With his father dead, a gifted, fourteen-year-old pianist finds himself sent away from his Caribbean home against his will, to study classical music in the U.S. with a family friend he’s never met. His first angry, frightened step away from the controlling mother he’s never been able to reach becomes a sharp break with her expectations: he leaps into the dramatic and cutthroat world of opera. In this high-stakes milieu, his fierce desire to be a star fires both his brilliance and the dark distrust of women and of love that is the legacy of his childhood, a legacy that threatens his career,
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Ming, born in a bleak outpost of Sichuan province, finds an unexpected glimpse of the world beyond when she meets a talking monkey with golden eyes and supernatural abilities—the immortal Monkey King, with whom Ming’s destiny is inextricably intertwined. Determined to become a writer, Ming finds her way to New York, but to make ends meet she goes to work for a crime ring and returns to China on the lam. Hope arrives in the form of her American friend Zoe. Together, they travel to the village of Ming’s birth, where the clouds writhe like phantoms and the rain never stops,
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A classic in the making: a mesmerizing novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.
At the turn of the 20th century, Vivian Lesperance is determined to flee her origins in Utica, New York, and avoid repeating her parents’ dull, limited life. When she meets Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager at a soap company, Vivian finds a partner she can guide to build the life she wants—not least because, more interested in men himself, Oscar will leave Vivian to tend to her own romances with women.
But Vivian’s plans require capital,
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Robert Shapard’s exquisitely crafted short stories take readers to enchantingly peculiar realms: A young girl poignantly rejects immortality in favor of love. A startling revelation confronts a son who discovers his father’s head is only burlap with piercing Marks-A-Lot eyes. A couple in their early 30s engage in sex role-play involving the destruction of Mars. A young woman valet parker at an all-night diner in Los Angeles is ensnared by the world’s most famous monster. A boy’s life is irrevocably altered by witnessing a Mexican family’s farm-truck accident. An old, hungover science professor imparts the Earth’s greatest secret to his students.
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Elizabeth Costello’s atmospheric and lyrical debut follows a mother and a daughter pursuing art, science, and autonomy in post war America. Part feminist noir, part queer coming of age, The Good War is an intense, beautifully written novel that explores the intimate bonds of family and big questions about the meaning of heroism and sacrifice.
In 1948, Louise Galle, a chemist and former Rosie-the-Riveter, is pursued by a wounded veteran who, with her deceased husband, was a prisoner in the Philippines during World War II. In New York City in 1964, Louise’s daughter Charlotte falls for the butch next door and receives an undeniable call to make art.
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Òdòdó’s hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the warrior king of Yorùbáland, and living conditions for the women in her blacksmith guild, who were already shunned as social pariahs, grow even worse.
Then Òdòdó is abducted. She is whisked across the Sahara to the capital city of Ṣàngótẹ̀, where she is shocked to discover that her kidnapper is none other than the vagrant who had visited her guild just days prior. But now that he is swathed in riches rather than rags, Òdòdó realizes he is not a vagrant at all; he is the warrior king, and he has chosen her to be his wife.
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