The Crooked Maid

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Lynn Coady

"With astonishing range and depth, Lynn Coady gives us nine unforgettable new stories. A young nun charged with taking an anorexic out of her religious fanaticism toys with the thin distance between practicality and blashphemy. A strange bond between a teacher and a schoolgirl takes on ever deeper, and stranger, shapes as the years progress. A bride-to-be with a penchant for nocturnal bondage can't seem to stop bashing herself up in the light of day. Equally adept at capturing the foibles and obsessions of both men and women, Coady never misses an opportunity to make her characters squirm. Fascinated as much by faithlessness as by faith, Lynn Coady is quite possibly the writer who best captures what it is to be human at this particular moment in our history." -- P. 4 of cover.

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Michael Winter

Henry Hayward is a drowning man. In a quest to find meaning in an emotionally arid life, Henry travels to Afghanistan as an army-affiliated contractor, where he becomes embedded in the regiment with which his friends are serving. But everything changes during a tragic roadside incursion. And Henry, who survives, knows in his heart that he is responsible. After returning home, Henry feels more rootless than before. Matters are complicated by the grief of Martha, his deceased friend's long-term girlfriend, with whom he once had an affair. Henry tries to make posthumous amends by planning to repair his deceased friend's home, but he hasn't taken family history or Martha's secrets into account.

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Mario Vargas Llosa

Call of the Tribe is a celebrated work by Mario Vargas Llosa (Nobel Laureate), recognized for masterclass storytelling and lasting literary resonance.

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Esi Edugyan

"Berlin, 1939. The Hot-Time Swingers, a popular German American jazz band, have been forbidden to play live because the Nazis have banned their 'degenerate music.' After escaping to Paris, where they meet Louis Armstrong, the band's brilliant young trumpet-player, Hieronymus Falk, is arrested in a café by the Gestapo. It is June 1940. He is never heard from again. He is twenty years old, a German citizen. And he is black. Berlin, 1992. Falk, now a jazz legend, is the subject of a celebratory documentary. Two of the original Hot-Time Swingers American band members, Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones, are invited to attend the film's premier in Berlin. As they return to the landscape of their past friendships, rivalries, loves and betrayals, Sid, the only witness to Falk's disappearance who has always refused to speak about what happened, is forced to break his silence. Sid recreates the lost world of Berlin's pre-war smoky bars, and the salons of Paris, telling his vibrant and suspenseful story in German American slang. Half-Blood Blues is a novel about music and race, love and loyalty, and marks the arrival of an extraordinarily 'gifted storyteller' (The Toronto Star)"--