In the middle of a perilous drought in the Northwest, an arsonist begins setting fires all around. It gives Zoe Penney nightmares about her home—seated right next to tinder-dry woods—rising up in explosions of fire, as well as haunting dreams of a little boy deep in the forest. Winter brings the longed-for rains but also a cancer diagnosis for Zoe’s husband, Jay, which plunges the family into disbelief and fear. The children lean in close to their parents, can’t stop touching them. As Jay’s treatment begins, nature lets loose with strange and startling encounters, while a shadowy figure hovers about the corners of the house. First, Zoe’s fear turns to anger: How can I love you if I am to lose you? How can I live in joy when the sky is falling? But she gradually learns that it’s possible to love anything, even terrible things—if you can love them for what they are teaching you.

Old age, death, and impermanence - it seems at first glance impossible to make a reader see these timeless and universal experiences with fresh eyes, but Ann Putnam's luminous prose achieves that miracle and more, transforming pain, suffering, and loss into a literary gift of beauty and redemption.

Venturing into a universe different from where his previous novels—Lightpaths, Standing Wave, and Better Angels—were set, Howard V. Hendrix tackles one of life's most enduring questions: What does it mean to be human? In a dramatically altered near-future, the world's newest technology resurrects a plague of apparent global madness that not only destroys ten thousand years of urban civilization, but also creates a world under the sway of the full moon—and a human race transformed in astonishing ways.

In postwar Sri Lanka, a hired driver observes his passengers—tourists, soldiers, businessmen, and others—in these linked stories by a “master storyteller” (The New York Times). Vasantha retired early, bought himself a van, and now works as a driver for hire. As he drives through Sri Lanka, carrying aid workers, entrepreneurs, and visiting families; meeting lonely soldiers and eager hoteliers, he engages them with self-deprecating wit and folksy wisdom—while revealing to us their uncertain lives with piercing insight. On his journey from the army camps in northern Jaffna to the moonlit ramparts of Galle, in the south, Vasantha slowly discovers the depth of his country’s troubles—as well as his own—while catching a glimmer of the promise the future might hold. From the Booker Prize–shortlisted author of Reef comes a collection of “gracefully crafted road stories” that draws a potent portrait of postwar Sri Lanka and the ghosts of civil war (TheGuardian). Praise for Romesh Gunesekera “Monkfish Moon strikes the reader like a hammer blow. . . . Gunesekera’s subtly erotic prose animates Sri Lanka’s natural luxuriance, veined with menace.” —Voice Literary Supplement