From Booker Prize Finalist and bestselling author of “pitch perfect” (Boston Globe) Small Things Like These, comes a triptych of stories about love, lust, betrayal, and the ever-intriguing interchanges between women and men.Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, considered “among the form’s most masterful practitioners” (New York Times), Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories, newly revised and expanded, together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan’s earliest to her most recent work.In So Late in the Day, Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he behaved differently; in The Long and Painful Death, a writer’s arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll for a residency is disrupted by an academic who imposes his presence and opinions; and in Antarctica, a married woman travels out of town to see what it’s like to sleep with another man and ends up in the grip of a possessive stranger.Each story probes the dynamics that corrupt what could be between women and men: a lack of generosity, the weight of expectation, the looming threat of violence. Potent, charged, and breathtakingly insightful, these three essential tales will linger with readers long after the book is closed.

A writer flees Beijing’s Communist authorities and embarks on a mythical quest through rural China in a “playful monster of a book” by a Nobel Prize winner (The New York Times Book Review).In 1983 Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer, and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer and prepared for imminent death. But six weeks later, a second examination revealed the cancer was gone, and he was thrown back into the world of the living. Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing and began a journey of 15,000 kilometers over a period of five months. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Mountain.A bold, lyrical, prodigious novel, Soul Mountain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor. Interwoven with a myriad of stories and countless memorable characters—from venerable Daoist masters and Buddhist nuns to mythical Wild Men, deadly Qichun snakes, and farting buses—is the narrator's poignant inner journey and search for freedom.“A true work of great literature.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review“Spellbinding . . . Gao Xingjian's masterpiece expresses sorrow and anger, wonder and confusion, humor and metaphysics, lust and tenderness, and a profound longing for meaning and freedom.” —Booklist“If a successful novelist is one who tells us something new about the human spirit and a successful novel transports us to another world, then Gao and Soul Mountain have succeeded spectacularly.” —The Washington Post Book World

The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POSTSHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION“Brilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking.”—J.Courtney Sullivan, New York Times Book Review  “TRESPASSES vaults Kennedy into the ranks of such contemporary masters as McCann, Claire Keegan, Colin Barrett, and fellow Sligo resident, Kevin Barry.” —Oprah DailySet in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and a dangerous passion.Amid daily reports of violence, Cushla lives a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast, teaching at a parochial school and moonlighting at her family’s pub. There she meets Michael Agnew, a Protestant barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment, Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.

This lyrical tale of a young man’s first foray into adulthood offers “a moving ode to the city of Chicago and the singular nature of its people” (Booklist, starred review)On the last day of summer, a young college grad moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there in the late 1970s, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, a shy apartment manager, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed.A love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man’s coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball, Chicago is a novel that will plunge you into a city you will never forget and may well wish to visit for the rest of your days.

A Nobel Prize-winning author delivers one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, showing a way out of despair and reaffirming the value of existence.Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide—the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly presents a crucial exposition of existentialist thought.