtrkp

THE WALLS OF DELHI: THREE STORIES by Uday Prakash Translated by Jason Grunebaum

rakash weaves together three tales of living and surviving in today’s globalized India. A street sweeper discovers a cache of black market money and escapes to see the Taj Mahal with his underage mistress; an Untouchable races to reclaim his life, which has been stolen by an upper-caste identity thief; a slum baby’s head grows bigger and bigger as he gets smarter and smarter, while his family tries to find a cure. “Prakash writes of contemporary India with bleak and unblinking scrutiny irradiated by empathy and humanity. His mastery of metaphor and allegory and the power of his style invoke a timeless culture on the cusp of change.” —Namita Gokhale, founder-director of The Jaipur Literature Festival and author of The Book of Shiva Seven Stories Press • TR • 978-1-60980-528-9 • 240 pp. • $23.95/$23.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00

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WORLD LITERATURE

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT by Erich Maria Remarque Translated by Arthur Wesley Wheen

REISSUE

Reissued to Coincide with the World War I Centennial Next Year

onsidered by many the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is Erich Maria Remarque’s story of the German experience during World War I. Through years of vivid horror, Paul Bäumer holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation, but different uniforms, against one another.

“The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.” —The New York Times Book Review Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-449-91149-5 • 240 pp. • $16.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Erich Maria Remarque, go to: http://tinyurl.com/pkg8jmc

THE WATCH: A NOVEL by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

ollowing a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers on an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother’s body. Taking his cues from the Antigone myth, Roy-Bhattacharya recreates the chaos, intensity, and immediacy of battle, and conveys the inevitable repercussions felt by the soldiers and their families, especially one sister.

“Every war spawns its major literary works, and Roy-Bhattacharya’s powerful, modern take on the Afghanistan armed conflict resonates with the echoes of Joseph Heller, Tim O’Brien, and Robert Stone.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-95591-3 • 336 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

A WELL-TEMPERED HEART by Jan-Philipp Sendker

n this sequel to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, almost ten years have passed since Julia came back from Burma. In the middle of an important meeting, she hears a stranger’s voice in her head. Not only does the voice refuse to disappear, but it also asks questions Julia has been trying to avoid. Interwoven with Julia’s story is that of a Burmese woman who finds her world turned upside down when Burma goes to war and calls on her two young sons to be child soldiers.

“Sendker’s follow-up to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats . . . opens readers’ eyes to a history of buried atrocities . . . [and] takes pains to develop a realistic world.” —Publishers Weekly Other Press • TR • 978-1-59051-640-9 • 400 pp. • $15.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Jan-Philipp Sendker, go to: http://tinyurl.com/n3newfc

THE ANDALUCIAN FRIEND: A NOVEL by Alexander Soderberg

hen Sophie Brinkmann—nurse, widow, single mother—meets Hector Guzman, her life is uneventful. She likes his quiet charm and easy smile; she likes the way he welcomes her into his family. She quickly learns, though, that his smooth façade masks something much more sinister. Guzman is the head of a powerful international crime ring, involved in drug and weapons trafficking throughout Europe and South America. Sophie must summon everything within her to navigate this intricate web of moral ambiguity, deadly obsession, and craven gamesmanship. “[A] tense, accomplished debut . . . Complex but swift, well-written and often grisly.” —The Wall Street Journal Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-7704-3607-0 • 464 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN WORLD LITERATURE

ALL DAYS ARE NIGHT by Peter Stamm Translated by Michael Hoffman

ll Days Are Night tells the story of a woman who loses her life but must stay alive all the same. After an argument, Gillian, a successful and beautiful TV host, and her husband are in a car accident. Matthias dies in the crash and Gillian wakes up in the hospital completely disfigured. Slowly, after many twists and turns, she puts her life back together, and reconnects with a love interest from the past who becomes a possible future—or so it seems. “A masterpiece of disorientation and control, All Days Are Night may be his best novel yet.” —Rupert Thomson, award-winning author of The Insult Other Press • HC • 978-1-59051-696-6 • 192 pp. • $22.00/$26.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00 For more books by Peter Stamm, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kx5m3rd

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF BASED ON SHOLEM ALEICHEM’S STORIES

by Joseph Stein

iddler on the Roof is well established as one of the great works of American musical theater. Adapted from the tales of Yiddish writer Sholom Alecheim and set in Tsarist Russia in 1905, it has proven to be an indelible tale of family, tradition, wit, and sorrow—all filtered through the ordeals of Tevye, a Jewish Everyman.

Crown • HC • 978-0-553-41897-2 • 128 pp. • $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $9.00

THE EXPEDITION TO THE BAOBAB TREE by Wilma Stockenstrom Translated by J. M. Coetzee

earning to survive in the harsh interior of Southern Africa, a former slave seeks shelter in the hollow of a baobab tree. We are the sole witnesses to her history: her capture as a child, her tortured days in a harbor city on the eastern coast as a servant, her journey with her last owner and protector, her flight, and the kaleidoscopic world of her baobab tree.

“This mini-masterpiece is less a novel than an intimate monologue illuminating the nature of slavery, oppression, womanhood, identity, Africa, and nature itself.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Archipelago • TR • 978-1-935744-92-4 • 220 pp. • $18.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE COLD SONG by Linn Ullmann Translated by Barbara J. Haveland

iri and Jon’s marriage is loving but difficult and troubled by painful secrets. When Milla is hired as their nanny, life in their idyllic summer community takes a dire turn. One night, Milla disappears without a trace. After her remains are discovered and a suspect is identified, everyone who had any connection with her feels implicated in her tragedy and haunted by what they could have done to prevent it. “A fluid, shape-shifting novel, a family saga that turns into an erotically charged drama and then takes a darker turn into the terrain of a murder mystery.” —Tom Perrotta, author of Nine Inches: Stories and The Leftovers Other Press • TR • 978-1-59051-667-6 • 352 pp. • $15.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Linn Ullmann, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ktvelkj

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GRAPHIC NOVELS

THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS

by Max Brooks Illustrated by Caanan White

he Harlem Hellfighters is a fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment—the first African American regiment mustered to fight in World War I. From the enlistment lines in Harlem, to the training camp in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, author Max Brooks tells the story of the heroic journey that these soldiers undertook for a chance to fight for America. Despite extraordinary struggles and discrimination, the 369th became one of the most successful—and least celebrated—regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, endured longer tours than any other American unit in combat and displayed extraordinary valor on the battlefield. Based on true events and featuring artwork from acclaimed illustrator Caanan White, these pages deliver a powerful and inspiring story of courage, honor, and heart.

Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-307-46497-2 272 pp. • $16.95/$19.95 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00 Max Brooks is available to Skype™ with classes that adopt this book. For more information, email: rhacademic@penguinrandomhouse.com Also by Max Brooks:

WORLD WAR Z AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ZOMBIE WAR Selected for Common Reading at Florida Southern College Broadway Books • TR 978-0-307-34661-2 352pp. • $14.95/$21 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

“An utterly fresh and shocking blend of storytelling and graphic art that takes us back to the global conflagration at the dawn of the last century and the heroic and outsized role brave African American soldiers played in turning the tide for the Allies. In an injustice oft repeated throughout our history, the heroic feats of the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ were not just forgotten but deliberately suppressed by a nation eager to accept the Black man’s sacrifice but terrified to give him the slightest credit for it. Denied the ability to even defend themselves back home, the Hell Fighters tear up the Western Front and terrify the Germans, facing down machine guns, rats, and poison gas with stoic relentlessness and deflected fury. White’s illustrations explode off the page and Brooks’ storytelling brings gripping action and anger to every page.” —Tom Reiss, author of Pulitzer Prize-winner The Black Count

For more books by Max Brooks, go to: http://tinyurl.com/n5y7axc MAX BROOKS is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, and The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.

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A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

I FIRST LEARNED of the Harlem Hellfighters from an Anglo-Rhodesian named Michael Furmanovsky when I was 11. Michael was working for my parents while getting his MA in history from UCLA. He taught me about the British Empire, the Falklands War, Hiroshima, the Holocaust, and a host of other topics not covered in my fifth-grade Western civilization class. Of all his after-school lessons, the one that left the deepest impression was the story of a unit of American soldiers who weren’t allowed to fight for their country because of the color of their skin. To a white, privileged kid growing up on the west side of LA in the 1980s, that kind of prejudice was just inconceivable. When I confessed that I didn’t know about them, he assured me that I wasn’t alone. Ten years later I was an exchange student at the University of the Virgin Islands. The experience brought me back into the orbit of the Hellfighters when, while walking through an old cemetery, I noticed some graves from 1918. I wondered if they might be casualties of the Great War, maybe even members of the 369th. I decided to ask my professor of Virgin Islands history. He was an African-American from the mainland, and to call him passionate would be a laughable understatement. With his beard and spectacles and flaring dashiki, he would rail against the historical crimes committed by white men of Europe and North America. Most heinous was the erasure of black accomplishments by white historians. Colonization, he would tell us, begins with the mind, and the best (or worst) way to colonize a people is to bury their past. “There were no black soldiers in World War I.” That was his dismissive answer to my question about the graves from 1918. When I started to argue, even bringing up the name “Harlem Hellfighters,” he assured me that I must have been confused with the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. I was shocked. Here was a scholar, a crusader, a thoughtful, driven man who’d made it his life’s mission to trumpet the glory of Africa and her diaspora, and HE didn’t know about the Harlem Hellfighters. I wish I could say that I decided then and there to write their story, but that would have to wait for nearly another decade. In 2006, I began collaborating with Avatar Press on a graphic companion to my first book, The Zombie Survival Guide. I learned very quickly how different comic book writing was from prose, but how similar it could be to movie scripts. I also realized that comics presented a forum for telling very visual stories without the cumbersome budget of movies or television. It seemed the ideal medium for telling the story of the Harlem Hellfighters. It’s now been close to six years since I began working with William Christensen of Avatar Press and the amazingly talented artist Caanan White. And now it’s time to share this heroic regiment’s story of courage, honor, and heart. I hope that you and your students are as captivated by it as I have been. —Max Brooks

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GRAPHIC NOVELS

MASKS OF ANARCHY: THE HISTORY OF A RADICAL POEM, FROM PERCY SHELLEY TO THE TRIANGLE FACTORY FIRE

by Michael Demson Illustrated by Summer McClinton

asks of Anarchy tells the extraordinary story of Percy Shelley’s poem “The Masque of Anarchy,” from its conception in Italy and suppression in England to the moment it became a catalyst for protest among New York City workers a century later. Shelley penned the poem in 1819, after hearing of the Peterloo Massacre, where British cavalry charged peaceful political demonstrators near Manchester. His words would later inspire figures as wide-ranging as Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi—and also Pauline Newman, the woman The New York Times called the “New Joan of Arc” in 1907. Verso • TR • 978-1-78168-098-8 • 128 pp. • $16.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE SPECTRAL ENGINE by Ray Fawkes

o catch a glimpse of the Spectral Engine is to face death itself. In Ray Fawkes’ new graphic novel, the Spectral Engine is also the supernatural device that ties together wide-ranging true stories—set across Canada and throughout time—of discovery and loss, migration and dislocation, ambition and the casualties of history—as told by the train’s own ghostly passengers.

