A Thousand Lies

“What a gorgeous, heartbreaking novel.”—Roxane Gay ​​ A necessary and exciting addition to both the Sri Lankan-American and LGBTQ canons, SJ Sindu's debut novel offers a moving and sharply rendered​ exploration of friendship, family, love, and loss. Lucky and her husband, Krishna, are gay. They present an illusion of marital bliss to their conservative Sri Lankan–American families, while each dates on the side. It’s not ideal, but for Lucky, it seems to be working. She goes out dancing, she drinks a bit, she makes ends meet by doing digital art on commission. But when Lucky’s grandmother has a nasty fall, Lucky returns to her childhood home and unexpectedly reconnects with her former best friend and first lover, Nisha, who is preparing for her own arranged wedding with a man she’s never met. As the connection between the two women is rekindled, Lucky tries to save Nisha from entering a marriage based on a lie. But does Nisha really want to be saved? And after a decade’s worth of lying, can Lucky break free of her own circumstances and build a new life? Is she willing to walk away from all that she values about her parents and community to live in a new truth? As Lucky—an outsider no matter what choices she makes—is pushed to the breaking point, Marriage of a Thousand Lies offers a vivid exploration of a life lived at a complex intersection of race, sexuality, and nationality. The result is a profoundly American debut novel shot through with humor and loss, a story of love, family, and the truths that define us all.

A son confronts the sins of his father in this electrifying page-turner from the New York Times–bestselling author of Whippoorwill. The product and heir of old money, Anson Poe hides behind a handsome face as he wreaks havoc upon those around him—his only goal is to satisfy his own devious desires. Nothing touches his heart but power and greed; not the woman he married or the four children they share. Brendan Poe shares his father’s stunning looks, but not his manner. He can only try to live down the shame, doing his best to stay out of Anson’s world of crime . . . until one hot Louisiana summer he can no longer look away. When the women who matter most in Brendan’s world become pawns in Anson’s need for revenge, Brendan strikes back with a blinding rage, leaving his father with two options: fight or flight. A powerful story about what we’ll do to protect those we love, A Thousand Lies will keep you up long after you finish the last page.

It's often said that a picture paints a thousand words... but what if every single one is a lie? In 1987, 36-year-old Sheila Shand was given a suspended sentence for killing her father. At her trial, it emerged that she and her mother and sister had been forced to shield brutal sadist Leslie Shand while he subjected them to a reign of terror, daily beatings and sexual abuse. Years later, journalist Amy Vaughan discovers a newspaper cutting about the Shand case while clearing out her dead mother's flat. Concluding that they are related, she decides to visit Sheila's mother Iris, who is in a care home. Amy is curious about the elderly woman who pores endlessly over an album of family snaps because she has known, from an early age, that photographs tell lies. Her own mother, who suffered from Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy, used snaps of the daughter she'd made sick to try and keep the affections of Amy's father, a charismatic but elusive conman. When she begins to investigate the Shand case, Amy realises that there is more to the murder of Leslie than the police ever unearthed, including two long-buried skeletons in woods near the family's home...

Perfect for fans of Julia Heaberlin’s We Are All the Same in the Dark and Megan Collins’s The Family Plot, Cody Luke Davis’ debut psychological thriller brings a sinister serial-killer tale to life with hair-raising twists and chilling turns. How far will some families go to protect their legacy? Diana Wolf likes to think she has it all: a rock god husband, an empty nest, a wine cellar, and a dream home in the woods. Life is good. It has to be. But when she hires a cartographer, Kerry Perkins, to survey and map her estate in rural Tennessee, she pulls back a frayed corner of the lie that is her fairytale life. On his first night at Wolf Hollow, Kerry stumbles across a young girl's skeleton buried in the woods. But what really scares Diana is a familiar symbol carved into the girl’s skull: two wolves. A week later, the cops are digging in her backyard. Diana begins to question how good her life really is. How good of a man is her husband and how good a father? She’s not the only one with questions. Kerry Perkins can’t shake what he saw in the woods that night. He suspects that Diana recognized that symbol, that she lied to the police; that someone is watching him, and that whoever it is, they desperately want him to keep his mouth shut. His search for answers leads him to Pink, a deeply disturbed man obsessed with the Wolfs’ celebrity. Pink knows the family better than they know themselves—and he knows that the more he and Kerry dig, the more bones they will find. Told through the eyes of multiple narrators, none reliable, this is a story about parents, the lies they tell their children, and the lies they tell themselves.

