Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it — how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens? This third perspective on myself is disconcerting. The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known—where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another. A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader’s mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader’s imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times.

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over asks how much of yourself can you lose before you are lost…and then what happens? The heroine of this haunting, spare novel is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, our undead narrator notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. She has forgotten even her name, but she remembers with unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known — where she loved and was loved. She heads west and into mind-boggling adventures, carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest. The joint winner of The Novel Prize, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is a sharp and funny tale for our dispossessed times. ‘Astounding, inventive, and utterly original, Anne de Marcken has written a freakish classic with wisdom to spare about life, death, and the eerily vast space between. I was absolute putty in this book’s hands.’ — Alexandra Kleeman ‘Anne de Marcken must write in a charmed ink that first erases the line between the living and the dead, and then — with prose as elegant as it is spooked — tells the story of what lies underneath. I have never read anything like this brilliant debut.’ — Sabrina Orah Mark

The inaugural winner of The Novel Prize, an international biennial award established by Giramondo (Australia), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and New Directions (USA). Cold Enough for Snow was unanimously chosen from over 1500 entries. A novel about the relationship between life and art, and between language and the inner world – how difficult it is to speak truly, to know and be known by another, and how much power and friction lies in the unsaid, especially between a mother and daughter. A young woman has arranged a holiday with her mother in Japan. They travel by train, visit galleries and churches chosen for their art and architecture, eat together in small cafés and restaurants and walk along the canals at night, on guard against the autumn rain and the prospect of snow. All the while, they talk, or seem to talk: about the weather, horoscopes, clothes and objects; about the mother’s family in Hong Kong, and the daughter’s own formative experiences. But uncertainties abound. How much is spoken between them, how much is thought but unspoken? Cold Enough for Snow is a reckoning and an elegy: with extraordinary skill, Au creates an enveloping atmosphere that expresses both the tenderness between mother and daughter, and the distance between them. 'So calm and clear and deep, I wished it would flow on forever.' — Helen Garner 'Rarely have I been so moved, reading a book: I love the quiet beauty of Cold Enough for Snow and how, within its calm simplicity, Jessica Au camouflages incredible power.' — Edouard Louis 'Au’s prose is elegant and measured. In descriptions of bracing clarity she evokes ‘shaking delicate impressions’ of worlds within worlds that are symbolic of the parts of ourselves we keep hidden and those we choose to lay bare. Put simply, this novel is an intricate and multi-layered work of art — a complex and profound meditation on identity, familial bonds and our inability to fully understand ourselves, those we love and the world around us.' — Jacqui Davies, Books+Publishing

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it - how much of what we love - can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens?

"The heroine of this haunting, spare novel is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, our undead narrator notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable, and nearly unbearable longing, the place where she knew herself and was known - where she loved and was loved. She heads west and into mind-boggling adventures, carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest. The joint winnder of The Novel Prize, It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over is a sharp and funny tale for our dispossessed times." -- Back cover."

Finally Abby is thirteen. A real teenager who only wants to pierce her ears, have a boyfriend, and run her own life. But when her mother suffers a nervous breakdown, Abby faces a life far different from what she hoped for. Set in the Bay Area in the '70s, An Egg on Three Sticks is Jackie Moyer Fischer's emotional, funny, and extraordinarily heartfelt novel about Abby's struggle to hold her family together, find love from a mother who has little to give, and simply try to be thirteen. With a voice completely fresh and honest, Abby takes us on a journey that is often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, and overwhelmingly hopeful. But a journey no thirteen-year-old should have to take.

"I know that I'll be evaluated in Seattle with wins and losses, as that is the nature of my profession for the last thirty-five years. But our record will not be what motivates me. Years ago I was asked, 'Pete, which is better: winning or competing?' My response was instantaneous: 'Competing. . . because it lasts longer.'" Pete Carroll is one of the most successful coaches in football today. As the head coach at USC, he brought the Trojans back to national prominence, amassing a 97-19 record over nine seasons. Now he shares the championship-winning philosophy that led USC to seven straight Pac-10 titles. This same mind-set and culture will shape his program as he returns to the NFL to coach the Seattle Seahawks. Carroll developed his unique coaching style by trial and error over his career. He learned that you get better results by teaching instead of screaming, and by helping players grow as people, not just on the field. He learned that an upbeat, energetic atmosphere in the locker room can coexist with an unstoppable competitive drive. He learned why you should stop worrying about your opponents, why you should always act as if the whole world is watching, and many other contrarian insights. Carroll shows us how the Win Forever philosophy really works, both in NCAA Division I competition and in the NFL. He reveals how his recruiting strategies, training routines, and game-day rituals preserve a team's culture year after year, during championship seasons and disappointing seasons alike. Win Forever is about more than winning football games; it's about maximizing your potential in every aspect of your life. Carroll has taught business leaders facing tough challenges. He has helped troubled kids on the streets of Los Angeles through his foundation A Better LA. His words are true in any situation: "If you want to win forever, always compete."

These three novellas each shimmer with exactitudes of falling out of love and falling into death, as existence at critical moments renounces normal life for moments of absolute desire. These are narratives of obsession and calamity. Lovers and wives are at the edge of themselves, saying the unsayable, doing the undoable, challenging us to keep our eyes open to the disintegration and pain. At the core of each tale is an erotic intensity. The prose is urgent. The stories are unforgettable. Into the Green Ocean Deep sees a man's last days with a dying lover as they engage in a final burst of transgressive eroticism. Negative Space recites the anguished thoughts of a man whose wife of twenty years has confessed her love for someone else as she packs to leave. In Inviolate, a wife suffers the imminent death of her husband from a fall that has left him comatose. "Once coma defined the limit of her husband's existence for the rest of it he was as well as he would ever be and so his wife at the foot of the bed observed that this was as good as he was going to look."

When a nuclear civil war shatters the United States, Mya loses everything. After being stripped of her poverty stricken childhood in Baltimore, a twisted turn of fate elects her the princess of a post United States empire. However, that same fate takes the only thing she treasured during her low times in Baltimore-her childhood lover. After five years of dealing with a harsh term in office, without her lover by her side, Mya finds the strength to move on, but just when she's moving forward the betrayal of a trusted father, and the sudden revelation of a terrorist mastermind planning to apprehend her with unknown motives, causes doubt about her unexplainable past. Mya finds herself in limbo; on an opportunity to prevent another nuclear war and on the brink of uncovering the past she tried to leave behind.

During the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s, a youthful indiscretion by a college student leads to a life on the run from the FBI, only to be identified years later by a computer hacker threatening blackmail. When the former firebrand seeks help from retired private investigator and Vietnam veteran Bill Quinn, he struggles with his decision whether to assist her. While weighing his options, he takes up the cause of a distraught friend whose daughter has gone missing, a search that will take Quinn into the heart of a white supremacist group. Unbeknownst to Quinn, a local narcotics agent and an undercover ATF officer are both closing in on the same group. A missing person and an FBI fugitive looking for help may be the least of his problems with a pair of mob hitmen tracking Quinn, out to settle an old score.