Agneta Pleijel writes a painful yet humorous autobiographical novel about childhood in the aftermath of World War II.A prophecy is received by a beloved aunt, a prophecy that her young niece eagerly waits to see fulfilled.The story takes place in the 1950s in the suburbs of Stockholm, in the university town of Lund, and in the United States. Neta’s childhood is in disarray. She reads—words give form to the vagueness of existence—and is busy thinkin...

In the heart of the Cotswolds a body is found. A teenage girl, probably local - somebody's daughter who went out one evening and didn't come back. It is not long before she is identified: fifteen-year-old Lynne Wills, who habitually drank underage in The Silver Bells pub and, on the night of her death, was seen leaving with an unknown man. Chief Inspector Markby's friend Meredith Mitchell has been befriended by another troubled young local girl, Katie Conway. On the surface Lynne and Katie...

Longlisted for the 2017 Walter Scott Prize for Historical FictionIn the 1600s Sara de Vos loses her young daughter suddenly to illness. In her grief, she secretly begins painting a dark landscape of a girl watching a group of ice skaters from the edge of a wood.In 1950s New York, Martijn de Groot has At the Edge of a Wood hanging above his bed. Though it is a dark, peculiar painting, he holds it dear and when it is stolen, he is bereft. In Brooklyn, struggl...

Karl Ove Knausgaard leaves his wife and everything he knows in Oslo for a fresh start in Stockholm. There he strikes up a deep and competitive friendship with Geir and pursues Linda, a beautiful poet who captivated him years ago.A Man in Love, the second book of six in the My Struggle cycle, sees Knausgaard write of tempestuous relationships, the trials of parenthood and an urge to create great art. His singular insight and exhilirating honesty must be read to be ...

With the fierce emotional and intellectual power of such classics as Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, Kate Zambreno's novel Green Girl is a provocative, sharply etched portrait of a young woman navigating the spectrum between anomie and epiphany.First published in 2011 in a small press edition, Green Girl was named one of the best books of the year by critics i...

Through a series of journal entries, a woman records her thoughts and feelings over the course of a summer, shortly after giving birth to her child. Confined to her bedroom on the advice of her husband, a physician, “The Yellow Wallpaper” chronicles the woman’s increasing instability, as she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper covering the walls of her room.“The Yellow Wallpaper” is considered one of the earliest American feminist works of fiction and is unique for author Ch...

Afflictions & Departures is a collection of first-person experiential essays by writer and academic Madeline Sonik. Although Sonik explores some of the salient personal experiences of her young life, the essays in Afflictions & Departures are not traditional memoir. In addition to incidents and feelings recaptured from memory, Sonik seeks out connections between the microcosm of of the daily events of her childhood and the social, historical, and scientific trends of the ...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2010.In a remote, piney wood in Finland stands a convalescent hospital called Suvanto. Is is the early twentieth century and the patients, all women, seek relief from ailments real and imagined. The upper floors house foreign women of privilege, tended to by Sunny Taylor, an American who has fled an ill-starred life, only to retreat behind a mask of crisp professionalism.On a late summer's day, a new patient arrives on ...

Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2017Keflavik: a town that may be the darkest place in Iceland, surrounded by black lava fields, hemmed in by a sea that may not be fished, and site of the U.S. military base, whose influences shaped Icelandic culture from the '50s to the dawning of the new millennium.Ari - a writer and publisher - lands back in Keflavik from Copenhagen. His father is dying, and he is flooded by memories of his youth in the '...

When one door closes, another opens, or so they say. So why am I sitting behind a locked door in the laundry room, wondering how I got here? When is that other door going to open? And what will I find behind it?

This superb debut hailed for its power, compassion and elegance takes in the wide sweep of human experience.From the last hours of a condemned man, to the imaginary life of an AIDS patient, to the first performance of a bizarre new symphony, Yann Martel's stories are moving, thought-provoking and as inventive in form as they are timeless in content. They display the startling mix of dazzle and depth that has made him an international phenomenon.

Kerrigan is writing a guidebook to the city of Copenhagen. Specifically, a guide to the city's drinking establishments – of which there are over 1,500. Thus, it is a project potentially without end, and one with a certain amount of drunken numbness built into it. And that's the point: for Kerrigan, an American expat fleeing a terrible betrayal, has plenty he wants to forget. The only problem with his proposed project is his research associate, a voluptuous, green-eyed beauty who makes him ...