When originally published in 1993, Ruined City (Fei Du) was promptly banned by China’s State Publishing Administration, ostensibly for its explicit sexual content. Since then, award-winning author Jia Pingwa’s vivid portrayal of...
When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble...
Joan Didion's electrifying first novel is a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the...
An American equivalent of "Das Boot," this gripping, bestselling novel of submarine warfare inspired a well-known Hollywood film starring Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable. Set in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the tension-filled story...
Some backs are born to glory — some achieve it — but sometimes, in the heart-testing minute before the final gun, only never-quit cleats will run the man...
FIVE DREAMS OF FAME
Glasgow, 1965. Jack Mackay dares not imagine a life of predictability and routine. The headstrong seventeen-year-old has one thing on his mind — London — and successfully convinces his four friends, and fellow band mates,...
He’d been a big shot yesterday — he’d make tomorrow’s headlines. But this was today... the day he had to prove himself to ten gents — who were hell on...
DeLillo's Running Dog, originally published in 1978, follows Moll Robbins, a New York city journalist trailing the activities of an influential senator. In the process she is dragged into the black market world of erotica and shady, infatuated...
Ed McBain is a pen name of Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Evan Hunter, who wrote The Blackboard Jungle. As Ed McBain, he has written fifty 87th Precinct novels, the blueprint series for every successful police procedural series. In this...
Chinese literature published in the United States has tended to focus on politics — think the Cultural Revolution and dissidents — but there's a whole other world of writing out there. It's punk, dealing with the harsh realities lived by the...