“What Ray Fawkes has done is weave together stories of lost souls and history in a way you will never forget. This book breathes new life into a forgotten past that will haunt you with its loss and mystery.” —Matt Kindt, author of Super Spy McClelland & Stewart • HC • 978-0-7710-3093-2 • 176 pp. • $27.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $14.00 For more books by Ray Fawkes, go to: http://tinyurl.com/lzhsvv8

V FOR VENDETTA by Alan Moore Illustrated by David Lloyd

ALAN MOORE

story about loss of freedom and individuality, V for Vendetta takes place in a totalitarian England following a devastating war that changed the face of the planet. In a world without political freedom, personal freedom, or precious little faith in anything, a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask who fights political oppressors through terrorism and seemingly absurd acts arises. This new trade paperback edition features the improved production values and coloring from the 2005 hardcover. Vertigo • TR • 978-1-4012-0841-7 • 296 pp. • $19.99/$23.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

WATCHMEN by Alan Moore Illustrated by Dave Gibbons

his Hugo Award–winning story chronicles the fall from grace of a group of superheroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the superhero is dissected, as the heroes are stalked by an unknown assassin. This edition features the highquality, recolored pages found in Watchmen: The Absolute Edition with sketches, neverbefore-seen extra bonus materials, and a new introduction by Dave Gibbons. “A work of ruthless psychological realism, it’s a landmark in the graphic novel medium. It would be a masterpiece in any.” —Time Magazine’s 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to the Present DC Comics • TR • 978-1-4012-4525-2 • 448 pp. • $19.99/$23.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

ESSAYS, BELLE LETTRES, & LITER ARY CRITICISM AGAINST WORLD LITERATURE: ON THE POLITICS OF UNTRANSLATABILITY by Emily Apter

gainst World Literature argues for a rethinking of comparative literature focusing on the problems that emerge when large-scale paradigms of literary studies ignore the politics of the “untranslatable”—the realm of those words that are continually retranslated, mistranslated, transferred from language to language, or especially resistant to substitution. In the place of “World Literature” Emily Apter proposes a plurality of “world literatures” oriented around philosophical concepts and geopolitical pressure points. Verso • TR • 978-1-84467-970-6 • 240 pp. • $29.95/$34.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00

COTTON TENANTS: THREE FAMILIES by James Agee Edited by John Summers Introduction by Adam Haslett Photographs by Walker Evans

iscovered 50 years after James Agee’s death, and accompanied by thirty of Walker Evans’ historic photos, Cotton Tenants is a report of three families struggling through desperate times. Agee’s dispatch remains relevant as one of the most honest explorations of poverty in America ever attempted and as a foundational document of long-form reporting.

“Agee’s discerning eye, crushing bluntness, and forward-falling prose poetry urge along before dunking readers’ senses, again and again, into the families’ way of life. Disdainful of sentiment and melodrama, Agee shows no bias, revealing his subjects and skewering both oppressors and supposed reformers.” —Booklist Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-398-4 • 224 pp. • $16.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by James Agee, go to: http://tinyurl.com/qffxmxc

AN ECOLOGY OF WORLD LITERATURE: FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT DAY by Alexander Beecroft

n this groundbreaking study, Alexander Beecroft develops a new way of thinking about world literature. Drawing on a series of examples and case studies, the book ranges from ancient epic to contemporary fiction. Beecroft identifies a series of literary ecologies, from small-scale societies to the planet as a whole, within which literary texts are produced and circulated. An Ecology of World Literature constructs a scholarly dialogue around ancient and modern, western and non-western texts, producing new and unexpected demands for literary study.

Verso • TR • 978-1-78168-573-0 • 320 pp. • $29.95/$35.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00

BOMB: THE AUTHOR INTERVIEWS by BOMB Magazine Edited by Betsey Sussler

rawing on 30 years of BOMB Magazine, this anthology of interviews brings together some of the greatest figures of world literature in a collection of sharp, insightful, and intimate author conversations. It includes a conversation with Jonathan Franzen, still an unknown author, on the eve of the publication of The Corrections; and one with Roberto Bolaño, near the end of his life. Lydia Davis and Francine Prose break down the intricacies of Davis’ methods; Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz discuss the power of Caribbean diasporic fiction.

Soho Press • HC • 978-1-61695-379-9 • 480 pp. • $40.00/$40.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $20.00

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ESSAYS, BELLE LETTRES, & LITERARY CRITICISM

PORTRAITS AND OBSERVATIONS by Truman Capote

rom the Modern Library’s new set of repackaged hardcover classics by Capote, Portraits and Observations is the first volume devoted solely to all the essays ever published by the author. Included are masterpieces of narrative nonfiction such as “The Muses Are Heard” and “Handcarved Coffins,” as well as many long-out-of-print essays, including portraits of Mae West, Humphrey Bogart, and Marilyn Monroe. From his travel sketches of Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Hollywood to the author’s last written words, “Remembering Willa Cather,” composed the day before his death, Portraits and Observations displays the full spectrum of Truman Capote’s brilliance.

Modern Library • HC • 978-0-8129-9439-1 • 672 pp. • $23.00/$26.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.50 For more books by Truman Capote, go to: http://tinyurl.com/qbasof8

THE BOOK OF LEGENDARY LANDS by Umberto Eco

rom the epic poets of antiquity to contemporary writers of science fiction, from the authors of the Holy Scriptures to modern raconteurs of fairy tales, writers and storytellers through the ages have invented imaginary and mythical lands, projecting onto them all of our human dreams, ideals, and fears. In the tradition of his acclaimed History of Beauty, On Ugliness, and The Infinity of Lists, renowned writer and cultural critic Umberto Eco leads us on an illustrated journey through these lands of myth and invention, showing us their inhabitants, the passions that rule them, their heroes and antagonists, and, above all, the importance they hold for us.

Rizzoli Ex Libris • HC • 978-0-8478-4121-9 • 432 pp. • $45.00/$45.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $22.50 For more books by Umberto Eco, go to: http://tinyurl.com/pzzndn2

THE ANCIENTS AND THE POSTMODERNS by Fredric Jameson

FREDRIC JAMESON

n his new masterpiece of cultural analysis, Fredric Jameson offers an idiosyncratic examination of what might be called a provisional or disposable canon—what aesthetic history might look at as we enter an age of the immediate and of the unimaginable overpopulation of art and culture. “For anybody hoping to understand not just the cultural but the political and social implications of postmodernism . . . Jameson’s book is a fundamental, nonpareil text.” —Sunday Times

DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 4/14/2015

Verso • HC • 978-1-78168-593-8 • 304 pp. • $29.95/$35.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00

THE ANTINOMIES OF REALISM by Fredric Jameson

ameson examines the most influential theories of artistic and literary realism, approaching the subject himself in terms of the social and historical preconditions for realism’s emergence. In a coda, Jameson explains how “realistic” narratives survived the end of classical realism. In effect, he provides an argument for the serious study of popular fiction and mass culture that transcends lazy journalism and the easy platitudes of recent cultural studies. “Fredric Jameson is a prodigiously energetic thinker, whose writings sweep majestically from Sophocles to science fiction.” —Terry Eagleton Verso • HC • 978-1-78168-133-6 • 432 pp. • $34.95/$39.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $17.50

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ESSAYS, BELLE LETTRES,AMERICAN & LITERARYLITERATURE CRITICISM THE LITERARY MIND AND THE CARVING OF DRAGONS by Liu Hsieh Translated with Annotations by Vincent Yu-chung Shih

he Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons is the first comprehensive work of literary criticism in Chinese—and one that has been considered essential reading for writers and scholars since it was written some 1,500 years ago. It is not only a summa of classical Chinese literary aesthetics, but also a wellspring of advice from the distant past on how to write. A complete translation of the text, this version has been re-edited from the out-ofprint edition published in 1983.

“Shih’s translation of the whole book is an immense undertaking, in itself deserving our deepest admiration.” —David Hawkes New York Review Books • TR • 978-9-6299-6585-3 • 424 pp. • $19.95/$23.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

MIND OF AN OUTLAW: SELECTED ESSAYS by Norman Mailer Edited by Phillip Sipiora Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

NORMAN MAILER

ind of an Outlaw, the first posthumous publication of Mailer, covers the many subjects and themes he wrestled with throughout his career: politics, personalities, art, literature, women, men, race, sex, and the systems of power that shape American life. Above all, Mind of an Outlaw reveals the man himself and the intellectual battles he fought throughout his monumental career.

