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  Fruiting Bodies - Stories

  Kathryn Harlan

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  Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction - 2023 
   
  This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay. 
   
   
  In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis. 
   
   
  In “The Changeling,” two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In “Endangered Animals,” Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In “Take Only What Belongs to You,” a queer woman struggles with the personal history of an author she idolized, while in “Fiddler, Fool, Pair,” an anthropologist is drawn into a magical—and dangerous—gamble. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes’s body—until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home. 
   
   
  Audacious, striking, and wholly original, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

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  The Low Road to Brenskie

  Michael J. Rigby

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  Stevie Darling's mundane life is flipped upside down by a betrayal and he soon finds himself on the run. His saving grace is that he’s agile, and manages to evade capture. Whilst trying to escape his past, Stevie encounters a forgotten friend, Ker Lo, whose own past carries great mysteries that will inevitably intertwine with Stevie’s journey. 
  Stevie realises that his most recent actions may not be the crime he is most obligated to fix, and doing so proves to be a mission beyond anything Stevie had imagined. As he discovers a world of dark secrets and ancient legends, he decides he must save his hometown and the people he loves before he can save himself.

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  Loveliest Rose in the World The...

  Hans Christian Andersen

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  There was once a mighty Queen, in whose gardens were found the most glorious flowers at all seasons of the year and from all countries of the world. But best of all she loved roses, and therefore she had all possible varieties of this flower, from the wild dog rose, with its apple-scented green leaves, to the most splendid roses of Provence. They grew along the walls of the castle, wound around pillars and window frames, and spread into the passages and along the ceilings of all the halls; and the roses were varied in fragrance, form, and color.

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  We Meant Well - A Novel

  Erum Shazia Hasan

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  Longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize 
  		 
  September 2023 selection for Great Group Reads by the Women’s National Book Association
  		 
  “Unsparing and compassionate … A novel of harrowing eloquence, We Meant Well explores compelling cultural contrasts and the ambiguity of charitable outreach.” — Foreword Reviews
  		 
  A propulsive debut that grapples with timely questions about what it means to be charitable, who deserves what, and who gets the power to decide
  		 
  It’s the middle of the night in Los Angeles when Maya, a married mother of one, receives the phone call. Her colleague Marc has been accused of assaulting a local girl in Likanni, where they operate a charitable orphanage. Can she get on the next flight?
  		 
  When Maya arrives, protesters surround the compound. The accuser is Lele, her former protégé and the chief’s daughter. There are no witnesses, no proof of any crime.
  		 
  What happened that night? And what will happen to the orphanage if this becomes a scandal? Caught between Marc and Lele, the charity and the villagers, her marriage and new temptations, and between worlds, Maya lives the secret contradictions of the aid worker: there to serve the most deprived, but ultimately there to govern.
  		 
  As Maya feels the pleasures, freedoms, and humanity of life in Likanni, she recognizes that her American life is inextricably woven into this violent reality — and that dishonesty in one place affects the realities in another.

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  Moral Injury

  M.D. Mhairi Haarsager

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  In this quick-hitting thriller set in Baltimore, during the waning years of the Cold War, Lussi Sim, a Norwegian physician, is the medical director of a newborn intensive care unit. 
  																			 
  Lussi had practiced pediatrics near her parents in Oslo until her father suffered a stroke. Growing up, Lussi experienced chronic mental trauma in the self-assigned role of her mother’s bodyguard. Ironically, her father’s stroke removed the physical threat to her mother and enabled Lussi to pursue her long-suppressed goal to train as a newborn intensive care subspecialist in the United States. 
  An excellent physician, Lussi copes with the stress of treating sick infants by entering the “rescuer” role she adopted to protect her mother. However, her fight v. flight response to threat defaults to the fight mode and she frequently fails to control her anger when negotiating with hospital managers she believes value profit over optimal patient care. 
  Stumbling upon a deadly medical conspiracy, evolving from a US government-approved financial agreement between the CIA and the Saudi Royal family, Lussi must now use her well-honed fighting instincts to overcome lethal obstacles, rescue victims, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

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  Ulysses - The Classic Tale

  James Joyce

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  Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety in Paris by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, Joyce's 40th birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement."According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". Ulysses chronicles the appointments and encounters of the itinerant Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom, and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain. The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature. Since its publication, the book has attracted controversy and scrutiny, ranging from an obscenity trial in the United States in 1921 to protracted textual "Joyce Wars". The novel's stream of consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—replete with puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterization and broad humor, have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works in history.

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