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There is no "you" consciously making decisions. So how do we make decisions? How can we have free will if we don't pull the levers on our own behavior? What moral and legal implications follow if we don't have free will? Who's in Charge? is a primer for a new era in the understanding of human behavior that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications.

A madcap new novel from Jonas Jonasson, author of the #1 internationally bestselling The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and The Girl Who Saved the King of SwedenA gangster, a vicar, and a receptionist walk into a bar . . .Killer-for-hire Anders is fresh out of prison and trying to keep his head down when he meets two unlikely new business partners at a 1-star hotel: one, an atheist former Protestant vicar fired from her church, and the other the hotel's receptionist, the ruined grandson of an ex-millionaire. Together they cook up an idea for an enterprising venture involving Swedish gangsters that is set to make them all a fortune?until, all of a sudden and to everyone's surprise, Anders finds Jesus. The perfect plan?if it weren't for Hitman Anders's curiosity about the meaning of it all. In conversations with the vicar, he turns to Jesus and, against all odds, Jesus answers him! Anders's sudden interest in religion might be good for his soul, but it's not good for business, and the vicar and the receptionist have to find a new plan, quick.As wildly funny and unexpected as Jonasson's previous bestselling novels, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All is a zany, feel-good adventure story, tenderly and hilariously exploring belief, redemption, and the fact that it's never too late to start again.

Each of the six stories in Your Duck Is My Duck, Deborah Eisenberg's first collection since 2006, has the heft and complexity of a novel. With her own inexorable but utterly unpredictable logic and her almost uncanny ability to conjure the strange states of mind and emotion that constitute our daily consciousness, Eisenberg pulls us as if by gossamer threads through the lives of her characters.In Eisenberg's world, the forces of money, sex, and power cannot be escaped, and the force of history, whether confronted or denied, cannot be evaded. No one writes better about time, tragedy and grief, and the indifferent but beautiful universe around us.

Frances Price?tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature?is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son, Malcolm, is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there's the Prices' aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamous litigator whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Lights serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self-destruction and economic ruin?to riotous effect.Bestselling author Patrick deWitt has returned with a darkly comic novel?a one-of-a-kind ?tragedy of manners,? a brilliant send-up of high society, and a moving mother-son caper.

Padgett Powell has been regarded as unique and one of the most exciting writers today. The New York Times calls him "a master of voice, a generator of absolutely particular, original, hilarious human sounds."'You & Me is a conversation, apparently on a porch, between two men who may be difficult to grasp. They move together in aimless, convenient debate, coming to conclusions that don't conclude but to positions that may not finally be so aimless. They disagree to agree. They are smart, not smart; fools, not fools.You & Me will take you on a tantalizing journey. Confounding, engaging fiction for everyone who loved The Interrogative Mood. Poignant, hilarious, opaque, diamond-clear, Padgett Powell's new novel offers unusual delights.

One of TIME's Best New Books to Read This Summer?Brilliant?a keen, elegantly written, and scorching account of the American family today. Through vivid stories, sharp analysis and wit, Quart anatomizes the middle class's fall while also offering solutions and hope.? ? Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and DimedFamilies today are squeezed on every side?from high childcare costs and harsh employment policies to workplaces without paid family leave or even dependable and regular working hours. Many realize that attaining the standard of living their parents managed has become impossible.Alissa Quart, executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, examines the lives of many middle-class Americans who can now barely afford to raise children. Through gripping firsthand storytelling, Quart shows how our country has failed its families. Her subjects?from professors to lawyers to caregivers to nurses?have been wrung out by a system that doesn't support them, and enriches only a tiny elite.Interlacing her own experience with close-up reporting on families that are just getting by, Quart reveals parenthood itself to be financially overwhelming, except for the wealthiest. She offers real solutions to these problems, including outlining necessary policy shifts, as well as detailing the DIY tactics some families are already putting into motion, and argues for the cultural reevaluation of parenthood and caregiving. Written in the spirit of Barbara Ehrenreich and Jennifer Senior, Squeezed is an eye-opening page-turner. Powerfully argued, deeply reported, and ultimately hopeful, it casts a bright, clarifying light on families struggling to thrive in an economy that holds too few options. It will make readers think differently about their lives and those of their neighbors.