This provocative collection brims with insights and reflections that show why Mailer is regarded as a great literary mind of his generation.” —Publishers Weekly Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8608-2 • 656 pp. • $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE SELECTED LETTERS OF NORMAN MAILER by Norman Mailer Edited by J. Michael Lennon

ailer wrote almost 50,000 letters over the course of his life, keeping a copy of almost every one of them. He corresponded with presidents and politicians, artists and athletes, writers and editors, students, antagonists, fans, friends, his children, and his loves, including his beloved sixth wife, Norris Church Mailer. Here are the letters of a precocious 16-year-old from Brooklyn arriving at Harvard, letters depicting the horrors of the war in the Pacific from a soldier’s point of view, and letters describing a young writer’s struggle with his first novel, a manuscript that would become The Naked and the Dead. Read together, they form an autobiographical portrait of Norman Mailer.

Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6623-0 • 896 pp. • $40.00/$46.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $20.00 For more books by Norman Mailer, go to: http://tinyurl.com/qevgrc8

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS: ESSAYS FROM THE CLASSICS TO POP CULTURE by Daniel Mendelsohn

n this collection by “one of the greatest critics of our time” (Poets & Writers), Daniel Mendelsohn brings together twenty-four of his recent essays on a wide range of subjects, from Avatar to the poems of Arthur Rimbaud, from our inexhaustible fascination with the Titanic to Susan Sontag’s journals.

Mendelsohn is a trained classics scholar, from which much of his intellectual authority still derives: witness his brilliantly illuminating, lucid essays on Homer, Sappho, Herodotus, and Horace. He writes about pop culture with equal enthusiasm.” — Phillip Lopate, San Francisco Chronicle New York Review Books • TR • 978-1-59017-713-6 • 432 pp. • $17.95/$21.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Daniel Mendelsohn, go to: http://tinyurl.com/krq48bq

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ESSAYS, BELLE LETTRES, & LITERARY CRITICISM THE ESSENTIAL PROSE OF JOHN MILTON by John Milton Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon

ulled from the Modern Library’s definitive The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this collection, authoritatively annotated and updated for this new volume, now includes selections from Milton’s Commonplace Book and the complete text of The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates in addition to Milton’s letters, pamphlets, political tracts, and essays. “Meticulously edited, full of tactful annotations that set the stage for his work and his times, and bringing Milton, as a poet and a thinker, vividly alive before us.” —Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States Modern Library • TR • 978-0-8129-8372-2 • 592 pp. • $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by John Milton, go to: http://tinyurl.com/n2k23v9

THIS LIVING HAND: AND OTHER ESSAYS by Edmund Morris

wide-ranging collection of essays drawn from a lifetime of work by a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the world’s leading contemporary critics and historians. Morris has hand-selected over fifty of his past works for inclusion in this collection, ranging from long, serious pieces on biographical, literary, and musical subjects to short, satirical commentaries. From Beethoven to Kilimanjaro, from Nadine Gordimer to Britain’s Imperial War Museum, Morris’ essays span a diverse range of topics, but together they weave a vivid portrait of the past four decades. Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8322-7 • 528 pp. • $18.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Edmund Morris, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ky7tmzp

IN PRAISE OF MESSY LIVES: ESSAYS by Katie Roiphe

his collection of essays ranges from pop culture to politics, from Hillary Clinton to Susan Sontag, from Facebook to Mad Men, from Joan Didion to David Foster Wallace, and to—most strikingly—the author’s own life. Roiphe turns her gaze on the surprisingly narrow-minded conventions governing the way we live and delivers an unapologetic defense of “the messy life.”

“[A] devastatingly good new book . . . Ms. Roiphe’s are how you want your essays to sound: lean and literate, not unlike Orwell’s, with a frightening ratio of velocity to torque. . . . Among Ms. Roiphe’s gifts is one for brevity. She lingers long enough to make her points, and no longer.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Dial Press • HC • 978-0-8129-9282-3 • 288 pp. • $25.00/$29.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 For more books by Katie Roiphe, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mdkje4u

CONGRATULATIONS, BY THE WAY: SOME THOUGHTS ON KINDNESS by George Saunders

hree months after George Saunders gave a convocation address at Syracuse University, a transcript of that speech was posted on the website of The New York Times, where its simple, uplifting message struck a deep chord. Within days, it had been shared more than one million times. Why? Because Saunders’ words tap into a desire in all of us to lead kinder, more fulfilling lives. Congratulations, by the way is an expanded version of that speech. “The loving selflessness that [George Saunders] advises and the interconnectedness that he recognizes couldn’t be purer or simpler—or more challenging.” —Kirkus Reviews

Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9627-2 • 64 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $7.00 For more books by George Saunders, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mo8k5cv

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ESSAYS, BELLE LETTRES,AMERICAN & LITERARYLITERATURE CRITICISM FARE FORWARD: LETTERS FROM DAVID MARKSON by Laura Sims Edited by David Markson Afterword by Ann Beattie

aura Sims shares her correspondence with Markson, which began with an impassioned fan letter in 2003 and ended with his death in 2010. The letters trace the growth of a friendship between two writers at very different stages; in them we see Markson grapple, humorously, with the indignities of old age and poor health, and reminisce about his early days as a key literary figure in the Greenwich Village scene of the 1950s and ’60s. At the same time, he celebrates Sims’ marriage and the first milestones of her career as a poet.

powerHouse Books • TR • 978-1-57687-700-5 • 156 pp. • $12.95/$12.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

SELECTED LETTERS OF WILLIAM STYRON by William Styron Edited by Rose Styron with R. Blakeslee Gilpin

his volume takes readers on an American journey, from the era of FDR to that of George W. Bush, through the trenchant observations of one of the country’s greatest writers. Not only do readers get a glimpse at Styron’s correspondence with and commentary about the people and events that made the past century such a momentous and transformative time, but they also encounter the writer’s private meditations on the art of writing.

“These letters open a window into the free workings of a brilliant mind. Composed with humor and profundity, the letters reveal the soul of a great writer.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6806-7 • 704 pp. • $40.00/$46.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $20.00 For more books by William Styron, go to: http://tinyurl.com/jwhosnb

KURT VONNEGUT: LETTERS by Kurt Vonnegut Edited and with an Introduction by Dan Wakefield

his compilation of personal correspondence written over a 60-year period has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction. Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter Vonnegut wrote upon being freed from a German POW camp that became the seed of Slaughterhouse-Five; letters of protest to school boards that had tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to friends and family; and letters to contemporaries like Norman Mailer, Gail Godwin, Gunter Grass, and Bernard Malamud. “A moving and revelatory portrait of the famed author. . . . Fans will find the collection as spellbinding as Vonnegut’s best novels, and casual readers will discover letters as splendid in their own way as those of Keats.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Dial Press Trade Paperback • TR • 978-0-385-34376-3 • 480 pp. • $20.00/$23.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $10.00 For more books by Kurt Vonnegut, go to: http://tinyurl.com/ohyswh3

THE STORYTELLERS: NARRATIVES IN INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART Edited by Selena Wendt

catalogue inspired by the tradition of Latin American literature and authors such as Jorge Amado, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, and Gabriel García Márquez. This book explores the unique storytelling tradition that characterizes Latin American literature and has influenced many contemporary artists around the world.

Skira • TR • 978-88-572-1480-1 • 128 pp. • $35.00/$35.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $17.50

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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH

by Rebecca Mead

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice

n New Yorker staff writer Rebecca Mead’s informative work of biography, reporting, and memoir, she discusses her personal passion for George Eliot’s Middlemarch and shows how repeated readings (begun when she was a child in an English coastal village) have given her deeper insight into her life while actively shaping it as well. She also considers the many lives the novel itself has gone through, explaining how Eliot’s ideas of marriage, parenthood, the complexity of love, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure have been considered and interpreted, and brings them into the present day. “My Life in Middlemarch is a poignant testimony to the abiding power of fiction.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

Crown • HC • 978-0-307-98476-0 • 304 pp. $25.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $12.50 DO NOT ORDER PAPERBACK BEFORE 1/27/2015

Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-307-98477-7 256 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

“In this deeply satisfying hybrid work of literary criticism, biography, and memoir, New Yorker staff writer Mead brings to vivid life the profound engagement that she and all devoted readers experience with a favorite novel over a lifetime. . . . Passionate readers, even those new to Middlemarch, will relish this book.” —Publishers Weekly (starred) “Rebecca Mead has written a singular and inventive tale about her favorite book, and how it has changed—and changed her—over many years of reading and re-reading. Anyone who has ever loved the characters in a novel as dearly as we love our own families will recognize the passion, the devotion, the intimacy, and the joy of returning again and again to a revered classic. Both a memoir and a biography, both an homage and a homecoming, My Life in Middlemarch is a perfectly composed offering of literary love and self-observation. I adored it, and it will forever live on my bookshelf next to my own precious paperbacks of George Eliot.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things

REBECCA MEAD is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding. She lives in Brooklyn.

