Agatha Christie meets Arsenic and Old LaceA classic Golden Age puzzle with a character driven plotCerridwen Evan Jones has a very brief to do list: Finish and publish her novel Avoid the head of the local historical society Make sure Great Uncle Teddy is wearing pantsBut when her historic neighborhood is rocked by the discovery of a decades old murder, her list gets a little longer: Find out who broke into her house Solve a murder Find out why the hot new neighbor is telling people they are engaged Stay alive

Handel is a failed priest but abiding Catholic with elitist tendencies whose work as a doctor forces him to consider social questions that he would probably rather avoid. Picasso, as she calls herself, is a young artist who has been sexually abused by her brother but whose family thinks she is at fault for her dark moods. Sappho is, indeed, Sappho, the lesbian poet of ancient Greece, who here proclaims herself a sensualist and then proceeds to dissect "the union of language and lust." The three converge in a place that may be England in a not-too-distant future made ugly by pollution and even uglier by greed. This is not a novel but an extended rift on art, sex, religion, social repression, the dangers of patriarchy, and everything that is wrong with the contemporary drift to the right. As such, it will be hard going for most readers, but those with some patience will discover exceptionally evocative writing and a vivifying review of some much-discussed contemporary issues.

These tales - sc-fi, ghost-stories, gothic fables, oriental allegories - were written in the first decade of the century and are now translated for the first time.They make a magnificent introduction to his bizarre genius, which combined the sharp Bohemian scepticism of his contemporary Kafka with the mordant humour and outreach of Swift. Independent on Sunday "Meyrink's short stories epitomised the non-plus-ultra of all modern writing. Their magnificent colour, their spine-chilling and bizarre inventiveness, their aggression, their succinctness of style, their overwhelming originality of ideas, which is so evident in every sentence and phrase that there seem to be no lacunae." Max Brod "His stories recall Gogol in their black, humorous vigour." The European Books of the Year

Mario Bellatin's complex dreamscape, offered here in a brand-new translation, presents a timely allegorical portrait of the body and society in decay, victim to inscrutable pandemic. In a large, unnamed city, a strange, highly infectious disease begins to spread, afflicting its victims with an excruciating descent toward death, particularly unsparing in its assault of those on society's margins. Spurned by their loved ones and denied treatment by hospitals, the sick are left to die on the streets until a beauty salon owner, whose previous caretaking experience extended only to the exotic fish tanks scattered among his workstations, opens his doors as a refuge. In the ramshackle Morgue, victim to persecution and violence, he accompanies his male guests as they suffer through the lifeless anticipation of certain death, eventually leaving the wistful narrator in complete, ill-fated isolation.

With the humor, irony, and veteran storytelling that have made him one of America’s most respected novelists, Thomas Berger has written a modern-day Robinson Crusoe.

Written by the author of Schindler's Ark, Flying Hero Class, The Playmaker and The Place Where Sold are Born, this novel captures the contrast between American and Australian culture today through the exploits of one Jacko Emptor.

Slocum tracks down a titanic treasure trove!When a dying man begs John Slocum to deliver one half of a mysterious map to his brother in Virginia City, there’s no way he can refuse. But his honorable intentions lead him into a mother lode of trouble, with a gang of cutthroats aiming to take the map from his cold, dead hands, a pair of devious and delightful women who each want the treasure—and Slocum—for themselves, and a winner-take-all hunt for a stolen fortune. Now, Slocum must find the hoard of ill-gotten gold before he ends up full of well-aimed lead…

"A superbly spun tale of love and desire that will capture your heart from the beginning. An emotionally layered and thoroughly engaging story of love lost and found. " —PAPERBACK FORUMThe year is 1879, and Molly Durant has fallen on hard times. When her mother died, Molly was left with a dilapidated boarding house and five siblings, all of whom she was determined to keep together. But with no boarders, thieves stealing her family's timber, and her banker fiancé set on sending her siblings to foster homes, fate seems against her. Then Molly gets an unexpected knock on her door. There, standing before her, is the man to whom she once foolishly gave her body, the same man who abandoned her: Rubal Jarrett. Or someone who looks like him? The man claims to be Jubal, twin brother of Molly's old lover, here to survey a route for a railroad through the timberland. "Jubal" soon has the boarding house brimming with paying guests, Molly serving meals to the public, and the family of...

From master of subversive humor Christopher Moore comes a quirky, irreverent novel of love, myth, metaphysics, outlaw biking, angst, and outrageous redemption.As a boy, he was Samson Hunts Alone—until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love—in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid—and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam...and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.

Nobel Prize winner and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez blends the natural with supernatural in Of Love and Other Demons - a novel which explores community, superstition and collective hysteria. 'An ash-grey dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst on to the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December' When a witch doctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesising a plague of rabies in the Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears that his young daughter, Sierva Maria, was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog, and the only one to survive. Sierva Maria appears completely unscathed - but as rumours of the plague spread, the Marquis and his wife wonder at her continuing good health. In a town consumed by superstition, it's not long before they, and everyone else, put her survival down to a demonic possession and begin to see her supernatural powers as the cause of the town's woes. Only the young priest charged with exorcizing the evil spirit recognises the girl's sanity, but can he convince the town that it's not her that needs healing? 'Superb and intensely readable' Time Out 'A compassionate, witty and unforgettable masterpiece' Daily Telegraph 'At once nostalgic and satiric, a resplendent fable' Sunday Times

Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Celine, this novel demonstrates Bukowski's own brand of humour and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.

For 20 years Eriador has suffered under the evil power of the Wizard King Greensparrow. Luthien Bedwyr is too young and privileged to truly understand the situation--until the night a close friend is murdered by the king's thugs. In anger, Luthien flees home, teaming up with Oliver deBurrows and the wizard Brind 'Amour in a rebellion against the overlords.