Hawthorn wasn't trying to insert herself into a missing person's investigation. Or maybe she was. But that's only because Lizzie Lovett's disappearance is the one fascinating mystery their sleepy town has ever had. Bad things don't happen to popular girls like Lizzie Lovett, and Hawthorn is convinced she'll turn up at any moment-which means the time for speculation is now. So Hawthorn comes up with her own theory for Lizzie's disappearance. A theory way too absurd to take seriously...at first. The more Hawthorn talks, the more she believes. And what better way to collect evidence than to immerse herself in Lizzie's life? Like getting a job at the diner where Lizzie worked and hanging out with Lizzie's boyfriend. After all, it's not as if he killed her-or did he? Told with a unique voice that is both hilarious and heart-wrenching, Hawthorn's quest for proof may uncover the greatest truth is within herself.

A girl trapped by the colour of her skin. A politician desperate to regain power. A family ripped apart. 16-year-old Pullamma, with her dark skin, has resigned herself to a limited future in her remote South Indian village. For this reason, she’s obliged her old-fashioned grandmother by not doing well in school. She’s also resigned to remaining unwed. For with three girls in the family, there’s simply not enough dowry to go around. Soon a wedding alliance arrives for her oldest sister—a fair-skinned beauty. There’s great rejoicing in their household. And why not? The prospective father-in-law is the right-hand man of an important politician. As Pullamma helps ready the house for the bride-viewing that precedes any arranged marriage—by washing the cow, by stringing flowers along doorways—she prays for the alliance to go through. Then something happens. Something so inconceivable, it will shape Pullamma’s future in ways she couldn’t have unimagined. Tell A Thousand Lies is a realistic exploration of how superstition and the colour of one’s skin can dictate life in rural India. Skilfully weaving themes of magical realism, political corruption, female empowerment, and fate, Rasana Atreya presents a narrative that is sometimes sassy, sometimes sombre, but ultimately unforgettable. This tale will captivate your heart and linger long after the final page is turned. (Please note: colour, skilfully and sombre are British/Indian spellings). ◆ Shortlisted for the Tibor Jones South Asia Prize (UK, 2012). ◆ Tell A Thousand Lies is one of our five favourite tales from India. Glam Magazine, UK (June 2014) ◆ Spellings used in this book are British/Indian. ◆ All books in this series may be read independently.

Brad Meltzer--author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Fate--returns with his most thrilling and emotionally powerful novel to date. In Chapter Four of the Bible, Cain kills Abel. It is the world's most famous murder. But the Bible is silent about one key detail: the weapon Cain used to kill his brother. That weapon is still lost to history. In 1932, Mitchell Siegel was killed by three gunshots to his chest. While mourning, his son dreamed of a bulletproof man and created the world's greatest hero: Superman. And like Cain's murder weapon, the gun used in this unsolved murder has never been found. Until now. Today in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Cal Harper comes face-to-face with his family's greatest secret: his long-lost father, who's been shot with a gun that traces back to Mitchell Siegel's 1932 murder. But before Cal can ask a single question, he and his father are attacked by a ruthless killer tattooed with the anicent markings of Cain. And so begins the chase for the world's first murder weapon. What does Cain, history's greatest villain, have to do with Superman, the world's greatest hero? And what do two murders, committed thousands of years apart, have in common? This is the mystery at the heart of Brad Meltzer's riveting and utterly intriguing new thriller

What is the difference between writing a novel about the Holocaust and fabricating a memoir? Do narratives about the Holocaust have a special obligation to be 'truthful'--that is, faithful to the facts of history? Or is it okay to lie in such works? In her provocative study A Thousand Darknesses, Ruth Franklin investigates these questions as they arise in the most significant works of Holocaust fiction, from Tadeusz Borowski's Auschwitz stories to Jonathan Safran Foer's postmodernist family history. Franklin argues that the memory-obsessed culture of the last few decades has led us to mistakenly focus on testimony as the only valid form of Holocaust writing. As even the most canonical texts have come under scrutiny for their fidelity to the facts, we have lost sight of the essential role that imagination plays in the creation of any literary work, including the memoir. Taking a fresh look at memoirs by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, and examining novels by writers such as Piotr Rawicz, Jerzy Kosinski, W.G. Sebald, and Wolfgang Koeppen, Franklin makes a persuasive case for literature as an equally vital vehicle for understanding the Holocaust (and for memoir as an equally ambiguous form). The result is a study of immense depth and range that offers a lucid view of an often cloudy field.