China in der nahen Zukunft. Der junge, ehrgeizige Beamte Song Cheng stößt auf einen gewaltigen Korruptionsskandal. Doch plötzlich wird er selbst ins Gefängnis geworfen. Dort taucht ein geheimnisvoller Mann mit einem Supercomputer auf, der ebenfalls verfolgt wird – weil er alles weiß. Einfach alles. Wie kann das sein? Und welche Konsequenzen hat das? Mit seiner Novelle Spiegel erweist sich Cixin Liu, Autor des Weltbestsellers Die drei Sonnen, einmal mehr als scharfer Beobachter der chinesischen Gegenwart und als literarischer Visionär der Welt von morgen. Dieses Buch enthält eine Leseprobe aus Der dunkle Wald, dem Nachfolger zu Die drei Sonnen, sowie ausführliche Anmerkungen zur Übersetzung und ein Nachwort.

In a way, Candace Bushnell's Lipstick Jungle picks up where her career-defining book Sex and the City left off, in the money-soaked, power-hungry, beauty-obsessed jungle that is New York City. This time around, the ladies are a bit older, a lot richer, but not particularly wiser nor more endearing than Bushnell's earlier heroines. Lipstick Jungle weaves the stories of Nico O'Neilly, Wendy Healy, and Victory Ford, numbers 8, 12, and 17 on The New York Post's list of "New York's 50 Most Powerful Women." But this is 21st Century New York, and to get ahead and stay ahead, these women will do anything, including jeopardizing their personal and professional relationships. Take for example Nico, editor-in-chief of Bonfire magazine, who betrays her boss to rise to the top of the entire magazine division at media mega-giant Splatch-Verner. As president of Paradour Pictures, Wendy may be poised to win an Oscar for her 10-year labor-of-love, Ragged Pilgrims, but her marriage is in shambles and her children care more about a $50,000 pony than their mother. And for single, 43-year-old fashion designer Victory, pleasing tough critics may be more important than ever finding the real relationship she's convinced herself she doesn't need. This racy tale of women behaving badly manages to shrewdly flip the tables to show us how gender roles are essentially interchangeable, given the right circumstances. Whether that was Bushnell's intent when crafting this wicked tale is another story. --Gisele Toueg Q: Were Victory, Wendy, and Nico inspired by any real-life women? A: The characters and situations in Lipstick Jungle were inspired by the real-life women I know and admire in New York City. As with Sex and the City, I spent a lot of time thinking about where women were today, and what I noticed was that there was a fascinating group of women in their forties who were leading non-traditional lives. They were highly successful and motivated, they often had children, and usually were the providers for their families, and yet, they didn't fit the old stereotype of the witchy businesswoman. Indeed, so many of these women were the girls next door, the girls who reminded me of my best friends when I was a kid and we used to fantasize about the great things we were going to do in life. Like the women in Sex and the City, the Lipstick Jungle women are charting new lives for themselves, redefining what it means to be a woman when you really are as powerful, or more powerful, than a man. Of course, you probably want specifics, so I will say that there was a moment when it all clicked. Tina Brown used to write a terrific column in the Washington Post, and one of the things she was always mentioning was how there was a group of powerful women who were meeting and lunching at Michael's restaurant. They'd been working for over twenty years, their children were now in their early teens and didn't need them every minute, and now, in their forties or early fifties, they had time to strive for new career goals and to spend more time with their girlfriends. I thought, "Aha--that's the Lipstick Jungle." Q: What kind of research did you do to cover fashion, film, and publishing in one book? A: To research fashion, film and publishing, I did what I always do--I talked to my girlfriends! Of course, it helps that I've worked in magazine publishing and have had my share of experience with Hollywood. I'm also lucky enough to have a couple of girlfriends who are top designers, who offered to help me out with the specific details. I still remember the afternoon when one of my girlfriends and I sat down to talk--she was over eight months pregnant, and I was worried that we were going to have to run to the hospital!

Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout’s new novel tells the story of a chance incident that sparks a powerful realization in a beloved teacher’s life—a poignant meditation on loneliness, friendship, parenthood, and the importance of truth in a capsizing world.Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.

