The Natural Way of Things

Charlotte Wood

Europa Editions

WINNER OF THE 2016 STELLA PRIZE, THE AUSTRALIAN INDIE BEST FICTION BOOK AND OVERALL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS

The Natural Way of Things is at once lucid and illusory, a brilliantly plotted novel of ideas that reminds us of mankind's own vast contradictions the capacity for savagery, selfishness, resilience, and redemption all contained by a single, vulnerable body. This gripping, provocative, and timely book will resonate with its readers for many years. Drugged, dressed in old-fashioned rags, and fiending for a cigarette, Yolanda wakes up in a barren room. Verla, a young woman who seems vaguely familiar, sits nearby. Down a hallway echoing loudly with the voices of mysterious men, in a stark compound deep in the Australian outback, other captive women are just coming to. Starved, sedated, the girls can't be sure of anything except the painful episodes in their pasts that link them. Charlotte Wood depicts a world where a woman's sexuality has become a weapon turned against her. The characters, each marked by their own public scandal, are silenced and shackled by a cruel system of corporate control and misogyny. In a Kafkaesque drag of days marked only by the increasing strangeness of their predicament, the fraught, surreal, and fierce reality of inhabiting a female body becomes frighteningly vivid. But it's in the very bind of this senseless system that Yolanda and Verla discover their ability to forge a bond powerful enough to bring it down. Drawing strength from the animal instincts they're forced to rely on, the girls go from hunted to hunters, along the way becoming unforgettable and boldly original literary heroines that readers will both relate to and root for.

The Charmers

Elizabeth Adler

Minotaur Books

When Mirabella Matthews Aunt Jolly dies unexpectedly and under mysterious circumstances Mirabella suddenly finds herself the new owner of a villa in the South of France. But with the inheritance come unexpected mysteries and dangers. On her way to the villa, Mirabella is run off the road by a motorcycle, and that's only just the beginning. It turns out that Aunt Jolly had a past, and as the various men who were a part of it show up Mirabella must find out who can be trusted and who is using charm to mask the face of a murderer. Told with Elizabeth Adler's signature attention to detail, strong female characters, and luxurious setting, The Charmers is a page-turner of a novel that will keep you riveted up until the very last page.

First Comes Love

Emily Giffin

Ballantine Books

Growing up, Josie and Meredith Garland shared a loving, if sometimes contentious, relationship. Josie was impulsive, spirited, and outgoing, Meredith hardworking, thoughtful, and reserved. When tragedy strikes, their delicate bond splinters. Fifteen years later, Josie and Meredith are in their late thirties, following very different paths. Josie, a first grade teacher, is single and "this close" to swearing off dating for good. What she wants more than the right guy, however, is to become a mother a feeling that is heightened when her ex-boyfriend's daughter is assigned to her class. Determined to have the future she's always wanted, Josie decides to take matters into her own hands. On the outside, Meredith is the model daughter with the perfect life. A successful attorney, she's married to a wonderful man, and together they re raising a beautiful four-year-old daughter. Yet lately Meredith feels dissatisfied and restless, secretly wondering if she chose the life that was expected of her rather than the one she truly desired. As the anniversary of their tragedy looms, and painful secrets from the past begin to surface, Josie and Meredith must not only confront the issues that divide them but also come to terms with their own choices. In their journey toward understanding and forgiveness, both sisters discover that they need each other more than they knew and that in the search for true happiness, love always comes first.

Ping-Pong Heart

Martin Limon

Soho Crime

South Korea, 1974. US Army CID Sergeants George Sueno and Ernie Bascom are assigned an underwhelming case of petty theft: Major Frederick M. Schulz has accused Miss Jo Kyong-ja, an Itaewon bar girl, of stealing twenty-five thousand "won" from him a sum equaling less than fifty US dollars. After two very divergent accounts of what happened, Miss Jo is attacked, and Schulz is found hacked to death only days later. Did tensions simply escalate to the point of murder? Looking into other motives for Schulz's death, George and Ernie discover that the major was investigating the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion: the Army's counterintelligence arm, solely dedicated to tracking North Korean spies. The division is rife with suspects, but it's dangerous to speak out against them in a period of Cold War finger-pointing. As George and Ernie go head-to-head with the battalion's powerful, intimidating commander, Lance Blood, they learn that messing with the 501st can have very personal consequences.

Ghosts of War

Brad Taylor

Dutton Books

The Taskforce has stopped countless terrorist threats across the globe, operating outside of US law to prevent the death of innocents. But now, along the fault lines of the old Iron Curtain, the danger is far greater than a single attack. With Russia expanding its influence from Syria to the Baltic States, the Taskforce is placed on stand-down because of the actions of one rogue operator. Meanwhile, Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill travel to Poland, hired to verify artifacts hidden for decades in a fabled Nazi gold train, only to find themselves caught amid growing tensions between East and West. A Russian incursion into Belarus under the facade of self-defense is trumped by a horrific attack against the United States, driving NATO to mobilize even as it tries to determine who is behind the strike. On the brink of war, Pike and Jennifer discover that there is a separate agenda in play, one determined to force a showdown between NATO and Russia. With time running out, and America demanding vengeance, Pike and Jennifer race to unravel the mystery before a point of no return is reached. Unbeknownst to them, there is another attack on the way. One that will guarantee World War III.

Jackson, 1964: And Other Dispatches from Fifty Years of Reporting on Race in America

Calvin Trillin

Random House

From bestselling author and beloved New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin, a deeply resonant, career-spanning collection of articles on race and racism, from the 1960s to the present. In the early sixties, Calvin Trillin got his start as a journalist covering the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Over the next five decades of reporting, he often returned to scenes of racial tension. Now, for the first time, the best of Trillin's pieces on race in America have been collected in one volume.