Joanna Kavenna

Inglorious

Rosa Lane is 35, at Dante's centre point of life, when the individual is meant to garner experience and become wise. So far she has managed well enough without wisdom; she has been obedient to prevailing mores, she has worked hard at her decent job in London and has never troubled the stream. Yet she is suddenly disoriented by events, unable to understand the death of her mother, finding the former buttresses of her life — her long-term relationship, her steady job — no longer support her. When she leaves her job, and her relationship ends, she is thrust out into a great loneliness; she becomes acutely aware of — tormented by — the details of the city, the lives of those around her, and the deluge of competing cries.

Having stripped herself of her former context, and become inexplicable to her friends and family, she embarks on a mock-epic quest for a sense of purpose, for an answer to the hoary old question 'Why Live?' Her comical grail quest is fraught with minor trials — encounters with former friends, unsympathetic landladies, prospective employers, theory-mongers, and denizens of the 'real world'. Rosa also falls into a state of constant motion, nervously treading around London. Yet her constant circumnavigations of the city fail to enlighten her, and she escapes from the city to join friends in Cumbria. This escape finally precipitates the climax of the book, the greatest trial, and the beginnings of her return to normality, whatever that was.

Carrie Jones

Désolation

Joanna Kavenna

The Birth of Love

It is Vienna, 1865: Dr Ignaz Semmelweis has been hounded into a lunatic asylum, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. The deaths of thousands of mothers are on his conscience and his dreams are filled with blood. It is 2153: humans are birthed and raised in breeding centres, nurtured by strangers and deprived of familial love. Miraculously, a woman conceives, and Prisoner 730004 stands trial for concealing it. London in 2009: Michael Stone's novel about Semmelweis has been published, after years of rejection. But while Michael absorbs his disconcerting success, his estranged mother is dying and asks to see him again. As Michael vacillates, Brigid Hayes, exhausted and uncertain whether she can endure the trials ahead, begins the labour of her second child. This is a beautifully constructed and immensely powerful work about motherhood that is also a story of rebellion, isolation and the damage done by rigid ideologies.

Carrie Jones

Emprise

Zara et Nick sont faits l'un pour l'autre, de véritables âmes soeurs qui veulent pouvoir s'aimer. Pour toujours. Mais Nick a été emporté au Walhalla par une Walkyrie... Pour tenter de sauver son bien-aimé, Zara a accepté de se transformer en lutin, elle est prête à surmonter toutes les épreuves, à faire tous les sacrifices. Pour ne rien arranger, des créatures malfaisantes continuent de s'en prendre aux adolescents de Bedford. Il faut donc absolument retrouver rapidement Nick, le seul qui soit assez puissant pour mettre fin à ces terrifiantes agressions. Mais chaque fois que Zara et ses amis semblent sur le point de réussir, ils affrontent une nouvelle épreuve et découvrent de nouveaux ennemis... Réussiront-ils à retrouver Nick à temps ? Et quel rôle joue le séduisant Astley, qui appartient à la race de ceux que Nick a toujours combattus ?

Jim Krusoe

Parsifal

There's a war going on between the earth and the sky, but that doesn’t stop Parsifal, a humble fountain-pen repairman, from revisiting the forest where he was raised. On his journey, Parsifal — a wise fool if there ever was one — encounters several librarians, a therapist, numerous blind people, and Misty, a beautiful woman who may well be under the influence of recreational drugs.

Head-spinning and hilarious, is a book like no other about the entanglement of the past and present, as well as the limitations of the future.

Carrie Jones

Envoûtement

SUMMARY: Zara collectionne les phobies et les angoisses, comme les autres jeunes filles de son âge collectionnent les bâtons de rouge à lèvres. La vie n'a pas été tendre avec elle et sa mère, incapable de s'occuper d'elle, vient de l'envoyer vivre chez sa grand-mère. Zara espère pouvoir y vivre en sécurité, loin de ses peurs. Pourtant, les froides forêts de la région n'ont rien de rassurant, et d'étranges aventures attendent la jeune fille... Qui est ce garçon qui la suit partout et semble si maléfique ? Heureusement, Nick, un élève de sa classe, veille sur elle, et sa beauté ténébreuse n'est pas le moindre de ses atouts... Mais n'a-t-il pas, lui aussi, de lourds secrets ? Zara ne va pas tarder à découvrir que le danger se cache derrière les apparences... Et que les humains ne sont pas ceux que l'on imagine !

Herman Koch

Dear Mr. M

The tour-de-force, hair-raising new novel from Herman Koch, bestselling author of and

Once a celebrated writer, M's greatest success came with a suspense novel based on a real-life disappearance. The book was called , and it told the story of Jan Landzaat, a history teacher who went missing one winter after his brief affair with Laura, his stunning pupil. Jan was last seen at the holiday cottage where Laura was staying with her new boyfriend. Upon publication, M.'s novel was a bestseller, one that marked his international breakthrough.

