Literature & Fiction

It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall.

The top 10 list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face....

The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive.,,,

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality.

Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect....

Dan has accidentally "Noclipped" into the Backrooms—a bizarro, extra-dimensional Alice-in-Wonderland world, overrun with horrific nightmare creatures known as the Dwellers. No one ever gets out.

When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf-themed wedding Rose is hosting.

Another instant classic from Carl Hiaasen—laugh-out-loud funny, tackling the current chaotic and polarized American culture (following in the path of Squeeze Me), with two wonderful Hiaasen heroes.

Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage....

She said yes to Morelli. She said yes to Ranger. Now Stephanie Plum has two fiancés and no idea what to do about it. But the way things are going, she might not live long enough to marry anyone.

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness....

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking....

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate....

Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime, Vero, have not always gotten along with Finlay’s elderly neighbor, Mrs. Haggerty, the community busybody and president of the neighborhood watch. But when a dead body is discovered in her backyard, Mrs. Haggerty needs their help.

Amber is a young videographer who has landed her dream job. She is to produce a web series based on a late-night talk radio show dealing with the unexplained. She is a huge fan of the show, and its host, Jack Owens, who she hopes to help reveal the world’s most cryptic secrets.

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore comes a hilariously deranged tale of a mad scientist, a famous painter, and an undead woman’s electrifying journey of self-discovery.

Well, this year, after the Spring Planting season, I’m really gonna relax and put down roots. It’s the slow life for me. Sure, the talking animals and cultivators coming to live with me are a bit weird, but this year everything is gonna be basically normal....

Large chests are said to encompass all manner of hopes and dreams. Men covet them. Women envy them. But one fact holds true - everyone wants to get their hands on some big ones....

Kirsten Miller, author of The Change, brings us a bracing, wildly entertaining satire about a small Southern town, a pitched battle over banned books, and a little lending library that changes everything.

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he’d return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he’s desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness.

When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting....

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book....

When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf-themed wedding Rose is hosting.

After her twin sister, Chiara, goes missing at a mom-fluencer weekend, Adrienne Shaw will find her no matter what it takes. They may have been on the outs, but no one comes for her sister and gets away with it. It’s been a year, the authorities have no answers, and her brother-in-law is useless in the matter. It’s time for Adrienne to take the case into her own hands. Following in Chiara’s last footsteps, Adrienne goes undercover, infiltrating the same influencer retreat as the last thing she wants to be: an Instamommy.

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

Workaholic Molly is buzzing when her best friend tells her she’s getting married. As maid of honour Molly can’t wait for the perfect bachelorette party in Spain. What could be better than a week in a stunning villa? Sun, sea, cocktails and gossiping – and best of all, no boys allowed. But when the hens arrive they discover that they are not alone. The villa has been accidentally double booked by a group of stags who make it very clear they’re not leaving!

The Chicago Tribune has dubbed Elmore Leonard, “the coolest, hottest writer in America.” In the same league as the legendary great ones—John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain—Leonard demonstrates his remarkable mastery with Get Shorty, one of the most adored of his forty-plus novels. The basis of the hit movie starring John Travolta and Danny DeVito, Get Shorty chronicles the over-the-top, sometimes violent Hollywood misadventures of a Florida mob loan shark who chases a deadbeat client all the way to Tinseltown and decides to stick around and make movies.

At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already. But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again.

Marina gave up her career as a chef to raise her children, but her divorce has left her harried, lonely, and the black sheep of her family. It’s also left her in dire financial straits. Opal is a post-menopausal fitness guru who spends her days chasing likes and followers in an industry that worships youth. Even her glossy online persona can’t mask her checkered past. Lilah is a shy and optimistic librarian who spends her days tending to the stacks, until she wins an unbelievable sum in the lottery. With a growing bank account and a dashing fiancé, life seems too good to be true.

On the surface, Denny Voss’s life in rural Minnesota is a quiet one. At thirty years old, he lives at home with his elderly mother and his beloved blind and deaf Saint Bernard, George. He cleans up roadkill to help pay the bills. Though his prospects are limited by a developmental delay—the result of an accident at birth—Denny has always felt that he has “a good life.” So how did he wind up being charged with the murder of a mayoral candidate—after crashing a sled full of guns into a tree?

When Diane Schwebe, the director of a major New York museum, is awakened in the early morning by a text message from the museum’s lawyer, it is the start of a twenty-four hour roller-coaster ride. Diane has sacrificed many things in her life to help the fading institution stave off irrelevance and financial ruin. In this battle, she’s surrounded by her stalwart supporters and a motley assortment of museum employees, each on the precipice of collapse or revelation.

It started out like any other morning for the Fact Checker. The piece, “Mandeville/Green,” didn’t raise any red flags. There were more pressing stories that week—it being 2004 New York City and all. “Mandeville/Green” was a light, breezy look at a local farm called New Egypt, whose Ramapo tomatoes were quickly becoming the summer’s hottest produce. At first glance, the story seemed straightforward, but one line made the Fact Checker pause: a stray quote from a New Egypt volunteer named Sylvia making a cryptic reference to “nefarious business” at the farmer’s market.

When Hester is diagnosed with terminal cancer on her fortieth birthday, she knows immediately what she must do: abandon her possessions and drive to California to kill her estranged father. With no friends or family tying her to the life she’s built in New York City, she quits her wildly lucrative job in corporate law and starts driving west. She hasn’t made it far when she runs into John, an environmental activist in need of a ride to different superfund sites across the United States.

