A new translation of an evocative, Huckleberry Finn –esque French bestseller about a young farmboy, the river where he is forbidden to play, and the adventures that ensue when he disobeys his family’s wishes. The Child and the River tells a simple but haunting tale. Pascalet, a boy growing up on a farm in the south of France, is permitted by his parents to play wherever he likes—only never by the river. Prohibition turns into Pascalet dreams of nothing so much as heading down to the river, and one day, with his parents away, he does. Wandering along the bank, intoxicated with newfound freedom, he falls asleep in a rowboat and wakes to find himself caught in rapids and run aground on an island where a band of Gypsies has pitched camp together with their trained bear. Hiding in the underbrush, Pascalet observes that the group includes a boy his age, who, after receiving a whipping, has been left tied to a post. This is Gatzo, and as soon as night falls, Pascalet sets him loose. The boys escape in a boat and spend an idyllic week on the river. But then the mysterious “puppeteer of souls” arrives, bringing their adventure to an end, and Pascalet must go back home to face the music. Has he seen the last of his new friend? Long hailed as a sort of French Huckleberry Finn , The Child and the River is, as Henri Bosco himself once wrote in a letter to a friend, “a novel very good, I think, for children, adolescents, and poets.” A beguiling adventure story, it is also beautifully written, full of keenly observed details of the river’s wilds, well captured by Joyce Zonana’s new translation.

Among the games people play, that between husband and wife whose affection has turned to hate can be most extraordinary. In his latest novel, Simenon explores such a relationship. Emile and Marguerite, both widowed, married each other eight years earlier, in a desperate need for companionship. At the opening of the novel, they have reached a climax of mutual hate. They share nothing any more, neither bed, nor board, nor even conversation. The specters of cat and parrot stand between them. With his accustomed mastery, Simenon reveals the circumstances that led first to their union and gradually to the devastation of it. Astonishingly, he also reveals the strength of the bond that unites them. They are frightened of each other, suspicious, mean, and vindictive, but they cannot separate. In the mute dialogue that goes on, perfectly understood, between the couple, they stay related; hate is shown to be a substitute for love, and as binding as love. This again is a major psychological novel by a master oft he genre.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN meets THE VEGETARIAN in this chilly and chilling epistolary novel of four characters locked in a frightening cycle of vengeance and comeuppance. Mira is a desperate young woman, hired by a wealthy single mother to tutor her lonesome son, Yuchan. But Mira is not who she presents herself to be; she is haunted by the death of her own family and motivated by the dark pulse of vengeance. Yuchan was cruel to Mira’s mother. A kind of cruelty she can’t ever forgive.   And then there is Jiwon, the boy’s mother, a bad mother, Mira thinks—or so Jiwon tells herself she must not be.   But as Mira spends more time in the family’s sprawling home, she begins to suspect Yuchan is not the culprit she’s after. Someone else in the family has been pulling the strings. Someone with a deviant plan she can’t begin to imagine.   Structured around four different letters and journal Mira's, Jiwon's reply, Yuchan's younger brother's diary entry and, finally, Mira's own written recollection. Each new section brings us deeper into a web of cruelty, consequence, and closer to the truth.

“I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.” London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character. In Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents these notebooks interspersed with his own biographical research into Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling – and often wickedly humorous – meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.

A sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city. Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city. 17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling pre-occupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them--and Bret in particular--with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends--or his own mind--to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision. Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero LA, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at 17-sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.

From the Man Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure comes an elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village. Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population. In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse – but who was the predator and on whom did they prey? Audacious and mesmerising, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory’s hall of mirrors, and an erotic fable of transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning. Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.

'Helen Ashton has the power of writing about people as though she had known them all her life. One feels that one has lived next door to Martin Lovell ever since the day when he first set up house with Letty in chambers on the north side of Gray's Inn Square' wrote the TLS in 1932. Unusually, Bricks and Mortar is about the life of a London architect from the 1890s to the early 1930s; it is, as well, about a 'very decent, simple, sweet-minded creature' who realises that his marriage has been a mistake yet makes the best of things: because he has dignity, commonsense and kindness, and is 'very much in love with his profession', he has his own special brand of heroism.

Norwegian Wood meets Perfect Blue in a contemporary evocation of the classical Greek myth. Brutal and haunting. Tender and intimate. A debut novel about a young musician's collision with rage and grief. The Yoshida family is dysfunctional. The father, Kiichiro, is a leading member of the Miyajima-gumi crime syndicate, while the mother, Miyuki, works long hours as the commissioner of police. With the matriarch and patriarch of the household habitually absent, their oldest, George, must take care of his little brother, Naoyuki. After a revelation in the form of a letter, Naoyuki confirms his his birth may have exacerbated the frigid loneliness and hidden hostility their family occupies. Determined to make amends, Naoyuki concocts a plan. He'll gather everyone together for his birthday party, and once there, he'll play a song—in this song, communicating his sincere longing for connection and love. Everything goes as he hopes. George agrees to it, putting aside his disdain for their parents, and helping Naoyuki prepare for the performance. But when the day arrives, tragedy strikes in the form of a blood-splattered crime scene. Years later, despite his recent success as a musician, Naoyuki still senses a debilitating self-hate from within himself. When his father—fresh from prison—appears at his doorstep, Naoyuki is offered an opportunity for atonement. And so, Orpheus braves the underworld for his revenge. Devastatingly beautiful, If Orpheus Was a Carp is a lyrical reckoning with and voyage through connection, legacy, and the elusive nature of memory. It marks the sincere and poignant entry of a young literary voice.

¿Es posible revertir el inevitable final del Universo, o el mundo debe acabar de todas formas? es la pregunta que desde un día del siglo XXI, hasta generaciones y generaciones posteriores en el tiempo, hacen los humanos a los ordenadores. En un relato aparentemente sencillo sobre un asunto sobrecogedor, el fin de los días, Asimov demuestra, una vez más, una mente preclara y una mano maestra para sobrecoger al lector y dejarlo en vilo, incluso después de la lectura.