That was years ago, and now M.'s career is almost over as he fades increasingly into obscurity. But not when it comes to his bizarre, seemingly timid neighbor who keeps a close eye on him. Why?

From various perspectives, Herman Koch tells the dark tale of a writer in decline, a teenage couple in love, a missing teacher, and a single book that entwines all of their fates. Thanks to , supposedly a work of fiction, everyone seems to be linked forever, until something unexpected spins the "story" off its rails.

With racing tension, sardonic wit, and a world-renowned sharp eye for human failings, Herman Koch once again spares nothing and no one in his gripping new novel, a barbed tour de force suspending readers in the mysterious literary gray space between fact and fiction, promising to keep them awake at night, and justly paranoid in the merciless morning.

Carrie Jones

Tourments

Affinity Konar

Mischling

Pearl is in charge of: the sad, the good, the past.

Stasha must care for: the funny, the future, the bad.

It's 1944 when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood.

As part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo, the girls experience privileges and horrors unknown to others, and they find themselves changed, stripped of the personalities they once shared, their identities altered by the burdens of guilt and pain.

That winter, at a concert orchestrated by Mengele, Pearl disappears. Stasha grieves for her twin, but clings to the possibility that Pearl remains alive. When the camp is liberated by the Red Army, she and her companion Feliks-a boy bent on vengeance for his own lost twin-travel through Poland's devastation. Undeterred by injury, starvation, or the chaos around them, motivated by equal parts danger and hope, they encounter hostile villagers, Jewish resistance fighters, and fellow refugees, their quest enabled by the notion that Mengele may be captured and brought to justice within the ruins of the Warsaw Zoo. As the young survivors discover what has become of the world, they must try to imagine a future within it.

A superbly crafted story, told in a voice as exquisite as it is boundlessly original, defies every expectation, traversing one of the darkest moments in human history to show us the way toward ethereal beauty, moral reckoning, and soaring hope.

Champollion Le Jeune

Lettres écrites d'Égypte et de Nubie en 1828 et 1829

Yasmina Khadra

The Angels Die

Award-winning author Yasmina Khadra gives us a stunning panorama of life in Algeria between the two world wars, in this dramatic story of one man’s rise from abject poverty to a life of wealth and adulation. Even as a child living hand-to-mouth in a ghetto, Turambo dreamt of a better future. So when his family find a decent home in the city of Oran anything seems possible. But colonial Algeria is no place to be ambitious for those of Arab-Berber ethnicity. Through a succession of menial jobs, the constants for Turambo are his rage at the injustice surrounding him, and a reliable left hook. This last opens the door to a boxing apprenticeship, which will ultimately offer Turambo a choice: to take his chance at sporting greatness or choose a simpler life beside the woman he loves.

Fərman İsmayıl-Oğlu Kərimzadə

Xudafərin körpüsü

“Qarlı aşırım“ əsəri ilə böyük ədəbiyyata gələn görkəmli yazıçı, tarixi romanlar ustası Fərman Kərimzadənin “Xudafərin körpüsü“ romanında XV əsrin axırı, XVI əsrin əvvəllərində baş vermiş tarixi hadisələr, Şah İsmayıl Xətainin uşaqlıq və gənclik illəri, hakimiyyət uğrundakı mübarizəsi qələmə alınmışdır.

Romanda həmçinin Şah İsmayıl Xətainin bir şair, sərkərdə və dövlət xadimi kimi yetişib formalaşdığı tarixi şərait təsvir edilmiş, Uzun Həsən, Sara Xatun, Hüseyn Lələ bəy, Əbih Sultan kimi tarixi şəxsiyyətlərin yadda qalan obrazları yaradılmışdır.

Chessex Jacques

L'Ogre

Alexandra Kleeman

Intimations: Stories

From the celebrated author of ,a thought-provoking, often unsettling story collection that consists, broadly, of narrative diagrams of the three main stages in a human life: birth, life, and death.

Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel earned her comparisons to Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Ben Marcus, and Tom Perrotta. It was praised by the as "a powerful allegory of our civilization’s many maladies, artfully and elegantly articulated, by one of the young wise women of our generation."

In her second book, a collection of twelve stories irresistibly seductive in their strangeness, she explores human life from beginning to end: the distress of birth into a world already formed; the brief and confusing period of "living" where we understand what is expected of us and struggle to do it; and the death-y period toward the end where we sense it is ending and will end only partially understood, at best.

The title is taken from one of the stories ("Intimation"), but is also a play on Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality" — only in this case it’s not clear exactly what is being intimated, but it’s nothing so gleaming and good as Immortality. The middle, "Living" section of the book, is fleshed out with a set of stories that borrow more from traditional realist fiction to illustrate the inner lives of the characters.

