Humorous dream fantasy in which a Duke keeps changing identity as he travels effortlessly through French history.

Romance between the poet Novalis and his fiancée Sophie, newly introduced by Candia McWilliam. The year is 1794 and Fritz, passionate, idealistic and brilliant, is seeking his fathers permission to announce his engagement to his hearts desire: twelve-year-old Sophie. His astounded family and friends are amused and disturbed by his betrothal. What can he be thinking?

“Ravishing… as if Saavedra were a modern-day Borges.” —Luis Alberto Urrea, O, The Oprah Magazine A novel of dark obsession, missed connections, and violent love. Marcos has just been through a divorce and moved into a new apartment. He feels alienated from his ex-wife, from his daughter, from society; everything feels flat and fake to him. He begins to receive letters at his new address from an anonymous troubled woman who signs off as A. and who clearly believes she is writing to the former tenant, her ex-lover, in the aftermath of a violent heartbreak. Marcos falls under the spell of the manic, hypnotic missives and for the first time in years, something moves him. Blue Flowers alternates between the letters detailing the dissolution of A.'s relationship, and Marcos' growing fixation with this damaged person. The letters become a kind of exorcism as both A.'s epistolary affair and Marcos' personal life reach a crisis point. Possessed by A., he is driven to discover her true identity. Blue Flowers is a dark portrait of desire, undermining accepted truths about love and sex, violence and fear, men and women.

It’s time for the Fujigaya Theater Festival again, and this year Akira and her friends have chosen an ambitious Japanese play. Not only will it seriously challenge their acting abilities, but the number of characters means they’ll need all hands on deck to pull it off. But ever since Fumi admitted that she has feelings for Akira, their friendship has been a little awkward. Will the forced intimacy of working on the play together help them figure things out or just make them worse? -- VIZ Media

Not all cats are tabby. Not all trees are tall. Not all clouds are white... and not all flowers are yellow. A beautiful and inspiring story, from award-winning writer Sonya Hartnett, about the discovery that being different can be something wonderful.

Fumi is elated now that she and Akira are dating, but she’s also terrified that her desires will lead her to do something Akira doesn’t like. But Fumi’s feelings for her friend aren’t chaste, so how can she reconcile her seemingly contradictory impulses? Akira, meanwhile, finds dating her best friend much more serious than she expected. Will taking their relationship to the next level bring them closer or ruin things forever? -- VIZ Media

Only a pataphysician nurtured lovingly on surrealist excess could have come up with The Blue Flowers, Queneau's 1964 novel. At his death in 1976, Raymond Queneau was one of France's most eminent men of letters––novelist, poet, essayist, editor, scientist, mathematician, and, more to the point, pataphysician. And only a pataphysician nurtured lovingly on surrealist excess could have come up with The Blue Flowers, Queneau's 1964 novel, now reissued as a New Directions Paperbook. To a pataphysician all things are equal, there is no improvement or progress in the human condition, and a "message" is an invention of the benighted reader, certainly not the author or his perplexing creations––the sweet, fennel-drinking Cidrolin and the rampaging Duke d'Auge. History is mostly what the duke rampages through––700 years of it at 175-year clips. He refuses to crusade, clobbers his king with the "in" toy of 1439––the cannon––dabbles in alchemy, and decides that those musty caves down at Altamira need a bit of sprucing up. Meanwhile, Cidrolin in the 1960s lolls on his barge moored along the Seine, sips essence of fennel, and ineffectually tries to catch the graffitist who nightly defiles his fence. But mostly he naps. Is it just a coincidence that the duke appears only when Cidrolin is dozing? And vice versa? In the tradition of Villon and Céline, Queneau attempted to bring the language of the French streets into common literary usage, and his mad word-plays, bad puns, bawdy jokes, and anachronistic wackiness have been kept amazingly and glitteringly intact by the incomparable translator Barbara Wright.