Towards the end of the 18th century, two brilliant young Germans set out to measure the world. The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt travels down the Orinoco, climbs the highest mountain then known to man, counts head lice on the heads of the natives, and explores every hole in the ground. The mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to know that space is curved.

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day–partner, parent, creator, muse–and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.

Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood - his home. Set in the mid-20th century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.

A few weeks after the 2016 election, at Thanksgiving with his daughter’s family, Rhys Kinnick snapped. After an escalating fight about politics, he hauled off and punched his conspiracy theorist son-in-law. Horrified by what he'd done, by the state of the country and by his own spiraling mental health, Rhys chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, off the grid and with no one around—except a pack of hungry raccoons. Now, seven years later, Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep.

Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring.

It's 1989, and in a small town on the Austria-Hungary border, nobody talks about the war; the older residents pretend not to remember, and the younger ones are too busy making plans to leave. The walls are thin, the curtains twitch, there is a face at every window, and everyone knows what they are not supposed to say. But as thousands of East German refugees mass at the border, it seems that the past is knocking on Darkenbloom's door. Still, though, nobody talks about the war. Until a mysterious visitor shows up asking questions.

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.

Wittgenstein's Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the listener as well that she is the only person left on earth. Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy.

Early one morning, a body is found lying next to the railway tracks just outside of Kuki Station in Saitama Prefecture, shot dead. It is identified as belonging to the owner of a local mill which is embroiled in a labour dispute. Suspicion initially falls on the workers' union, then on a new religious sect that has been gaining followers recently. Chief Inspector Onitsura and his assistant Tanna are called in to investigate, and soon set off in a journey across Japan, from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka, and finally to the island of Kyushu, in a hunt for the killer.

All I want is to be innocent again. But that's not how it works. Especially not after the Wheel. The three Bishop sisters grew up in privilege in the moneyed suburbs of Detroit. But as the auto industry declined, so did their fortunes. Harper, the youngest, is barely making ends meet when her beloved, charismatic sister Pam—currently in the middle of a contentious battle with her ex-husband—and her eldest sister, Debra, approach her about joining an exciting new club.

In a highly inventive style, Cockerell captures history as it unfolds, weaving together letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles, and interviews into a vivid account. Melting Point follows Zangwill and the Jochelmann family through two world wars, to London, New York, and Jerusalem—as their lives intertwine with some of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century, and each chooses whether to cling to their history or melt into their new surroundings. It is a story that asks what it means to belong, and what can be salvaged from the past.

During the 1920s, dozens of expeditions scoured the Chinese and Tibetan wilderness in search of the panda bear, a beast that many believed did not exist. When the two eldest sons of President Theodore Roosevelt sought the bear in 1928, they had little hope of success. Together with a team of scientists and naturalists, they accomplished what a decade of explorers could not, ultimately introducing the panda to the West. In the process, they documented a vanishing world and set off a new era of conservation biology.

Scientist-explorer Alexander von Humboldt summons the great mathematician Carl Gauss to Berlin before embarking on an ambitious expedition across Russia, determined to measure the world.

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.

Winner of the 2009 Tony Award®, God of Carnage is a brash and hilarious exploration of human nature. After one 11-year-old is hit by another, their parents meet to find a mature resolution. As the evening wears on, the veneer of civility degenerates. What begins as protective parenting ends as an excuse to let loose the primordial beast buried in each of us.

Scientist-explorer Alexander von Humboldt summons the great mathematician Carl Gauss to Berlin before embarking on an ambitious expedition across Russia, determined to measure the world.

Towards the end of the 18th century, two brilliant young Germans set out to measure the world. The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt travels down the Orinoco, climbs the highest mountain then known to man, counts head lice on the heads of the natives, and explores every hole in the ground. The mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to know that space is curved.

Daniel Kehlmann masterfully weaves the fates of many historical figures into this enchanting work of magical realism and adventure. This account of the 17th-century vagabond performer and trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel begins when he’s a scrawny boy growing up in a quiet village. When his father, a miller with a secret interest in alchemy and magic, is found out by the church, Tyll is forced to flee with the baker’s daughter, Nele. They find safety and companionship with a traveling performer, who teaches Tyll his trade. And so begins a journey of discovery and performance for Tyll.

One day Arthur Friedland piles his three sons into the car and drives them to see the Great Lindemann, Master of Hypnosis. Protesting that he doesn't believe in magic even as he is led onto the stage, Arthur nevertheless experiences something. Later that night, while his family sleeps, he takes his passport, empties all the money from his bank account, and vanishes. In time, still absent from his family, he begins to publish novels and becomes an internationally renowned author.

