New Fiction eBooks

Set in a small town that lost many of its citizens in the "Sudden Departure," this is the story of ordinary people getting on with their lives after the unexplainable has happened. As the N.Y. Times said in a recent review, "Perrotta has delivered a troubling disquisition on how ordinary people react to extraordinary and inexplicable events, the power of family to hurt and to heal, and the unobtrusive ease with which faith can slide into fanaticism. The Leftovers is, simply put, the best Twilight Zone episode you never saw."

Three hundred and some years later, the eerie current of history stemming from the Salem witch trials still flows darkly through New England. Poet Rebecca Wolff's debut novel is as much a coming to terms with that hysterical event as it is an attempt to reconcile the differences between childhood and adulthood. As lyrical as Rilke, menacing as Shirley Jackson, and moody as Emily Bronte, The Beginners will weave a magic spell over readers.

The bare facts of Arthur Rimbaud's life are the stuff of legend: a prodigy who at the age of 20 renounced poetry to travel across three continents, eventually becaming a gun-runner in Africa before being forced to return home to France with a cancerous leg. He was dead by the age of 37, yet his legacy continues to influence artists of all stripes (including the poet John Ashbery, whose translation of Rimbaud's Illuminations was recently published). Bruce Duffy, author of The World as I Found It, a fictionalized biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, takes the legendary facts of Rimbaud's life and fleshes them out into a compelling and entertaining story.

Set in the aftermath of 9/11, My New American Life offers a vivid, darkly humorous, bitingly real portrait of a particular moment in history, when a nation's dreams and ideals gave way to a culture of cynicism, lies, and fear. Beneath its high comic surface, the novel is a more serious consideration of immigration, of what it was like to live through the Bush-Cheney years, and of what it means to be an American.

A sweeping, richly compassionate novel about marriage, ambition, and the reclaiming of love-by the bestselling novelist and co-founder of Narrative magazine. Many love stories end in marriage; rare is the love story that begins with one-already promised, already worn. Set in San Francisco during the first year of Obama's presidency, Three Stages of Amazement deftly charts the struggles and triumphs of Lena Rusch and her husband Charlie Pepper, still believe they can have it all--sex, love, marriage, children, career, brilliance. But life delivers surprises and tests--a stillborn child, an economic crash, a ruthless business rival and the attentions of an old lover. Touched by tragedy and by ordinary hopes unmet, Lena and Charlie must face, for the first time in their lives, real limitation.

We would love this book even it didn't feature a character who once worked at Green Apple. Set partially in San Francisco's late '70's punk scene, here's what the San Francisco Chronicle had to say about it: "Jennifer Egan is a rare bird: an experimental writer with a deep commitment to character, whose fiction is at once intellectually stimulating and moving. . . . It's a tricky book, but in the best way. When I got to the end, I wanted to start from the top again immediately, both to revisit the characters and to understand better how the pieces fit together. Like a masterful album, this one demands a replay.

Emma Donoghue has caught lightening in a bottle with this book. Room breathes new life into an old familiar genre, and in doing so, surpasses any and all expectations you might have. Upon finishing it, you'll want to start it all over again.