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A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

I FIRST READ MIDDLEMARCH, which many critics consider the greatest novel in the English language, when I was seventeen. The novel tells the interweaving stories of several residents of a provincial town in the Midlands; but to describe it this way is a bit like describing Everest as a really tall, ice-covered mountain. In its psychological acuity and generosity of spirit, in the deftness of its humor and immensity of its intelligence, Middlemarch offers everything we go to books for. It’s awesome, in every sense of the word. I’ve gone back to it every five years or so since, and every time I see something new. When I was an anxious, aspiring teenager, it seemed to be all about the anxieties and aspirations of youth. In my twenties, stumbling through misbegotten love affairs, it seemed to be about the meaning of love and marriage. In my thirties, establishing my career as a writer, the novel seemed to offer cautionary insight into how one might or might not achieve one’s ambitions. By the time I was forty, conscious of the doors of youth closing behind me, the book seemed to offer a melancholy insight into the resignations of middle age. So revisiting Middlemarch by writing a book about it was also a way of reckoning with the life I had lived so far: of looking at the choices I had made, the paths I had taken, and considering the alternative lives I had left unlived. For it, I read the diaries and letters of George Eliot, the book’s author, who was born Mary Ann Evans in 1819; I visited the places she had lived, and I read about the lives of people who had been close to her. Having started out as the humble daughter of a provincial land agent, Eliot transformed herself into one of the dominant intellectual forces of her era—first as an editor and critic for the most important London periodicals, and only later as a novelist. “One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy,” she wrote to a friend when she was just twenty-four. She did find happiness: in love found late, and in a vocation discovered in maturity. “I feel very full of thankfulness for all the creatures I have got to love, all the beautiful and great things that are given to me to know, and I feel, too, much younger and more hopeful, as if a great deal of life and work were still before me,” Eliot wrote in 1861, when she was forty-one. Her greatest work was still before her: Middlemarch was ten years in the future. I hope that I have written a book that can be read by people who haven’t read Middlemarch—though I also hope that my book will make those readers want to discover George Eliot’s masterpiece for themselves. I wanted to write a book that would speak to any passionate reader. Often, reading is thought of as escapism: we talk of “getting lost” in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and as I wrote My Life in Middlemarch I found that the novel spoke to me differently than it had during any of my earlier readings. Going back to Middlemarch gave me the chance to look at where I was in my life, and to ask myself how I had got there—and to think, with a renewed sense of hopefulness, about where I might go next. —Rebecca Mead

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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

LITTLE FAILURE: A MEMOIR

by Gary Shteyngart

A New York Times Notable Book A Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Book of the Year Selected for Common Reading at Brooklyn College

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by BookPage, The Economist, The Guardian (UK), NPR, Publishers Weekly, The Telegraph (UK), and The Washington Post

fter three novels, Gary Shteyngart turns to memoir in a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life so far. Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with humor and insight. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels both epic and intimate, and distinctly his own. Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart’s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world. “Should become a classic of the immigrant narrative genre.” Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR 978-0-8129-8249-7 • 384 pp. $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

—The Miami Herald “Surely some enterprising scholar is already gnawing at the question of why two of the brilliant outliers of American writing were Russian immigrants. One, of course, was the great Vladimir Nabokov. The other is the youngish Shteyngart. They both have the qualities of sly humor, secret griefs.” —San Francisco Chronicle “By turns naive and cynical, hyper-intelligent and comically immature, empathetic on the page and unfeeling off it, his self-portrait of a Soviet Jew transplanted aged seven from Leningrad to Eighties America is a masterpiece of comic deprecation.” —The Telegraph (UK)

For more books by Gary Shteyngart, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mqr6opo GARY SHTEYNGART was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. He is the author of the novels Super Sad True Love Story, which won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and was selected as one of the best books of the year by more than forty news journals and magazines around the world; Absurdistan, which was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and Time magazine; and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Travel + Leisure, Esquire, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications and has been translated into twenty-six languages.

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BOOK EXCERPT from Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

1. THE CHURCH AND THE HELICOPTER A YEAR AFTER graduating college, I worked downtown in the immense shadows of the World Trade Center, and as part of my freewheeling, four-hour daily lunch break I would eat and drink my way past these two giants, up Broadway, down Fulton Street and over to the Strand Annex bookstore. In 1996, people still read books and the city could support an extra branch of the legendary Strand in the financial district, which is to say that stockbrokers, secretaries, government functionaries—everybody back then was expected to have some kind of inner life. In the previous year I had tried being a paralegal for a civil rights law firm but that did not work out well. The paralegaling involved a lot of detail, way more detail than a nervous young man with a ponytail, a small substance abuse problem, and a hemp pin on his cardboard tie could handle. This was as close as I would ever come to fulfilling my parents’ dreams of becoming a lawyer. Like most Soviet Jews, like most immigrants from communist nations, my parents were deeply conservative and they never thought much of the four years I had spent at my liberal alma mater, Oberlin College, studying Marxist politics and book-writing. On his first visit to Oberlin my father stood on a giant vagina painted in the middle of the quad by the campus Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual organization, oblivious to the rising tide of hissing and camp around him, as he enumerated to me the differences between laser jet and ink jet printers, specifically the price points of the cartridges. If I’m not mistaken, he thought he was standing on a peach. I graduated summa cum laude and this improved my profile with Mama and Papa, but when I spoke to them it was understood that I was still a disappointment. Because I was often sick and runny-nosed as a child (and as an adult) my father called me soplyak, or “Snotty.” My mother was developing an interesting fusion of English and Russian and, all by herself, had worked out the term failurchka, or Little Failure. That term made it from her lips into the overblown manuscript of a novel I was typing up in my spare time, one whose opening chapter was about to be rejected by the important writing program at the University of Iowa, letting me know that my parents weren’t the only ones to think that I was nothing. Realizing that I was never going to amount to much, my mother, working her connections as only a Soviet Jewish mama can, got me a job as a “staff writer” at an immigrant resettlement agency downtown, which involved maybe thirty minutes of work per year, mostly proofing brochures teaching newly arrived Russians the wonders of deodorant, the dangers of AIDS, and the subtle satisfaction of not getting totally drunk at some American party. Excerpted from Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart. Copyright 2013 by Gary Shteyngart. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

THE DEATH OF SANTINI THE STORY OF A FATHER AND HIS SON

by Pat Conroy

hile the publication of The Great Santini brought Conroy much attention, the public rift it caused with his father generated more attention still. But, as Conroy chronicles in this intimate memoir, even the oldest of wounds can heal. In the final years of his life, quite unexpectedly, Santini defended his son’s honor. “Despite the inherently bleak nature of so much of this material, Conroy has fashioned a memoir that is vital, large-hearted and often raucously funny. The result is an act of hard-won forgiveness, a deeply considered meditation on the impossibly complex nature of families and a valuable contribution to the literature of fathers and sons.” —The Washington Post DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 12/2/2014

Dial Press Trade Paperback • TR • 978-0-3853-4352-7 • 384 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Pat Conroy, go to: http://tinyurl.com/o3jsuzw

NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL A YOUNG WOMAN TELLS YOU WHAT SHE’S “LEARNED”

by Lena Dunham

his poignant and frank collection of personal essays confirms Lena Dunham— the acclaimed creator, producer, and star of HBO’s Girls—as one of the brightest and most original writers working today.

“A genuine artist, and a disturber of the order.” —The Atlantic Random House • HC • 978-0-8129-9499-5 • 288 pp. • $28.00 /NCR • Exam copy $14.00

ROMANTIC OUTLAWS: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIVES OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND HER DAUGHTER MARY SHELLEY

by Charlotte Gordon

ary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous separate biographies, yet no author has ever examined their lives in tandem. Perhaps this is because the women never knew each other—Wollstonecraft died of infection a week after giving birth to her daughter. Nevertheless their lives were so closely intertwined, it seems impossible to consider one without the other: both became famous writers; both fell in love with brilliant but impossible authors; both were single mothers and had children out of wedlock (a shocking and self-destructive act in their day); and both played important roles in the Romantic era during which they lived. DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 2/10/15

Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6842-5 • 672 pp. • $30.00/$35.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00

THE FOOTLOOSE AMERICAN FOLLOWING THE HUNTER S. THOMPSON TRAIL ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA

by Brian Kevin

n 1963, Hunter S. Thompson completed a year-long journey across South America. In The Footloose American, award-winning travel writer Brian Kevin traverses the continent with Thompson’s ghost as his guide and offers a ground-level exploration of twenty-firstcentury South American culture, politics, and ecology. By contrasting the author’s own transformative experiences with those that Thompson described, The Footloose American is both a personal journey and a thought-provoking study of culture and place.

Broadway Books • TR • 978-0-7704-3637-7 • 384 pp. • $14.99/$17.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN BIOGRAPHYLITERATURE & MEMOIR

VIDAL VS. MAILER by Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and Carole Mallory Introduction by Dick Cavett

orman Mailer and Gore Vidal engaged in a vicious and public feud that went on for decades. The feud, from a time when writers really mattered in American public life, is the stuff of literary legend, and Vidal vs. Mailer collects the exchanges, transcripts, and interviews that document the historic rivalry. DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 12/6/2016

Melville House • TR • 978-1-61219-266-6 • 176 pp. • $15.95/$15.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

MORAL AGENTS: EIGHT TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN WRITERS by Edward Mendelson

ne of contemporary America’s leading critics and scholars offers a provocative reassessment of the lives and work of eight influential twentieth-century American writers: Lionel Trilling, Dwight Macdonald, W.H. Auden, William Maxwell, Saul Bellow, Alfred Kazin, Norman Mailer, and Frank O’Hara. Drawing on newly published letters and diaries, Edward Mendelson explores the responses of these writers, very public figures all, to major historical events—among them the rise and fall of fascism, the Cold War, the struggles for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, and the sexual revolution—and shows how intensely personal concerns, relating to childhood, religion, status, sex, and money, largely shaped their views. DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 2/24/2015.

New York Review Books • HC • 978-1-59017-776-1 • 144 pp. • $20.00/$24.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $10.00 For more books by Edward Mendelson, go to: http://tinyurl.com/pu3wjfu

THE BLACK COUNT GLORY, REVOLUTION, BETRAYAL, AND THE REAL COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO

by Tom Reiss

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

eneral Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar— because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature in such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

“The Black Count is a dazzling achievement. I learned something new virtually on every page. No one who reads this magnificent biography will be able to read The Count of Monte Cristo or any history of slavery in the New World in the same way again.” —Henry Louis Gates Jr., Director of The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University Broadway: TR • 978-0-307-38247-4 • 432 pp. • $16.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Tom Reiss, go to: http://tinyurl.com/py7cuno

JOSEPH ANTON: A MEMOIR by Salman Rushdie

ushdie was “sentenced to death” by the Ayatollah Khomeini for writing The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran.” Moving from house to house, with an armed police protection team, he was asked to choose an alias that the police could use to refer to him. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names, and then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. In this memoir, Rushdie tells the story of how he regained his freedom.