Einer der Größten des Kinos, vielleicht der größte Regisseur seiner Epoche: Zur Machtergreifung dreht G. W. Pabst in Frankreich; vor den Gräueln des neuen Deutschlands flieht er nach Hollywood. Aber unter der blendenden Sonne Kaliforniens sieht der weltberühmte Regisseur mit einem Mal aus wie ein Zwerg. Nicht einmal Greta Garbo, die er unsterblich gemacht hat, kann ihm helfen. Und so findet Pabst sich, fast wie ohne eigenes Zutun, in seiner Heimat Österreich wieder, die nun Ostmark heißt. Die barbarische Natur des Regimes spürt die heimgekehrte Familie mit aller Deutlichkeit. Doch der Propagandaminister in Berlin will das Filmgenie haben, er kennt keinen Widerspruch, und er verspricht viel. Während Pabst noch glaubt, dass er dem Werben widerstehen, dass er sich keiner Diktatur als der der Kunst fügen wird, ist er schon den ersten Schritt in die rettungslose Verstrickung gegangen. Daniel Kehlmanns Roman über Kunst und Macht, Schönheit und Barbarei ist ein Triumph. Lichtspiel zeigt, was Literatur vermag: durch Erfindung die Wahrheit hervortreten zu lassen.

From the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not the only ancient tales of the Trojan War. In Son of Nobody, Yann Martel composes a new the Psoad, an epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight at Troy. Psoas meets his doom and the poem of his life is lost—until a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, Harlow Donne, discovers its relics thirty centuries later. As Harlow assembles and comments on the fragments in footnotes, he retrieves memories of his wife and daughter and grapples with questions of ambition, family, and responsibility in both the ancient and modern worlds. Son of Nobody upends the regal perspective of traditional epics and shows that “the past is never done with, that always there are parallels and returns and repetitions, always the song continues.” Readers of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Emily Wilson’s The Iliad will revel in this breathtaking feat of the imagination.

Kommissar Dupins zwölfter Fall Kommissar Dupins zwölfter Fall entführt uns in die Welt der Winzer, der vorzüglichen Weine und an den größten See der Bretagne, den Lac de Grand-Lieu, an dem schon die berühmte Kosmetikdynastie Guerlain residierte. Kommissar Dupin und Claire verbringen ihre Flitterwochen an der Loire, im traumhaften Pays de Retz. Von Weingut zu Weingut, von einem kulinarischen Hochgenuss zum nächsten soll die Reise gehen. So zumindest der Plan. Doch dann braucht eine Freundin von Claire Hilfe und ein ungeheuerlicher Mord geschieht. Gibt es da etwa einen Zusammenhang?

Geheime Gärten, seltene Vogelarten, viel Cidre – und grandiose Landschaften. Kommissar Dupin ermittelt in einer der wildesten und beeindruckendsten Gegenden der Bretagne – im hohen bretonischen Norden. Ein vertrackter und vor allem sehr persönlicher Fall. Denn es geht um die Familie von Inspektor Kadeg.

A young man changes into a snake and goes on a killing spree. A private investigator investigates the disappearance of a family member of the mayor of the Gold Coast, and finds the body of a beautiful young poet on the way with a bottlebrush clasped to his chest. A washed-up actor languishes in a motel room thinking about God. An Aboriginal man channel surfs alone in a dark room. Gritty, bloodsoaked and unsentimental, Loki Liddle's debut work takes readers on a deranged road trip from Coolangatta to Broome. Along the way, he consumes and spits out western popular culture and connects to the voices of his Jabirr Jabirr ancestors, weaving past, present and fiction together in a surreal and unforgettable feature.

What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people? Does technology draw us closer together or trap us behind screens? When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by this most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving fluidly between works and lives -- from Edward Hopper's Nighthawks to Andy Warhol's Time Capsules, from Henry Darger's hoarding to the depredations of the AIDS crisis -- Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone, illuminating not only the causes of loneliness but also how it might be resisted and redeemed.