Denk an das schlimmste Date deines Lebens – und du bist noch nicht einmal nahe dran! Ein ebenso humorvoller wie lebenskluger Roman, eine grandiose Mischung aus Humor und existentiellen Fragen. The Walking Date ist keine normale Dating-Plattform: Hier können sich Menschen, die nicht mehr lange zu leben haben, noch ein letztes Mal verlieben. Deshalb hat sich auch Patient Raphael bei TWD angemeldet, und tatsächlich funkt es zwischen ihm und der ebenfalls erkrankten Nala. Doch am Tag ihres ersten Blind Dates geht es Raphael nicht gut.

Join the hilarious and heartwarming adventures of Samuel Pickwick and his quirky band of companions in The Pickwick Papers, Dickens’ delightful and timeless comedic masterpiece. When the kindly but bumbling Mr. Pickwick forms the Pickwick Club and sets out on a series of journeys to investigate the curiosities of life, he unwittingly stumbles into one misadventure after another, from bizarre legal battles to laugh-out-loud encounters with eccentric characters.

Joybird Martin—an Uber driver with cheerfulness to spare—desperately wants to be a life coach. She’s so sunny about her chances that even her snarky father—a has-been TV writer with a failed third marriage—can’t dim her light. So when he shows up broke on her doorstep, Joybird takes him in with no questions asked, trying to find a balance between her bright optimism and his sarcastic pessimism. It works, and she continues sharing her earnest wisdom with her Uber riders.

Informed by real-life events, from Japanese incarceration to the Vietnam War and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen’s novel gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to one another, and to ourselves, after tragedy.

Jessamyn St. Germain is meant to be a star. Not an actor who occasionally books yogurt commercials and certainly not a lowly usher at one of Vancouver’s smallest regional theaters. No, she is bound for greatness, and that’s why the part of Maria in the theater’s upcoming production of The Sound of Music is hers. Or it’s going to be.

Comic, ironic, grotesque, disturbingly poetic in its use of language, and profoundly sorrowful, Chevengur—here published in a new English translation based on the most authoritative Russian text—is the most ambitious of the extraordinary novels that the great Andrey Platonov wrote in the 1920s and 1930s

Funny, whip-smart, and often tender, Bitter Texas Honey introduces us to the unforgettable and indefatigable Joan West: ambitious, full of contradictions, utterly herself. As she wades through it all—addiction, politics, loss, and, notably, her father’s string of increasingly bizarre girlfriends—we witness her confront what it means to be a person, and an artist, in the world.

"Europe and Elsewhere" by Mark Twain is a collection of essays and stories that provide insights into the author's experiences in Europe and beyond. From humorous anecdotes to reflections on society and politics, the book covers a range of topics such as memorable midnight experiences, editorial writings, temperance crusades, and national stupidities. With contributions from Brander Matthews and Albert Bigelow Paine, the book offers a unique perspective on the world through Mark Twain's witty storytelling and critical observations of human nature and society. Published in 1923.

Garantiert kein Safe Space: Der Debütroman der Queen of Meme. Weil Peggy Brinkmann, 37, ihr Studium weder erfolgreich beenden noch erfolglos abbrechen kann, haben ihr die Eltern den Geldhahn zugedreht. Seitdem muss sie sich Küche und Bad mit Martin teilen, der sich wahlweise mit seinem Schwanz oder dem Lackieren seiner Fingernägel beschäftigt – und trotzdem nicht schwul ist.

Mikey makes everything a joke, even the clinical depression he's struggled with for years. After a run of failed jobs, he becomes the unlikely basketball coach at a high school for high-risk offenders who are experiencing mental illness. The position becomes suddenly available after the team tried to strangle their last coach.

What would you do if you thought your coworker was getting away with murder—literally? Dolores dela Cruz has been dying to spot one in the wild, and he fits the mold perfectly: strangler gloves, calculated charm, dashing good looks that give a leg up in any field . . . including fields of unmarked graves. The new office temp is definitely a serial killer.

Frances Partridge, fifty-five, is a beloved children’s author. Geraint Blevins, forty-one, is an auto mechanic and devoted family man. Parker Poplawski, twenty-three, is just starting her career as a wardrobe assistant on a hit TV show. What do these people have in common? Nothing, that’s what. Until each of them reaches a breaking point and snaps in spectacular fashion. They meet in a court-mandated anger management class: three very different people, forced to spend a lot of time together, who slowly end up bonding and helping one another in unexpected ways.

Derrymore Academy circa 2007 is home to teenagers who have their eyebrows shaped and their sweet sixteens tented. Their first kisses arrive around the same time as their boating licenses and they celebrate getting their braces off with Mediterranean vacations. It is here that Emery Hooper, adopted at birth into the country club set, thrives. The one blight on her otherwise perfect life? Lilah Chang. The Chinese-American student is the embarrassing epitome of every Asian stereotype Emery despises—and is inexplicably determined to become Emery's friend.

Facing down a shirtless Miles Appleton – best friend to her brother-in-law – Betty is reminded both of everything she dislikes about the talented pastry chef, and how annoyingly gorgeous he is. Boathouse Cottage was meant to be a sanctuary for Betty and her beloved rescue Shetland Pony, Pumpkin, but it seems Fate isn’t done messing with her just yet… Now, as her sister’s marriage implodes and the family cottage in St Aiden becomes a bargaining chip that needs to be protected, Betty and Miles go head to head.