“A harrowing, deeply felt and revealing document: an autobiographical mirror of the big, philosophical preoccupations that have animated Mr. Rushdie’s work throughout his career.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8260-2 • 656 pp. • $18.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Salman Rushdie, go to: http://tinyurl.com/qdjaj2y

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BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR / SHORT STORIES

WHAT POETS ARE LIKE: UP AND DOWN WITH THE WRITING LIFE by Gary Soto

ary Soto is a widely published author of children’s and young adult fiction, and he is an acclaimed poet—often referred to as one of the nation’s first Chicano poets. In some 60 short episodes, this book captures moments of a writer’s inner and public life: close moments with friends and strangers; occasional reminders of a poet’s generally low place in the cultural hierarchy; time spent with cats; and the curious work of writing.

“Funny, heartfelt, instructive and erudite while remaining, in a storyteller’s way, wryly entertaining.” —Oscar Hijuelos, author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Sasquatch Books • HC • 978-1-57061-874-1 • 208 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $7.50 For more books by Gary Soto, go to: http://tinyurl.com/oowbf79

SON OF A GUN: A MEMOIR by Justin St. Germain

ven after Debbie St. Germain’s murder is “solved,” closure is missing for her son Justin. Distancing himself from the legendary ghost town of his childhood, Justin makes another life a world away in San Francisco. Ultimately, he is pulled back to the desert landscape of his childhood, where he confronts people from his past and delves into the police records in an attempt to make sense of his mother’s legacy. All the while, he struggles to be the kind of man she always wanted him to be. “From an incident of heartbreaking violence, Justin St. Germain has created a clear-eyed and deeply moving meditation on family, geography, and memory, and how difficult it is to find our place in any of them.”—Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8074-5 • 272 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

SHORT STORIES

THE COMPLETE STORIES by Truman Capote

his is the first volume to assemble all of Capote’s short fiction. From the Gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of Capote’s oeuvre are captured in this compendium. The Complete Stories of Truman Capote restores its author to a place not only above mere celebrity, but at the highest levels of American letters.

“To best experience Capote the stylist, one must go back to his short fiction. . . . One experiences as strongly as ever his gift for concrete abstraction and his spectacular observancy.” —The New Yorker Modern Library • HC • 978-0-8129-9437-7 • 352 pp. • $23.00/$26.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.50 For more books by Truman Capote, go to: http://tinyurl.com/qbasof8

STAY AWAKE: STORIES by Dan Chaon

ational Book Award winner Dan Chaon returns to short stories with suspenseful tales of characters who wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection— and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations.

“Superbly disquieting.” —The New York Times Book Review Ballantine Books • TR • 978-0-345-53038-7 • 304 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Dan Chaon, go to: http://tinyurl.com/k7br87a

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AMERICAN SHORT LITERATURE STORIES

THE ROY STORIES by Barry Gifford

ifford brings his signature style to a collection of tales following the character of Roy, who has made appearances in a number of Gifford’s previous story collections. Roy lives a mystical kind of life, skinning crocodiles in Southern Florida at age nine in the 1940s and playing in the back alleys of Chicago in the 1950s.

“Gifford, a master of the short story and nasty vignette, can sum up in a few words the cruelty, horror, and crushing banality that shape an entire life.” —The New York Times Book Review Seven Stories Press • TR • 978-1-60980-497-8 • 432 pp. • $16.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Barry Gifford, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mmslj73

THIS IS PARADISE: STORIES by Kristiana Kahakauwila

n her debut collection, Kahakauwila travels the islands of Hawai’i, exploring the deep tensions between local and tourist, tradition and expectation, façade and authentic self. This Is Paradise provides a portrait of life as it’s truly being lived on Maui, Oahu, Kaua’i, and the Big Island.

“Vividly imagined, beautifully written, at times almost unbearably suspenseful—the stories in Kristiana Kahakauwila’s debut collection, This Is Paradise, are boldly inventive in their exploration of the tenuous nature of human relations. These are poignant stories of ‘paradise’—Hawai’i—with all that ‘paradise’ entails of the transience of sensuous beauty.” —Joyce Carol Oates Hogarth • TR • 978-0-7704-3625-4 • 240 pp. • $16.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF LOUIS L’AMOUR, VOLUME 1: FRONTIER STORIES by Louis L’Amour

hile all of Louis L’Amour’s 89 novels are still in print, testifying to his recognition as an important novelist, a lesser-known fact is that L’Amour is also one of the all-time bestselling authors of short fiction. Compared by The Wall Street Journal to Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson, L’Amour’s Collected Short Stories are now presented for the first time in paperback, featuring 35 action-packed Frontier Stories. It kicks off a series of 9 paperbacks, including a 2-part volume of adventure stories and a 2-part volume of crime stories. Bantam • TR • 978-0-553-39226-5 • 544 pp. • $6.99/$7.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Louis L’Amour, go to: http://tinyurl.com/k6hap57

GET IN TROUBLE: STORIES by Kelly Link

his is the celebrated short story writer’s first new collection in nearly a decade. Hailed by Michael Chabon as “the most darkly playful voice in American fiction” and by Neil Gaiman as “a national treasure,” Link has won a following for her ability, with each new short story, to take readers deeply into a fictional universe. But as fantastical as her stories can be, they are always grounded by humor and a generosity of feeling for the frailty—and the hidden strengths—of human beings. The 8 examples in this collection are no exception. “Richly imagined, intellectually teasing: these are not so much small fictions as windows on to entire worlds. A brilliant, giddying read.” —Sarah Waters DO NOT ORDER BEFORE 2/3/15

Random House • HC • 978-0-8041-7968-3 • 352 pp. • $25.00/$29.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

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SHORT STORIES

MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS: STORIES by Kelly Link Illustrated by Shelley Jackson

amed “Best of the Decade” by Salon, The Village Voice, and The Onion, Link’s original stories riff on haunted convenience stores, husbands and wives, rabbits, zombies, weekly apocalyptic poker parties, witches, and cannons.

“Link’s stories . . . play in a place few writers go, a netherworld between literature and fantasy, Alice Munro and J. K. Rowling, and Link finds truths there that most authors wouldn’t dare touch.” —Lev Grossman, Time Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8651-8 • 352 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THUNDERSTRUCK & OTHER STORIES by Elizabeth McCracken

t the center of the National Book Award finalist’s stories, one often finds a jagged space left by loss: a neighborhood is haunted by a child’s ghost; library staff grapple with the mystery of a patron’s death; a corner-store manager obsesses over a missing woman; a son absconds forever with his parents’ savings. But McCracken’s prose also captures all that is exquisite, strange, and heartbreaking about our world in a way that has won her rare acclaim. “Marvelously quirky, ironic, but, most of all, poignant. . . . McCracken paints [her characters] with such rich detail that it feels as if we must know them.” —Booklist The Dial Press Trade Paperback • HC • 978-0-385-33577-5 • 240 pp. • $26.00/$31.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 For more books by Elizabeth McCracken, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mezbypv

MUNDO CRUEL: STORIES by Luis Negrón Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine

uis Negrón’s debut collection reveals the intimate world of a small community in Puerto Rico joined together by its transgressive sexuality. The writing straddles the shifting line between storytelling and satire, exploring the sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking nature of survival in a decidedly cruel world. “Slender but never slight, and often extremely funny, the nine stories in this debut collection offer insight into both gay life in Puerto Rico and the human condition in general . . . the reader should be left both completely satisfied and wanting more.” —Publishers Weekly

Seven Stories Press • TR • 978-1-60980-418-3 • 96 pp. • $13.95/$13.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

THE IRON BRIDGE: SHORT STORIES OF 20TH CENTURY DICTATORS AS TEENAGERS by Anton Piatigorsky

iatigorsky breathes fictionalized life into the adolescents who would grow up to become brutal dictators. We discover a teenaged Mao Tse-Tung refusing an arranged marriage; Idi Amin cooking for the British Army; Stalin living in a seminary; and a melodramatic young Adolf Hitler dreaming of vast architectural achievements. Piatigorsky explores moments that are vague incidents in the biographies of these men and others, expanding mere footnotes into entire realities.

“I am bedazzled by the creative imagination of the author whose compelling portraits convincingly and vividly fill in the relative void in the backgrounds of these authors of dark chapters in 20th century history.”—Jerrold Post, Director of the Political Psychology Program, George Washington University, author of Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World Steerforth • TR • 978-1-58642-218-9 • 272 pp. • $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN SHORT LITERATURE STORIES

THE KISSING LIST: STORIES by Stephanie Reents

ylvie moves to New York to begin a life full of possibility, but each exciting life she envisions is inevitably shadowed with potential disappointment: the stultifying temp job, the disastrous first date, the surprising and heartbreaking loss of friends, lovers, and roommates. In a modern world that is increasingly unforgiving, Sylvie and the friends she meets test how far they will go to carve out unique and brilliant adult lives for themselves in this fresh and smart debut story collection.

“These stories are often funny, but there’s a satisfying dark edge. . . . Reents weaves the book’s stories together with humor, grief, and slender prose.” —The New York Times Book Review Hogarth • TR • 978-0-307-95183-0 • 240 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

TENTH OF DECEMBER: STORIES by George Saunders Selected for Common Reading at Colgate University • National Book Award Finalist Named “One of the Ten Best Books of the Year” by The New York Times Book Review Named “One of The Best Books of The Year” by The New York Times Magazine; NPR; and Kirkus Reviews • Winner of the Folio Prize

finalist for the National Book Award, Tenth of December is the bestselling and critically acclaimed story collection from MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient George Saunders. Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience, taking on the big questions and exploring the fault lines of our morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human. Includes an extended conversation with David Sedaris. Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8425-5 • 288 pp. • $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by George Saunders, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mo8k5cv

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ENEMY: FICTION by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize

n his first short story collection, Whiting Writers’ Award winner Sayrafiezadeh conjures up a nameless American city and its unmoored denizens: a call-center employee jealous of the attention lavished on a co-worker newly returned from a foreign war; a history teacher dealing with a classroom of maliciously indifferent students; a grocery store janitor caught up in a romantic relationship with a kleptomaniac customer.

