Modern Fiction

At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV’s Versailles, an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D’Aulnoy herself has christened contes de fées: fairy tales. Recently ousted from court and still raw from the death of his beloved wife, Charles Perrault finds companionship and creative camaraderie at the salon, where he eagerly joins the storytellers. Their hostess is impressive, fiercely intelligent, but somehow unreadable. She is harboring secrets of her own.

Between school events and teaching spin classes, Jen finds herself fully immersed in sports mom competitiveness. These parents seem perfectly unassuming, until their kids start to wrestle, and they become raging pubescent monsters. Learning to navigate this new world while fielding calls from the principal because of Max’s newfound misogynistic behavior, Jen steels herself for the indignities of middle-school life—with her loyal spin class attendees and her bossy four-year-old granddaughter giving her the strength she needs to press on.

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

Rhiannon Hunter may have revolutionized romance in the digital world, but in real life she only swipes right on her career - and the occasional hookup. The cynical dating app creator controls her love life with a few key rules: nude pics are by invitation only; if someone stands you up, block them with extreme prejudice; protect your heart. Only there aren't any rules to govern her attraction to her newest match, former pro-football player Samson Lima. The sexy and seemingly sweet hunk woos her one magical night...and disappears.

In Another View, there are only two men in Emma's life - her father, a remote artist in Cornwall who left her in boarding school and saw her every few years, and Christo, who had been her stepbrother for a few months, and now wants to get to know her. But until Emma can understand what she means to them, there will never be room for love.

What if Edgar Allan Poe's masterpieces happened in our world? Step into five chilling retellings that transport Poe's most terrifying tales into the 21st century, where ancient horrors take on frightening new forms. From sterile hospital corridors to corporate boardrooms, from contaminated mansions to digital graveyards, these stories prove that the human capacity for guilt, obsession, and revenge transcends any era. "The Monitor" - A night-shift nurse's paranoia spirals into murder, where the tell-tale heart becomes the relentless beeping of medical equipment, and guilt echoes through ...

Legs inaugurated William Kennedy's cycle of novels set in Albany, New York. True to both life and myth Legs evokes the flamboyant career of the legendary gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond, who was finally murdered in Albany. Through the equivocal eyes of Diamond's attorney, Marcus Gorman (who scraps a promising political career for the elemental excitement of the criminal underworld), we watch as Legs and his showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts, blaze their gaudy trail across the tabloid pages of the 1920s and 1930s.

Twenty-plus intimate sci-fi stories from the heights and depths of the fractal universe. The stories you’ve dreamed of; the people you crave to meet; or would love to be. The aliens who’d make you shiver, or laugh. The huge risks of guiding your spacecraft here, or there. The adventures you’d have if only you had the nerve… Or the utter romance of doing that… The lighter side; the humour of orbital disasters and alien conflicts; the perils of ill-advised time-interference; the sheer romance of null-gravity love; the terrors of a leaky hull; the fear of a bullying boss when ...

Kate Appleton needs a job. Her husband has left her, she's been fired from her position as a magazine editor, and the only place she wants to go is to her parents' summer house, The Nutshell, in Keene's Harbor, Michigan. Kate's plan is to turn The Nutshell into a Bed and Breakfast. Problem is, she needs cash, and the only job she can land is less than savory.

Lucian: I am a Dragon Prince of the House of Smoke...and I am dying. Five hundred years is truly enough for a man like me. A monster. Yet a 10,000-year treaty will die with me, if I don't spawn a dragonling to take my place. My two brothers are no use in this task. It falls to me, the eldest by a hair's breadth, and yet, I cannot face the horror of another sealing. Another death. Another woman's blood on my hands.

Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Includes introduction and commentary by Mary Shelley. Required reading for any fan of science fiction and horror genres. A classic.

The Karpov Bridge is the last artery out of the besieged city of Dnipro, and Captain Viktor Radek, a commander haunted by past failures, has just been given an impossible order: hold it at all costs. His command is a fractured collection of survivors: a disillusioned American ex-Marine with a history of mistrusting command , a guilt-ridden Polish medic who has already lost everything in the war , and a street-smart teenage artist whose graffiti reveals more than military intelligence. Their mission is compromised before it even begins when the explosives wired to the bridge are expertly ...

At exactly midnight on December 31, every electronic device made in China for the last 30 years stops working! From the U.S. electrical grid and all its back-ups, engine control-management systems, early warning systems on U.S. satellites, every motor vehicle, aircraft and ship made after 1985, to even simple memory chips inside children’s teddy bears—every electronic fuse, resistor, or connector that was “Made in China” becomes dormant… forever. At one minute past midnight on January 1st, every modern television broadcast of the U.S. New Year’s Eve festivities on the East Coast...

For many of those who've lived there, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan can seem like a magical place because nature there feels so potent and, at times, full of mystery. After having grown up there, Raymond Luczak can certainly attest to its mythical powers. In Chlorophyll, he reimagines Lake Superior and its environs as well as his houseplants as a variety of imaginary and historical characters.

1945. Struggling for survival in a doomed Corsair fighter plane in the skies over the Pacific Ocean, World War II Marine pilot David Hamilton’s life suddenly and mysteriously takes a strange and ominous turn, leaving him searching for answers as he finds himself lost and alone in a different time, place, and perhaps, identity. With no choice but to enlist the help of two young strangers, David embarks on a desperate journey in a 1941 Ford Coupe that possesses its own secret past and purpose, to find his way back home and keep a promise made to the most important person in his life. As ...

Jasmine always trusted her instincts—until someone refused to take “no” for an answer. In the dead of night, a single glance becomes a chilling pursuit. As cryptic gifts and relentless messages encircle her every move, Jasmine must discover just how far she’ll go to protect her freedom—and reclaim the power of her voice. STALKED is a pulse-pounding thriller about boundaries, bravery, and the unbreakable resolve of a woman who refuses to be silenced. When Jasmine tells him “No,” she means it. But Mark doesn’t listen. What begins as an innocent rose on her doorstep escalates ...

By 1943, the war was lost, and most German officers knew it. What kept the German army going in an increasingly hopeless situation? Where some historians have found explanations in the power of Hitler or the role of ideology, Robert M. Citino, the world's leading scholar on the subject, posits a more straightforward solution: Bewegungskrieg, the way of war cultivated by the Germans over the course of history. In this book, Citino charts the path by which Bewegungskrieg, or a "war of movement," inexorably led to Nazi Germany's defeat.

Seamus O'Mahony charts the realities of work in the 'ministry of bodies', that huge complex where people come to be cured and to die. From unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls and wards that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence.

The story of Flem Snopes' ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, this is the second volume of Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South.

Melanie has a destiny, though it isn’t the one everyone assumes it to be. She’s delicate; she’s fragile; she’s dying. Now, truly, is the winter of her soul. Harry doesn’t want to believe in destiny, because that means accepting the loss of the one person who gives his life meaning, who brings summer to his world.