Adam One Afternoon

One afternoon, every single machine in sixteen-year-old Adam’s high school computer lab stops working. Outside, cars won’t start, phones are down, and a blackout is widespread. Soon Adam will discover that the problem has paralyzed not just his town but the whole country and beyond. As resources dwindle, crises mount, and chaos descends, he will see that his suburban neighborhood must band together for protection. Violence will erupt and Adam will understand that having a police captain for a mother and a retired government agent living next door are not just the facts of his life but the keys to his survival. Set in the here and now but with a distinctly dystopian feel, this is Eric’s most exciting and commercial title yet!

Masterpieces of myth and terror about modern gods from technology to drugs to materialism—“fantasy at its most bizarre and unsettling” (The New York Times). As Earth approaches Armageddon, a man embarks on a quest to confront God in the Hugo Award–winning novelette, “The Deathbird.” In New York City, a brutal act of violence summons a malevolent spirit and a growing congregation of desensitized worshippers in “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” an Edgar Award winner influenced by the real-life murder of Queens resident Kitty Genovese in 1964. In “Paingod,” the deity tasked with inflicting pain and suffering on every living being in the universe questions the purpose of its cruel existence. Deathbird Stories collects these and sixteen more provocative tales exploring the futility of faith in a faithless world. A legendary author of speculative fiction whose best-known works include A Boy and His Dog and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream—and whose major awards and nominations number in the dozens, Harlan Ellison strips away convention and hypocrisy and lays bare the human condition in modern society as ancient gods fade and new deities rise to appease the masses—gods of technology, drugs, gambling, materialism—that are as insubstantial as the beliefs of those who venerate them. In addition to his Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Edgar, and other awards, Ellison was called “one of the great living American short story writers” by the Washington Post—and this collection makes it clear why he has earned such an extraordinary assortment of accolades. Stories include: “Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars” “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” “Along the Scenic Route” “On the Downhill Side” “O Ye of Little Faith” “Neon” “Basilisk” “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” “Corpse” “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” “The Face of Helene Bournouw” “Bleeding Stones” “At the Mouse Circus” “The Place with No Name” “Paingod” “Ernest and the Machine God” “Rock God” “Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W” “The Deathbird”

A spectacular display of this key European writer's early work This dazzling collection of stories follows the individual adventures of a varied cast of characters and masterfully illustrates Calvino's unique perspective and narrative gifts. As well as the thirteen tales from his Difficult Loves collection this volume also includes 'Smog', 'A Plunge into Real Estate' and 'The Argentine Ant'. 'The quirkiness and grace of the writing, the originality of the imagination at work, the occasional incandescence of vision, and a certain loveable nuttiness make this collection well worth reading' Margaret Atwood 'If this is not a masterpiece of twentieth-century prose writing, I cannot think of anything better' Gore Vidal on 'The Argentine Ant'

A TIMES AND EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2019 ONE OF THE BBC'S '100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD' LONGLISTED FOR THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FIRST BOOK AWARD 'So hard to put down.' Daily Mail 'Startling . . . Remarkable.' Economist 'Right away I was utterly absorbed.' Sarah Jessica Parker One father. Two sons. An impossible choice. When thirteen-year-old Paul doesn't return home one afternoon, even his twin brother, Peter, doesn't know where he is. So their father, Clyde, must set out into the dark Trinidadian bush with a torch, to search for him on foot. And when the reasons for Paul's disappearance become clear, Clyde will be faced with a terrible decision. How does a father choose between his children? How does he weigh up what each one is worth? Which one is the golden child?

Examining Calvino's literary experiments as a young artist in search of his narrative voice, Ricci explores the psychological and existential motivations intrinsically linked to the writer's need for textual and systemic patterning. I racconti contains some of Calvino's least-read works, yet these early stories address issues, present scenarios and generate a growing variation of themes that form the heart of Calvino's narrative discourse. Ricci points out that melancholy permeates Calvino's works—even at his most playful. He suggests that if Calvino's highest merit was his sense of wonder and his urge to transform and defeat obscurantism with all the joy he could muster, one must remember that his work expressed, often painfully, the limits of human rationalism. I racconti can thus be read as a catalogue of the anxieties of both the young author and postwar Italian society.

A novel of a delightful eccentric on a search for truth, by the renowned author of Invisible Cities. In The New York Times Book Review, the poet Seamus Heaney praised Mr. Palomar as a series of “beautiful, nimble, solitary feats of imagination.” Throughout these twenty-seven intricately structured chapters, the musings of the crusty Mr. Palomar consistently render the world sublime and ridiculous. Like the telescope for which he is named, Mr. Palomar is a natural observer. “It is only after you have come to know the surface of things,” he believes, “that you can venture to seek what is underneath.” Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, or a topless sunbather, he tends to let his meditations stray from the present moment to the great beyond. And though he may fail as an objective spectator, he is the best of company. “Each brief chapter reads like an exploded haiku,” wrote Time Out. A play on a world fragmented by our individual perceptions, this inventive and irresistible novel encapsulates the life’s work of an artist of the highest order, “the greatest Italian writer of the twentieth century” (The Guardian).