Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from NYRB Classics:<\/p>\n Two very intelligent, very idealistic young women leave the convent school where they became the fastest of friends to return to their families and embark on their new lives. For Ren\u00e9e de Maucombe, this means an arranged marriage with a country gentleman of Provence, a fine if slightly dull man for whom she feels admiration but nothing more. Meanwhile, Louise de Chaulieu makes for her family\u2019s house in Paris, intent on enjoying her freedom to the fullest: glittering balls, the opera, and above all, she devoutly hopes, the torments and ecstasies of true love and passion. What will come of these very different lives?<\/p>\n Despite Honor\u00e9 de Balzac\u2019s title, these aren\u2019t memoirs; rather, this is an epistolary novel. For some ten years, these two will\u2014enthusiastically if not always faithfully\u2014keep up their correspondence, obeying their vow to tell each other every tiny detail of their strange new lives, comparing their destinies, defending and sometimes bemoaning their choices, detailing the many changes, personal and social, that they undergo. As Balzac writes, \u201cRen\u00e9e is reason…Louise is wildness…and both will lose.\u201d Balzac being Balzac, he seems to argue for the virtues of one of these lives over the other; but Balzac being Balzac, that argument remains profoundly ambiguous. \u201cI would,\u201d he once wrote, \u201crather be killed by Louise than live a long life with Ren\u00e9e.\u201d<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Pantheon:<\/p>\n The second novel in the Man Booker Prize\u2013nominated author\u2019s Seasonal cycle; the much-anticipated follow-up to Autumn<\/i> (a New York Times<\/i>, Washington Post<\/i>, NPR, Financial Times<\/i>, The Guardian<\/i>, Southern Living<\/i>, and Kirkus Reviews<\/i> best book of the year).<\/p>\n Winter. Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. And now Art\u2019s mother is seeing things. Come to think of it, Art\u2019s seeing things himself.<\/p>\n When four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone?<\/p>\n Winter. It makes things visible. Ali Smith\u2019s shapeshifting Winter<\/i> casts a warm, wise, merry and uncompromising eye over a post-truth era in a story rooted in history and memory and with a taproot deep in the evergreens, art and love.<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Open Letter Books:<\/p>\n In June of 1923, a military coup established Aleksandar Tsankov as the new leader of Bulgaria. His fascist policies\u2014especially aimed at the Bulgarian Communist Party\u2014led to the failed September Uprising and an extended period of martial law.<\/p>\n At that same time, Geo Milev\u2014one of Bulgaria\u2019s most beloved poets\u2014started a politically charged literary magazine with Georgi Sheytanov, a notorious anarchist on the run. Eighteen months later, the government assassinated both of them, although Milev\u2019s body wouldn\u2019t be found for another thirty years.<\/p>\n In this multilayered historical novel that calls to mind Laurent Binet\u2019s HHhH<\/em>, Hristo Karastoyanov deconstructs this period, blending this adventurous tale of resistance with current-day reflections on what this period meant to Bulgaria and the world.<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Grove Press:<\/p>\n Published to rave reviews in the United Kingdom, Phone<\/i> tells the story of two men: Zack Busner and Jonathan De\u2019Ath. Busner is a psychiatrist who has made his name through his unorthodox treatment of psychological damage, such as giving the controversial drug L-DOPA to patients ravaged by encephalitis, or administering LSD to World War II PTSD-sufferers. But now Busner\u2019s own mind is fraying: Alzheimer\u2019s is shredding his memory and his newest possession is a shiny smartphone given to him by his introverted grandson Ben. Meanwhile, Jonathan De\u2019Ath, aka \u201cthe Butcher,\u201d is an MI6 man who remains a mystery even to those closest to him, be it his washed-up old university lecturer father, his jumbling-bumbling mother, his hippy-dippy brothers, his spooky colleagues or multitudinous lovers. All of De\u2019Ath\u2019s acquaintances apply the \u201cButcher\u201d epithet to him, and perhaps there is only one person who thinks of him with tenderness, a man he keeps top secret, encrypted in the databanks of his steely mind: Colonel Gawain Thomas, husband, father, highly-trained tank commander, and Jonathan De\u2019Ath\u2019s long-time lover. As Busner\u2019s mind totters and Jonathan and Gawain\u2019s affair teeters, they come to face the interconnectedness of all lives, online and off, while an irritating phone continues to ring\u2026 ring\u2026 ring\u2026<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Riverhead Books:<\/p>\n Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age thirty. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights, or angels, Jim wonders what–if anything–awaits us on the other side.<\/p>\n Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love. Funny, fiercely original, and gracefully moving,\u00a0The Afterlives<\/i>\u00a0will haunt you. In a good way.<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Harper:<\/p>\n In the heart of Elizabethan England, Richard Shakespeare dreams of a glittering career in one of the London playhouses, a world dominated by his older brother, William. But he is a penniless actor, making ends meet through a combination of a beautiful face, petty theft and a silver tongue. As William\u2019s star rises, Richard\u2019s onetime gratitude is souring and he is sorely tempted to abandon family loyalty.<\/p>\n So when a priceless manuscript goes missing, suspicion falls upon Richard, forcing him onto a perilous path through a bawdy and frequently brutal London.\u00a0Entangled in a high-stakes game of duplicity and betrayal which threatens not only his career and potential fortune, but also the lives of his fellow players, Richard has to call on all he has now learned from the brightest stages and the darkest alleyways of the city. To avoid the gallows, he must play the part of a lifetime . . . .<\/p>\n Showcasing the superb storytelling skill that has won Bernard Cornwell international renown,\u00a0Fools and Mortals<\/em>\u00a0is a richly portrayed tour de force that brings to life a vivid world of intricate stagecraft, fierce competition, and consuming ambition.