Literary Fiction Political

Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman gives an understated and exemplary performance of this satiric look at the unreality of American media culture. Chance, the enigmatic gardener, becomes Chauncey Gardiner after getting hit by a limo belonging to a Wall Street tycoon. The whirlwind that follows brings Chance to his new status of political policy advisor and possible vice presidential candidate. His garden-variety political responses, inspired by television, become heralded as visionary, and he is soon a media icon.

Author Yiyun Li, honored as one of Granta’s 21 Best Young American Novelists under age 35, continues her illustrious career with this insightful collection of short stories. With compelling visions of the scrapes and unpleasant situations in which people find themselves, Li’s works trigger emotional responses of all types - whether through a tale of unrequited love, an unburdening of guilt, or something else entirely.

Amy Waldman, who reported from Afghanistan for the New York Times after 9/11, has created a taut, propulsive novel about power, perspective, and idealism, brushing aside the dust of America's longest-standing war to reveal the complicated truths beneath. A Door in the Earth is the rarest of books, one that helps us understand living history through poignant characters and unforgettable storytelling.

When Molly, home alone with her two young children, hears footsteps in the living room, she tries to convince herself it’s the sleep deprivation. She’s been hearing things these days. Startling at loud noises. Imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s what mothers do, she knows. But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement. Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty.

Numero Zero is the feverish and delightfully readable tale of a ghostwriter in Milan whose work pulls him into an underworld of media politics and murderous conspiracies (involving the cadaver of Mussolini's double, naturally). This novel is vintage Eco - corrupt newspapers, clandestine plots, imaginary histories - and will appeal to his many readers and earn him legions of new ones.

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam.

A student at the University of Baghdad must return to his small village home when the Americans invade Iraq. There, he witnesses American soldiers kill the benign village idiot, bomb a wedding, and finally, terrorize his family in his own home. Consumed by the desire for vengeance, the youth leaves for the city, where he is taken in by a radical group.

Cassandra Devine, a young Washington spin doctor and blogger, suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75. This proposal catches on with citizens outraged about Social Security debt and a senator seeking the youth vote for his presidential bid. With the help of Washington's greatest PR strategist, Cassandra and the senator try to ride the issue of euthanasia to the White House.

García Márquez construyó, en El otoño del patriarca, una maquinaria narrativa perfecta que desgrana una historia universal -la agonía y muerte de un dictador- en forma cíclica, experimental y real al mismo tiempo, en seis bloques narrativos sin diálogos, sin puntos y aparte, repitiendo una anécdota siempre igual y siempre distinta, acumulando hechos y descripciones deslumbrantes.

Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.

Elena McMahon walks off the presidential campaign she has been covering for a major newspaper to do a favor for her father. Elena's father does deals. And it is while acting as his agent in one such deal - a deal that shortly goes spectacularly wrong - that she finds herself on an island where tourism has been superseded by arms dealing, covert action, and assassination. The Last Thing He Wanted is a tour de force - persuasive in its detail, dazzling in its ambiguities, enchanting in its style.

The Golden Age is a vibrant tapestry of American political and cultural life from 1939 to 1954, when the epochal events of World War II and the Cold War transformed America, once and for all, for good or ill, from a republic into an empire.

A prophetic and experimental masterpiece by J. G. Ballard, the acclaimed author of ‘Crash’ and ‘Super-Cannes’. This edition features explanatory notes from the author. The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force. The central character’s dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and car-crash victims as he traverses the screaming wastes of nervous breakdown.

Naomi Roth is the first female president of Webster College, a once-conservative school now known for producing fired-up progressive graduates. So Naomi isn't surprised or unduly alarmed when Webster students begin the fall semester with an outdoor encampment around "The Stump"—a traditional campus gathering place for generations of student activists—to protest a popular professor's denial of tenure.

“What does ‘allegiance’ mean?” the New Teacher asked, hand over her heart. In this classic and chilling tale about an elementary school classroom in post-war occupied America, James Clavell brings to light the vulnerability of children and the power educators have to shape and change young minds. Originally written in the Cold War era, Clavell’s extraordinary and enduringly relevant allegory on the impressionability of the human mind is still read in schools around the globe today, and is a call to every person to keep questioning and keep learning.

Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .

When his closest friend, Benjamin Sachs, accidentally blows himself up on a Wisconsin road, Peter Aaron attempts to piece together the life that led to Sachs' tragic demise and determine the reason for his death.

Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic 18-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, in the US in the summer before university. Dmitry is a charming sociopath, who develops a fascination with his autodidactic philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig.

Expert in recognizing and anticipating behavioral patterns - a skill enhanced by her bipolar disorder she keeps secret to protect her career - Carrie is increasingly certain that a terrorist plot has been set in motion. She risks a shocking act of insubordination that helps her uncover secret evidence connecting Nightingale with Abu Nazir, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Determined to stop the terrorist mastermind, she embarks on an obsessive quest that will nearly destroy her.

In an alternate 2009, the United States has been a second-rate power for a quarter of a century, ever since Argentina’s victory in the Falkland’s War thanks to their development of “psychopigments.” Created as weapons, these colorful chemicals can produce almost any human emotion upon contact, and they have been embraced in the US as both pharmaceutical cure-alls and popular recreational drugs. Black market traders illegally sell everything from Blackberry Purple (which causes terror) to Sunshine Yellow (which delivers happiness).