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Small press or indie publishers publish titles that are not solely driven by commercial success. They have a passion to introduce literary works that connect authors that might not be published by one of the large commercial publishing houses to readers. Often these works are of the highest literary quality. Many small press publishers support works in translation and are a great source of introducing readers to international authors. Small press books should are not the same as self-published books.
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The promise
by Damon Galgut
"Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life's unfulfilled promises; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country - an atmosphere ofresentment, renewal, and - ultimately - hope. The Promise is an epic drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of national history, sure to please current fans and attract many new ones"
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Heaven
by Mieko Kawakami
A 14-year old student who is bullied mercilessly for having a lazy eye develops a friendship with a female classmate who suffers similar treatment from tormentors, in the new novel from the internationally best-selling author of Breasts and Eggs.
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My brilliant friend : Childhood, Adolescence
by Elena Ferrante
Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. This first novel in the series follows Lila and Elena from their fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence.
Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between two women.
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The Forests
by Sandrine Collette
Winner of the 2020 Grand Prix RTL-Lire, a powerful novel about a man’s desperate quest to bring new life to a desolate world. Nobody wanted Corentin. Not his father, who flees as soon he can, nor the women in the village, only preoccupied with gossip, nor especially his mother, who dreams of getting rid of him. Dragged from home to home, his childhood feels like a sad, aimless pilgrimage. Until the day his mother abandons him with an old woman, Augustine. That’s when life begins again for him, deep into the Valley of the Forests, the remote region where the woman who becomes his adoptive grandmother lives.
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Fresh water for flowers
by Valérie Perrin
"Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her life is lived to the predictable rhythms of the often funny, always moving confidences that casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues share with her. Violette's routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of Julien Sole&;local police chief&;who has come to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. It soon becomes clear that Julien&;s inexplicable gesture is intertwined with Violette's own complicated past"
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The elegance of the hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu
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Brotherhood
by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
After a fundamentalist Islamist government publicly executes two young people for being in love, their mothers begin a secret correspondence to deal with their grief that leads to the publication of an underground newspaper and ultimately a rebellion.
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Xstabeth
by David Keenan
A transcendent love letter to literature and music, Xstabeth is an exciting new work from a writer who, book-by-book, is rewriting the rules of contemporary fiction. Aneliya’s father dreams of becoming a great musician but his naivete and his unfashionable music suggest he will never be taken seriously. Her father’s best friend, on the other hand, has a penchant for vodka, strip clubs, and moral philosophy. Aneliya is torn between love of the former and passion for the latter. When an angelic presence named Xstabeth enters their lives Aneliya and her father’s world is transformed. A short, stylish novel with a big heart, humor, Xstabeth moves from Russia to Scotland, touching upon the pathos of Russian literature and the Russian soul, the power of art and music to shape reality, and the metaphysics of golf while telling a moving father-daughter story in highly-charged, torrential prose.
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Nives
by Sacha Naspini
"Meet Nives: widow, Tuscan through-and-through, survivor. Nives has recently lost her husband of fifty years. She didn't cry when she found him dead in the pig pen, she didn't cry at the funeral, but now loneliness has set in. When she decides to bring her favorite chicken inside for company, she is shocked, confused, and a little bit guilty to discover that the chicken's company is a more than adequate replacement for her dead husband. But one day, Giacomina goes stiff in front of the tv. Unable to rouse the paralyzed chicken, Nives has no choice but to call the town veterinarian, Loriano Bottai, an old acquaintance of hers. What follows is a phone call that seems to last a lifetime, a phone call that becomes a novel. Their conversation veers from the chicken to the past--to the life they once shared, the secrets they never had the courage to reveal, wounds that never healed. Nives reverberates with the kinds of stories we tell ourselves at night when we cannot sleep: stories of love lost, of abandonment, of silent and heart-breaking nostalgia, of joy, laughter, and despair. With delicate yet sharp prose and raw, astonishing honesty, Sacha Naspini bravely explores the core of our shared humanity"
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The Night Will Be Long
by Santiago Gamboa
The newest novel from one of Colombia’s most distinguished and beloved writers is a gripping thriller about corruption deep within the foundations of the Churches in Latin America. When a horribly violent confrontation occurs outside of Cauca, Colombia, only a young boy is around to witness it. But no sooner does the violence happen than it disappears, vanished without a trace. Nobody claims to have seen anything. Nobody claims to have heard anything. That is, until an anonymous accusation catalyzes a dangerous investigation into the deep underbelly of the Christian churches present today in Latin America. The Night Will Be Long is a dark, twisting thriller filled with moments of humor and pain--a story that will stick with readers long after they turn the last page. The author.