Jj Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he's startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. Ava is now married and desperate for a baby, though she can't seem to carry one to term. Her husband, Henry, has grown frustrated by the demise of the furniture industry, which has stripped the area of jobs. And Ava's mother, Sylvia, meddles in the lives of those around her, trying to fill the void left by her absent son. JJ's return quickly stirs up the entire town, as the ostentatious wealth he's attained forces everyone to consider the cards they've been dealt. Can they reorient their lives to align with their wishes rather than their current realities? Or are they all already resigned to the rhythms of the particular lives they lead?

This brilliantly imagined debut tells the story of Flora 717, a devout young worker bee who finds herself in possession of a deadly secretFlora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive, where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive's survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw, but her courage and strength are assets. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect nectar and pollen. A feat of bravery grants her access to the Queen's inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous.But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all?daring to challenge the Queen's preeminence?enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the hive's strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by a greater power: a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, and her society?and lead her to perform unthinkable deeds.Thrilling, suspenseful, and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees and its dazzling young heroine will forever change the way you look at the world outside your window.

»Ein exquisiter, melancholischer und kritischer Roman der Arbeiterklasse.« Politiken Um über den plötzlichen Tod ihres Bruders hinwegzukommen, reist Anna nach Paris und arbeitet in den darauffolgenden Jahren bei verschiedenen Familien als Au-pair. Die Beziehung zu ihren Arbeitgebern ist zugleich intim und distanziert. Sie muss eine Bindung zu den Kindern herstellen, bleibt als Angestellte aber immer eine Außenstehende. Auch der ständige Wechsel in neue Familien hinterlässt Spuren. Selbst privat schafft Anna es irgendwann nicht mehr, Nähe zuzulassen. Ein feinfühliger Roman darüber, wie es ist, bei einer Familie zu leben und dennoch nicht zu ihr zu gehören. Über Grenzen und Rollen, die sich verändern und bröckeln. Und über das Kochen von Mahlzeiten, von denen man selbst nicht essen darf. »Zart und präzise. Emeli Bergman ... schreibt selten direkt darüber, wie es Anna geht, aber es gelingt ihr unglaublich gut, die Stimmungen von Anna und ihrer Familie auf den Seiten einzufangen.« Information »Beschreibt die Machtverhältnisse in der Kinderbetreuung, ohne zu urteilen. Gekonnt, leise und mit viel Feingefühl ... Feine sinnliche Szenen ... Ein bisschen häuslicher Horror ... Das Buch lässt einen erschauern wie ein Schatten, der inmitten eines biedermeierlichen Motivs flackert.« Weekendavisen »Ich bin sehr begeistert von Emeli Bergmans zeitlosem Roman ... Elegant und makellos.« Litteratouren »Ein poetischer Hochgenuss.« Bogvægten »Es war eine sehr schöne, sinnliche und poetische Erfahrung, Die anderen Seiten der Tage von Emeli Bergman zu lesen ... Es ist die Art von Geschichte, in der man sich beim Lesen mit allen Sinnen verliert.« Fuglsangforoven »Ein Buch, das einem lange Zeit im Gedächtnis bleibt. So viele Details, Stimmungen und Denkanstöße ... Es ist poetisch, ergreifend und voller Emotionen, und setzt tausend Gedanken in Gang.« Etkapitelomdagen »Schön, dicht und gut komponiert.« Bogsyn >Kindermädchen< vorgibt.« Litteratursiden

Seit Jane Douglas auf die einsam gelegenen, rauen und stürmischen Shetlandinseln zurückgekehrt ist, denkt sie, sie hätte das Trauma ihrer Kindheit hinter sich gelassen. Sie hat eine einfache Arbeit in einer Fischfabrik und führt ein ruhiges Leben ¿ zum ersten Mal ist sie so etwas Ähnliches wie glücklich. Bis ihre Mutter tot aufgefunden wird, die verschwunden ist, nachdem Janes kleiner Bruder vor zwanzig Jahren starb.

