Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Alternate editions can be found here and here. A gothic masterpiece of tempestuous passions and dark secrets, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is edited with an introduction and notes by Stevie Davis in Penguin Classics. Charlotte Brontë tells the story of orphaned Jane Eyre, who grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, enduring loneliness and cruelty. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds employment as a governess to the young ward of Byronic, brooding Mr Rochester. As her feelings for Rochester develop, Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall's terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions - even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre dazzled readers with its passionate depiction of a woman's search for equality and freedom.

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.

In occupied France, two people sacrificed everything. Now their granddaughter has come looking for the truth… Ruth’s childhood was a happy one, and her family—on her mother’s side—large and loving. But her father’s French origins have always remained a mystery. Now, with aged relatives beginning to die, Ruth decides to research her father’s family before it’s too late. When she discovers a series of long-lost cassettes, everything she thought she knew about them shatters. The tapes expose an unimaginable truth – an epic wartime story of hidden love and sacrifice, stretching back to occupied France. These long-buried confessions will rock Ruth’s family—and finally piece together the puzzle of her father’s heritage. But are any of them ready for the truth?

'Catalogues what happens to sport horses in plain sight ... should be compulsory reading for all of us who care about horses.' - Professor Paul McGreevy BVSc, PhD, FRCVS; author, Equine Behaviour Passionate, yet rigorous and meticulously researched, this eye-opening book holds equestrian sport up to Olympic standards and finds it sadly wanting. Doping agents that used to cost Olympic medals, rebranded as benign 'medication'. Shell federations with no riders or horses, propped up to make the sport seem 'global'. Judging that favours spectacle over the rules. From the myth of gender equality, to the failure to prevent rollkur, to the easing of the 'blood rule' to appease riders, to horses competing with the nerves in their legs cut to numb the pain of this is a tale of entitlement, privilege, and spineless regulation, always at the expense of the horse. 'I Can't Watch Anymore' chronicles and explains how the bureaucrats who run the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI) have stripped and sold for parts one of the oldest Olympic sports in the world until finally, there is nothing left to preserve. This compelling book challenges the reader to confront the reality of high-level equestrian competition today and say, along with so many others, 'I can't watch anymore'.