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The Italian
by Shukrī Mabkhūt
"In Tunisia at the turn of the 80s and 90s, an era of great tensions and political and social changes, the story of a revolutionary love and dream destined to succumb in the clash with the harsh reality of a country in which repression, malpractice and general degradation crush the ambitions and dreams of the individual. At his father's funeral, to the great consternation of all present, Abdel Nasser beats the imam who is celebrating the funeral rite. The narrator, a childhood friend of the protagonist, retraces the story of Abdel Nasser from his days as a free and rebellious adolescent spirit to the leader of a student movement and then affirmed journalist. Those were crucial years in Tunisia, with great tensions and changes coming up: the growth of Islamism fighting against the strong repression by the government. Against this background full of revolutionary ferments, struggles against Islamists and demonstrations against state power stands the tormented love story between Abdel Nasser and Zeina, a brilliant and beautiful philosophy student who dreams of a career in academia. The dreams of Zeina and Abdel Nasser will unfortunately end up being wrecked under the ruthless gears of a corrupt and male chauvinist society, in which values are only a facade,ending up crushing the individuality, hopes, and aspirations of individuals. Abdel Nasser's transformation from a young idealist with high hopes to a successful, but disillusioned and tired journalist is masterfully narrated in a stream of stories, digressions and flashbacks in which the narrative tension is always high"
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Remote sympathy
by Catherine Chidgey
The wife of an SS officer, Frau Hahn is oblivious to the fact that a concentration camp is on the fringe of their idyllic life until she is forced into an unlikely and poignant alliance with one of Buchwald’s prisoners who challenges her naïve ignorance.
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A Sister’s Story
by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 STREGA PRIZE From the internationally acclaimed author of A Girl Returned, a spellbinding story about family, memory, love, and the relationships that define us. It’s the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth is she carrying with her? Like a whirlwind, Adriana upends her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations. Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara, her hometown. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister’s youth, their loves and losses, secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town’s fishermen’s quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and attempt to make peace with the past. Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a moving novel focused on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters.
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Touring the Land of the Dead : And Ninety-nine Kisses
by Maki Kashimada
A story from one of Japan's rising literary stars about memory, loss, and love, Touring the Land of the Dead is a mesmerizing combination of two tales, both told with stylistic inventiveness and breathtaking sensitivity. Taichi was forced to stop working almost a decade ago and since then he and his wife Natsuko have been getting by on her part-time wages. But Natsuko is a woman accustomed to hardship. When her own family's fortune dried up years during her childhood, she, her brother, and her mother lived a surreal hand-to-mouth existence shaped by her mother's refusal to accept their new station in life. One day, Natsuko sees an ad for a spa and recognizes the place as the former luxury hotel that Natsuko's grandfather had taken her mother to when she was little. She decides to take her damaged husband to the spa, despite the cost, but their time there triggers hard but ultimately redemptive memories relating to the complicated history of her family and a reconciliation with her husband. Modeled on Junichiro Tanizaki's classic story, The Makioka Sisters, Ninety-Nine Kisses is the second story in this book and it portrays in touching and lyrical fashion the lives of the four unmarried sisters in a historical, close-knit neighborhood of contemporary Tokyo.
