Brief Encounters With The Enemy

"An unnamed American city feeling the effects of a war waged far away and suffering from bad weather is the backdrop for this startling work of fiction. The protagonists are aimless young men going from one blue collar job to the next, or in a few cases, aspiring to middle management. Their everyday struggles--with women, with the morning commute, with a series of cruel bosses--are somehow transformed into storytelling that is both universally resonant and wonderfully uncanny. That is the unsettling, funny, and ultimately heartfelt originality of Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's short fiction, to be at home in a world not quite our own but with many, many lessons to offer us"--

A New York Times Editors' Choice pick One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Stories that capture our times by “a young author who has already established himself as a unique American voice” (Elle). Said Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as "a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain." His new collection of stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Best American Short Stories—is set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to readers of Denis Johnson and George Saunders. These are people contending with internal struggles—a son’s fractured relationship with his father, the death of a mother, the loss of a job, drug addiction—even as they are battered by larger, often invisible, economic, political, and racial forces of American society. Searing, intimate, often slyly funny, and always marked by a deep imaginative sympathy, American Estrangement is a testament to our addled times. It will cement Sayrafiezadeh’s reputation as one of the essential twenty-first-century American writers.

“Marvelously compelling . . . consummate military-adventure science fiction.”—SciFi In the aftermath of the cold-blooded assassinations that killed her parents and shattered the Vatta interstellar shipping empire, Kylara Vatta sets out to avenge the killings and salvage the family business. Ky soon discovers a conspiracy of terrifying scope, breathtaking audacity, and utter ruthlessness. The only hope against such powerful evil is for all the space merchants to band together. Unfortunately, because she commands a ship that once belonged to a notorious pirate, Ky is met with suspicion, if not outright hostility . . . even from her own cousin. Before she can take the fight to the enemy, Kylara must survive a deadly minefield of deception and betrayal. Praise for Engaging the Enemy “A fast-paced space adventure, with a heroine that will captivate readers.”—Omaha World-Herald “Excels in character development as well as in its fast-paced action sequences and intricate plotting.”—Library Journal “You’ll have fun with this one, for Moon keeps things moving.”—Analog

The Pleasure of the Kill They strike without warning out of the interstellar depths, their only communication a burst of static--and then death. They are called the Remor, and they kill for the pure joy of killing. The brave fighting men and women of the Interstellar Defense League eagerly take up the call to arms against the Remor and their grinders--monstrous war machines that leave a trail of death and desolation in their wake. But to win, the League warriors must get inside the machines'-and the mind of their foe. Who--or what--is this mysterious enemy? Where do they come from? And why are they determined to destroy humankind? Mere courage won't uncover the Remor's secrets. Something else is needed. Something that can only be found in the untamed spirit of a renegade who long ago "went native" with the most primitive species in the known universe...

Winner of: The Pulitzer Prize The National Book Critics Circle Award The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award The Jon Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize A Time Magazine #1 Fiction Book of the Year One of the best books of 2007 according to: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, People, The Village Voice, Time Out New York, Salon, Baltimore City Paper, The Christian Science Monitor, Booklist, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, New York Public Library, and many more... Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

Moving from the elegant drawing rooms of Lahore to the mud villages of rural Multan, a powerful collection of short stories about feudal Pakistan. An impoverished young woman becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress; an electrician on the make confronts his desperate assailant to protect his most prized possession; a farm manager rises far in the world—but his family discovers after his death the transience of power; a maid, who advances herself through sexual favours, unexpectedly falls in love. In these linked stories about the family and household staff of the ageing KK Harouni, we meet masters and servants, landlords and supplicants, politicians and electricians, village women, and Karachi housewives. Part Chekhov, part RK Narayan, these stories are dark and light, complex and humane; at heart about the relationship between the powerful and powerless, bound together in life—and in death. Together they make up a vivid portrait of a feudal world rarely brought alive in the English language. Sensuous, graceful, melancholy, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders gives you Pakistan as you have never seen it. It marks the debut of an amazing new talent.

Five stories by master speculative-fiction author Harlan Ellison, adapted to graphic novel format and fully painted in full color by illustrator Ken Steacy. Out of print since 1987, the tales recount mankind's war with an alien race. Suggested for mature readers.

Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse-Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him.