Finally returned to print, Joyce Carol Oates's lost classic: the satirical, often surreal, and beautifully plotted Gothic romance that follows the exploits of the audacious Zinn sisters, whose nineteenth-century pursuit of adventurous lives turns a lens on contemporary American culture When their sister is plucked from the shores of the Bloodsmoor River by an eerie black-silk hot air balloon that sails in through a clear blue sky, the lives of the already extraordinary Zinn sisters are radically altered. The monstrous tragedy splinters the family, who must not only grapple with the mysterious and shameful loss of their sister and daughter but also seek their way forward in the dawn of a new era?one that includes time machines, the spirit world, and the quest for women's independence.Breathlessly narrated in the Victorian style by an unnamed narrator who is herself shocked and disgusted by the Zinn sisters' sexuality, impulsivity, and rude rejection of the mores of the time, the novel is a delicious filigree of literary conventions, "a novel of manners" in the tradition of Austen, Dickens, and Alcott, which Oates turns on its head. Years ahead of its time, A Bloodsmoor Romance touches on murder and mayhem, ghosts and abductions, substance abuse and gender identity, women's suffrage, the American spiritualist movement, and sexual aberration, as the Zinn sisters come into contact with some of the nineteenth century's greatest characters, from Mark Twain to Oscar Wilde.Pure Oates in its mordant wit, biting assessment of the American landscape, and virtuosic transformation of a literary genre we thought we knew, A Bloodsmoor Romance is a compelling, hilarious, and magical antiromance, a Little Women wickedly recast for the present day.

Celeste Price is twenty-six years old, beautiful, smart, married to a handsome man with money, and starting a new job as a junior high school teacher in suburban Tampa. Yet she harbors a dark secret. She is driven by a singular sexual obsession?fourteen-year-old boys. As the school year begins, Celeste has chosen and seduced the naive Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in awe of his teacher. But when her lustful frenzy begins to spiral out of control, the insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination.

Joyce Carol Oates schreibt über die Menschen, die wir hätten sein können, wenn wir einen anderen Weg gewählt hätten Eine etablierte Schriftstellerin kehrt in ihren Heimatort zurück und fragt sich, was hätte sein können, wenn sie nie gegangen wäre. Eine Attentäterin denkt über die Schwere ihrer Tat nach. Eine Professorin fühlt eine starke Verbindung zu ihrer Studentin und löst in ihr weitreichende Veränderungen aus. »Das Unerwartete« ist eine prägnante Vision alternativer Realitäten, und ein scharfer Blick auf die Zwänge, denen wir aufgrund unserer Geburt ausgesetzt sind, und die damit einhergehenden Erwartungen, die insbesondere an Frauen gestellt werden. »Ein literarischer Hochgenuss!« Galore »Scharfsinnig und launisch.« New York Times Book Review »Oates' einzigartiger Stil funktioniert hier wunderbar und beflügelt die Storys, obwohl man sie manchmal gleichsam fürchtet.« USA Today

A riveting follow-up to Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal's account of the most memorable missions of the Mossad, No Mission Is Impossible sheds light on some of the most harrowing, nail-biting operations of the Israeli Special Forces In No Mission Is Impossible, Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal depict in electrifying detail major battles, raids in enemy territory, and the death- defying commando missions of the Israeli Special Forces. The stories are often of victories, but sometimes also of immense failures, and they run side by side with the accounts of the lives and accomplishments of some of Israel's most prominent figures. Captivating and eye-opening, No Mission Is Impossible is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how these crucial missions shaped Israel, and the world at large.

Über die Herausforderung, den Traum von Freiheit zu leben -die Wiederentdeckung des DDR-Bestsellers aus dem Jahr 1982Almut, eine alleinerziehende Literaturwissenschaftlerin, übernimmt von ihrem Vater ein Segelboot, einen Drachen - wunderschön, doch viel zu groß und viel zu kostspielig für sie. Bald verschlingt der Drache all ihre Zeit und ihr Geld. Sie verbringt die Wochenenden nur noch am See, mit der Instandhaltung und Renovierung beschäftigt, oder läuft auf der Suche nach Lack, Sandpapier, Planstoff durch ganz Ostberlin. Die anderen Bootsbesitzer, alles Männer, belächeln sie - so ein Boot sei nichts für eine einzelne Person, schon gar nicht für eine Frau. Mehrfach versucht sie, den Drachen zu verkaufen, aber dann kann sie sich doch nicht von ihm trennen. Denn mit ihm entdeckt sie eine Freiheit, die sie weder in ihrem Land noch in einer Beziehung je finden konnte.