“An arresting fiction debut . . . With insightful humor and a keen eye for offbeat details, Sayrafiezadeh, entertaining and political without being heavy-handed, is a force to be reckoned with.” —Booklist Dial Press Trade Paperback • HC • 978-0-8129-9358-5 • 240 pp. • $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 For more books by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, go to: http://tinyurl.com/p2rxnkp

YOU’LL ENJOY IT WHEN YOU GET THERE

THE SELECTED STORIES OF ELIZABETH TAYLOR

by Elizabeth Taylor Stories Selected and with an Introduction by Margaret Drabble

riting about topics like the undercurrents beneath the apparent calm of respectable family life, human loneliness, and dislocation, Taylor's stories of alienation and impossible desire take place not in distant climes but right at home.

“There is a deceptive smoothness in her tone, or tone of voice, as in that of Evelyn Waugh; not a far-fetched comparison, for in the work of both writers the funny and the appalling lie side by side in close amity.” —Kingsley Amis NYRB Classics • TR • 978-1-59017-727-3 • 400 pp. • $16.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Elizabeth Taylor, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mlwjbhw

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LITERARY CRITICISM

DISTANT READING

by Franco Moretti

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

ow does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here, Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, considers the theoretical influences on his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions. From the evolutionary model of “Modern European Literature,” through the geo-cultural insights of “Conjectures of World Literature” and “Planet Hollywood,” to the quantitative findings of “Style, Inc.” and the abstract patterns of “Network Theory, Plot Analysis,” the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of “distant reading,” that has come to define—well beyond the wildest expectations of its author—a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.

Verso • TR • 978-1-78168-084-1 • 224 pp. $29.95/$34.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00

“It’s a rare literary critic who attracts so much public attention, and there’s a good reason: few are as hell bent on rethinking the way we talk about literature.” —Times Literary Supplement

Also by Franco Moretti:

THE BOURGEOIS: BETWEEN HISTORY AND LITERATURE

rom the “working master” of the opening chapter, through the seriousness of nineteenth-century novels, the conservative hegemony of Victorian Britain, the “national malformations” of the Southern and Eastern periphery, and the radical self-critique of Ibsen’s twelve-play cycle, the book charts the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and for its current irrelevance.

“The great iconoclast of literary criticism.” —John Sutherland, The Guardian Verso • TR • 978-1-78168-304-0 • 224pp. • $19.95/$23.95 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Franco Moretti, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mxv69bb FRANCO MORETTI teaches literature at Stanford, where he is the director of the Literary Lab. He is the author of Signs Taken for Wonders, The Way of the World and Modern Epic, Atlas of the European Novel 1800–1900, and Graphs, Maps, and Trees, as well as chief editor of The Novel.

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BOOK EXCERPT from Distant Reading by Franco Moretti

DISTANT READING WRITING about comparative social history, Marc Bloch once coined a lovely

‘slogan’, as he himself called it: ‘years of analysis for a day of synthesis’; and if you read Braudel or Wallerstein you immediately see what Bloch had in mind. The text which is strictly Wallerstein’s, his ‘day of synthesis’, occupies one-third of a page, one-quarter, maybe half; the rest are quotations (1,400, in the first volume of The Modern World-System). Years of analysis; other people’s analysis, which Wallerstein’s page synthesizes into a system. Now, if we take this model seriously, the study of world literature will somehow have to reproduce this ‘page’—which is to say: this relationship between analysis and synthesis—for the literary field. But in that case, literary history will quickly become very different from what it is now: it will become ‘second hand’: a patchwork of other people’s research, without a single direct textual reading. Still ambitious, and actually even more so than before (world literature!); but the ambition is now directly proportional to the distance from the text: the more ambitious the project, the greater must the distance be. The United States is the country of close reading, so I don’t expect this idea to be particularly popular. But the trouble with close reading (in all of its incarnations, from the new criticism to deconstruction) is that it necessarily depends on an extremely small canon. This may have become an unconscious and invisible premise by now, but it is an iron one nonetheless: you invest so much in individual texts only if you think that very few of them really matter. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. And if you want to look beyond the canon (and of course, world literature will do so: it would be absurd if it didn’t!), close reading will not do it. It’s not designed to do it, it’s designed to do the opposite. At bottom, it’s a theological exercise—very solemn treatment of very few texts taken very seriously—whereas what we really need is a little pact with the devil: we know how to read texts, now let’s learn how not to read them. Distant reading: where distance, let me repeat it, is a condition of knowledge: it allows you to focus on units that are much smaller or much larger than the text: devices, themes, tropes—or genres and systems. And if, between the very small and the very large, the text itself disappears, well, it is one of those cases when one can justifiably say, less is more. If we want to understand the system in its entirety, we must accept losing something. We always pay a price for theoretical knowledge: reality is infinitely rich; concepts are abstract, are poor. But it’s precisely this ‘poverty’ that makes it possible to handle them, and therefore to know. This is why less is actually more. Excerpted from Distant Reading by Franco Moretti. Copyright © 2013 by Franco Moretti. Excerpted by permission of Verso Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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POETRY

JIMMY’S BLUES AND OTHER POEMS

by James Baldwin Introduction by Nikky Finney

Beacon Press • TR • 978-0-8070-8486-1 120 pp. • $16.00/$18.00 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

Also by James Baldwin:

THE LAST INTERVIEW CONTRIBUTION BY QUINCY TROUPE

Melville House • TR 978-1-61219-400-4 192 pp. • $15.95/$15.95 Can. Exam Copy: $3.00

uring his lifetime, James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, many of which were published to widespread praise. Baldwin’s novels and essays brought him respect as a public intellectual and admiration as a writer. However, Baldwin’s earliest writing was in poetic form, and some argue that even Baldwin considered himself a poet first and foremost. One can see this inclination in the poetic rhythms of his prose. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy’s Blues, published only a few short years before his death in 1987, never attracted as much attention as his novels and nonfiction did and has been unavailable for many years. This new collection celebrates Baldwin the poet. Including the 19 poems from Jimmy’s Blues, the collection also features his poems from a limited-edition art book called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed. Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, class, poverty, and sexual orientation, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays. “I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin’s prose. It liberated me as a writer. These poems overwhelm without competing with his prose and I am grateful to have this collection.” —Toni Morrison “James Baldwin was born for truth. It called upon him to tell it on the mountains, to preach it in Harlem, to sing it on the Left Bank in Paris. His honesty and courage would lead him to see truth and to write truth in poetry, drama, fiction, and essay. He was a giant.” —Maya Angelou

For more books by James Baldwin, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kdw7v2h

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BOOK EXCERPT from the Introduction by Nikky Finney to Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin

PLAYING BY EAR, PRAYING FOR RAIN: THE POETRY OF JAMES BALDWIN

BALDWIN was never afraid to say it. He made me less afraid to say it too.

The air of the Republic was already rich with him when I got here. James Arthur Baldwin, the most salient, sublime, and consequential American writer of the twentieth century, was in the midst of publishing his resolute and prophetic essays and novels: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), The Amen Corner (1954), Notes of a Native Son (1955), and Giovanni’s Room (1956). I arrived on planet earth in the middle of his personal and relentless assault on white supremacy and his brilliant, succinct understanding of world and American history. In every direction I turned, my ears filled a little more with what he always had to say. His words, his spirit, mattered to me. Black, gay, bejeweled, eyes like orbs searching, dancing, calling a spade a spade, in magazines and on the black-and-white TV of my youth. Baldwin, deep in thought and pulling drags from his companion cigarettes, looking his and our danger in the face and never backing down. My worldview was set in motion by this big, bold heart who understood that he had to leave his America in order to be. Baldwin was dangerous to everybody who had anything to hide. Baldwin was also the priceless inheritance to anybody looking for manumission from who they didn’t want or have to be. Gracious and tender, a man who had no idea or concept of his place, who nurtured conversation with Black Panthers and the white literati all in the same afternoon. So powerful and controversial was his name that one minute it was there on the speaker’s list for the great August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and then, poof, it was off. The country might have been ready to march for things they believed all God’s children should have in this life, but there were people, richly mis-educated by the Republic, who were not ready for James Baldwin to bring truth in those searing ways he always brought truth to the multitudes. The eldest of nine, a beloved son of Harlem, his irreverent pride and trust in his own mind, his soul (privately and sometimes publicly warring), all of who he was and believed himself to be, was exposed in his first person, unlimited voice, not for sale, but vulnerable to the Republic. Baldwin’s proud sexuality, and his unwillingness to censor his understanding that sex was a foundational part of this life even in the puritanical Republic and therefore should be written, unclothed, not whispered about, not roped off in some back room, informed all of his work, but especially his poetry. Uninviting Baldwin was often the excuse for the whitewashing of his urgent and necessary brilliance from both the conservative Black community and from whites who had never heard such a dark genius display such rich and sensory antagonism for them. Into the microphone of the world Baldwin leaned—never afraid to say it. Only once did I see James Baldwin live and in warm, brilliant person; it was 1984, a packed house at the University of California at Berkeley. I was thirty-seven, he was sixty, and we would never meet. None of us there that night, standing shoulder to shoulder, pushed to the edge of our seats, knew that this was our last embrace with him, that we would only have him walking among us for three more years. I remember the timbre of his voice. Steadfast. Smoky. Serene. His words fell on us like a good rain. A replenishing we badly needed. All of us standing, sitting, spread out before this wise, sharp-witted, all-seeing man. Excerpted from Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin. Copyright © 2014 by James Baldwin. Excerpted by permission of Beacon Press, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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POETRY

FOR ALL OF US, ONE TODAY: AN INAUGURAL POET’S JOURNEY by Richard Blanco

or All of Us, One Today is a poetic story anchored by Blanco’s experiences as the inaugural poet in 2013 and beyond. He shares his journey as a Latino immigrant and openly gay man discovering a new, emotional understanding of what it means to be an American. He tells the story of the call from the White House committee and reveals the inspiration and challenges behind the creation of the inaugural poem, as well as two other poems commissioned for the occasion. All three are published here for the first time ever, alongside translations of all three of those poems into his native Spanish.

