Literary Realism

At the border with another world, a line of people wait for the gates to open; on the floor of a lonely room, a Born Winner runs through his life’s achievements and losses; in a suburban garden, a man witnesses a murder that pushes him out into the community. Struggling to realise the human ideals of love and freedom, the characters of Dark Neighbourhood roam instead the depths of alienation, loss and shame.

El intenso relato del regreso clandestino del director de cine Miguel Littín a Chile, su patria.

È una ragazzina, Mangiaterra, quando scopre il suo potere misterioso: le basta inghiottire un pugno di terra perché la verità sulle persone disperse e su quelle che, ormai, popolano l'aldilà le si dipinga nella mente e le sconvolga l'anima. Il suo corpo si contrae, nel disgusto e nella repulsione per se stessa, ma il suo sguardo penetra la notte che circonda gli scomparsi, legge i segni nascosti nelle visioni, vibra delle storie terribili che la terra nasconde.

La casa de Piranesi no es un edificio cualquiera: sus habitaciones son monumentales, con paredes llenas de miles de estatuas, y sus pasillos, interminables. Dentro del dédalo de corredores hay un océano aprisionado en el que las olas retumban y las mareas inundan los aposentos.

Two extraordinary women in 1865 establish a trading post in a southern jungle that grows to be a safe haven for cast-off women and the dispossessed. When a murderous forger sets up shop and the mayor on the right-side-of-the-tracks becomes intent on their destruction, the village fights for survival in its own special way. Told in evocative magical realism, Jaguar Paloma and the Caketown Bar is a tale of wronged women who stand up to be counted.

When Yusuf fled Syria, he lost everything. Now the circus, with its middle-eastern flair, is the only home he knows. When the lights go on, the refugees dazzle their audience, but off-stage tensions flare. Ellie is passionate about the circus and drawn to its broken people. Even so, if she wants to keep her job at the newspaper, she must head up a campaign against it.

Having lost his mother and been shunned by his father, Zabor grows up in the company of books, which teach him a new language. Ever since he can remember, he has been convinced that he has a gift: If he writes, he will stave off death; those captured in the sentences of his notebooks will live longer. Like a kind of inverted Scheherazade saving his fellow men, he experiments night after night with the delirious power of the imagination.

A financial crisis. A fractious family. A mysterious box falls into the middle of it - straight from the sky onto Ċensa. Now she’s got horrible headaches, and it’s not just from the blow to the head. The box might be very valuable, it might be a historical treasure - and definitely, everyone wants it! While the family home crumbles, relationships are strained by robbery, spiritual misfortune, and revenge; and she can’t stand to even think about the complications with her boyfriend.

En la década de 1950, las tensiones en la ciudad de La Frontera son palpables. Las camisas de boliche y las chaquetas de cuero compiten con las guayaberas y los huaraches. Los convertibles corren al lado de las motocicletas. Sin embargo, en medio de la discordia, el amor joven florece a primera vista entre Fulgencio Ramírez, hijo de inmigrantes empobrecidos, y Carolina Mendelssohn, la hija del farmacéutico local. Pero como pronto descubrirán, sus lazos serán deshechos por una fuerza más poderosa de lo que podrían haber imaginado.

In the 1950s, tensions remain high in the border town of La Frontera. Penny loafers and sneakers clash with boots and huaraches. Bowling shirts and leather jackets compete with guayaberas. Convertibles fend with motorcycles. Yet amidst the discord, young love blooms at first sight between Fulgencio Ramirez, the son of impoverished immigrants, and Carolina Mendelssohn, the local pharmacist’s daughter. But as they’ll soon find out, their bonds will be undone by a force more powerful than they could have known.

In this visionary novel framed as a hagiography, the ruminative, subjective memories of Gabriel’s witnesses - spiritual, familial, romantic, and political - converge to make sense of the man’s confounding works and message. As they do, a surprising portrait develops...not only of the deepening mystery of Gabriel Romero himself but also of a country in conflict and the faith it takes to fight the suspicion and fear that divide us.

When Sam falls in love with Deptford thug Derek, and Anne’s best friend Kathleen takes her own life, they discover they are linked not just by a world of drugs and revenge - they also share the friendship of the uncanny and enigmatic Deborah. Seamstress, sailor, storyteller and self-proclaimed centenarian immortal, Deborah slowly reveals to Anne and Sam her improbable, fantastical life, a history of hidden Deptford and ultimately the solution to their crises.

An American pilot crash-lands in the desert and finds himself on the outskirts of the very camp he was supposed to bomb. After days spent wandering and hallucinating from dehydration, Major Ellie is rescued by one of the camp's residents, a teenager named Momo, whose entrepreneurial money-making schemes are failing as his family is falling apart: his older brother, Ali, left for his first day of work at an American base and never returned; his parents are at each other’s throats; his dog, Mutt, is having a very bad day; and an earthy-crunchy aid worker has shown up....

In 1923, 17-year-old Esther arrives in Köln "with a hardened heart as her sole luggage.” Thus begins a 22-year journey, woven against the European Holocaust and the Hindu Kali Yuga (the “Age of Darkness” when human civilization degenerates spiritually), in search of a place of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, using cunning and shrewdness, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her Jewish heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India. Esther’s traveling companion and the novel’s narrator is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God....

Jaymi is an independent games designer living on Electra Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Opposed to him are his former colleagues at Bang Dead Games. Their mounting competitiveness regarding his own extravagant game creation reaches a point where they attack him physically with a flying drone.

In a Jerusalem both ancient and modern, where the First Temple squats over the populace like a Trump casino, where the streets are literally crawling with prophets and heathen helicopters buzz over Old Testament sovereigns, two young poets are about to have their lives turned upside down. Struggling Jeremiah is worried that he might be wasting his time trying to be a writer; the great critic Broch just beat him over the head with his own computer keyboard.

Most of the things Pillow really liked to do were obviously morally wrong. He wasn't an idiot; clearly it was wrong to punch people in the face for money. But there had been an art to it, and it had been thrilling and thoughtful for him. The zoo was also evil, a jail for animals who'd committed no crimes, but he just loved it. The way Pillow figured it, love wasn't about goodness, it wasn't about being right, loving the very best person, having the most ethical fun. Love was about being alone and making some decisions.

This collection of eight stories paints a vivid image of people who don't do what you might expect them to living on the fringes in America. Not stories of triumph over adversity but something completely other. Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods' characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong - often the places where they were born. In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.

Almost immediately upon Julie Bird’s return to the small port town where she was raised, everyday life is turned upside down. Julie’s Gulf War vet father, Marty, has been on the losing side of a battle with PTSD for too long. A day of boating takes a dramatic turn when a majestic blue whale beaches itself and dies. A blond stranger sets up camp oceanside: she’s an agitator, musician-impersonator, and armchair philosopher named Jennie Lee Lewis - and Julie discovers she’s connected to her father. As the blue whale decays on the beach, more wildlife turns up dead - apparently by suicide - echoing Marty’s deepest desire.

It’s 1984 in Los Angeles. Jake Maldemer’s first book, Tales from the Back of a Bus, is a hit. It's a darkly comic, genre-bending roman à clef in which aspiring writer Jack Moses meets an odd little man name Kobold who keeps randomly feeding him handwritten horror stories as they travel across Los Angeles in the back of an RTD bus. Just as the life of Jake’s storybook-self gets stranger and more chaotic, so does Jake’s real life.