Wiederentdeckung eines schwedischen Klassikers: das 1908 erschienene Debüt der Feministin Elin WägnerStockholm, Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. Vier junge Frauen haben es sich in den Kopf gesetzt, eigenständig in der Großstadt zu leben, was zu dieser Zeit unerhört ist. Ihr Gehalt reicht kaum zum Überleben, sie teilen sich eine kleine Wohnung und leben an vielen Tagen von kaum mehr als trockenem Brot. Jeder Versuch, dieses Unrecht zu ändern, stößt auf Unverständnis, immer wieder wird ihnen nahegelegt, sich einfach einen Mann zu suchen und zu heiraten. Aber gemeinsam setzen die vier ihren Traum um.Mit viel Witz und auch heute noch moderner Sprache wird vom Leben junger Frauen in der Großstadt erzählt, die sich auch durch Widerstände nicht einschüchtern lassen.»Tolle Wiederentdeckung der schwedischen Feministin Elin Wägner und nach wie vor hochaktuell.« hygge

To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. In Being Wrong, journalist Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken. Drawing on thinkers as varied as Augustine, Darwin, Freud, Gertrude Stein, Alan Greenspan, and Groucho Marx, she shows that error is both a given and a gift?one that can transform our worldviews, our relationships, and ourselves.

China in den 1880er Jahren:Der jungen Daiyu wird die Heimat und die Zukunft genommen, als sie entführt und über den Ozean von China nach Amerika geschmuggelt wird.Über die folgenden Jahre muss sie sich beständig neu erfinden, um zu überleben. Von einer Kalligraphieschule in China über ein Bordell in San Francisco bis zu einem kleinen Laden, versteckt in den Bergen Idahos gelegen, versucht Daiyu verzweifelt, der Tragödie zu entkommen, die sie verfolgt.Aber dann geht eine Welle von Rassismus durchs Land, die sich gegen Einwanderer aus China richtet und zu unsäglicher Gewalt und Lynchmorden führt.Daiyu muss all ihre Stärke aufbringen, sich zurückerinnern an alle Rollen, die sie schon ausgefüllt hat - um endlich ihren eigenen Namen und ihre Geschichte zurückzuerobern.Mitreißend erzählt und inspiriert von wahren Begebenheiten aus der Zeit des Chinese Exclusion Acts bietet der RomanEinblick in ein noch wenig behandeltes Kapitel der amerikanischen Geschichte

A masterly collection of new stories from Russell Banks, acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone, which maps the complex terrain of the modern American familyThe New York Times lauds Russell Banks as "the most compassionate fiction writer working today." Long celebrated for his unflinching, empathetic works that explore the unspoken but hard realities of contemporary culture, Banks now turns his keen intelligence and emotional acuity on perhaps his most complex subject yet: the shape of family in its many forms. Suffused with Banks's trademark lyricism and reckless humor, the twelve stories in A Permanent Member of the Family examine the myriad ways we try?and sometimes fail?to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world. Moving between the stark beauty of winter in upstate New York and the seductive heat of Florida, A Permanent Member of the Family charts with subtlety and precision the ebb and flow of both the families we make for ourselves and the ones we're born into. One of our most acute and penetrating authors, Banks is a virtuosic writer whose stories are profoundly humane, deeply?and darkly?funny, and absolutely unforgettable.

