Back in print, a classic of literary fantasy from the author of The Wooden Sea and The Land of Laughs.

Back in print comes a classic of literary fantasy from the author of The Wooden Sea and The Land of Laughs. Walker Easterling, an actor confused about his orphan past, discovers he has led many past lives. An unresolved conflict may lead to the death of his unborn child.

“Lightman’s best book since Einstein’s Dreams . . . a piercing story of social dissolution in damaged Cambodia . . . an important story of global women’s rights.” —Annie Proulx The stories of one Cambodian family are intricately braided together in Alan Lightman’s first work of fiction in seven years. Three Flames portrays the struggles of a Cambodian farming family against the extreme patriarchal attitudes of their society and a cruel and dictatorial father, set in a rural community that is slowly being exposed to the modern world and its values. Ryna is a mother fighting against memories of her father’s death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and her powerful desire for revenge. Daughter Nita is married off at sixteen to a wandering husband, while her sister Thida is sent to the city to work in the factories to settle their father’s gambling debt. Kamal, the only son, dreams of marrying the most beautiful girl in the village and escaping the life of a farmer. Yet it will be up to Sreypov, the youngest, to bravely challenge her father and strive for a better future. Three Flames is a vivid story of one family's yearning for freedom and of a young girl's courage to face down tradition. “Lyrical and poignant, Three Flames weaves the stories of three generations of a poor, Cambodian farming family as they struggle to survive and hold on to their humanity . . . Beautifully written and told with great compassion, Alan Lightman's novel gives readers a family that is rich in stories, history, and heart, proving in the end that love shines even in the midst of great darkness.” —Loung Ung, author of First They Killed My Father

The story begins with seven college students and a professor gathering to play a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons. Little do they know that the professor will magically teleport the seven students to the very world the game takes place in, and they will possess the bodies and minds of the characters they played as.

The fire was visible from seventy miles away and the heat generated was so intense that a helicopter could only circle the rig at a perimeter of one mile. On the surface of the sea, a converted fishing trawler inched as close as possible, but the paint on the vessel’s hull blistered and burnt. In the water surrounding the inferno, men’s heads could be seen bobbing like apples as their yellow hard hats melted with the heat. On 6 July 1988 a series of explosions ripped through the Piper Alpha oil platform, 110 miles north-east of Aberdeen in the North Sea. Ablaze with 226 men on board, the searing temperatures caused the platform to collapse in just two hours. Only sixty-one would survive by leaping over 100 feet into the water below. Newly updated for the thirtieth year since the tragedy, Fire in the Night by journalist Stephen McGinty tells in gripping detail the devastating story of that summer evening. Combining interviews with survivors, witness statements and transcripts from the official inquiry into the disaster, this is the moving and vivid tale of what remains the worst offshore oil-rig disaster to date.

Bones of the Moon is the story of a young woman named Cullen James who leads a dual life, one in the real world and the other in her vivid night dreams set in a magical land called Rondua. In these dreams, Cullen embarks on a quest to find the Bones of the Moon, five bones that hold power over Rondua. As the dreams intensify, they begin to impact her waking life, leading to unsettling and frightening intersections between the two worlds. Alongside an enigmatic little boy also seeking the bones, and Mr. Tracy, a dog the size of a hot-air balloon, Cullen navigates through both realms in search of these mystical bones.

"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book. Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times). Praise for When You Are Engulfed in Flames: "Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris...defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life." --Kirkus Reviews This latest collection proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he's also getting better....Sedaris's best stuff will still--after all this time--move, surprise, and entertain." --Booklist Table of Contents: It's Catching Keeping Up The Understudy This Old House Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie? Road Trips What I Learned That's Amore The Monster Mash In the Waiting Room Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool Memento Mori All the Beauty You Will Ever Need Town and Country Aerial The Man in the Hut Of Mice and Men April in Paris Crybaby Old Faithful The Smoking Section