In David Ignatius' gripping new novel, spies don' t bother to steal information...they change it, permanently and invisibly. Graham Weber has been director of the CIA for less than a week when a Swiss kid in a dirty T-shirt walks into the American consulate in Hamburg and says the agency has been hacked, and he has a list of agents' names to prove it. This is the moment a CIA director most dreads. Weber isn' t sure where to turn until he meets a charismatic (and unstable) young man named James Morris who runs the Internet Operations Center.

"It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air." This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the mountains of Germany - a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics.

Einer der Größten des Kinos, vielleicht der größte Regisseur seiner Epoche: Zur Machtergreifung dreht G.W. Pabst in Frankreich; vor den Gräueln des neuen Deutschlands flieht er nach Hollywood. Aber unter der blendenden Sonne Kaliforniens sieht der weltberühmte Regisseur mit einem Mal aus wie ein Zwerg. Nicht einmal Greta Garbo, die er unsterblich gemacht hat, kann ihm helfen. Und so findet Pabst sich, fast wie ohne eigenes Zutun, in seiner Heimat Österreich wieder, die nun Ostmark heißt.

Tyll Ulenspiegel - Vagant und Schausteller, Entertainer und Provokateur - wird zu Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts in einem Dorf geboren, in dem sein Vater, ein Müller, als Magier und Welterforscher schon bald mit der Kirche in Konflikt gerät. Tyll muss fliehen, die Bäckerstochter Nele begleitet ihn. Auf ihren Wegen durch das vom Dreißigjährigen Krieg verheerte Land begegnen sie vielen kleinen Leuten und einigen der sogenannten Großen: Gelehrten, Ärzten, Henkern und Jongleuren.

Imagine being famous. Being recognized on the street, adored by people who have never even met you, known the world over. Wouldn’t that be great? But what if, one day, you got stuck in a country where celebrity means nothing, where no one spoke your language and you didn’t speak theirs, where no one knew your face (no book jackets, no TV) and you had no way of calling home? How would your fame help you then? What if someone got hold of your cell phone? What if they spoke to your girlfriends, your agent, your director, and started making decisions for you?

A cinematic and unforgettable debut novel, Gulf casts a harsh desert light on often overlooked stories from the Arabian Gulf through the voices of five diverse women whose lives collide with devastating and profound consequences. Written with unsettling intimacy and determined empathy, Gulf exposes the stark realities of what happens when a woman’s agency is stripped away and asks how far we will go in order to survive.

For much of her life, Dawn has felt as if something had been missing. Now, at the age of fifty-eight, with a divorce behind her and her two grown-up sons busy with their own lives, she should be trying to settle into a new future for herself. But she keeps returning to the past and to the secret she’s kept all these years. At just sixteen, Dawn found herself pregnant, and—as was common in Trinidad back then—her parents sent her away to have the baby and give her up for adoption.

Den omvandrende skuespiller, entertainer og provokatør Tyll Ulenspiegel blev født i starten af 1600-tallet. Tylls far, der er møller, er også tryllekunstner og opfinder og i særlig grad en mand, der vækker de lokale gejsteliges vrede. Tyll bliver nødt til at flygte og får følgeskab af Nele, bagerens datter. På sin rejse gennem et land, der er smadret af Trediveårskrigen, møder han både almindelige mennesker og store ånder; bl.a.

In this highly original work of lyrical reportage, Elizabeth Rush guides listeners through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place. Weaving firsthand accounts from those facing this choice with profiles of wildlife biologists and other members of the communities both currently at risk and already displaced, Rising privileges the voices of those usually kept at the margins.

Gegen Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts machen sich zwei junge Deutsche an die Vermessung der Welt. Der eine, Alexander von Humboldt, kämpft sich durch Urwald und Steppe, befährt den Orinoko, kostet Gifte, zählt Kopfläuse, kriecht in Erdlöcher, besteigt Vulkane und begegnet Seeungeheuern und Menschenfressern. Der andere, der Mathematiker und Astronom Carl Friedrich Gauß, der sein Leben nicht ohne Frauen verbringen kann und doch in der Hochzeitsnacht aus dem Bett springt, um eine Formel zu notieren.

In Hudson River Bracketed, Edith Wharton illuminates the creative process of writing. Vance Weston, a young Midwesterner yearning to be a writer, travels to New York in pursuit of his dreams. On the Hudson River, in an old house called The Willows, he meets a kindred spirit. Halo Spear is the privileged daughter of an old New York family, a lover of poetry and literature who educates and inspires him as he hones his craft.