Literary Fiction Political

As the 21st century enters its second decade, foreign wars, the lingering recession, and a caustic political environment are taking their toll on Americans. But the party hasn't ended for Aidan Cole and his friends, a band of savvy, if cynical, New York journalists and bloggers who thrive at the intersection of media and celebrity.

After a decade living in England, Jeremy O'Keefe returns to New York, where he has been hired as a professor of German history at New York University. Though comfortable in his new life, and happy to be near his daughter once again, Jeremy continues to feel the quiet pangs of loneliness. Walking through the city at night, it's as though he could disappear and no one would even notice. But soon Jeremy's life begins taking strange turns.

Internationally best-selling author and Washington State Book Award winner Jim Lynch's Truth Like the Sun was named one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month. In 1962, Roger Morgan became the golden boy behind the Seattle World's Fair. Nearly 40 years later, he's a shoo-in for mayor. But when an ambitious journalist begins digging into his past, sordid details about his career come to light.

At the height of the Cold War, words are weapons and secrecy reigns. These are challenging times to be a writer and a wife, as Nell Benjamin knows only too well. One bright November day in 1963, the dazzling young president arrives in Texas and Nell receives a phone call that overturns the world as she knows it. In the shocking aftermath, whilst America mourns, Nell must come to terms with both a tragedy and a betrayal that shatters every illusion of the man she thought she knew better than anyone else.

Samuel Lumen has reached the hearts of millions with his fearless advocacy for liberal causes. Now he’s almost ninety years old, and the ideas he espoused as a young man, radical at the time, are woven into the political landscape of America, even as they’ve been warped and diluted by younger generations. His ideological heirs want to honor his contributions with a banquet full of pomp and circumstance, but Lumen’s not so sure he’s ready to honor his heirs in return.

Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem only a distant echo. An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him with bitter severity. He begins an intense friendship with a Jewish boy his age, talented and mercurial Anton Zweibel, a budding concert pianist.

Step into a world which is both magically fictitious and shockingly real, to follow the lives of Tamsin, Ellie, Arun, and Charlie; a refugee, native, occupier, and economic migrant. Watch them grow up during a halcyon past, an everyday present, and a dystopian future. And be prepared to be amazed. Inspired by the occupations of Palestine, Kurdistan, and Tibet, and by the corporate occupation of the west, Occupied is a haunting glance into a society which is too familiar for comfort. It truly is a unique piece of literary fiction.

Surrounded by ghosts, spurred on by demons, Doriel finally turns to Dr. Therese Goldschmidt, a psychoanalyst who finds herself particularly intrigued by her patient. The two enter into an uneasy relationship based on exchange of dreams, histories, and secrets. Despite Doriel's initial resistance, Dr. Goldschmidt helps to bring him to a crossroads - and to a shocking denouement.

"Frank Witzels Werk ist ein im besten Sinne maßloses Romankonstrukt. Erzählt wird die Geschichte eines Jungen aus der hessischen Provinz, der sich im Alter von dreizehneinhalb auf der Schwelle zum Erwachsenwerden befindet. In diese Geschichte eingewoben ist das politische Erwachen der alten Bundesrepublik, die beginnt, sich vom Muff der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit zu befreien [...]."

Charity Mupanga, the resilient and maternal proprietor of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot) faces her toughest challenge in Dizzy Worms, the final novel in Michael Holman’s acclaimed trilogy set in the African slum of Kireba. Faced with a Health and Safety closure, Charity has a week to appeal and the chances of success seem negligible: elections are imminent, and Kireba is due to become a showcase of President Josiah Nduka's "slum rehabilitation program", backed by gullible foreign donors.

Twenty-eight-year-old Carrie Thompson-Sherman has the life she always wanted: her PhD, a prestigious fellowship, and an amazing husband. Her charmed life begins to unravel as a jealous colleague puts her fellowship in jeopardy and a hideous secret Ray carried home from Afghanistan comes to light. Hanging on by a single thread, a disastrous accident puts both her husband and her sister's lives at risk. Heartbroken, Carrie will be faced with the most devastating choice of her life. A choice that will change everything.

His last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure provoked such widespread and bitter attacks that Hardy claimed it caused him to stop writing novels. The primary causes of the uproar involved Hardy’s frank treatment of sexual themes and his unconventional portrayal of the pillars of Victorian society: the British university system, marriage, and religion. Today, many consider this to be Hardy’s finest work.

Forty years ago, Bakerton coal fueled the country. Then the mines closed, and the town wore away like a bar of soap. Now Bakerton has been granted a surprise third act: It sits squarely atop the Marcellus Shale, a massive deposit of natural gas. To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn't count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother's skepticism, or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their frail daughter.

Christopher Buckley's comic thriller takes readers to the Arab land of Matar, where a philandering emir allays his restless wife by allowing her to start a TV network for Arab women. She is joined in this endeavor by a maverick American State Department officer known as Florence, who wants to use the TV network to start a revolution among Islamic women.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, first published in 1915, is a feminist utopian novel that describes an isolated society composed entirely of women---a progressive, environmentally conscious land where peace and rationality reign and poverty is unknown.

The Crescent City after the war is at the heart of a rapidly changing America, and ex-sailor Jack Rodenko is caught up in a strange and shifting milieu as he tends bar at a seedy club called L’Êtoile. While struggling to build a new life, Rodenko becomes involved with a corrupt, greedy power broker, and falls in love with a striking photographer - relationships that will force him to choose between two decidedly different futures.

A dozen years after his last visit, Jeebleh returns to his beloved Mogadiscio to see old friends. He is accompanied by his son-in-law, Malik, a journalist intent on covering the region's ongoing turmoil. What greets them at first is not the chaos Jeebleh remembers, however, but an eerie calm enforced by ubiquitous white-robed figures bearing whips.

What if, one day, Europe was to crack along the length of the Pyrenees, separating the Iberian peninsula? In Saramago's lovely fable, the new island is sent spinning, like a great stone raft, towards the Azores. While the authorities panic and tourists and investors flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by portents that burden them with a bemusing sense of responsibility.

President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancée, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington–the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA).

Lorena, Nord-Est della Francia, zona di industria siderurgica una volta fiorente. Anni Novanta, quando la parola "globalizzazione" era ancora incomprensibile ai più. In una fabbrica, l'arroganza di un manager vanitoso provoca la protesta dei lavoratori che sfocia nell'occupazione degli stabilimenti. Potrebbe essere un'accesa vertenza sindacale e finire con un accordo, ma qualcuno vi vede un rischio maggiore. Allora un incendio può servire a bruciare tutto. A Parigi, che sembra molto lontana, si sta giocando una grossa partita.