“One of Thailand’s preeminent female writers . . . Each of her stories poses its own moral challenge, pleasurable and unsettling at once . . . phenomenal.” —NPR.org In thirteen stories that investigate ordinary and working-class Thailand, characters aspire for more but remain suspended in routine. They bide their time, waiting for an extraordinary event to end their stasis. A politician’s wife imagines her life had her husband’s accident been fatal, a man on death row requests that a friend clear up a misunderstanding with a sex worker, and an elevator attendant feels himself wasting away while trapped, immobile, at his station all day. With curious wit, this collection offers revelatory insight and subtle critique, exploring class, gender, and disenchantment in a changing country. “Arid Dreams is stark, sly, and unsparingly brilliant. Here is a writer unafraid to pick up the scalpel of her prose and use it to cut to the bone. Each story is more compelling than the last, each combines dark humor with deeper truths about human desire and depravity. I couldn’t look away.” —Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young “Pimwana’s characters, whether they are truck drivers or farmers, doctors or prisoners, are realized with depth, affection, and a good degree of humor. The petty concerns of their daily lives—frustrated careers, infidelity, reconnecting with distant family—are hypnotically rendered in Pimwana’s telling. This is an exciting debut.” —Publishers Weekly “A deep and thoughtful exploration of human psyches and the dreams of ordinary Thais in an ever-changing socio-economic environment.” —Bangkok Post “An exacting look at the moments of joy and tragedy, of hope and desire.” —Independent Book Review

"What would you do if you were going to live your life as if you only had a year to live?" When a stranger poses this question in the supermarket checkout line, Cricket Thompson is jolted out of her everyday life to face a startling revelation: after seventeen years of marriage to solid, reliable Jim, and despite her love for her teenage daughters, Janis and Grace, Cricket is lonely. The tides of change are pulling her toward something new and barely recognizableŠan internal shift that leads her to spend time with a man named Pass Christian, who offers her a special kind of acceptance and understanding. But in a single moment, Cricket's world comes crashing down when an act of deadly violence erupts at the local shopping mall -- and she faces a devastating, heartbreaking loss. Through the prism of this surreal crisis, Cricket's life path is irrevocably altered; without her knowledge or consent, she has been plunged into the kind of cataclysmic event that by its very nature forces transformation. For Cricket, the world of dreams and fantasy comes up against the sting of reality with relentless force. Life as she knew it has been left in the past; yet Jim refuses to acknowledge the changes that confront them both. And suddenly, for Cricket, the love that Pass has to offer just about overwhelms her.... Exploring the solace of dreams and the fragility of being wide awake, Barbara Chepaitis has written an astoundingly powerful and heartwrenching novel. These Dreams beautifully portrays the love that grows in the most desolate of circumstances, when even the very will to endure is challenged by the inexplicable design of the world we must live in.

The poems first capture sorrow and pain but through the spiritual journey, a transformation takes hold. In the background is a depiction of the world of New York City and the human dramas that unfold, from the petty to the sublime.

WINNER OF THE NEUSTADT PRIZE This novel of post-9/11 London is a masterful dissection of racism, aging, and the perturbing nature of desire. Ananda Devi's "fluid, poetic language memorably conjures a union of two outcasts" (The New Yorker). A chance encounter on Portobello Road incites an unsettling, magnetic attraction between Mary, a seventy-five-year-old white British spinster, and Cub, a thirteen-year-old Jamaican boy from Brixton. Mary increasingly clings to phantoms as dementia overtakes her reality, latching on to Cub and channeling all of her remaining energy into their relationship. But their macabre romance comes to a horrific climax, as white supremacy, poverty, and class conflict explode on the streets of London. Through exquisite juxtaposition, Devi uses lush prose to confront the tensions of an increasingly nationalistic metropolis, and the queasy nature of desire muddled with power. “A gorgeously written, profoundly upsetting fairy tale of race, class, power, and desire.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Brutal and entirely believable, a gorgeous and haunting depiction of London and the real lives and memories of those unseen within it." —Publishers Weekly

Dream Cycles offers a new and exciting aproach to dream interpretation. The premise is that dreams come from an inner source full of symbolism. Using the nine basic cycles in your life, you can open your dreams and read them in the full context of the events in your life.

Vol. for 1958 includes "Anthology of poems from the seventeen previously published Braithwaite anthologies."

It's summer in Paris, 1972. Frenchwoman Eva Laroche wants to pass her bar exams and get a good job as a trial attorney, but she's working as a tour guide to pay off debts. American beauty Brigitte Green wants to find a new home in Paris and forget her past that haunts her with vivid waking dreams. Though the beauty of Paris and the magic of its rich feminist culture draw them ever closer, a secret from Brigitte's past life threatens to destroy their chance for a future together. Can their fragile love flourish in the City of Light?

By one of Southeast Asia’s most exciting writers, The Age of Goodbyes is a wildly inventive account of family history, political turmoil, and the redemptive grace of storytelling. In 1969, in the wake of Malaysia's deadliest race riots, a woman named Du Li An secures her place in society by marrying a gangster. In a parallel narrative, a critic known only as The Fourth Person explores the work of a writer also named Du Li An. And a third storyline is in the second person; “you” are reading a novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Floundering in the wake of “your” mother’s death, “you” are trying to unpack the secrets surrounding “your” lineage. The Age of Goodbyes—which begins on page 513, a reference to the riots of May 13, 1969—is the acclaimed debut by Li Zi Shu. The winner of multiple awards and a Taiwanese bestseller, this dazzling novel is a profound exploration of what happens to personal memory when official accounts of history distort and render it taboo.

In their stunning fiction debut, queer Indonesian writer Norman Erikson Pasaribu blends together speculative fiction and dark absurdism, drawing from Batak and Christian cultural elements. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize, Happy Stories, Mostly introduces “one of the most important Indonesian writers today” (Litro Magazine). These twelve short stories ask what it means to be almost happy—to nearly find joy, to sort-of be accepted, but to never fully grasp one's desire. Joy shimmers on the horizon, just out of reach. An employee navigates their new workplace, a department of Heaven devoted to archiving unanswered prayers; a tourist in Vietnam seeks solace following her son’s suicide; a young student befriends a classmate obsessed with verifying the existence of a mythical hundred-foot-tall man. A tragicomic collection that probes the miraculous, melancholy nature of survival amid loneliness, Happy Stories, Mostly considers an oblique approach to human life: In the words of one of the stories’ narrators, “I work in the dark. Like mushrooms. I don’t need light to thrive.”