Illness Fiction

Under the rule of the Isle’s Voice, the people of Aeris suffer from a jarring divide between the wealthy and impoverished. The Isle’s Voice controls the distribution of immersia, a magic that keeps bloodthirsty monsters known as the vayle away from Aeris’s people. Laborers slave to do the jobs allotted to them, while privileged families remain in control. When young Aselle Attete, a laborer in the great city of Aurora, hears a mysterious song in the desert that surrounds her city, a series of events unfolds that proves there is hope of salvaging Aeris.

World-renowned pianist Gloria Banderas is at the height of her career when a curious ailment forces her to cancel a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall. The same day, she befriends one of the many free-spirited artists inhabiting the warren of apartments above the theater. With her career and marriage at a standstill, Gloria moves into an empty studio and convalesces among the poets, photographers, and dancers who eke out a living with total dedication to their art. As a return to her old routine beckons, Gloria must decide which parts of her life are worth fighting for.

A beloved schoolteacher chronicles the meteoric rise of his most dazzling student in this ambitious, big-hearted work of literary fiction, perfect for fans of Nathan Hill, Susan Choi, and Tess Gunty. Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant, dedicated, and possibly a few pages ahead in...

'The albatross is just about the rarest thing in golf - two shots on a par 5. A hole-in-one, anywhere on the course, is just a random event, a fluke. It's not your own doing. But an albatross . . . It's a thing of beauty. One. Two. It must be very deliberate, very thoughtful, one superb shot...

The only thing that could pull Antonia Bernardi away from her high-powered career is her lifelong best friend. And with two children and a cruel prognosis, Miriam Vaughn needs her now more than ever. Antonia drops everything—her job, her relationship—to be there for the Vaughns. Playing mom to Miriam’s teenage son and seven-year-old daughter is a tall order made heavier by grief. But the kids need her, and she needs them. Then there’s the boy’s coach and mentor, former MLB star Weston Schmidt. He’s a pillar of support, a safe space for Antonia to rest.

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE FINALIST FOR THE 2023 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE From the author of the award-winning debut story collection We Show What We Have Learned, an "atoundingly original” (The New York Times Book Review) work of historical fiction with shocking and eerie...

This groundbreaking anthology presents 40 narratives, both nonfiction and fiction, that together capture the impact and complexity of Alzheimer’s and other dementias on patients, as well as their caregivers and family. Deeply personal, recounting the wrenching course of a disease that kills a loved one twice - first they forget who they are, and then the body succumbs - these stories also show how witnessing the disease and caring for someone with it can be powerfully transformative, calling forth amazing strength and grace.

Ash boards a Greyhound bus heading to the place where Bly was last seen: Snowflake, Arizona. Six thousand feet up in the wide red desert, Ash meets Mona, her dog, her goat, and her neighbors, and finds stepbrother Bly, too. In their ramshackle homes, the walls lined with tinfoil, almost all the residents of Snowflake are sick. But this isn’t any ordinary sickness: the chemicals and technologies of modern life are poisoning them.

The End of Miracles is a twisting, haunting story about the drastic consequences of a frustrated obsession. A woman with a complex past wants nothing more than to become a mother, but struggles with infertility and miscarriage. She is temporarily comforted by a wish-fulfilling false pregnancy, but when reality inevitably dashes that fantasy, she falls into a depression so deep she must be hospitalized.

Twenty-one-year-old narcoleptic Angel Duet knows her father harbors secrets. He loves and protects her, but his suspicious refusal to discuss her mother's death drives Angel to worship an image created from the little history she does have: her father's sketchy stories and her mother's treasured photography, studies of clouds that have hung in the their foyer for more than twenty years. When her father's girlfriend moves in, the photographs come down, and Angel's search for truth becomes an obsession.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves - which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.)

Heather Fowler's fourth collection of fiction speaks to the language of need. Desperate, obsessive, even demented need is voiced by characters ill or ill-advised. From modern to historical, cyber to stalker, explicit to tender, the relationships in Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness translate love and lust into disorder.

"In the face of tragedy, Dess’s narrator memorably dramatizes the anxiety-inducing exigencies of the creative arts, and the need of artists to remain focussed on their craft." —The New Yorker “Ms. Dess shrewdly explores the intersections between intimacy and possession.” —The Wall...

Décembre 2018. Anna, Nico et Mathis, trois jeunes pleins de vie, préparent ensemble les fêtes du Nouvel An. Inséparables, ils partagent leur quotidien entre les amis, les amours, et les études. Pourtant, l'année suivante débute au rythme des machines de l'hôpital où Anna s'accroche à la vie. Au fil des pages, l'auteure nous transporte dans un futur proche et inquiétant, et laisse deviner qu'une menace pèse sur la petite bande : pour eux, tout semble devoir changer.

Twelve women confront the mounting existential terrors of modern life in this absurd, wryly hilarious debut story collection. A woman's limbs disappear into “the cloud” during wildfire-induced power outages. A lonely DoorDasher accidentally becomes the star of someone else's reality show...

Dallas, Dealey Plaza, 1963. Nineteen-year-old Mariah Byrne is following her dream of a career in photography. One moment she’s filled with joy and hope watching the president and Mrs. Kennedy drive past. In the next, the world—and Mariah’s life—is split into before and after. What follows, and the unconventional decisions Mariah makes, will affect her and her family forever.

Kate Croy is secretly engaged to Merton Denscher, a journalist who lacks money. By chance, Kate befriends Milly, an American heiress, and learns she is suffering from a fatal illness. Kate devises a scheme to maximize their combined assets: she encourages Merton to take an interest in Milly and marry her. Kate intends to make him a rich widower whom she herself can marry. But such well-laid plans are not enough for the subtlety of the heart.

Palliative-care physician and award-winning author Anna DeForest returns with an ode to life and to death, and the ways we care for ourselves and others on our long, marvelous walk toward the end. In a pandemic-hushed city, a young doctor lives a life of insecure attachments: to a distant...

Immerse yourself in a collection of calm bedtime chronicles, featuring serene meditation narratives and mindful voyages meticulously crafted to ease the burdens of stress, insomnia, overthinking, and anxiety.

Eighteen-year-old twins Adina and Tovah have little in common besides their ambitious nature. Viola prodigy Adina yearns to become a soloist - and to convince her music teacher he wants her the way she wants him. Overachiever Tovah awaits her acceptance to Johns Hopkins, the first step on her path toward med school and a career as a surgeon. But one thing could wreck their carefully planned futures: a genetic test for Huntington's, a rare degenerative disease that slowly steals control of the body and mind.