Centuries before the events of A GAME OF THRONES, House Targaryen --- the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria --- took up residence on Dragonstone. FIRE & BLOOD begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart. What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why was it so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What were Maegor the Cruel’s worst crimes? What was it like in Westeros when dragons ruled the skies? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel.

Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis. In the small town of Castle Rock, Scott is engaged in a low-grade --- but escalating --- battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott’s lawn. They are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face --- including his own --- he tries to help.

A woman grieves a miscarriage, haunted by the Buddha’s birth. An artist with schizophrenia tries to survive hatred and indifference in small-town India by turning to the beauty of sculpture and dance. Orphans in India get pulled into a strange “rescue” mission aimed at stripping their mysterious powers. A brief but intense affair between two women culminates in regret and betrayal. And fragments of history, from child brickmakers to slaves in Renaissance Portugal, are held up in brief fictions, burnished, made dazzling and unforgettable. In 16 remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other.

One of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century and a hero of political thought, the largely unsung and often misunderstood Hannah Arendt is best known for her landmark 1951 book on openness in political life, THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM, which, with its powerful and timely lessons for today, has become newly relevant. She led an extraordinary life. This was a woman who endured Nazi persecution firsthand, survived harrowing "escapes" from country to country in Europe, and finally had to give up her unique genius for philosophy, and her love of a very compromised man --- the philosopher and Nazi-sympathizer Martin Heidegger --- for what she called "love of the world."

An unnamed narrator writes a letter to an old college friend, Adam, at whose place he has been crashing since his abrupt return to the States from Israel. Now that the narrator is moving on to a new location, he finally reveals the events that led him to Adam's door, set in motion by a chance encounter with Uzi, an older man with whom the narrator has just had an intense sexual relationship. From his first meeting with Uzi, the narrator is overwhelmed by an animal attraction that will lead him to derail his life, withdraw from friends and extend his stay in a small town north of Tel Aviv. As he becomes increasingly entangled in Uzi's life --- and, by extension, the lives of Uzi's ex-wife and children --- his passion turns sinister, ultimately threatening all around him.

Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA is one of the most beloved and notorious novels of all time. And yet, very few of its readers know that the subject of the book was inspired by a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of 11-year-old Sally Horner. Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, THE REAL LOLITA tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing LOLITA.

Nine-year-old Samuel lives alone in a once-great estate in Surrey with the family’s housekeeper, Ruth. His father is dead and his mother has been abroad for months, purportedly tending to her late husband’s faltering business. She left in a hurry one night while Samuel was sleeping and did not say goodbye. He misses her dearly and maps her journey in an atlas he finds in her study. Samuel’s life is otherwise regulated by Ruth, who runs the house with an iron fist. Only she and Samuel know how brutally she enforces order. As rumors in town begin to swirl, Samuel wonders whether something more sinister is afoot. Perhaps his mother did not leave but was murdered --- by Ruth.

On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than 100 words per day, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial. This can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her. Soon women are not permitted to hold jobs. Girls are not taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke 16,000 words each day, but now women have only 100 to make themselves heard. For herself, her daughter and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.

Roxana Olsen has always dreamed of going to Paris, and after high school graduation finally plans to travel there on a study abroad program. But a logistical mix-up brings Roxana to Copenhagen instead, where she is picked up at the airport by Søren, a 28-year-old guide who is meant to be her steward. Instantly drawn to one another, Roxana and Søren’s relationship turns romantic, and when he asks Roxana to accompany him to a small coastal town for the rest of the summer, she doesn’t hesitate to accept. But as their relationship deepens, Søren’s temperament darkens, and Roxana finds herself increasingly drawn to a local outsider, Zlatan, whom she learns is a Muslim refugee from the Bosnian War.

In the darkly magical realm of THE WRONG HEAVEN, inanimate objects come to life, supernatural beings move among humans, and conflicted female characters seek answers to their sexual and spiritual dilemmas in all the wrong places. In "Horse," a woman considers transforming herself into an animal through a series of injections reminiscent of IVF. In "The Cleas," a young babysitter struggles to reconcile her feminist ideals with her confounding urges, while the dying protagonist of "Black Stones" finds herself strangely attracted to the angel of death. As provocative as they are deeply affecting, these stories reckon with the inescapable confusion of living in a mortal body, laying bare the heart of our deepest longings while teasing out new possibilities for what fiction can do.