Showing titles in Literary Fiction

This is a story about love. It's also a story about hate, which is why I left New York in the first place. You don't fly halfway across the world to live with a bunch of people you never met, just for a laugh.

The iron wheel began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The room grew darker. As the light lessened, so did the sound. Deeba and Zanna stared at each other in wonder. The noise of the cars and vans and motorbikes outside grew tinny. The wheel turned off all the cars and turned off all the lamps. It was turning off London.... Zanna and Deeba are two girls leading ordinary lives, until they stumble into the world of UnLondun, an urban Wonderland where all the lost and broken things of London end up.

Fifteen-year-old Simone is lured by her new boyfriend with promises of a better life in a big city. On the run from a dangerous environment and her drug-addicted sister, she arrives in Palmino with stars in her eyes and hope in her heart. Simone's story is the story of a society in which no child was going to have to live in poverty: a land of milk and honey, which for some people, turns sour and is filled with despair. The way it is? Not necessarily....

My name’s Cameron Wolfe. I have a little bit of sense. I don’t have much sense. My older brother Ruben gets me into plenty of trouble. I get Rube into as much trouble as he gets me into. I have a family, yes, that doesn’t really function without tomato sauce. That’s me. Cameron and Ruben Wolfe are brothers. They spend most of their time throwing one-handed boxing matches (they only have the one pair of gloves) and plotting to rob the local dentists.

An international best seller, Across the Nightingale Floor is the first book in the Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn. In his black-walled fortress at Inuyama, the warlord Iida Sadamu surveys his famous nightingale floor. Constructed with exquisite skill, it sings at the tread of each human foot. No assassin can cross it unheard. The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace.

When my dad dropped us off at the front gate, the first things I saw were the rose garden spreading out on either side of the main driveway and the enormous sign in iron cursive letters spelling out Laurinda. No "Ladies College" after it, of course; the name was meant to speak for itself. Laurinda is an exclusive school for girls. At its secret core is the Cabinet, a trio of girls who wield power over their classmates - and some of their teachers.

Praised for its epic scope and descriptive detail, Across the Nightingale Floor, the first book in the Tales of the Otori series, was an international best seller and critical success. With Grass for His Pillow, we return to the medieval Japan of Lian Hearn's creation - a land of harsh beauty and deceptive appearances. In a complex social hierarchy, amid dissembling clans and fractured allegiances, there is no place for passionate young love.

A beautiful, haunting evocation of the medieval Japan of Lian Hearn's imagination, this thrilling follow-up to Grass for His Pillow and Across the Nightingale Floor delves deeper into the complex loyalties that bind its characters from birth.... In the third volume of the phenomenal series that began with the best-selling Across the Nightingale Floor and then Grass For His Pillow, the teenage lovers, Takeo and Kaede, are now married.

Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and irreverent novel powerfully asks what if you weren't the Chosen One? The one who's supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you were like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

The young and beautiful daughter of a wealthy family, Ginevra longs to share her poetry and participate in the artistic ferment of Renaissance Florence but is trapped in an arranged marriage in a society dictated by men. The arrival of the charismatic Venetian ambassador, Bernardo Bembo, introduces Ginevra to a dazzling circle of patrons, artists, and philosophers.

1962, Anchor Bend, Oregon. The sea calls to Eleanor. Like the turn of the waves it beckons her from the heart of the town she’s always known, from her husband Hob and their young daughter, Agnes, to the unfathomable depths of the ocean. 1985. Agnes’s daughter Eleanor is six years old. She shares her name with the grandmother she never knew and everything else with her identical twin, Esmerelda. But to Agnes, only Eleanor is a constant reminder of the past.

Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school's ultimate power couple - but one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey. Golden child Delilah is a legend at exclusive Acheron Academy and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. But Delilah doesn't know that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything - absolutely anything - to unseat Delilah for the scholarship. After all, it would lock in Maria's attendance at Stanford - and assure her and Lily four more years in a shared dorm room.

Lyra's story begins in the Haven Institute, a building tucked away on a private island off the coast of Florida that from a distance looks serene and even beautiful. But up close, the locked doors, military guards, and biohazard suits tell a different story. In truth Haven is a clandestine research facility where thousands of replicas, or human models, are born, raised, and observed. When a surprise attack is launched on Haven, two of its young experimental subjects - Lyra, or 24, and the boy known only as 72 - manage to escape.

Grass for His Pillow is the second novel in Lian Hearn's astonishingly beautiful series inspired by feudal Japan, Tales of the Otori. In the ancient Oriental lands of the Otori, amidst a time of violent war, famine and treacherous alliances, the fate of the young lovers Otori Takeo and Shirakawa Kaede hangs in the balance.... Takeo, heir to the great Otori clan, has pledged his life to the secret Tribe. His supernatural skills of virtual invisibility and acute hearing make him their most deadly assassin.

In his palace at Inuyama, Lord Iida Sadamu, warlord of the Tohan clan, surveys his famous nightingale floor. Its surface sings at the tread of every human foot, and no assassin can cross it. But 16-year-old Otori Takeo, his family murdered by Iida's warriors, has the magical skills of the Tribe - preternatural hearing, invisibility, a second self - that enable him to enter the lair of the Tohan. He has love in his heart and death at his fingertips....

The third title in the compelling Tales of the Otori - the story that began with Across the Nightingale Floor and Grass for his Pillow, Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn is an epic tale of love, power and destiny, set in a mythical world inspired by feudal Japan. Takeo and the exquisite Kaede, still only teenagers, are now married, but the implacable forces of destiny that rule their lives tear them apart.

From the critically acclaimed author of The Gospel of Winter and the coauthor of All American Boys comes a cool, contemplative spin on hot summer nights and the classic teen love story as two teens embark on a cross-country journey of the heart and soul.

Sal used to know his place with his adoptive gay father, their loving Mexican American family, and his best friend, Samantha. But it's senior year, and suddenly Sal is throwing punches, questioning everything, and realizing he no longer knows himself. If Sal's not who he thought he was, who is he? This humor-infused, warmly humane look at universal questions of belonging is a triumph.

Otori Takeo and Kaede have ruled the Three Countries peacefully for over 16 years, following the events laid out in the epic Tales of the Otori. They have three daughters: Shigeko, 15 years old and heir to the Otori, and Maya and Miki, 13-year-old twins who have inherited the supernatural skills of their father. Kaede knows nothing of the prophecy that Takeo will die at the hands of his son and longs to give him a male child. Nor does she know of the boy he fathered 16 years ago.

In a remote mountain village, a boy is born gifted with the supernatural skills of his father, once the deadliest assassin of the Tribe. Set in the years before the beginning of Across the Nightingale Floor, Heaven's Net Is Wide by Lian Hearn is the first and last tale, which both closes the circle and introduces new listeners to the fantastical, beautiful and thrilling world of the Otori. It is an epic story of betrayal, revenge, magic and love.