A bold, poignant essay collection that treats women’s friendships as the love stories they truly are, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space. Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger felt a new urgency in her devotion to the women in her life—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family. Each essay in this incisive collection is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture—ranging from fairytales to true crime, from Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the “sad girls” of Tumblr—Dancyger’s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other. Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.

Pulitzer Prize winner Andrew Sean Greer ("A great chronicler of our times." —San Francisco Chronicle) showcases his wit, sophistication and deep knowledge of focaccia in this magical and madcap tale of a young man who takes an unspecified job with a charismatic elderly baronessa at her crumbling villa in the Tuscan hills.Heartsore, broke and directionless, our young man (the chosen moniker of Villa Coco's narrator) takes a job in the Italian countryside as the all-purpose assistant (technically, the employment ad asked for "adjutant") to Lisabetta, known to her friends as Coco, a strong-willed, wealthy widow of great local renown. Technically, our young man is an archivist, charged with cataloguing Coco’s extensive and eclectic collection of art and artifacts, but what are his actual duties? He is charged with ridding the house of a marten, whatever that is, locating the antediluvian septic system, entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn and not inadvertently sabotaging Coco's great and final plan—to locate the lost love of her life and be reunited before it’s too late.Told with the signature wit, insight and deeply felt humanity that made Less an international phenomenon, Villa Coco is a dazzling, sun-soaked ode to life itself—a romp through a youthfully self-constructed emotional obstacle course, a meditation on what we give and take from others and a bawdy Mediterranean ballad about becoming who you’ve always wanted to be.

Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . . In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

「ONE PIECE magazine」で好評連載中の『ONE PIECE novel HEROINES』シリーズが単行本化! ONE PIECEに登場する女性キャラクターを主人公に、彼女たちの〈自分らしさ〉を描く短編集。ファッションショーに出演するナミ、コアラやサボとともに石板解読を手伝うロビン、ラブレターで噂が持ちきりのビビ、ミホークとワインを争うペローナなど、本編では見られないエピソードを収録。ヒロインたちの魅力を余さず描いたファッショナブルな挿絵も必見! episode : NAMI 購入したハイヒールの作りが粗く、不満のナミ。返品に行くと、デザイナーのルブロからショーに出てくれないかと頼まれる。高慢なルブロの一方、靴職人ミウチャの仕事ぶりに感心したナミは、ショーで〈あること〉を画策する。〈飾らない美しさ〉をめぐるストーリー。 episode : ROBIN 革命軍で石板解読に取り組むコアラを手伝うロビン。発掘場所や文字形状の解析を進めると、心躍るような内容が記されていて? 〈死者の声〉をめぐるストーリー。 episode : VIVI アラバスタに住む少年ファタはコーザに恋愛相談中。王女ビビにラブレターを書くが、風で飛ばされた! 誰のラブレターなのか町中大騒ぎの中、コーザとビビがとった行動は…? 〈わたしのまわり〉をめぐるストーリー。 episode : PERONA シッケアール城の海岸にワインが流れ着いた。あまりの美味しさにペローナはワインを独り占めするが、ミホークに没収される。打倒ミホークに燃えるゾロとともに戦いを挑むが…。〈居場所〉をめぐるストーリー。

Della sua lunga vita, Ibuse Masuji (1898-1993) ha trascorso a Hiroshima solo pochi anni, ma il mondo rurale della terra d’origine è stato sempre il centro della sua geografia poetica. Le sue storie narrano dei "deboli", di contadini, di individui strappati alle loro radici da catastrofi causate da eventi naturali o dall’agire sconsiderato dell’uomo. Colonne di fuoco, vortici d’acqua, terremoti, vulcani in eruzione sono le scenario costante dei suoi racconti: la natura è governata da una forza inesorabile che guida il destino dell’uomo. Quando Ibuse arriva a "descrivere l’indescrivibile" della tragedia atomica, ha già elaborato i simboli che daranno vita e potenza alle sue immagini. Con La pioggia nera egli accetta la sfida più ardua della sua carriera e il romanzo, suo capolavoro, diventa l’epilogo di un lungo percorso artistico. La sua matura sperimentazione narrativa e la sua particolare "cosmologia" gli consentono di dare forma nuova a quell’esperienza che, per la sua mostruosità, è stata definita da tanti sopravvissuti "al di là delle parole". Un lampo, una nube a forma di fungo, cangiante come una medusa, e poi quella strana pioggia nera, segno indelebile del destino della città di Hiroshima. L’ossimoro che Ibuse Masuji ha scelto per titolo è metafora del fall out atomico e trae il suo vigore dal contrasto: la pioggia è forza vitale, rigeneratrice, perché l’acqua nella tradizione religiosa giapponese è apportatrice di purezza. Inconciliabile con il nero, lo sporco, l’impuro. La pioggia nera è una contraddizione nel ciclo biologico, suona come una violenza verbale alle leggi della natura, così come la potenza distruttrice dell’atomo rinnega la vita dell’uomo, agendo sull’origine del suo essere, scollando gli anelli della sua catena genetica. Con questo romanzo Ibuse Masuji ci fa rivivere la tragedia di Hiroshima attraverso gli occhi ignari e rassegnati di persone come tante, e ci dimostra come la finzione letteraria, con gli artifici che le sono propri, riesca a sublimare il dato reale della ricerca storica e a convogliare il senso del vero più di un’asciutta descrizione realistica. Con uno stile pacato, senza retorica né vittimismo, Ibuse salva il senso della scrittura come "memoria" e recupera al di là dell’orrore la dignità dell’uomo.