Fiction - novels

The Way Back

 A moving, haunting and all-too-real-novel that takes you beyond the headlines and explores a family's worst nightmare with compassion and insight.

Goodwood

Rich in character and complexity, its humour both droll and tender, Goodwood is a compelling ride into a small community, torn apart by dark rumours and mystery.

Retribution

Retribution is an unforgettable exploration of the intersections of sexual desire, sadism, folk belief, and the inexorable cycles of karmic retribution.

My Brilliant Career

First published in 1901, this Australian classic is the candid tale of the aspirations and frustrations of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvin, a headstrong country girl constrained by middle-class social arrangements, especially the pressure to marry. 

To the Black Women We All Knew

 In To the Black Women We All Knew, Maenetsha showcases the modern township existence and its weakening yet ever-present link to tradition. Her vivid writing tells of the capriciousness of life and love and the strength of women in the face of a crisis.

The Pistachio Seller

This wonderfully exuberant novel of quixotic adolescent longing and the enduring search for self, set in middle class urban Egypt, chronicles young Wafaa's struggle to come to terms with her own sexuality and her romantic infatuation with her cousin Ashraf, a spoiled and confident young Egyptian who was educated in England. 

Fear of Flying

 A literary sensation when it was first published, Fear of Flying established Erica Jong as one of her generation’s foremost voices on sex and feminism. Decades later, the novel has lost none of its insight, verve, or jaw-dropping wit. 

Play It As It Lays

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader.

The House of Falling Women

House of Falling Women is the story of a young woman with quixotic ideas about improving the lot of women who finds out that the crusader's cloak is an uncomfortable one. 

My South Seas Sleeping Beauty

My South Seas Sleeping Beauty is a captivating coming-of-age tale set in the magical jungles of Borneo. 

Secret of a Rainbow Goddess

Set against the allures of West-meets-East exoticism and modern Asia, this rare adrenaline-pumped, fantasy-romance novel is satiated with memorable whirlwinds of desires and erotica adventures. 

Loving Mr. Darcy

Darcy and Lizzy venture away from Pemberley to journey through England, finding friends, relatives, fun, love, and an even deeper and more sacred bond along the way. 

Surrender the Wind

Surrender the Wind is the story of Seth Braxton, a patriot of the American Revolution, who unexpectedly inherits his loyalist grandfather’s estate in England. From the Virginia wilderness to the dark halls of an isolated English estate, Seth and his beloved Juleah inherit more than an ancestral home. They uncover a sinister plot that leads to murder, abduction, and betrayal--an ominous threat to their new life, love, and faith.

Bridget Crack

 A gripping and moving story of a woman's struggle for survival in a beautiful and brutal landscape, Bridget Crack is a unique and deeply accomplished novel by a rare talent.

The Blue Wolf

 In this riveting and thoroughly researched portrait, Japan's celebrated epic novelist drives at the root of the khan's great desires and insatiable appetite for supremacy. Hailed for its sophistication and rich imagining of a remote world, The Blue Wolf puts a human cast on a legendary force that changed Asia and the world.

The Tale of Hansuli Turn

Lyrically rendered by one of India's great novelists, this story of one people's plight dramatizes the anxieties of a nation and the resistance of some to further marginalization.

The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume Five

This is the fifth and final volume in David Roy's celebrated translation of one of the most famous and important novels in Chinese literature. The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei is an anonymous sixteenth-century work that focuses on the domestic life of Hsi-men Ch'ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. 

Catherine

Though he originally set out to depict criminals in as harshly accurate a light as possible, without the sentimentalization that he saw and disdained in Dickens' work, Thackeray's fictionalized account of the life of Catherine Hayes, an eighteenth-century woman who was burned at the stake for the murder of her husband, depicts the titular character in a somewhat more appealing and charming manner than the author intended. 

A Work of Historical Fiction about the Life and World of Nikos Kazantzakis

This book narrates Kazantzakis' life --- his poverty, his life in exile, his struggle as a writer groping for a "voice," and describes the conditions under which that voice brought forth the prolific range of work that included The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, Zorba the Greek, and the controversial Last Temptation of Christ.

House of the Wolf: An Egyptian Novel

Winner of the 2012 Naguib Mahfouz Medal, this novel is set in an idyllic Egyptian village from the time it was discovered by Muhammad Ali's mission in the early nineteenth century to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, movingly intertwining events on the world scene with the life dramas of its protagonists.

Pythagoras' Revenge: A Mathematical Mystery

Set in 1998 with flashbacks to classical Greece, Pythagoras' Revenge investigates the confrontation between opposing views of mathematics and reality, and explores ideas from both early and cutting-edge mathematics.

