Verken de grenzen van het fatsoen en volg Adam en Natalie op hun bizarre avontuur vol exotische dieren, humor en onverwachte romantiek. In ‘Fatsoenlijke mensen stelen olifanten’ van Peter Hammarbäck werkt Adam als dierenverzorger is een Stockholmse dierentuin. Wanneer de directeur olifanten en leeuwen overneemt van een circus in een poging om bezoekers aan te trekken, komt hij in actie om de dieren te redden van een treurig bestaan. Samen met collega en dierenvriend Natalie bekokstooft hij een grandioos plan om de exotische viervoeters vrij te laten in Kenia. Gaandeweg bloeit de liefde op tussen de twee… ‘Fatsoenlijke mensen stelen olifanten’ is een heerlijk met absurde humor geschreven verhaal over liefde en vechten voor je idealen.

Een drankzuchtige scheepskapitein ontdekt voor de kust van een Aziatisch eiland een reusachtige, intelligente salamandersoort, die hij als goedkope arbeidskrachten aan het werk zet. De dieren verspreiden zich over de wereld en worden steeds slimmer. Ze leren praten, weten aan wapens te komen – en ontwikkelen zich tot Salamanders. Ze gaan de strijd met de mens aan. Čapek's roman over de ondergang van de mensheid verscheen in 1936 en was een onmiddellijk succes: binnen een jaar verschenen er vertalingen in Duitsland, Frankrijk en Engeland; George Orwell vond er zijn inspiratie in voor Animal Farm. Oorlog met de salamanders is een hilarische, briljante afrekening met het opkomende nationaal-socialisme, het communisme en het racisme, maar vooral met het kapitalisme. Tot in de speelse typografie en illustraties maakt Čapek gebruik van talloze mogelijkheden om de ernst van zijn boodschap te maskeren met spot, lachlust en vertelplezier. Hij gebruikt allerlei stijlen en invalshoeken om het verhaal te vertellen, zoals hij ook deed in de veelgeprezen roman Een doodgewoon leven.

Margaret Atwood returns with a shrewd, funny, and insightful retelling of the myth of Odysseus from the point of view of Penelope. Describing her own remarkable vision, the author writes in the foreword, “I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in the Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself.” One of the high points of literary fiction in 2005, this critically acclaimed story found a vast audience and is finally available in paperback.

In 2035 verkeert de wereld in crisis. Schaarste en armoede domineren, behalve in Stad O., waar de inwoners genieten van luxe: volle schappen, riante woningen en royale salarissen dankzij de fabriek Martha. Bethe en Tobias, een welgesteld koppel met een kinderwens, lijken het perfecte leven te leiden. Maar gaandeweg komt Bethe erachter dat er onverklaarbare dingen gebeuren. De fabriek lijkt gevaren met zich mee te brengen, en als ze op onderzoek uit wil ondervindt ze tegenwerking van het stadsbestuur. Terwijl Tobias berust in de situatie, vraagt Bethe zich af: wil ze nog wel een toekomst bouwen in een stad vol geheimen en gevaar? In een even verrassende als verontrustende opvolger van zijn succesvolle en bekroonde debuutroman Stenen eten schetst Koen Caris een samenleving waarin welvaart en veiligheid om voorrang strijden. Een wereld waar we in angstvallig hoog tempo op af lijken te denderen.

Love Island meets The Hunger Games in this must-talk-about-it read, as bingeable as the best reality TV. Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win? Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends

Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast. Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life. Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home. But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat. Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

An explosive new novel brimming with love, secrets, and enchantment The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head. Years ago, the Fall kids’ father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame . . . or self-destruction. Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls’ world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole. With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family’s complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.

From a writer who is always "razor sharp and furiously good" (Zadie Smith), a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country. The Big Guy loves his family, money and country. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, begins to realize that her favorite subject--history--is not exactly what her father taught her. In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in power, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom and democracy--and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the same words mean such different things to people living together under one roof. In her first novel since the Women's Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender and devastatingly funny.

At seventeen, Lenora Hope Hung her sister with a rope Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. Stabbed her father with a knife Took her mother’s happy life It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything. “It wasn’t me,” Lenora said But she’s the only one not dead As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

Plots wemelt het in Berlijn van de olifanten. Algauw wordt duidelijk dat de dieren niet uit de dierentuin komen, maar een geschenk van de president van Botswana zijn. Twintigduizend olifanten heeft hij de Duitsers cadeau gedaan, als ‘dank’ voor de verscherpte wetgeving met betrekking tot de invoer van jachttrofeeën. ‘Jullie Europeanen willen ons vertellen hoe we moeten leven. Misschien moeten jullie zelf maar eens proberen hoe het is om met megafauna samen te leven.’ De bondskanselier zit met de handen in het haar: hij moet deze crisis snel en daadkrachtig aanpakken. Want straks zijn er verkiezingen en zijn politieke tegenstanders ruiken bloed...