Fiction

Tang Yitian has been living in America for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family’s rural village in China. Though they have been estranged for years, Yitian promises to come home.

When Yitian attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate China’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider, and his mother’s evasiveness only deepens the mystery. So he seeks out a childhood friend who may be in a position to help: Tian Hanwen, the only other person who shared Yitian’s desire to pursue a life of knowledge. As a teenager, Hanwen was “sent down” from Shanghai to Yitian’s village as part of the country’s rustication campaign. Young and in love, they dreamed of attending university in the city together. But when their plans resulted in a terrible tragedy, their paths diverged, and while Yitian ended up a professor in America, Hanwen was left behind, resigned to life as a midlevel bureaucrat’s wealthy housewife.

Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on the search for Yitian’s father, all the while grappling with the past—who Yitian’s father really was, and what might have been. Spanning the late 1970s to 1990s and moving effortlessly between rural provinces and big cities, A Map for the Missing is a deeply felt examination of family and forgiveness, and the meaning of home.

Tossed back into the not-so-familiar fairy-tale world of Never After, Filomena Jefferson-Cho and her friends set off on another adventure . . . this time in search of Cinderella’s glass slipper. Or rather, glass slippers.

It turns out the classic story of Cinderella is full of lies–starting with how Cinderella herself is far from the innocent heroine everyone thinks she is. She is manipulative and cunning–willing to do anything to be the princess of Eastphalia. The real heroines of her story are her “wicked” stepsisters, Hortense and Beatrice, who aren’t actually wicked at all!

With the help of the dashing Jack Stalker, adorable Alastair, and glamorous Gretel, Filomena must track down the slippers, which may be the key to a certain mysterious prophecy . . . And when Filomena and Beatrice get tossed into the Beast’s dungeon, all hope seems to be lost. Will the conniving Cinderella shatter everyone’s hopes for a true un-twisted ending? Or will Filomena and her friends secure the happily ever after Cinderella’s stepsisters deserve?

Powerful and deeply personal, these three essays by the great Nigerian author articulate his mission to rescue African culture from the narratives written by Europeans. Looking through the prism of his experiences as a student in English schools in Nigeria, he recalls his first encounters with European perspectives on Africa in the works of Joyce Cary and Elspeth Huxley. He examines the impact that his novel Things Fall Apart—as well as fellow Nigerian Amos Tutola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mt. Kenya, among other works—had on efforts to reclaim Africa’s story. He confronts the persistence of colonial views of Africa. And he argues for the importance of living and writing the African experience: Africa needs stories told by Africans.

Isabel Delancey, a classical violinist, has always taken her comfortable life for granted. But when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of debt, she and her two children are forced to abandon their home and move to the Spanish House, a now dilapidated manor Isabel inherited in the English countryside.

With the house falling down around them and the last of her savings disappearing fast, Isabel turns to her neighbors for help, not knowing that her mere presence has stirred up long-standing obsessions.

As Isabel fights to make her house a home, passions and lives collide, and she will discover an instinct for survival she never knew she had – and that a heart can play a new song.

Bethany Lu Carlisle is devastated when the tabloids report actor Keanu Reeves is about to tie the knot. What?! How could the world’s perfect boyfriend and forever bachelor, Keanu not realize that making a move like this could potentially be devastating to the equilibrium of…well…everything! Not to mention, he’s never come face to face with the person who could potentially be his true soulmate—her.

Desperate to convince Keanu to call off the wedding, Lu and her ride-or-die BFF Truman Erikson take a wild road trip to search for the elusive Keanu so that Lu can fulfill her dream of meeting her forever crush and confess her undying love. From New York to Los Angeles, Lu and True get into all sorts of sticky situations. Will Lu be able to find Keanu and convince him she’s the one for him? Or maybe she’ll discover true love has been by her side all along…