Beacon Press • TR • 978-0-8070-3380-7 • 120 pp. • $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

AIMLESS LOVE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Billy Collins

imless Love is the first volume of new and selected poetry in twelve years from the twotime Poet Laureate. Containing more than 50 new poems and a generous gathering from his collections of the past decade, the book showcases the best from a writer the Wall Street Journal calls “America’s favorite poet.” “Collins, the maestro of the running-brook line and the clever pivot, celebrates the resonance and absurdity of what might be called the poet’s attention-surfeit disorder. . . . But Collins’s droll wit is often a diversionary tactic, so that when he strikes you with the hard edge of his darker visions, you reel.” —Booklist Random House • TR • 978-0-8129-8267-1 • 288 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Billy Collins, go to: http://tinyurl.com/llwuntu

SEVEN AMERICAN DEATHS AND DISASTERS by Kenneth Goldsmith

oldsmith transcribes historic radio and television reports of national tragedies as they unfurl, assembling word collages that reveal an extraordinarily rich linguistic panorama of passionate description. Taking its title from the series of Andy Warhol paintings by the same name, Goldsmith recasts the mundane as the iconic, creating a series of prose poems that encapsulate seven pivotal moments in recent American history: the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and John Lennon assassinations, the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the Columbine shootings, 9/11, and the death of Michael Jackson.

“. . . it’s like nothing he’s done. It knocks the air from your lungs.” —The New York Times powerHouse Books • TR • 978-1-57687-636-7 • 176 pp. • $19.95/$23.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

LOVE SONNETS AND ELEGIES by Louise Labé Translated with an Afterword by Richard Sieburth Preface by Karin Lessing

abé, one of the most original poets of the French Renaissance, published her complete Works around the age of 30 and then disappeared from history. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, her incandescent love sonnets were later translated into German by Rilke, and appear here in a new English version by award-winning translator Richard Sieburth.

“Labé knew well the love poetry of Sappho, Propertius, Ovid, and Petrarch, but she herself joined the ranks of these great Western tossers and turners by breaking with convention. Across five centuries, thanks to Richard Sieburth’s beautiful translations, her urgent voice, her embodied images, and her rapid, somehow breathless, lines come to us as if they were spoken yesterday.” —Susan Stewart NYRB Poets • TR • 978-1-59017-731-0 • 144 pp. • $12.95/$15.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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AMERICAN LITERATURE POETRY

PARADISE REGAINED, SAMSON AGONISTES, AND THE COMPLETE SHORTER POEMS by John Milton Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon

erived from the Modern Library’s The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this new volume, extensively revised and updated by its editors, contains Milton’s two late masterpieces, the brief epic Paradise Regained and the tragic drama Samson Agonistes. The volume also contains Milton’s complete shorter poems and the author’s 24 influential sonnets.

Modern Library • TR • 978-0-8129-8371-5 • 448 pp. • $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by John Milton, go to: http://tinyurl.com/n2k23v9

JACKLEG OPERA: COLLECTED POEMS, 1990 TO 2013 by BJ Ward

ard has brought together in one volume the fruits of his labor spanning over 20 years. Winner of the 2014 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, this rich collection of thoughtful and often ironic reflections reveals both the reverence and irreverence of human experience. Jackleg Opera contains material from Ward’s three previous books, as well as 35 new poems that are reminiscent of the clear simple style of Poet Laureate Billy Collins. “Ward blends poignancy and humor with downright good story telling, and takes his place among the bright up-and-coming voices of his generation.” —Stephen Dunn, poet and author of Different Hours, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry North Atlantic Books • TR • 978-1-58394-677-0 • 272 pp. • $22.95/$25.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.50

LINES IN LONG ARRAY: A CIVIL WAR COMMEMORATION: POEMS AND PHOTOGRAPHS, PAST AND PRESENT

Edited by David C. Ward and Frank H. Goodyear III

ines in Long Array demonstrates the enduring impact of the Civil War on American culture by presenting poems and photographs from the past and present, including twelve new poems by contemporary poets created especially for this volume and includes expert commentary to guide readers through historical contexts and verbal details, as well as the larger political and philosophical implications. Includes previously unpublished poetry by Jorie Graham, John Koethe, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tracy K. Smith, among others. Also includes historic poems by Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and more.

Smithsonian Books • TR • 978-1-58834-397-0 • 136 pp. • $19.95/$22.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

DIARIES OF EXILE by Yannis Ritsos Translated by Edmund Keeley and Karen Emmerich

Winner of a 2014 PEN Literary Award for Best Poetry in Translation

annis Ritsos is a poet whose writing life is entwined with the contemporary history of his homeland. This volume presents a series of three diaries in poetry that Ritsos wrote between 1948 and 1950, during and just after the Greek Civil War, while a political prisoner first on the island of Limnos and then at the infamous camp on Makronisos. Archipelago • TR • 978-1-935744-58-0 • 120pp. • $15.00/$15.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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REFERENCE & LANGUAGE DANCING ON THE HEAD OF A PEN: THE PRACTICE OF A WRITING LIFE by Robert Benson

igging deeply into his own writing habits, failures, and successes, Benson helps readers choose the ideal audience for their work, commit to it, and overcome the hurdles that inevitably confront both aspiring artists and accomplished professionals. The book also includes a discussion on the relationship between spirituality and art. Including wisdom from revered writers past and present, Dancing on the Head of a Pen is a mosaic of inspiration, practical help, and a glimpse into the disciplines that shape one writer’s life.

“A gem. It is wise, witty, and inspiring—a trifecta seldom achieved by a book on the writing life.” —James Scott Bell, author of Plot & Structure WaterBook Press • HC • 978-1-4000-7435-8 • 192 pp. • $14.99/$17.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $7.50 For more books by Robert Benson, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mfoq49m

THE BEST PUNCTUATION BOOK, PERIOD.

JUNE CASAGRANDE

A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE FOR EVERY WRITER, EDITOR, STUDENT, AND BUSINESSPERSON

by June Casagrande

his all-in-one reference from grammar columnist June Casagrande covers the basic rules of punctuation for all styles plus the finer points not addressed anywhere else, offering clear answers to perplexing questions about semicolons, quotation marks, periods, apostrophes, and more. It’s also the only guide that uses icons to show how punctuation rules differ for book, news, academic, and science style.

“Invaluable reference work for professional proofreaders, editors, and writers because it is the only book that presents Chicago, AP, APA, and MLA conventions side by side.” —Amy Einsohn, author of The Copyeditor’s Handbook Ten Speed Press • TR • 978-1-60774-493-1 • 256 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

IT WAS THE BEST OF SENTENCES, IT WAS THE WORST OF SENTENCES

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CRAFTING KILLER SENTENCES

by June Casagrande

his guide goes beyond punctuation or grammatical correctness to focus on constructing effective, “reader-serving” sentences. Only by paying attention to writing’s unit of meaning—the sentence—will writers be able to create memorable prose. Ten Speed Press • TR • 978-1-58008-740-7 • 224 pp. • $14.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

SIN AND SYNTAX: HOW TO CRAFT WICKED GOOD PROSE by Constance Hale

ully revised and updated with challenges and writing prompts in every chapter, Sin and Syntax covers grammar’s ground rules while revealing countless unconventional syntax secrets that both makes for good writing and improves readers’ command of the English language. “Hale has put together a writing/grammar manual that is fresh and fun. The basic rules are here, and they are well explained. . . . Easy to understand and appealing to a broad range of readers, this book is highly recommended.” —Library Journal

Three Rivers Press • TR • 978-0-385-34689-4 • 320 pp. • $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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REFERENCE AMERICAN&LITERATURE LANGUAGE

THANK YOU FOR ARGUING: WHAT ARISTOTLE, LINCOLN, AND HOMER SIMPSON

CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE ART OF PERSUASION by Jay Heinrichs Revised and Updated Edition hank You for Arguing is a master class in the art of persuasion, taught by professors ranging from Bart Simpson to Winston Churchill. The time-tested secrets this book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to action as well as Honest Abe’s shameless trick of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. But it’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an assortment of popular-culture dodges. This expanded and revised edition includes new chapters on leadership, Obama’s oratorical mastery, the pitfalls of apologies—and an “Argument Lab” section to put your new skills to the test.

Three Rivers Press • TR • 978-0-385-34775-4 • 432 pp. • $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Jay Heinrichs, go to: http://tinyurl.com/mady7kh

GOOD PROSE: THE ART OF NONFICTION by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd

idder and Todd pull back the curtain on some great books and great writing, revealing principles and mechanics that form the bedrock of good prose. Character, narration, action, voice, and so much more are interwoven with stories from their own careers. “A gem . . . The finer points of creative nonfiction are molded into an inspiring read that will affect the would-be writer as much as Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird or Stephen King’s On Writing. . . . This is a must read for nonfiction writers.” —Library Journal Random House Trade Paperbacks • TR • 978-0-8129-8215-2 • 224 pp. • $16.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 For more books by Tracy Kidder, go to: http://tinyurl.com/kfsloc2

THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM, Revised and Updated 3rd Edition WHAT NEWSPEOPLE SHOULD KNOW AND THE PUBLIC SHOULD EXPECT

by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel

evised and fully updated to tackle the challenges journalists face in the world of digital media, this third edition contains new material covering the rise of social media, sponsored content, and much more, making it an essential read for journalists, students, and anyone hoping to stay informed in the digital age.