<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from NYRB Classics:<\/p>\n Now available in English for the first time, Eileen Chang\u2019s dark romance opens with Julie, living at a convent school in Hong Kong on the eve of the Japanese invasion. Her mother, Rachel, long divorced from Julie\u2019s opium-addict father, saunters around the world with various lovers. Recollections of Julie\u2019s horrifying but privileged childhood in Shanghai clash with a flamboyant, sometimes incestuous cast of relations that crowd her life. Eventually, back in Shanghai, she meets the magnetic Chih-yung, a traitor who collaborates with the Japanese puppet regime. Soon they\u2019re in the throes of an impassioned love affair that swings back and forth between ardor and anxiety, secrecy and ruin. Like Julie\u2019s relationship with her mother, her marriage to Chih-yung is marked by long stretches of separation interspersed with unexpected little reunions. Chang\u2019s emotionally fraught, bitterly humorous novel holds a fractured mirror directly in front of her own heart.<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Random House:<\/p>\n The Largesse of the Sea Maiden <\/i>is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson. Written in the luminous prose that made him one of the most beloved and important writers of his generation, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating the ghosts of the past and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.<\/p>\n Finished shortly before Johnson\u2019s death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from NYRB Classics:<\/p>\n Bella Winter has hit a low. Homeless and jobless, she is the mother of a toddler by a man whose name she didn\u2019t quite catch, and her once pretty face is disfigured by the scar she acquired in a car accident. Friendless and without family, she\u2019s recently disentangled herself from a selfish and indifferent boyfriend and a cruel and indifferent mother. But she shares a quality common to Barbara Comyns\u2019s other heroines: a bracingly unsentimental ability to carry on. Before too long, Bella has found not only a job but a vocation; not only a place to live but a home and a makeshift family. As Comyns\u2019s novel progresses, the story echoes and inverts the Brothers Grimm\u2019s macabre tale The Juniper Tree<\/i>. Will Bella\u2019s hard-won restoration to life and love come at the cost of the happiness of others?<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Pushkin Press:<\/p>\n A boy is obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches. He goes to the supermarket almost every day, just so he can look at her face. She is beautiful to him, and he calls her “Ms Ice Sandwich”, and endlessly draws her portrait.<\/p>\n But the boy’s friend hears about this hesitant adoration, and suddenly everything changes. His visits to Ms Ice Sandwich stop, and with them the last hopes of his childhood.<\/p>\n A moving and surprisingly funny tale of growing up and learning how to lose, Ms Ice Sandwich<\/i> is Mieko Kawakami at her very best.<\/p>\n Buy from Amazon.com here<\/a>. Here is the blurb from Dalkey Archive:<\/p>\n A Jesuit and an English ambassador make a journey to Petrograd across a gloomy, often desolate eighteenth-century Eastern Europe in order to sight a rare transit of the sun by Venus. A Moldovan student coming of age at the end of the twentieth century, and in the aftermath of the Soviet Union\u2019s break-up, flees to the west in search of a less gloomy life, only to find more of the sordid, inhumane experience she had hoped to leave behind. A boy known only as the Writer, under the sway of Paul Auster\u2019s novels, searches for his theme and finally settles on an eighteenth-century Yugoslav Jesuit known for his fascination with rare astronomical events. In these subtly linked novellas, Muharem Bazdulj takes the reader across several centuries of Yugoslav history, finding in three very different sets of circumstances a common longing to escape the desperation and depression of life in the east.<\/p>\n [\/fusion_text][\/fusion_builder_column][\/fusion_builder_row][\/fusion_builder_container]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are lots of lists of 2018 books floating around right now. 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The Memoirs of Two Young Wives<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Honor\u00e9 de Balzac
\ntranslated from the French by Jordan Stump
\nNYRB Classics<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Winter-692x1024.jpg?resize=270%2C400\")
Winter<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Ali Smith
\nPantheon<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Same-Night-Awaits-Us-All-663x1024.jpg?resize=259%2C400\")
The Same Night Awaits Us All<\/i><\/b>
\nby Hristo Karastoyanov
\ntranslated from the Bulgarian by Izidora Angel
\nOpen Letter Books<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Phone-741x1024.jpg?resize=289%2C400\"){kind=spacer}
Phone<\/i><\/b>
\nby Will Self
\nGrove Press<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Afterlives.jpg?resize=265%2C400\")
The Afterlives<\/i><\/b>
\nby Thomas Pierce
\nRiverhead Books<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Fools-and-Mortals.jpg?resize=266%2C400\")
Fools and Mortals<\/i><\/b>
\nby Bernard Cornwell
\nHarper<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nJanuary 16<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Little-Reunions-640x1024.jpg?resize=250%2C400\")
Little Reunions<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Eileen Chang
\ntranslated from the Chinese by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz
\nNYRB Classics<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Largesse-of-the-Sea-Maiden.jpg?resize=265%2C400\")
The Largesse of\u00a0the Sea Maiden<\/i><\/strong>
\nby Denis Johnson
\nRandom House<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nJanuary 23<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/The-Juniper-Tree-640x1024.jpg?resize=250%2C400\")
The Juniper Tree<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Barbara Comyns
\nNYRB Classics<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ms-Ice-Sandwich.jpg?resize=260%2C400\")
Ms Ice Sandwich<\/i><\/b>
\nby Mieko Kawakami
\ntranslated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai
\nPushkin Press<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nJanuary 30<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Transit-Comet-Eclipse-663x1024.jpg?resize=259%2C400\"){kind=spacer}
Transit Comet Eclipse<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Muharem Bazdulj
\ntranslated from the Bosnian by Nata\u0161a Milas
\nDalkey Archive<\/p>\n
\nBuy from Amazon UK here<\/a>.<\/p>\n