At once familiar and mysterious, these stories have an eerie resonance as its characters find themselves in new and surprising situations. An unnamed woman enters a room with no exit and a ready-made life; the disappearance of people, objects, and memory creates an apocalypse; the art of dance is used to try to tame a feral child; the key to surviving a house-party lies in knowing the difference between fake and real blood.

Elegant, surprising, wondrous, and haunting, is an utterly transporting collection from one of our most ingenious and brilliant young writers.

Christian Jacq

Le moine et le vénérable

Début 44, deux hommes exceptionnels sont arrêtés par la Gestapo et emprisonnés dans une mystérieuse forteresse allemande. L'un est médecin et vénérable d'une loge maçonnique très ancienne. L'autre est un éminent moine bénédictin. Le Reich, qui poursuit son rêve hégémonique et totalitaire, entend soumettre à son idéologie toutes les croyances qui l'ont précédé. Sous les ordres de Himmler, un service secret traque les ordres religieux, les voyants, les astrologues et les sociétés secrètes afin de leur arracher leurs pouvoirs, leurs rites et leurs techniques et de vérifier leur efficacité. Comment le franc-maçon et le chrétien, aux convictions a priori inconciliables, vont-ils s'affronter, s'écouter et s'entendre face à des tortionnaires nazis déterminés à les asservir ? Peuvent-ils sortir du piège sadique dans lequel ils sont enfermés ?

Dakota Krout

Dungeon Born (The Divine Dungeon Book 1)

The Divine Dungeon

For eons, conquering dungeons has been the most efficient way to become a strong adventurer. Although, not everything is as straightforward as it seems. Several questions have always plagued the mind of those that enter these mythical places of power: Why are there so many monsters? Where does the amazing weaponry and heavy gold coins come from? Why does the very air fill with life-giving energies?!

Cal has all of the answers to these age old questions, for a very simple reason. He is a Dungeon Heart, a soul forced against his will into a magical stone. After several lonely years, Cal was able to regain sentience, allowing him to form new memories while slowly growing a dungeon around himself. With help from a friend, Cal learned how to create monsters and traps, increasing his power and size quickly.

When a threat to his existence rears its head, Cal decides that he will do anything to stay alive and become stronger. Unfortunately for treasure-seekers, the fastest way for Cal to achieve his goal... is to eat anyone that enters his depths.

Clemens James

L'Ombre de l'assassin

Durant quatre mille ans, rien n’est venu troubler la paix des Neuf Contrées, bénies des dieux… mais les dieux meurent aussi.Meeryn, déesse des Îles d’Estivage, a été sauvagement assassinée. Le seul témoin, Tylar de Noche, est un ancien Chevalier d’ombre. Cette caste de combattants puissants et respectés a reçu la Grâce de se déplacer sans être vu et de s’esquiver dans les ténèbres. Mais frappé d’infirmité, Tylar est tombé en disgrâce.Or, en mourant, la déesse lui a accordé une bénédiction : une marque qui a guéri son corps blessé mais que beaucoup voient comme la preuve qu’il est l’assassin. Pourchassé sans relâche, Tylar doit prouver son innocence et vaincre le véritable coupable…

Jessie Keane

Stay Dead

Stay Dead is the heartstopping sixth book in Jessie Keane's bestselling Annie Carter series. Annie Carter finally believes that life is good. She and Max are back together and she has a new and uncomplicated life sunning herself in Barbados. It's what she's always dreamed of. Then she gets the news that her old friend Dolly Farrell is dead, and suddenly she finds herself back in London and hunting down a murderer with only one thing on her mind…revenge. But the hunter can so quickly become the hunted, and Annie has been keeping too many secrets. She's crossed and bettered a lot of people over the years, but this time the enemy is a lot closer to home and she may just have met her match…

Clemens James

L'Ombre du chevalier

Loin au sud de Myrillia, un dangereux artefact fait surface : un crâne déformé. C’est celui d’un dieu et l’oeuvre de la Cabale, une faction déterminée à détruire les Neuf Contrées.Mais la Cabale n’est pas le seul danger. À la Citadelle, Tylar et les Chevaliers d’ombre tombent dans un traquenard. La menace est terrible : un ordre de chevaliers dæmoniques dont la Grâce a été pervertie se dresse contre la Citadelle.Pour sauver les Neuf Contrées, Tylar doit pénétrer dans l’hinterland, un territoire désolé qui s’étend au-delà des Contrées bénies, hanté par les dieux errants et gangrené par les Grâces Sombres… et dont aucun Chevalier d’ombre n’est jamais revenu.

Jonathan Kellerman

The Best American Crime Reporting 2008

Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators – it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 brings together the murderers and the masterminds, the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true-crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Jonathan Kellerman, bestselling author of more than twenty crime novels, most recently Compulsion and the forthcoming Bones.