In this gamble, more than a few poker chips are at stake. When an Army Air Force Major vanishes from his Top Secret job at the Fort Worth airbase in the summer of 1947, down-on-his-luck former Ranger Jefferson Sharp is hired to find him, because the Major owes a sizable gambling debt to a local mobster. The search takes Sharp from the hideaway poker rooms of Fort Worth's Thunder Road, to the barren ranch lands of New Mexico, to secret facilities under construction in the Nevada desert. Lethal operatives and an opaque military bureaucracy stand in his way, but when he finds an otherworldly clue and learns President Truman is creating a new Central Intelligence Agency and splitting the Air Force from the Army, Sharp begins to connect dots. And those dots draw a straight line to a conspiracy aiming to cover up a secret that is out of this world?literally so.

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Childless Maeve Corrigan, though rich and successful, is dying of cancer. She wants to leave her business empire to one of the offspring of her two estranged brothers, Des and Leo. But which young relative should she choose? Des has four children and he is overstretched financially. Leo is the unambitious owner of a hardware store in a remote Australian town and has two children. As the younger generation begin to gather around Maeve, old secrets are revealed, new allegiances made, and there are surprises for every member of the family. The Corrigan legacy is not what it first appears.

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Women’s writing in Cameroon has so far been dominated by Francophone writers. The short stories in this collection represent the yearnings and vision of an Anglophone woman, who writes both as a Cameroonian and as a woman whose life has been shaped by the minority status her people occupy within the nation-state. The stories in Your Madness, Not Mine are about postcolonial Cameroon, but especially about Cameroonian women, who probe their day-to-day experiences of survival and empowerment as they deal with gender oppression: from patriarchal expectations to the malaise of maldevelopment, unemployment, and the attraction of the West for young Cameroonians. Makuchi has given us powerful portraits of the people of postcolonial Africa in the so-called global village who too often go unseen and unheard.

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A collection of over 100 inspirational africentric stories of power, hope, and joy. This book contains stories about biblical events, African history, family, education, nature, and famous African Americans such as Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Paul Robeson, and many others.

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A Stanford University Press classic.

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In An Amish Family, beloved author of Amish romance, Kathleen Fuller, invites readers into the lives of four Amish families.

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“Michael Knight is more than a master of the short story. He knows the true pace of life and does not cheat it, all the while offering whopping entertainment.”—Barry HannahLong considered a master of the form and an essential voice in American fiction, Michael Knight’s stories have been lauded by writers such Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Hannah, and Richard Bausch. Now, with Eveningland he returns to the form that launched his career, delivering an arresting collection of interlinked stories set among the “right kind of Mobile family” in the years preceding a devastating hurricane.Grappling with dramas both epic and personal, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to the “unspeakable misgivings of contentment,” Eveningland captures with crystalline poeticism and perfect authenticity of place the ways in which ordinary life astounds us with its complexity. A teenaged girl with a taste for violence holds a burglar hostage in her house on New Year’s Eve; a middle aged couple examines the intricacies of their marriage as they prepare to throw a party; and a real estate mogul in the throes of grief buys up all the property on an island only to be accused of madness by his daughters. These stories, told with economy and precision, infused with humor and pathos, excavate brilliantly the latent desires and motivations that drive life forward.Eveningland is a luminous collection from “a writer of the first rank.”(Esquire)

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Fay Weldon’s latest novel, The Spa, is full of all the biting humor and glittering prose that made her name. Always sharp tongued and occasionally libidinous, it offers a glimpse of the despairs and dalliances of a set of high-powered women who have burned paths through—and sometimes been burned by—their worlds and the men in them. It is the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and ten high-achieving ladies are gathered at the expensive Castle Spa, seeking to rejuvenate themselves with Botox, aromatherapy, and all-around pampering. They lounge around in the Jacuzzi, sipping champagne, and telling each other the stories of their lives. The Trophy Wife recounts her spell in a Greek prison; the Brain Surgeon tells of twins and mistaken identity; the Judge describes a sex change that allowed him to judge the pleasures of the bedroom from both male and female perspectives; and the Stepmother remembers her unforgettable story, a reversal of Cinderella’s, with the stepmother fated to play the victim. The Spa is a darkly funny sketch of a group of women who, despite prejudice, imprisonment, domestic catastrophes and romantic debacles, have risen to the top of their respective worlds.

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In Drink, Play, F@#k Bob Sullivan, a jilted husband, sets off to explore the world, experience a meaningful connection with the divine, and rediscover his passion. His travels lead him from his home in New York City to a drinking bender across Ireland, through the glitz and glamour that is Las Vegas, and to the hedonistic pleasure palaces of Thailand. After a lifetime of playing it safe, Mr. Sullivan finally follows his heart and lives out everyone's deepest fantasies. For who among us hasn't dreamed of standing stark naked, head upturned, and mouth agape beneath a cascading torrent of Guinness Stout? What could be more exhilarating than losing every penny you have because Charlie Weiss went for a meaningless last-second field goal? And what sensate creature could ever doubt that the greatest pleasure known to man can be found in a leaky bamboo shack filled with glassy-eyed, bruised Asian hookers? Bob Sullivan has a lot to teach us about life. Let's just pray we have the wisdom to put aside our preconceptions and listen. Because what Bob Sullivan finds isn't at all what he expected.

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An amazing game of mirrors. […] Original and promising. —LE MONDE2014 Anton Wachter Prize for Best First NovelGolden Book Owl Reader's Choice AwardOpzij Feminist Literature Prize2014 Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize.MEET MINNIE PANIS, a young and talented conceptual artist navigating love affairs, her unexpected success in the art world, and her relationship with an emotionally distant mother. After surviving a near-death experience falling through the ice during her ultimate artwork, Minnie begins to uncover the truth behind her premature birth with the help of the doctor who saves her life—as it turns out—twice. Entering into his clinic, whose motto is All the fish needs is to get lost in the water, Minnie arrives at the border of life’s ebb, where meaningful art and revelations occur. An intimate, often humorous exploration of the intertwining cycles of death, rebirth and coincidence, The Consequences is a Bildungsroman that echoes far beyond the last page. Niña Weijers’ remarkable, inventive novel depicts a contemporary conceptual artist at the height of her fame, whose blasé art project has unintended consequences. Weijers invokes Kurt Vonnegut in the course of the narrative, and this novel shares Vonnegut’s sense of how things can be simultaneously real and absurd. Movies and books notoriously fail to capture the social and spiritual atmosphere of the contemporary art world, but Weijers nails it. Her book is beautifully written, surprising and often profound. —CHRIS KRAUS

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