An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heart wrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in...

"Sharp, lyrical poems celebrating the Black vernacular—its influence on pop culture, its necessity for familial survival, its rite in storytelling and in creating the safety found only within its intimacy. Definition of finna, created by the author: fin·na /ˈfinə/ contraction: (1) going to; intending to [rooted in African American Vernacular English] (2) eye dialect spelling of “fixing to” (3) Black possibility; Black futurity; Blackness...

After a scandal breaks out involving a famous Irish Nationalist politician, Stephen Dedalus finds his family being torn apart over their differing opinions of the matter. Shaken by all the fighting and animosity, Stephen begins to wonder where he can place his faith. Questioning the Irish and Catholic ideology that he was raised on, Stephen begins to rebel against expectations as he departs for college. While he excels in his studies, Stephen struggles...

A strikingly original collection of short stories and accompanying vignettes that marked Ernest Hemingway's American debut.
When In Our Time was first published in 1925, it was widely praised for its simple and precise use of language to convey a wide range of complex emotions, and earned Hemingway a place among the most promising American writers of that period. In Our Time contains several early Hemingway classics, including...

"This rich collection of one hundred never-before-published poems is also the poet’s most personal work to date. With poems about her own childhood and school years, her parents and grandparents, and the people who have touched and shaped her life in so many ways, this is an emotional and sparkling collection to savor, share, and read again and again." --publisher's website.

Having escaped an Australian maximum security prison, a disillusioned man loses himself in the slums of Bombay, where he works for a drug mafia kingpin, smuggles arms for a crime lord, forges bonds with fellow exiles, and finds love with an elusive woman. A first novel.

"In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed's poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde—whose...

Drawing on the rich experience of his own life, best-selling author Paulo Coelho takes us back in time to re-live the dreams of a generation that longed for peace and dared to challenge the established social order. In Hippie, he tells the story of a young Brazilian man, Paulo, and Karla, a Dutch woman in her twenties, who share a journey of self-discovery aboard the Magic Bus, as it travels from Amsterdam to Kathmandu in 1970. In his most autobiographical...

"Walking Gentry Home tells the story of Alora Young’s ancestors, from the unnamed women forgotten by the historical record but brought to life through Young’s imagination; to Amy, the first of Young’s foremothers to arrive in Tennessee, buried in an unmarked grave, unlike the white man who enslaved her and fathered her child; through Young’s great-grandmother Gentry, unhappily married at fourteen; to her own mother, the teenage beauty queen...

"[T]his collection of loosely autobiographical stories locates the transforming moments of [Hilary Mantel's] haunted childhood. Absorbing and evocative, these drawn-from-life stories begin in the 1950s in an insular northern village 'scoured by bitter winds and rough gossip tongues.' For the young narrator, the only way to survive is to get up, get on, get out. In 'King Billy Is a Gentleman,' the child must come to terms with the loss of a father...