fiction / literary

Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft down the Mississippi River in search of freedom.

"New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline's world is forever changed when Hitler's army invades Poland in September 1939--and then sets its sights on France..."--Provided by publisher.

"'A Gentleman in Moscow' immerses us in ... the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery"--Provided by publisher.

"Set in...present-day Paris...seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour--a ma?tre at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust--must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present"--Dust jacket.

"Richard Bowmaster--a 60-year-old human rights scholar--hits the car of Evelyn Ortega--a young, undocumented immigrant from Guatemala--in the middle of a snowstorm in Brooklyn. What at first seems just a small inconvenience takes an unforeseen and far more serious turn when Evelyn turns up at the professor's house seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant Lucia Maraz--a 62-year-old lecturer from Chile--for her advice"-- Provided by publisher.

"In this pair of novellas and two stories, Russo's characters bear little similarity to the blue-collar citizens we're familiar with from most of his novels. In "Horseman," a tenured professor confronts a young plagiarist as well as her own weaknesses as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches--"And after that, who knew?" In "Intervention," a realtor facing an ominous medical prognosis finds himself in his father's shadow while he presses forward, or not. In "Voice," a semi-retired English professor is conned by his increasingly estranged brother into coming along on a group tour of the Biennale, fleeing a mortifying incident with a traumatized student back in Massachusetts but encountering further complications en route. And in "Milton and Marcus," a lapsed novelist is struggling with his wife's illness and trying to rekindle his screenwriting career, only to be stymied by the pratfalls of that trade when he's called to an aging, iconic star's mountaintop in Wyoming"--Provided by publisher.

A hiker discovers human remains embedded in the wall of a dry desert ravine, locals fear it's the reamins of Jess Winters, the teenage girl who disappeared eighteen years earlier.

"A novel about a young Chinese woman whose graduate studies in chemistry go off track and lead her to discover the truths about her goals and desires" -- Provided by publisher.

"Hellsmouth, a willful thoroughbred filly with the blood of Triple Crown winners flowing through her veins, has the legacy of the Forges riding on her. One of the oldest and proudest families in Kentucky, the Forge family is as mythicas the history of the South itself. Descended from one of the first settlers to brave the Gap, Henry Forge, through anact of naked ambition, is attempting to blaze a new path, breeding horses on the family's crop farm. His daughter, Henrietta, becomes his partner in the endeavor, although shehas desires of her own. Their conflict escalates when AllmonShaughnessy, a black man fresh from prison, comes to work inthe stables, and the ugliness of the farm's past and the exigencies of appetite become evident. Together, the three stubbornly try to create a new future through sheer will--one that isn't written in their very fabric--while they mold Hellsmouth into a champion."--Provided by publisher.

An unflinching exploration of the fragile line between childhood and the adult world. Ulman grounds the stories, set on three different continents, with three stories about a charasmatic film-studies major trying to navigate her mid-twenties and the trecherous dating scene in San Francisco. Together Ulman's characters tell the story of all stages of becoming a woman: their collective longing to have the power that maturity can bring and their confusion and disappointment when they finally attain it. Evocative and acutely observed, set mainly in San Francisco, about the reality of being a girl today, which manages to be at once mischievous, dignified, and self-deprecating, as well as disturbingly and darkly realistic.