The Apple Trees at Olema includes work from Robert Hass's first five books?Field Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, Sun Under Wood, and Time and Materials?as well as a substantial gathering of new poems, including a suite of elegies, a series of poems in the form of notebook musings on the nature of storytelling, a suite of summer lyrics, and two experiments in pure narrative that meditate on personal relations in a violent world and read like small, luminous novellas. From the beginning, his poems have seemed entirely his own: a complex hybrid of the lyric line, with an unwavering fidelity to human and nonhuman nature, and formal variety and surprise, and a syntax capable of thinking through difficult things in ways that are both perfectly ordinary and really unusual. Over the years, he has added to these qualities a range and a formal restlessness that seem to come from a skeptical turn of mind, an acute sense of the artifice of the poem and of the complexity of the world of lived experience that a poem tries to apprehend.Hass's work is grounded in the beauty of the physical world. His familiar landscapes?San Francisco, the northern California coast, the Sierra high country?are vividly alive in his work. His themes include art, the natural world, desire, family life, the life between lovers, the violence of history, and the power and inherent limitations of language. He is a poet who is trying to say, as fully as he can, what it is like to be alive in his place and time. His style?formed in part by American modernism, in part by his long apprenticeship as a translator of the Japanese haiku masters and Czeslaw Milosz?combines intimacy of address, a quick intelligence, a virtuosic skill with long sentences, intense sensual vividness, and a light touch. It has made him immensely readable and his work widely admired.

Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, Burning Bright captures the complexities of Appalachia?a rugged, brutal landscape of exceptional beauty, promise, and suffering that serves as New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash's muse. Spanning from the Civil War to the present day, Rash's historical and modern settings are sewn together in a haunting patchwork of suspense and myth, populated by raw and unforgettable characters mined from the landscape.

From a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (The New Yorker) comes the most authoritative, readable single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the holy landNine hundred years ago, a vast Christian army, summoned to holy war by the Pope, rampaged through the Muslim world of the eastern Mediterranean, seizing possession of Jerusalem, a city revered by both faiths. Over the two hundred years that followed, Islam and Christianity fought for dominion of the Holy Land, clashing in a succession of chillingly brutal wars: the Crusades. Here for the first time is the story of that epic struggle told from the perspective of both Christians and Muslims. A vivid and fast-paced narrative history, it exposes the full horror, passion, and barbaric grandeur of the Crusading era, revealing how these holy wars reshaped the medieval world and why they continue to influence events today.

Edited by New York Times bestselling author Jerome Groopman, The Best American Science Writing 2010 collects in one volume the most crucial, thought-provoking, and engaging science writing of the year. Distinguished by new and impressive voices as well as some of the foremost names in science writing?David Dobbs, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Larissa MacFarquhar among them?this eleventh edition features outstanding journalism from a wide variety of publications, providing a comprehensive overview of the year's most compelling, relevant, and exciting developments in the world of science. Provocative and engaging, The Best American Science Writing 2010 reveals just how far science has brought us?and where it is headed next.

Nothing that has happened since the inauguration of Barack Obama has dispelled the sense that the election of 2008 was the kind of moment of truth in American politics and history that seldom comes along. Simon Schama, the acclaimed historian and award-winning critic, followed the campaign, but unlike other accounts, The American Future looks at that contemporary moment through the window of time. In four areas critical to the fate of the American republic?war; the place of religion in politics and culture; immigration; and the tenacious grip of expectations of permanent abundance?Schama looks back to see more clearly into the future. Full of lost insights and spellbinding tales, discovering men and women who have been forgotten in the big record, The American Future showcases Schama's unique gift of storytelling, ensuring these eloquent voices will be heard again as the nation moves forward into an uncertain moment in its history.

Illegally arrested and without hope of reprieve, unlikely terrorist Augustus Rose finds himself at the mercy of Harper, ruthless interrogator and ambassador for the darkest forces at work in our times. In the ordeal that brings his whole life under brutal scrutiny, Augustus has but one shield: memory. His is a past filled with talismanic women, but at its center is Selina, a stunning, rebellious white aristocrat with whom he shared an epic, taboo love. Their affair, begun in 1960s Manhattan, would yield a lifetime's worth of passion, heartbreak, and wanderlust, leading Augustus from Harlem to Greenwich Village, from El Salvador to Barcelona, from Morocco to a bleak Scottish island where death seems his only companion.