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  The Ministry of Pain - A Novel

  Dubravka Ugrešic

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  Far from home, a fractured community of Yugoslav outcasts struggle with their lives in award–winning author Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel The Ministry of Pain.   Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the “Ministry.”   Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their “Yugonostalgia” in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland’s cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja’s act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class—and pulls her dangerously close to another—which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.  “A shiningly weird and powerful novel. . . . [It] approaches perfection.” —Washington Post  “Soulful, often searing. . . . This is a work that comes from the gut, one that deserves to be read.” —New York Times Book Review  “Splendidly ambitious. . . . She is a writer to follow. A writer to be cherished.” —Susan Sontag

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  The First Murder

  Carol Goodman Kaufman

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  The ME ruled her death an accident. He was dead wrong.
   
  When Mary Jane Bennett is found dead in her bed— alone, strangled by her own scarf, and with every door in the house locked — the medical examiner rules her death accidental, the result of a sex game gone horribly awry. State police decline to investigate further, but Queensbridge Police Chief Caleb Crane doesn't buy for a minute that his good friend died this way, so he undertakes his own investigation. Facing town councilors afraid of bad publicity, an angry medical examiner, and his own personal demons, he labors to solve what he believes is the first-ever murder in his pastoral Berkshire Hills village. Complicating things: the list of suspects includes some of the people to whom he is closest — including his own wife.
   
  “. . . [a] smartly-paced debut novel . . .”—Gerald Elias, author of the Daniel Jacobus mystery series
   
  “. . . one of my favorite mystery reads this year . . . With a talent reminiscent of Louise Penny, Kaufman creates a small town ambience of alliances and hidden resentments among characters whose humanity draws you in while raising your suspicions. The First Murder is an engaging and intriguing journey to an exciting conclusion.”—Sharon Healy-Yang, author of the Jessica Minton Mystery Series
   
  “. . . [a] deftly constructed debut novel [that] kept me guessing until the very end.”—Leslie Wheeler, award-winning author of the Berkshire Hilltown Mysteries

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  The ugly sisters

  Danny King

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  For hundreds of years, readers have been enchanted by the tale of Cinderella, of how a nobleman's daughter escaped a life of servitude with the help of a pumpkin, a pair of glass slippers and her Fairy Godmother. But the truth is very different from the fairytale yet no less extraordinary. Marigold and Gardenia Roche have simple dreams; to marry well and live happily ever after. Yet this is a tricky proposition when neither heralds from money nor could be considered a great beauty. But two events are about to change the lives of everyone in the tiny Kingdom of Andovia: the first is the announcement of a great ball, at which the Crown Prince has vowed to choose a bride. The second is the arrival of a widowed French nobleman and his beautiful daughter. Two events, seemingly unconnected, and yet both will have dire consequences for all – unless something is done. Marigold and Gardenia's lives are about to become entwined with the girl who would be Queen. And yet few will ever know the dangers they faced nor the sacrifices they made to save a vainglorious Kingdom from the damsel with the crocodile smile.
  Every child knows the story of Cinderella. But this is the story of Marigold and Gardenia Roche – otherwise known as the Ugly Sisters. And it is no fairytale.
  »One of the few writers to make me laugh out loud.« – David Baddiel, Comedian
  »One of Britain's best kept literary secrets.« – The Big Issue in the North

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  Edge of Extinction

  Robert J. Szmidt

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  When the ruthless aliens attack the outer reaches of the Federation, Humankind is forced to retreat haphazardly from dozens of conquered systems. The only chance to delay the advance of the enemy is to create hundreds of fake colonies. If that doesn’t work, the Fleet will be forced to face the ma’lahn in a series of open battles, which can lead to its annihilation. Politicians, however, do not care about the consequences. Their goal is to preserve power, even at the cost of billions of lives. The headquarters of the third metasector must meet the requirements of the Council on the one hand, and prevent the destruction of the only force that is able to defend Humankind on the other. But this war has another—human and personal—dimension: Major Darski must fight to save the colonists that he left on Ulietta…. Edge of Extinction is book three in The Fields of Long-Forgotten Battles series.

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  Grey Dog

  Elliott Gish

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  “Gish’s prose is as sharp as a scalpel.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review
  		 
  “Grey Dog is a bewitching tale of the horrors of spinsterhood in the early 1900s, with madness and magic threaded through every sentence.” — Heather O’Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads and Lullabies for Little Criminals
  		 
  A subversive literary horror novel that disrupts the tropes of women’s historical fiction with delusions, wild beasts, and the uncontainable power of female rage
  		 
  The year is 1901, and Ada Byrd — spinster, schoolmarm, amateur naturalist — accepts a teaching post in isolated Lowry Bridge, grateful for the chance to re-establish herself where no one knows her secrets. She develops friendships with her neighbors, explores the woods with her students, and begins to see a future in this tiny farming community. Her past — riddled with grief and shame — has never seemed so far away.
  		 
  But then, Ada begins to witness strange and grisly phenomena: a swarm of dying crickets, a self-mutilating rabbit, a malformed faun. She soon believes that something old and beastly — which she calls Grey Dog — is behind these visceral offerings, which both beckon and repel her. As her confusion deepens, her grip on what is real, what is delusion, and what is traumatic memory loosens, and Ada takes on the wildness of the woods, behaving erratically and pushing her newfound friends away. In the end, she is left with one question: What is the real horror? The Grey Dog, the uncontainable power of female rage, or Ada herself?

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  Escape from Paradise

  Robert J. Szmidt

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  A secret hidden on a colony world could affect the course of a war between humanity and an alien civilization in this bestselling space opera from Poland. It is the mid-twenty-fourth century. After colonizing a significant portion of Orion’s Arm, humanity encounters an advanced alien civilization, which—unwilling to make contact—starts a total war. There is more at stake here than just the conquest of territory. It’s a matter of survival for the human race.  On one of the hurriedly evacuated planets, Captain Darski wages his own private war to save as many people as possible. The colony in the Ulietta System hides a much bigger secret, though—one that could possibly alter the course of the war. Book two in The Fields of Long-Forgotten Battles series.

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