The Last Man

Mary Shelley’s astounding look at the end of the world Set at the end of the twenty-first century, The Last Man is a moving and fantastical account of the apocalypse. 

Journeys Through Time and Space

A Nebula Award winner presents tales that shaped modern science fiction and fantasy—five complete novels by Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, and more. 

Atlas

Set in the long-lost City of Victoria (a fictional world similar to Hong Kong), Atlas is written from the unified perspective of future archaeologists struggling to rebuild a thrilling metropolis. 

The City Trilogy

Taiwan's most innovative science fiction writer presents three tales of intrigue, espionage, betrayal, political strife, time travel, and Chinese history and mysticism. 

Deluge

First published in 1927, Deluge is one of the most famous of the English catastrophe novels. Beautifully written and action packed--RKO Radio Pictures even filmed this story--the novel depicts a flood so severe that it destroys modern civilization, leaving the few survivors to adapt to the rigors of the natural world. 

The Choke

The Choke is a brilliant, haunting novel about a child navigating an often dark and uncaring world of male power and violence, in which grown-ups can't be trusted and comfort can only be found in nature. 

Into the Interior

Moving among its fragmented personalities and social life, she witnesses—and experiences—its propensity for racism and homophobia, misogyny and abusive patriarchy, hypocrisy and sadism.Deftly shifting between present and past, between a childhood in Jamaica—her memories, both disconcerting and humor-tinged, beautifully rendered by Cliff’s elliptical prose—and her purposeful wanderings as an adult that result in intellectual, sexual, and political awakenings, Into the Interior is both deeply personal and charged by a world-historical awareness of the persistent injustices that colonialism imposes on its former subjects.

The Book of Emma

 "Both crazy and too lucid," an articulate and knowledgeable Emma relates her long battle against despair, through striking images of her lonely but determined and creative struggle to win the love of a mother misled by a racist society and then through tales of the suffering and resistance of some of her female forebears. 

Calendar of Regrets

Calendar of Regrets is a wildly inventive and visually rich collage of twelve interconnected narratives, one for each month of the year, all pertaining to notions of travel--through time, space, narrative, and death. 

Why Me?

Dortmunder draws international attention when he steals the wrong ring. The US has agreed to return it to Turkey, but it's about to be stolen twice more. Much blood has been shed for this little ruby, and Dortmunder's could be next.

Being Cool

In Being Cool, Charles J. Rzepka looks at what makes the dope-dealers, bookies, grifters, financial advisors, talent agents, shady attorneys, hookers, models, and crooked cops of Leonard's world cool. They may be nefarious, but they are also confident, skilled, and composed.

The Akroma File

Faced with debts at home and threatened by poverty, Akroma a brilliant and well-educated Ghanaian, using unorthodox means, successfully gets into Cameroon. He is bent on making a fortune. The rest of this very readable novel is about what happens when the Ghanaian evil genius is pitted against the best Cameroonian police superintendent. It is the clash of giants that ends in a cataclysm.

A Deadly Business

A Deadly Business introduces a new crime hero who's not a detective and whose motives aren't always pure, but he's sure got a talent for finding trouble.

The three leaps of Wang Lun: A Chinese novel

In 1915, fourteen years before Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Doblin published his first novel, an extensively researched Chinese historical extravaganza: The Three Leaps of Wang Lun. Even more remarkably, given its subject matter, the book was written in Expressionist style and is now considered the first modern German novel, as well as the first Western novel to depict a China untouched by the West.

The fall of the stone city

Enigmatic and compelling, The Fall of the Stone City shows Ismail Kadare at the height of his powers. Ismail Kadare is Albania's best-known poet and novelist.

The Red Badge of Courage

The finest novel of the Civil War, and one of the greatest battle stories ever told. Stephen Crane was born six years after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and had yet to see a battlefield when he wrote The Red Badge of Courage. Nevertheless, the novel is widely regarded as one of the most realistic depictions of war ever published, and a masterpiece of American literature.

Canterbury Tales

David Wright's new translation of The Canterbury Tales into modern verse--the first to appear in over thirty years--makes one of the greatest works of English literature accessible to all readers while preserving the wit and vivacity of Chaucer's original text.

Middlemarch

A masterful tale of a small town in the English midlands, and the hopes, regrets, and unrealized dreams of those who make it their home. As complex in theme as it is heart-wrenching and engaging, Middlemarch stands as a true classic of Victorian-era storytelling. 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The classic story of a boy who makes his own rules and the small Missouri town where he and his friends experience the adventures of a lifetime Filled with schoolyard pranks, buried treasures, spooky caves, secret gangs, and grave robbers, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is entertainment of the highest order. 

