Brilliant and illuminating, this astonishing debut novel by the award-winning writer Yiyun Li is set in China in the late 1970s, when Beijing was rocked by the Democratic Wall Movement, an anti-Communist groundswell designed to move China beyond the dark shadow of the Cultural Revolution toward a more enlightened and open society. In this powerful and beautiful story, we follow a group of people in a small town during this dramatic and harrowing time, the era that was a forebear of the Tiananmen Square uprising. Morning dawns on the provincial city of Muddy River. A young woman, Gu Shan, a bold spirit and a follower of Chairman Mao, has renounced her faith in Communism. Now a political prisoner, she is to be executed for her dissent. Her distraught mother, determined to follow the custom of burning her only child’s clothing to ease her journey into the next world, is about to make another bold decision. Shan’s father, Teacher Gu, who has already, in his heart and mind, buried his rebellious daughter, begins to retreat into memories. Neither of them imagines that their daughter’s death will have profound and far-reaching effects, in Muddy River and beyond. In luminous prose, Yiyun Li weaves together the lives of these and other unforgettable characters, including a serious seven-year-old boy, Tong; a crippled girl named Nini; the sinister idler Bashi; and Kai, a beautiful radio news announcer who is married to a man from a powerful family. Life in a world of oppression and pain is portrayed through stories of resilience, sacrifice, perversion, courage, and belief. We read of delicate moments and acts of violence by mothers, sons, husbands, neighbors, wives, lovers, and more, as Gu Shan’s execution spurs a brutal government reaction. Writing with profound emotion, and in the superb tradition of fiction by such writers as Orhan Pamuk and J. M. Coetzee, Yiyun Li gives us a stunning novel that is at once a picture of life in a special part of the world during a historic period, a universal portrait of human frailty and courage, and a mesmerizing work of art.

As a part of the acclaimed DC Comics—The New 52 event of September 2011, writer and co-creator of the CW show Supernatural Adam Glass rolls out an all-new team of death-row super villains recruited by the government to take on missions so dangerous–they're sheer suicide! The story begins with the Suicide Squad defeated, imprisoned and being interrogated about their newest mission. Harley Quinn, King Shark, Deadshot and company must make it out alive without revealing who's pulling the strings behind their illegal operations. Who will be the first to crack under the pressure? More importantly will they make it all out alive? Collects: Suicide Squad 1-7

As a part of the acclaimed DC Comics—The New 52 event of September 2011, writer and co-creator of the CW show Supernatural Adam Glass rolls out an all-new team of death-row super villains recruited by the government to take on missions so dangerous–they're sheer suicide! The story begins with the Suicide Squad defeated, imprisoned and being interrogated about their newest mission. Harley Quinn, King Shark, Deadshot and company must make it out alive without revealing who's pulling the strings behind their illegal operations. Who will be the first to crack under the pressure? More importantly will they make it all out alive? Collects: Suicide Squad 1-7

A complete refreshment and uplift of a hilarious, beguiling first novel for the head and the heart.“It’s maybe six hundred times a day,” Sylvie says, and then she stops and the therapist tilts her head. “That I think about you,” Sylvie goes on, the word you said so quietly as to be barely audible. Sylvie is happy only when she is in therapy. This is because Sylvie is in love with her therapist; she thinks about her every second they’re not together (roughly 167 hours and 10 minutes per week). In that room, Sylvie is able to talk about everything. Her true pleasures, which include hitting a piñata so the candy falls out; her thoughts about the false hope promised by eighties music; and what a dog’s inner life is really like. She’s aware she has an obsession, but whether it’s a case of extreme transference, “erotic transference,” or a lost person’s need to connect, Sylvie isn’t sure. Beyond therapy, Sylvie has what she considers to be a small a job as a veterinary nurse, companionship from her tattooist friend via text, and her little brain-damaged dog, Curtains. One day, on the beach in her seaside town, she meets Chloe, who understands Sylvie completely. Chloe becomes her friend that day and for the rest of her life. When the therapist delivers some devastating news, Sylvie has to imagine new and lasting ways of coping (that don’t include being adopted by the therapist). Her world has begun to open up, inching beyond the pain, confusion, and fear that have confined her, and she must decide whether she’s ready for a bravery of feeling. With a lightness of touch, irresistible charm, and a rare, warm wit, Happiness Forever is one woman’s search inside—and for—herself. In this stunning debut, Adelaide Faith encapsulates the great vulnerability, difficulty, and joy of being a person and of being alive.

