NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • “Altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature.”—Michael Dirda, The New York Review of Books Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone—Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic about Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century—were originally conceived as one vast, mysterious novel. Now, in this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has marvelously distilled a monumental work while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. Praise for Shadow Country “Magnificent . . . breathtaking . . . Finally now we have [this three-part saga] welded like a bell, and with Watson’s song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate.”—Los Angeles Times “Peter Matthiessen has done great things with the Watson trilogy. It’s the story of our continent, both land and people, and his writing does every justice to the blood fury of his themes.”—Don DeLillo “The fiction of Peter Ma­­tthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. Shadow Country lives up to anyone’s highest expectations for great writing.” —Richard Ford “Shadow Country, Matthiessen’s distillation of the earlier Watson saga, represents his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy.”—W. S. Merwin “[An] epic masterpiece . . . a great American novel.”—The Miami Herald

By the author of The Snow Leopard, The Tree Where Man Was Born and On the River Styx, this novel is based around the circumstances of the death of a man in Florida 1910, who had terrorized his community in the Florida Everglades. It explores whether it was murder, exorcism or sacrifice.

"Watson's voice is an artistic triumph. . .[Bone by Bone] may well come to be regarded as a classic." --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review In Bone by Bone, Peter Matthiessen speaks in the extraordinary voice of the enigmatic and dangerous E. J. Watson, whom we first saw, obliquely, through the eyes of his early twentieth-century Everglades community in Killing Mister Watson. This astonishing new novel, calling to account the violence, virulent racism, and destruction of the land that fueled the so-called American Dream, points an accusing finger straight into the burning eyes of Uncle Sam. Here is the bloodied child of the Civil War and Reconstruction who dreams of recovering the family plantation. He becomes the gifted cane planter nearing success on a wilderness river when he gives in fatally to his accumulating demons. Powerfully imagined, prodigiously detailed, Bone by Bone is a literary tour de force as bold and ambitious as Watson himself. "Like a true tragic figure, [Watson] knows and understands; he does not wriggle to save his own skin," said The New York Times. "This is a work of genuine dignity."

From the #1 bestselling author of The Historian comes a mesmerizing novel that spans the past and the present—and unearths the troubled history of a gorgeous but haunted country. A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. Soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, however, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi—and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes. As Alexandra sets out to locate the family and return this precious item, she will first have to uncover the secrets of a talented musician who was shattered by political oppression—and she will find out all too quickly that this knowledge is fraught with its own danger. Elizabeth Kostova’s new novel is a tale of immense scope that delves into the horrors of a century and traverses the culture and landscape of this mysterious country. Suspenseful and beautifully written, it explores the power of stories, the pull of the past, and the hope and meaning that can sometimes be found in the aftermath of loss. Praise for The Shadow Land “A compelling and complex mystery, strong storytelling, and lyrical writing combine for an engrossing read.”—Publishers Weekly “In The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova, a master storyteller, brings vividly to life an unfamiliar country—Bulgaria—and a painful history that feels particularly relevant now. You won’t want to put down this remarkable book.”—Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs “In this brilliant work, what appears at first a minor mystery quickly becomes emblematic of a whole country’s hidden history. Lyrical and compelling, The Shadow Land proves a profound meditation on how evil is inflicted, endured, and, through courage and compassion, defeated. Elizabeth Kostova’s third novel clearly establishes her as one of America’s finest writers.”—Ron Rash, author of The Risen

The art of Dale Laitinen. I chase shadows with my brush, whether it is in the Sierra Nevada with the sweep of a cloud across granite or a red rock canyon casting its shadow profile across the face of a dam. It is the gut-sucking view I am after. In this book you will find paintings divided between the natural world and the engineered world of dams and highways.

The influential and controversial critic takes literary history out of the classroom and into the public In the field of literary history and theory, Franco Moretti is synonymous with innovation. The cofounder of the Stanford Literary Lab, he brought quantitative methods into the study of the novel, enabling a “distant” reading that uses computation to analyze literary production over centuries. But at the same time, he was also teaching undergraduates the history of literature. Knowing Moretti, it’s no surprise that he didn’t teach the course the accepted way: one author after another, in a long uninterrupted chain. Instead, he put an irregular chessboard in front of his students that was too strange to be taken for granted. Literary history had become a problem, and he offered a solution. In Far Country, Moretti take these lectures out of the classroom and lets us share in the passion and excitement that comes from radical critique. Unconstrained by genre, Moretti juxtaposes Whitman and Baudelaire, the Western and film noir, even Rembrandt and Warhol, illuminating each through their opposition. With his guidance, we revel in the process of transformation—the earthquakes that shook the “how” of artistic form—and begin to shape a new view on American culture. Bracing in its insight and provocative in its conclusions, Far Country is a critical look at the development of American cultural hegemony.

A stunning, powerful debut novel set against the backdrop of the Cambodian War, perfect for fans of Chris Cleave and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyanis testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. 'In the Shadow of the Banyanis one of the most extraordinary and beautiful acts of storytelling I have ever encountered' Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand 'Ratner is a fearless writer, and the novel explores important themes such as power, the relationship between love and guilt, and class. Most remarkably, it depicts the lives of characters forced to live in extreme circumstances, and investigates how that changes them. To read In the Shadow of the Banyan is to be left with a profound sense of being witness to a tragedy of history' Guardian 'This is an extraordinary debut … as beautiful as it is heartbreaking' Mail on Sunday

Author of War Horse, and bestselling storyteller Michael Morpurgo touched our hearts with this beautiful story of a boy, his lost dog, and the lengths he would go to be reunited. This timely story of battle-scarred Afghanistan delivers a masterful portrait of war, love, and friendship. With the horrors of war bearing down on them, Aman and his mother are barely surviving in an Afghan cave, and staying there any longer will end horribly. The only comfort Aman has is Shadow, the loyal spaniel that shows up from places unknown, it seems, just when Aman needs him most. Aman, his mother, and Shadow finally leave the destroyed cave in hopes of escaping to England, but are held at a checkpoint, and Shadow runs away after being shot at by the police. Aman and his mother escape--without Shadow. Aman is heart-broken. Just as they are getting settled as free citizens in England, they are imprisoned in a camp with locked doors and a barbed wire fence. Their only hope is Aman's classmate Matt, his grandpa, and the dream of finding his lost dog. After all, you never lose your shadow.

FROM FORMER GREEN BERET AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR JASON KASPER "Jason Kasper is a name to watch in the thriller world." -Mark Greaney, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of the Gray Man Series When American citizens in Nigeria are kidnapped and held for ransom, David Rivers and his team of CIA contractors find themselves enveloped in an international firestorm. With a US administration determined to protect American lives, David has the authority to do whatever it takes. But as David's team tracks down the mysterious terror cell responsible for the kidnapping, they uncover a conspiracy beyond anything they could have imagined. And in a race against time to recover the hostages, David and his team must infiltrate the Sambisa Forest, a sprawling Boko Haram stronghold overflowing with enemy soldiers. Failure is not an option. Survival is not guaranteed.

The extraordinary diary and memoir of just under one year in a woman’s life.