Fiction

From the Editors of Nerve.com
Smut delivers the whole package—intelligence, eye candy, and undeniable satisfaction. This paperback collection presents 20 examples of Nerve.com's most talked-about fiction plus arresting photos. More fearless, forthright, and provocative... Learn More

By Andrew Losowsky
These alluring photographs of doorbell panels in Florence, Italy, inspired stories that imagine the lives of the people who dwell at each address. Charming, whimsical, and elegant, each story is a perfect match for its photo, balancingthe antique, old-w... Learn More

By Nadia Gordon
A decadent day of poolside sunbathing turns into a scandalous nightculminating in murder. By morning, the police are pounding on Sunny McCloskey's door, and she is once again thrust into the center of a tense investigationinvolving a hedge-fund billion... Learn More

By Stuart Bailey,and Robin Kinross
E. C. Large (1902-1976) was—in chronological order—an industrial chemist, writer, and plant scientist. Best known for his 1940 history of plant diseases, The Advance of the Fungi, it is his long-out-of-print late-1930s oeuvre that wil... Learn More

By E. C. Large
Back in print after an absence of nearly 70 years, the facsimile edition of E. C. Large's novel Sugar in the Air is what we now call a "mash-up," made up of scientific research, social satire, and fictional flights of fancy. Sugar in the Air Learn More

By E. C. Large
Back in print after an absence of nearly 70 years, the facsimile edition of E. C. Large's novel Asleep in the Afternoon is what we now call a "mash-up," made up of scientific research, social satire, and fictional flights of fancy.Sugar in... Learn More

By Jules Romains,Translated by Brian Evenson,Afterword by Joan Ockman
Donogoo-Tonka or The Miracles of Science: A Cinematographic Tale is a mock film scenario written by the French novelist Jules Romains. It was first published in book form in 1920, and has never been translated into English. The satirical plot con... Learn More

By Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum
This Life She's Chosen, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's acclaimed debut story collection hailed as "haunting and inspired" by The Boston Globe introduced readers to her penetrating and delicate voice. In eight new stories, Lunstrum further e... Learn More

By Nadia Gordon
Walking home late one night from a party, Napa Valley restaurant owner Sunny McCoskey happens upon the shocking sight of a murdered woman, bound and hanging from the tree of a local vineyard. Shortly before, she'd seen a truck leaving a local winery, driv... Learn More

By John Nichols
It's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, when ex-patriots, artists, and colorful bums are kings. A tiny stand selling empanadas near the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal streets is the center of the action for the shy narrator, an aspiring writer just o... Learn More

Words and Drawings by Cooper Edens
If tomorrow morning the sky falls . . . have clouds for breakfast.If you have butterflies in your stomach . . . ask them into your heart.Clouds for breakfast and butterflies in your heartthese are the unconventional solutions to life's... Learn More

By Kirk Russell
Named one of the top ten crime novels of 2005 by the American Library Association, Deadgame marks the return of "far and away the most inventive new detective hero" (Booklist). Ex-DEA agent John Marquez, now head of the undercover unit of th... Learn More

BY Peter Grandbois
"Reminiscent of the work of Luis Alberto Urrea and Gabriel Garca Mrquez (Booklist), this enchanting first novelnow in paperbackwas an Original Voices feature at Borders and a Discover Great New Writers selection at Barnes & Noble. Juan Rodrigo... Learn More

By Craig Ferguson
Bawdy, joyous, messy, hysterically funny, and guaranteed to offendregardless of religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or professionBetween the Bridge and the River is the debut novel by Craig Ferguson, host of CBS's The Late Lat... Learn More

By Sandow Birk,and Marcus Sanders
Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a work of profound satiric fury" and by Bookpage as "funny and deeply affecting," Birk and Sanders' masterwork is now available for the first time in a substantial and sumptuous slipcased set. The pa... Learn More

By Austin Davis
Reveling in outrageous shenanigans and hilariously off-kilter characters, Shoveling Smoke (now in paperback) does for East Texas what Carl Hiaasen's novels do for South Florida. Burned-out corporate lawyer Clay Parker chucks it all and moves from H... Learn More

