NCW Libraries

"A chilling literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home Jac Jemc's The Grip of It tells the eerie story of a young couple haunted by their new home. Julie and James settle into a house in a small town outside the city where they met. The move--prompted by James's penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check--is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual...

A devout woman finds herself adrift in late 19th century Central America in this novel of "deep imagination, stylistic verve, and psychological acuity" (The Washington Post). Set in late nineteenth century Central America and New York City, The Divine Husband tells the story of María de las Nieves Moran, whose brief career as a nun is ended in the wake of revolution. Forced to make her way in the secular world, María is surrounded by an unforgettable...

Isaac and Nora haven't seen each other in five years, yet when Nora phones Isaac late one night, he knows who it is before she's spoken a word. Isaac, a photographer, is relinquishing his artistic career, while Nora, a writer, is seeking to rededicate herself to hers. Fueled by their rediscovered love, Nora is soon on fire with the best work she's ever done, until she realizes that the story she's writing has turned into a fictionalized portrait of...

After dedicating his 20's to raising his two brothers and keeping to himself on the ancestral homestead, Cord Alastair fears he might have lost something else: a chance at a family of his own. When a Draft is called, Cord must decide whether to hold the family together, or let his brothers stand on their own as each pursues his own convictions.From out-of-the-way Oklahoma farmland to foreign fields, the Alastair brothers deal with alienation from...

James Wilson's The Dark Clue is as stylishly inventive as the oil paintings of J. M. W. Turner, the elusive genius who lies at the thriller's heart. Sheltered, upright Walter Hartright is commissioned to write a biography of England's great Romantic landscape artist. When he discovers the "dark clue" hidden deep within Turner's paintings, he becomes eerily obsessed with reconstructing a life that is shrouded in mystery and steeped in rumor. To do...

Zabelle begins in a suburb of Boston with the quiet death of Zabelle Chahasbanian, an elderly widow and grandmother whose history remains vastly unknown to her family. But as the story shifts back in time to Zabelle's childhood in the waning days of Ottoman Turkey, where she survives the 1915 Armenian genocide and near starvation in the Syrian desert, an unforgettable character begins to emerge. Zabelle's journey encompasses years in an Istanbul orphanage,...

In Brooklyn, in the Age of Disco, Valentine Kessler -- a sweet Jewish girl who bears a remarkable resemblance to the Virgin Mary of Lourdes -- has an unerring gift for shattering the dreams and hopes of those who love her. Miriam, her long-suffering mother, betrayed and anguished by the husband she adores, seeks solace in daily games of mah-jongg with The Girls, a cross between a Greek Chorus and Brooklyn's rendition of the Three Wise Men, who dispense...

"Last Night's Heroes" is a captivating journey into the life of Gary De Giose, a budding radio disk jockey in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, whose world is shaken when he receives the devastating news of his mentor and friend Matt's passing back in their hometown of Brooklyn, New York. Overwhelmed with guilt for missing Matt's funeral, Gary embarks on a poignant pilgrimage to visit his friend's final resting place, igniting a profound reflection on his...

Damon Galgut is one of South Africa's most exciting new literary voices. In The Impostor, his first novel since The Good Doctor, Galgut leads his readers into the developing heart of post-apartheid South Africa, a landscape being reshaped by new waves of money and power. Adam Napier leaves Johannesburg looking for a fresh start. Jobless and directionless, but with a head full of literary ambitions, he moves into his brother's dilapidated house on...

Set on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Catherine, an American expatriate becomes unwittingly embroiled in an internecine war between rival factions of the government. Into this potentially explosive scene enters a woman once loved and lost, but who remains a powerful temptation-one that proves impossible to resist. In the opening pages of Shacochis's first novel, Mitchell Wilson, an American who works for the Ministry of Agriculture on the Caribbean...