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Cathedral
by Ben Hopkins
The 12th- and 13th-century construction of Hagenburg’s Cathedral and its related depravities shape the religious, political and economic lives of diverse characters, from the local bishop and his treasurer to regional stonecutters and Jewish denizens.
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Tonight Is Already Tomorrow
by Lia Levi
Inspired by true events during World War II, this stirring new novel portrays Italys tragic past through the story of a Jewish family, plagued by doubts, passions, weaknesses, impulses and betrayals.
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A novel bookstore
by Laurence Cossé
A mysterious death, unusual car accident, and anonymous threats have one thing in common-- the victims are all members of the Good Novel bookstore's secret selection committee. Set in Paris, this tale combines mystery, romance, and French theology and literature.
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Disoriental
by Négar Djavadi
In an intricately woven tapestry of Iranian history, politics, culture, family drama and triumph, 25-year-old Kimia Sadr, facing the future she has built for herself after leaving her family behind, is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors in the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic.
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Farewell, my orange
by Kei Iwaki
A single mother from Nigeria and a Japanese college student who has put her studies on hold to raise her infant bond over devastating losses while attending an ESL class in a small Australian town.
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The Hollow Land
by Jane Gardam
Bell and Harry explore an enchanted world of wonder where they run into an Egg Witch and also a very famous Londoner who moves to town, in a collection of rural stories from the award-winning author of Crusoe's Daughter.
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Peace Talks
by Tim Finch
Shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Book Awards A small masterpiece of compression and containment, Peace Talks tells the story of one man's grief, the tribulations of the human heart, and our longing for peace. Edvard Behrends is a highly regarded senior diplomat who has made his reputation as a mediator in international peace negotiations. In his latest post, he has been sent to a resort hotel in the Tyrol. High up on this mountain, the air is bright and clear. When he isn't working, Edvard reads, walks, listens to music. He confides in no one--no one but his wife Anna. Anna, whom he loves with all his heart; Anna, always present and yet forever absent. Reminiscent of Robert Seethaler's work in its formal elegance and emotional heft, of Rachel Cusk's novels in the precision and tenacity of its prose, and of David Szalay's writing in its abiding preoccupations, Finch's new novel is a work of great depth, honesty, wit, beauty, and enduring importance.
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Winter
by Christopher Nicholson
A fictionalized account of the final years of the life of Thomas Hardy, as the London theatre production of his acclaimed Tess of the D'Urbervilles premiers and his obsessive infatuation with the show's star becomes known to his reclusive wife.
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In His Own Image
by Jérôme Ferrari
From Goncourt Prize-winning author Jérôme Ferrari, a bewitching story of passion, death, and love, and a powerful reflection on the ambiguous relationship between art and reality Born in a small town in Corsican countryside, Antonia grows up in a place of deeply-rooted traditions and strong family ties. When she’s fourteen, her uncle, a priest, gives her a camera—suddenly changing the way she looks at the world and igniting a passion that will prompt her to become a photojournalist. Over two decades later, Antonia is walking around the port of Calvi when she runs into Dragan, a soldier whom she had met when she was reporting on the war in the former Yugoslavia. The two spend the entire night in deep conversation, reminiscing about their experience of the conflict. Shortly after saying goodbye, as she drives home Antonia loses control of her car, plunges off a cliff and is killed instantly. Tasked with officiating his niece’s funeral, Antonia’s uncle is forced to reflect on her life and legacy, and on the profound questions they beg about ambition and doubt, passion and guilt, representation and reality. Wide in scope but rich in detail, restrained yet deeply moving, In His Own Image masterly weaves together the story of an individual life with universal themes that resonate across time and space.
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The River Within
by Karen Powell
An increasingly erratic heir, a smitten young woman and her domineering brother find their lives in 1955 North Yorkshire upended by a friends tragic death and the secrets that emerge from the lake where he drowned.
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