By Jason Headley
"With winning wit and compassionate, delightful prose" (Publishers Weekly), Jason Headley tells the story of a young man trapped in a small West Virginia town. Enormously likable and a habitual screw-up, Eric Mercer has settled into a sometimes rau... Learn More

By Craig Ferguson
Bawdy, joyous, messy, hysterically funny, and guaranteed to offendregardless of religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or professionBetween the Bridge and the River is the debut novel by Craig Ferguson, host of CBS's The Late Lat... Learn More

By Barbara Boxer,with Mary-Rose Hayes
Written with a true insider's perspective, A Time to Run is the remarkable literary debut of United States Senator Barbara Boxer, one of the most admired and respected figures on the political scene. Senator Boxer, writing with Mary-Rose Hayes, tel... Learn More

Retold by Anne Gatti,Illustrated by Peter Malone
Enter a magical world of monster serpents, mysterious ladies, and flying machines where giant flowers and butterflies the size of birds abound. It is here, amidst a lush wood and within a dark labyrinthine castle that an unforgettable cast of characters g... Learn More

By James Calder
It's a parent's nightmare: the fertility doctor who tinkers with the very essence of a child. The Bill Damen series leaps onto a bigger and more ambitious canvas with the filmmaker-turned-sleuth's third case, one where life and death are chillingly intert... Learn More

By Nadia Gordon
Returning from a party late one night, chef Sunny McCoskey is the first to discover the body of a murdered woman left outside a local winery, and she may even have witnessed the killer driving away. Thrust into the center of a crime that has rattled... Learn More

By Monica Wood
Richard Russo has celebrated Monica Wood's fiction as "thoroughly captivatingwarm and wise and beautifully written," and Andre Dubus III praised it as "luminous and gracefulentertaining yet transcendent." Any Bitter Thing, Wood's brilliant new no... Learn More

By Les Galloway,Afterword by Jerome Gold
Called "stunning and suspenseful" (Andrea Barrett, Outside), and "exquisitely detailed" (Alan Cheuse, NPR), The Forty Fathom Bank is a gripping novella of adventure and desperation in the tradition of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Finall... Learn More

Illustrated by Sandow Birk,Text adapted by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders
A faithful yet totally original contemporary spin on a classic, Dante's Inferno as interpreted by acclaimed artist Sandow Birk and writer Marcus Sanders is a journey through a Hell that bears an eerie semblance to our own world. Birk, hailed by th... Learn More

By Kirk Russell
The discovery of thousands of empty abalone shells and two murdered divers sends Lieutenant John Marquez's poaching investigation in a newand very riskydirection. Former DEA agent and now head of a special operations unit of the California Department of... Learn More

By John Nichols
Now in paperback, John Nichols's fresh, hilarious, and touching novel brings his vintage wit to the absurdities of modern life. When Suicide City's new highway bypass threatens the home of an exquisitely obscure butterfly, aging '60s radical and continuin... Learn More

By Nick Bantock
Alexandria will continue to delight the 3 million readers who fell in love with the epistolary romance of Griffin & Sabine. Awash with gorgeous artwork, the mystery of Griffin Moss and Sabine Strohem now entwines Matthew Sedon, an archaeologist steeped in... Learn More

By Dashka Slater
A sometimes funny, sometimes magical first novel, The Wishing Box explores the surprising and unintended consequences of getting what you ask for. Julia, an almost-30 single mom whose life is mostly together, lives in Oakland with her seven-year-ol... Learn More

Written and illustrated by J.otto Seibold,and Vivian Walsh
Olive is merrily preparing for Christmas when suddenly she realizes "Olive... the other Reindeer... I thought I was a dog. Hmmm, I must be a Reindeer!" So she quickly hops aboard the polar express and heads to the North Pole. And while Santa and the other... Learn More

By Karen Elizabeth Gordon,With Barbara Hodgson,and Nick Bantock
From the author of The Transitive Vampire, comes an invitation to a strangely illuminated City of Light, Paris out of Hand. This seductively beautiful replica of a 19th-century travel book—replete with illustrations of sights you will n... Learn More