Sense and Sensibility

Torn between reason and passion, obligation and impulse, two sisters search for love in eighteenth-century England. A sparkling comedy of manners and an essential guide to navigating affairs of the heart, Jane Austen’s first published novel is a timeless tale of love and loss. 

Between Two Worlds

The second in the Pulitzer Prize–winning historical fiction series takes Lanny Budd through the 1920s, from the rise of fascism to the crash on Wall Street.  A spellbinding mix of history, adventure, and romance, the Lanny Budd Novels are a testament to the breathtaking scope of Upton Sinclair’s vision and his singular talents as a storyteller.

Sylvia's Lovers

This tragic tale from Elizabeth Gaskell follows the wartime love affairs of the title character. After her true love is believed to have perished at sea, Sylvia seeks stability in a loveless arranged marriage. But does her husband know more about her first lover's fate than he is admitting?

The Custom of the Country

Can't get enough of the Gilded Age fast talkers, débutantes, and social climbers who populate Edith Wharton's exquisitely wrought novels? Fans of The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence will love The Custom of the Country, which details country girl Undine Spragg's attempt to take a bite out of Big Apple high society.

Feathers

In this, his first novel, Be’er portrays the world of a deeply religious community in Jerusalem during the author’s childhood and adolescence in the 1950s and 60s. Feathers was chosen one of the 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature by the National Yiddish Book Center.

Kindred: a Graphic Novel Adaptation

Octavia E. Butler’s bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format. More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day.

Lantern City Vol. 1

Sander Jorve just wants to keep his wife and son safe. Living in the brutalized lower class of Lantern City means living in near constant darkness, the enormous walls of the city always looming overhead, while the upper class enjoys the elevated, interconnected towers and airships above. When Sander's brother-in-law, the persuasive activist Kendal, convinces him to infiltrate the brutal ranks of the Guard, he's set on a dangerous path that will test his abilities and beliefs, all in the name of making a difference for his family and his caste.

Lantern City Vol. 2

Sander Jorve thought that infiltrating the brutal Guard of Lantern City would help his family and his cause. He was wrong. After a chance run-in with the Emperor of the city, Killian Grey, Sander finds himself promoted to the Grey Guard, working directly under Killian in the heights of Grey Towers. The luxury is unparalleled, but can Killian be trusted? Can Sander trust himself? Nowhere in Lantern City is safe...and the imperial court may just be the most dangerous place of all.

Lantern City Vol. 3

Feathers #1

A recluse boy born covered in feathers must help his first-ever friend, a young girl named Bianca, as she tries to return to her home beyond the slums of the Maze. They must dodge street gangs and child-snatchers along the way, and perhaps together will learn the secrets to his mysterious past.

Feathers #2

Fresh from their near-miss escape from the Guards, Bianca and Poe strike a deal: If he guides her through the treacherous Maze, she will take him to see the White Guide, a feathered statue in the City that may hold the key to Poe's origins. It's an adventure that will take them from the lowest shadows to the highest rooftops, with untold dangers along the way...and not everyone in the Maze is happy about their new alliance.

Feathers #3

Betrayal comes from all sides as Poe's new friendship with Bianca creates chaos in the Maze, and the pair discover they may have even fewer allies than they thought in their race to the heart of the City.

Feathers #4

Good friends are hard to come by in the Maze. Poe and Bianca will have to stick together and outsmart the Guard if they want to reach the White Guide, but a new revelation may shake their courage.

Feathers #5

Feeling alone and betrayed by Bianca and Gabriel, Poe finds a humbled and apologetic Z, who tells him that all the Mice have been taken by the Scarf Man.

Feathers #6

Final issue! When he tracks the Scarf Man to his secret lair, and with Bianca, R, and Z's lives at stake, Poe comes face-to-face with the man who's been kidnapping the Mice from the Maze.

Jim Henson's the Power of the Dark Crystal Vol. 1

In celebration of the 35th anniversary of Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal, return to the world of Thra in an official sequel to the beloved fantasy film. Discover an all-new race of creatures called Firelings that live in a realm near the planet's core, based on official character designs by Brian Froud. Years have passed since the events of the original film, and though Jen and Kira have ruled Thra as King and Queen, bringing Gelfling back to the land, they have become distracted by power and can no longer feel or see the needs of the world the way they once did. Thurma is a young Fireling tasked with stealing a shard of the Dark Crystal to restore power to her realm. Along the way, she'll befriend the young Gelfling Kensho, bring back the Skeksis and Mystics, and embark on one incredible adventure.

The Power of the Dark Crystal #3

The return of the Skeksis kicks Jen out of a daze and back on the offensive in the name of Thra. Meanwhile, Kensho and Thurm look to escape the Crystal Castle unnoticed.