A mega best-seller in Sweden, with rights sold to over a dozen countries and a TV adaptation underway, Annika Norlin’s debut novel The Colony is the biggest Swedish literary phenomenon since Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove.   Winner of the Vi Literature Award and Swedish Radio’s Novel Prize, two of Sweden’s biggest literary awards, The Colony is a gripping portrayal of contemporary society and its alternatives.  Burnt-out from a demanding job and a bustling life in the city, Emelie has left town to spend a few days in the country. Once there, in the peaceful, verdant hills, down by the river she encounters a mysterious group of seven people, each with personal stories full of pain, alienation, and the longing to live differently. They are misfits, each in their own way, and all led by the enigmatic and charismatic Sara.  How did they end up there? Are they content with the rigid roles they’ve been assigned? And what happens when an outsider appears and is initially drawn to their alternative lifestyle but cannot help but stir things up?  A masterful blend of humor, emotion, unforgettable characters, and sharp social commentary, The Colony is a magnetic and deeply touching story about love, community, and the unfathomable power we other others and that others have over us. 

Where would I start, and how would it even make sense? How could you understand the year in Shandon Street unless you were there, with us, living it? Rachel Murray is twenty-one years old, platonically infatuated with her housemate James, and less-than-platonically infatuated with her enigmatic, married English professor Dr Byrne. Over the course of a year, as Rachel and James's lives become more and more deeply entwined with those of Dr Byrne and his perfect wife Deenie, tensions rise, and a shocking secret threatens everything they hold dear. The Rachel Incident is a sharp, poignant, and beautifully told story of losing and finding yourself and the lengths we will go to for those we love.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious author interested in human psychology. He is regarded as a leading pioneer of existentialism and one of the greatest philosophers of the 19th Century. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard wanted to understand the anxiety that must have been present in Abraham when God commanded him to offer his son as a human sacrifice. Abraham had a choice to complete the task or to forget it. He resigned himself to the loss of his son, acting according to his faith. In other words, one must be willing to give up all his or her earthly possessions in infinite resignation and must also be willing to give up whatever it is that he or she loves more than God. Abraham had passed the test -- his love for God proved greater than anything else in him. And because a good and just Creator would not want a father to kill his son, God intervened at the last moment to prevent the sacrifice.

The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men. King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has laid the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men? A haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us.

In this vulnerable and enlightening book of life lessons, globally renowned performer Cynthia Erivo draws from her singular experience to show us how to embrace being “too much” and to live up to the fullest iteration of ourselves. It is never too late to build the life you’re seeking. Cynthia Erivo learned the music to Wicked a decade before she needed it, not knowing those same lyrics would change her life. Now she has performed those songs on the world stage, showing us there is always time to keep discovering ourselves. And to illustrate that it’s often the parts of ourselves we are told to bury that make us shine. In a series of powerful, personal vignettes, Cynthia reflects on the ways she has grown as an actor and human and the practices she’s learned over years of performing and reminds us all we are capable of so much more than we think. We all have hopes and dreams that we want to bring across the finish line. We all falter and take missteps. In this book, Cynthia draws from her experiences running marathons, both real and metaphorical, onstage and onscreen, to show how each challenge can help us. She urges readers to lean into the wisdom of their bodies, to understand and strive for a physical and mental balance. Because when we chase our deepest desires, each small step leads us closer to where we want to go.

From an incendiary new talent, a contemporary queer folktale about a mother and daughter living in the woods, for fans of Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, and Julia Armfield. “Deliciously dark and shockingly bold—someone needs to make this into a film right now! Lucy Rose is one to watch. This is one of my favorite debuts in a long time.”—Kirsty Logan, author of Now She is Witch and Things We Say in the Dark A FOLK TALE. A HORROR STORY. A LOVE STORY. AN ENCHANTMENT. Margot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. People who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she picks apart their bodies and toasts them off with some vegetable oil. But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her own bid for freedom. With this gothic coming-of-age tale, debut novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts—and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.