A frustrated geologist studying global warming becomes obsessed with eating rocks after embarking on his first same-sex relationship in Europe. Back home, his young sister is a high-school girl who suddenly starts to ooze honey through her pores, an affliction that attracts hordes of bees as well as her male classmates but ultimately turns her into a social pariah. Meanwhile, their obsessive Pentecostal mother repeatedly calls on the Holy Spirit to rid her family of demons. The siblings are reunited on a ship bound for Europe where they hope to start a new life, but are unaware that their disguised mother is also on board and plotting to win back their souls, with the help of the Virgin Mary. Told in a lush baroque prose, this intense, extravagant magic-realist novel combines elements of fairy tales, horror movies, and romances to create a comic, hallucinatory celebration of excess and sensuality. Barry Webster's first book, The Sound of All Flesh, won the ReLit Award for story collections.

Bestselling author Sheila O'Flanagan's DESTINATIONS takes readers into the lives of women on a journey who have some surprises in store. A delightful read perfect for fans of Kathryn Hughes and Emily Bleeker. Two eavesdropping train passengers learn more than they bargained for about their own love lives; an office-party fling has unforeseen consequences for a young woman and for a marriage; a suburban housewife is forced to face her past when her estranged mother, famous and exotic, makes contact after many years; an office worker who imagines herself an undercover agent finds her commute to work livened up by the daily sightings of a handsome stranger...whose life she decides to investigate; an adopted woman journeys to meet the woman who gave her up all those years ago, and finds that all is not what she imagined... A myriad lives brilliantly captured through the keen lens of one of Ireland's best-loved and best-selling storytellers.

With eight short stories and a novella that travel from dusty city streets to humid beaches, Cristina Henríquez carves out a distinctive and unforgettable vision of contemporary Panama. The stories of Come Together, Fall Apart combine to create a seamless fictional world in which the varied landscapes and shifting culture of a country in transition—and the insistent voices of its young people—are vividly represented. In “Yanina,” a young man’s fidelity is tested when a new living situation strains his relationship with his girlfriend. For the young woman in “Ashes,” the very notion of fidelity is shattered—and her lover’s philandering is only one link in a chain of traumatic events that begins with her mother’s death. In “Mercury,” an American girl visits her grandparents in Panama while her parents divorce at home, and attempts to connect with her ailing grandfather in broken Spanish that he’ll never understand. Again and again, characters find their fates irrevocably tied to those of their families—in “Beautiful,” as fortunes rise; and in “Come Together, Fall Apart,” as they collapse. These are stories of family bonds and generational conflicts, youthful infatuation and genuine passion that are tender, ambitious, and unflinching, from a bold and original young writer who is not only an accomplished prose stylist but also an irresistible storyteller.

Real-life flight attendant Heather Poole has written a charming and funny insider’s account of life and work in the not-always-friendly skies. Cruising Attitude is a Coffee, Tea, or Me? for the 21st century, as the author parlays her fifteen years of flight experience into a delightful account of crazy airline passengers and crew drama, of overcrowded crashpads in “Crew Gardens” Queens and finding love at 35,000 feet. The popular author of “Galley Gossip,” a weekly column for AOL’s award-winning travel website Gadling.com, Poole not only shares great stories, but also explains the ins and outs of flying, as seen from the flight attendant’s jump seat.

A dazzling return to the short story by a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize In fourteen effervescent stories, Dorthe Nors plumbs the depths of the human heart, from desire to melancholy and everything in between. Just as she did in her English-language debut, Karate Chop, Nors slices straight to the core of the conflict in only a few pages. But Wild Swims expands the borders of her gaze, following people as they travel through Copenhagen, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. Here are portraits of men and women full of restless longing, people who are often seeking a home but rarely finding it. A lie told during a fraught ferry ride on the North Sea becomes a wound that festers between school friends. A writer at a remote cabin befriends the mother of an ex-lover. Two friends knock doors to solicit fraudulent donations for the cancer society. A woman taken with the idea of wild swims ventures as far as the local swimming pool. These stories have already been featured in the pages of New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Tin House, and A Public Space. They sound the darker tones of human nature and yet find the brighter chords of hope and humor as well. Cutting and offbeat without ever losing its warmth, Wild Swims is a master class in concision and restraint, and a path to living life without either. With Wild Swims Nors’s star will continue to be ascendant.

In the same inimitable, uncensored, and hilarious style that has made him one of the most popular voices on satellite radio, Jason Ellis unleashes his no-holds-barred words of advice on diet and exercise, cultivating your signature look, partying, getting laid, maintaining a relationship—and more! Maybe—like Jason Ellis—you want to have sex with multiple partners and then talk about it on the radio while wearing cheetah pants . . . Or maybe you have some goals of your own. Whatever the case may be, Jason believes it's all about getting off your ass and maximizing the opportunities that life has to offer. It's about remembering that you are alive, right now, and that won't always be the case. So do something. Anything. Enjoy the ride. Go outside and get naked. Jason can tell you how to handle every situation life throws at you and play it like a champ: how to look, how to act, how to pick up a stripper—you name it. But that's just for starters. Jason believes that to get what you really want out of life, you have to have confidence. And true confidence is something you have to earn, by deciding what you want from life and then pursuing your passion until you make your dreams a reality. This book will show you how to develop the positive attitude that will allow you to truly make things happen.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Downstairs Girl comes the richly imagined story of Valora and Jamie Luck, twin British-Chinese acrobats traveling aboard the Titanic on its ill-fated maiden voyage. Valora Luck has two things: a ticket for the biggest and most luxurious ocean liner in the world, and a dream of leaving England behind and making a life for herself as a circus performer in New York. Much to her surprise though, she's turned away at the gangway; apparently, Chinese aren't allowed into America. But Val has to get on that ship. Her twin brother Jamie, who has spent two long years at sea, is there, as is an influential circus owner, whom Val hopes to audition for. Thankfully, there's not much a trained acrobat like Val can't overcome when she puts her mind to it. As a stowaway, Val should keep her head down and stay out of sight. But the clock is ticking and she has just seven days as the ship makes its way across the Atlantic to find Jamie, perform for the circus owner, and convince him to help get them both into America. Then one night the unthinkable happens, and suddenly Val's dreams of a new life are crushed under the weight of the only thing that matters: survival.