“Of the many books that have been written about reporting the news, this one best captures the shortcomings, subtleties, and possibilities of modern journalism. It deserves to become as indispensable to journalists and journalism students as The Elements of Style.” —Tom Goldstein, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University Three Rivers Press • TR • 978-0-8041-3678-5 • 352 pp. • $15.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

YOUR LIFE IS A BOOK: HOW TO CRAFT & PUBLISH YOUR MEMOIR by Brenda Peterson and Sarah Jane Freymann

n Your Life is a Book, Brenda Peterson, a memoirist, and Sarah Jane Freymann, a literary agent, help writers shape their experiences into cohesive and compelling stories to prepare for publication or to share with others. With helpful tips on developing a story arc, point of view, dialogue, and advice on the publishing process, the authors help students move through the process of self-exploration and personal awareness, using the writing exercises and prompts that have worked for them. ”Unusually affecting and radiant . . . a witty, enrapturing account of a spiritual journey of great relevance to us all.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review) Sasquatch Books • TR • 978-1-57061-930-4 • 272pp. • $18.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

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INDEX Adler, H.G. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Against the Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Against World Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Age of Miracles, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Agee, James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Agostino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Aimless Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 All Days Are Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 All Quiet on the Western Front . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay . . 11 Amis, Kingsley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Ancients and the Postmoderns, The . . . . . . . 56 And Sons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Andalucian Friend, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Andrew’s Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Antinomies Of Realism, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Apter, Emily . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Arrows of Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38, 47 Augustus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Aw, Tash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Baldwin, James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Balestrini, Nanni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Beckett, Chris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Beecroft, Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bell, Matt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Benson, Robert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Best Punctuation Book, Period, The . . . . . . . 76 Bingo’s Run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Black Count, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Black Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Blanco, Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Blas De Robles, Jean-Marie . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Blood and Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Boianjiu, Shani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Bomb Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bomb: The Author Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Bond, Cynthia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Bone Clocks, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Book of Legendary Lands, The . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Bourgeois, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Boyne, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Breakfast at Tiffany’s & Other Voices, Other Rooms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Brief Encounters with the Enemy . . . . . . . . . 69 Brooks, Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Brotherly Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Brunt, Carol Rifka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Burgess Boys, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Calhoun, Kenneth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Capote, Truman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 56, 66 Carpentier, Alejo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Cartwheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Casagrande, June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Chabon, Michael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Chaon, Dan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 China Dolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 City of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Clara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Clement, Jennifer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Cline, Ernest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Cold Song, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Cole, Teju . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, The Volume 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Collins, Billy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Complete Stories, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Congratulations, by the way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Conn, Andrew Lewis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Conroy, Pat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Constellation of Vital Phenomena, A . . . . . . . 8 Cotton Tenants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

God’s Pocket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Going After Cacciato . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Goldsmith, Kenneth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Good Prose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Gordon, Charlotte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Gray Notebook, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Dancing on the Head of a Pen . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Hale, Constance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Dark Eden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Dead Do Not Improve, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Death of Santini, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Dee, Jonathan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Demson, Michael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Devil in Silver, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Dexter, Pete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 12 Diamond as Big as the Ritz, The . . . . . . . . . 14 Diaries of Exile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Diary of the Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Dinner, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Distant Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Doctorow, E.L. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Dominczyk, Dagmara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Dubois, Jennifer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Dunant, Sarah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Dunham, Lena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Eco, Umberto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Ecology of World Literature, An . . . . . . . . . . 55 Elders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Elements of Journalism, The Revised and Updated 3rd Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Ellis, M. Henderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Enon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Eskens, Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Espinoza, Alex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Essential Prose of John Milton, The . . . . . . . 58 Every Day Is for the Thief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Evil and the Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Expedition to the Baobab Tree, The . . . . . . . 51

Fagan, Jenni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Family Hightower, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Fare Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Fawkes, Ray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Fiddler on the Roof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 First True Lie, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Fitzgerald, F. Scott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Five Acts of Diego Leon, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Five Star Billionaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Footloose American, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 For All of Us, One Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Ford, Jamie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Foreign Gods, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Forgiven, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Fortier, Anne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Frangipani Hotel, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Furst, Alan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Gaffney, Elizabeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Gapper, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Gass, William H. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Get in Trouble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Ghost Shift, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Gifford, Barry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Gilbert, David . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Gilgi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Girl at War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Half the Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Harding, Paul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Harlem Hellfighters, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Heinrichs, Jay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Hope, Anna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare . 28 Hsieh, Liu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Hunter, Aislinn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Hunting Gun, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

I Am Forbidden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 I Await the Devil’s Coming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 If I Die in a Combat Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Imperfectionists, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country . . 15 In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Inoue, Yasushi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Iron Bridge, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Iyer, Lars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 J 24

Jackleg Opera: Collected Poems, 1990 to 2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Jacobson, Howard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 James Baldwin: The Last Interview . . . . . . . 72 Jameson, Fredric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Jansson, Tove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems . . . . . . . . . . 72 Johnson, Adam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Johnson, Mat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Johnston, Bret Anthony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Joseph Anton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Journey, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Joyce, Rachel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Kafka, Franz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Kahakauwila, Kristiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Kang, Jay Caspian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Karl Marx and World Literature . . . . . . . . . 49 Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Cafe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Keun, Irmgard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Kevin, Brian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Kidder, Tracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Kinder Than Solitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Kissing List, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Koch, Herman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Kovach, Bill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Kupersmith, Violet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Kurt Vonnegut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Labe, Louise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

L’Amour, Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Laub, Michel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Lavalle, Victor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Let the Great World Spin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

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AMERICAN LITERATURE INDEX Levine, James A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Li, Yiyun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Life We Bury, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Lines in Long Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Link, Kelly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67, 68 Lisette’s List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Little Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Lost Sisterhood, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, The . 27 Love Sonnets and Elegies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Ludwig, Ken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Lullaby of Polish Girls, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Machiavelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 MacLane, Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Magic for Beginners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Mailer, Norman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57, 65 Mander, Marina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Map of the Invisible World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Markovits, Anouk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Markulin, Joseph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Marra, Anthony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Martian, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Masks Of Anarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Masters, Ben . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 McCann, Colum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Mccracken, Elizabeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 McHugh, Laura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 McIlvain, Ryan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Mead, Rebecca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Mendelsohn, Daniel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Mendelson, Edward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Metamorphosis, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Metcalf, Ben . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Midnight in Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Milton, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 75 Mind of an Outlaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Mitchell, David . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Moore, Alan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Moral Agents: Eight Twentieth-Century American Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Moravia, Alberto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Moretti, Franco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Morris, Edmund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Morte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Mother, Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Mukasonga, Scholastique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Mundo Cruel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 My Life in Middlemarch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Nakamura, Fuminori . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Ndibe, Okey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38, 47 Negron, Luis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Night Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Nikolaidou, Sophia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Northern Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Not That Kind of Girl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Noughties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Novic, Sara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

O, Africa! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Obreht, Téa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

O’Brien, Tim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Olive Kitteridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 One Fat Englishman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Open City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Orphan Master’s Son, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Osborne, Lawrence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Our Lady of the Nile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Owen, Lauren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Palka, Kurt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Panopticon, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Panorama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Complete Shorter Poems . . . . . . 75 Paris Trout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Partial History of Lost Causes, A . . . . . . . . . 13 Pearl, Matthew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 People of Forever Are Not Afraid, The . . . . . 43 Perez-Reverte, Arturo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Pessl, Marisha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Peterson, Brenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Piatigorsky, Anton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Pla, Josep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Poe, Edgar Allan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Portraits and Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Prakash, Uday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Prawer, S.S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Prayers for the Stolen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Pym: A Novel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Quick, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Rachman, Tom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Rachman, Tom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Ready Player One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Reasons of State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Reents, Stephanie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Reiss, Tom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Remarque, Erich Maria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Remember Me Like This . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Repino, Robert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Rise & Fall of Great Powers, The . . . . . . . . . 40 Ritsos, Yannis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Romantic Outlaws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Roy Stories, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Roy-Bhattacharya, Joydeep . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Ruby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Rushdie, Salman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Ryan, Donal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

S. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Saunders, George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 69 Sayrafiezadeh, Saïd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Scapegoat, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 See, Lisa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Segal, Lore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Selected Letters of Norman Mailer . . . . . . . . 57 Selected Letters of William Styron . . . . . . . . 59 Sendker, Jan-Philipp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Seven American Deaths and Disasters . . . . 74 Shteyngart, Gary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Siege, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Sims, Laura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Sin and Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Sisterland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Sittenfeld, Curtis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Slattery, Brian Francis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Soderberg, Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Son of a Gun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Songs of Willow Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Soto, Gary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Spectral Engine, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Spinning Heart, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 St. Germain, Justin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Stamm, Peter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Stay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Stay Awake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Stein, Joseph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Steinberg, Janice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Stockenstrom, Wilma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Storytellers, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Strout, Elizabeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Styron, William . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Summer House with Swimming Pool . . . . . 46

Taylor, Elizabeth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Technologists, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Tell the Wolves I’m Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Tenth of December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Thank You For Arguing, Revised and Updated Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 This House is Haunted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 This Is Paradise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 This Living Hand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Thompson Walker, Karen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Thousand Pardons, A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Thunderstruck & Other Stories . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Tiger’s Wife, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Tin Horse, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Tomcat in Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 TransAtlantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Tristano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Ullmann, Linn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Updike, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

V for Vendetta New (New Edition TPB) . . . 54

Vidal vs. Mailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Vonnegut, Kurt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 59 Vreeland, Susan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Waiting for the Barbarians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Wake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Wall, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Walls of Delhi, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Ward, BJ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Ward, David C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Watch, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Watchmen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Weight of Blood, The . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Weir, Andy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Well-tempered Heart, A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Wendt, Selena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 What Poets Are Like . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 When the World Was Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Where Tigers are at Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Williams, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Wittgenstein Jr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Woman Who Borrowed Memories, The . . . 45 World War Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There . . . . . 69 Your Life is a Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Zailckas, Koren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

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