Fiction

Welcome to the fantastic world of Zamonia, populated by all manner of extraordinary characters. This is book one of the series the Washington Post called "equal parts J. K. Rowling, Douglas Adams, and Shel Silverstein."

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Blue Bear is a land of imaginative lunacy and supreme adventure, wicked satire and epic fantasy, all mixed together, turned on its head, and lavishly illustrated by author Walter Moers.

"A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen and a half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest," says the narrator of Walter Moers's epic adventure.

"What about the Minipirates? What about the Hobgoblins, the Spiderwitch, the Babbling Billows, the Troglotroll, the Mountain Maggot . . . Mine is a tale of mortal danger and eternal love, of hair's breadth, last-minute escapes."

Enjoy Walter Moers's Zamonia Series:

"Noir fiction à la Orwell." Le Monde

In the kingdom of Abistan, citizens submit to a single god, demonstrating their devotion by kneeling in prayer nine times a day, denouncing dissenters, and demonstrating blind faith in a just god. Secular learning has been banned, remembering is forbidden, and an omnipresent surveillance system informs the authorities of every deviant act, thought, or idea.

Ati has encountered certain people, however, wanderers and outcasts, who think differently. In ghettos and caves, hidden from the authorities and the ubiquitous surveillance, exist the last living freethinkers of Abistan. Under their influence, Ati begins to doubt, and ultimately undertakes a perilous journey into Abistan's hidden territories in an effort to resist submission and discover the true origin of the Holy Book.

A tribute to George Orwell's 1984, a work of political satire, and a novel of protest against totalitarianism of all kinds, Sansal's 2084 tells the story of one man's struggle for freedom in a near future in which independent thought has been outlawed.

"A powerful satire...Sansal spares us nothing of the horrors of the autocratic state, its hypocrisy, its deceptions and malicious contrivances." The Spectator

"Always intriguing...Sansal's playfulness is his most endearing writerly quality." The National

44 Poems on Being with Each Other is a new volume that offers immersive reflections on the human connection. With an observant eye, Pádraig Ó Tuama shares an enlightening meditation on each poem, revealing the ways we relate to each other, the world around us, and ourselves. Among the selections, Ó Tuama examines friendship and its loss through Langston Hughes's "I Loved My Friend," changing familial bonds in Rita Dove's "Eurydice, Turning," the relationship with the past in Mary Oliver's "The Uses of Sorrow," the power of declaration in Lucille Clifton's "Won't You Celebrate with Me," and the necessity of connection to land in Joy Harjo's "Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings."

Blending humor with insight, tension with tenderness, complexity with care, 44 Poems on Being with Each Other articulates the power of poetry itself. Through careful and incisive readings, it illuminates aspects of the human condition, particularly the ways we are inextricably linked to each other, and provides inspiration for grounded self-reflection. It is an anthology that will delight readers, just as Pádraig's podcast has done for millions around the world.

Written and published in 1843, the year after Charles Dickens traveled through the United States, A Christmas Carol has proved to be one of his most popular and well read works. Although he wrote it originally with the hope of paying outstanding bills, the book (self-printed with an expensive binding) did not bring in as much money as he had hoped, and he was forced to move his family to Genoa. There, in the hot Italian summer, Dickens penned his second Christmas story, The Chimes.

Today, few readers need introduction to the anti-hero Ebenezer Scrooge, his dastardly treatment of his employee and family, and his "ba-humbug" attitude towards Christmas-all changed by a nightmarish sleep of visions past, present, and future.

This new edition, printed with the original John Leech illustrations, again reveals why this classic is so appealing.

In A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux revisits the season 50 years earlier when she found herself overpowered by another's will and desire. In the summer of 1958, 18-year-old Ernaux submits her will to a man's, and then he moves on, leaving her without a "master," bereft.

Now, 50 years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman that she wanted to forget completely. And to discover that here, submerged in shame, humiliation, and betrayal, but also in self-discovery and self-reliance, lies the origin of her writing life.

Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, nineteenth-century edge of the future. Fear, greed, and real estate turn the windmill into a hanging tree. Each train into this booming railroad town unloads a cargo of carpetbaggers, entrepreneurs, seekers, Civil War veterans, and strong, lonely women--like Eliza Pelham. Good mother, drunk and unfaithful wife, Eliza stands at this juncture of raw change and random justice, caught in a reality of callousness and redemption. As Eliza searches for her stolen children, she discovers three allies: an Irish saloon girl, an Apache man who reads Melville, and La Llorona, the weeping mother, fierce in a black dress, thousands of years old.

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most enduring works. Since Hemingway's personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.

Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest's sole surviving son, and an introduction by grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, editor of this edition, the book also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of literary luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford, and insightful recollections of Hemingway's own early experiments with his craft.

Widely celebrated and debated by critics and readers everywhere, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

"A remarkable novel. . . . A Prayer for Owen Meany is a rare creation. ... An amazingly brave piece of work ... so extraordinary, so original, and so enriching. . . . Readers will come to the end feeling sorry to leave [this] richly textured and carefully wrought world." --STEPHEN KING, Washington Post

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice--not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

In the summer of 1953, two eleven-year-old boys--best friends--are playing in a Little League baseball game in Gravesend, New Hampshire. One of the boys hits a foul ball that kills the other boy's mother. The boy who hits the ball doesn't believe in accidents; Owen Meany, one of literary fiction's most unforgettable characters, believes he is God's instrument. What happens to Owen after that 1953 foul ball is extraordinary.

A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick

This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff.

Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun."

"The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."

In this exuberantly praised book -- a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner -- David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.