Annabel: A Novel
by Kathleen Winter
Black Cat

$14.95
20% off: $11.96

In 1968, into the devastating, spare atmosphere of the remote coastal town of Labrador, Canada, a child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor fully girl. Only three people are privy to the secret—the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbor and midwife, Thomasina. Though Treadway makes the difficult decision to raise the child as a boy named Wayne, the women continue to quietly nurture the child’s female side, his shadow-self, a girl he thinks of as “Annabel.”

Beneath the Lion's Gaze
by Maaza Mengiste
W W Norton & Co Inc

$14.95
20% off: $11.96

“Beneath the Lion’s Gaze begins in the Addis Ababa of 1974. It takes its title from a stone lion that looks over the city from atop an obelisk—a monument to those killed in the struggle against Italian aggression. The aging Emperor Haile Selassie, known to some as the Lion of Judah, is losing his grip on power. Student demonstrations are being suppressed with violence.... [The book] tells a painful story, but the beauty of its language keeps it from becoming unreadable. Stark scenes of conflict and violence are set off by the dreamlike visions of the characters.” —The Christian Science Monitor

Coriolanus
by William Shakespeare
Arden Shakespeare

$18.00
20% off: $14.40

“Set against a background of strife between the powerful aristocracy and hungry citizens of the early Roman republic, Coriolanus is a visceral and politically sharp-edged play. At its centre is Caius Martius, fresh from victory over the hated Volscians, dismissive of the Roman people and, following exile, hungry for war and retribution. Brusque, muscular language conveys insistent questions about the meaning of the heroic ideal and one man’s emotional blindness.” —description from the Globe Theatre The Harvard Square Book Circle will discuss Coriolanus on Monday, January 31 at 7pm.

The Empty Family: Stories
by Colm Toibin
Scribner

$24.00
20% off: $19.20

“The chief reason to read these stories is the peculiar power of Colm Tóibín’s prose. His absorption in Henry James, both as a critic and a creative writer, assuming for a second that criticism isn’t creative, is well known. He doesn’t at all ‘do’ James—his voice is a strongly contemporary one—but these stories are steeped in a Jamesian sense of equivocation, of characters on thresholds, of several shades of prevarication (notwithstanding a few outbursts of gutsy gay sex—all of which, one notes, belong to the past) and non-commitment.” —The Telegraph (UK)

The Imperfectionists
by Tom Rachman
Dial Pr

$15.00
20% off: $12.00

“The Imperfectionists is a splendid original, filled with wit and structured so ingeniously that figuring out where the author is headed is half the reader’s fun. The other half comes from [Rachman’s] sparkling descriptions not only of newspaper office denizens, but of the tricks of their trade, presented in language that is smartly satirical yet brimming with affection.” —The New York Times

The Lost Books of the Odyssey: A Novel
by Zachary Mason
Picador USA

$14.00
20% off: $11.20

"“Zachary Mason has achieved something remarkable. He’s written a first novel that is not just vibrantly original, but also an insightful commentary on Homer’s epic and its lasting hold on our imagination.... The effect of reading The Lost Books is to make you realize that it’s not just its narrative of homecoming that makes The Odyssey so archetypal. It’s also that the poem captures the irrepressible human impulse to tell stories. And, perhaps, to favor a good story over a strictly accurate one.” —Slate"

The Memory of Love
by Aminatta Forna
Atlantic Monthly Pr

$24.95
20% off: $19.96

In contemporary Sierra Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with scars to hide and secrets to keep. On the run from an empty life, British psychologist Adrian Lockheart arrives with good intentions and a desire to help. He forges a friendship with Kai Mansaray, a charismatic and overworked young surgeon with a sharp sense of responsibility to his country and a heavy burden of memories to bear.

Point Omega
by Don DeLillo
Scribner

$12.00
20% off: $9.60

Richard Elster was a scholar when he was called to a meeting with government war planners and asked to apply his “ideas and principles to such matters as troop deployment and counterinsurgency.” We meet Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, “somewhere south of nowhere,” in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker, Jim Finley, intent on documenting his experience. Finley wants to persuade Elster to make a one-take film, with Elster its single character.