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Salman Rushdie, author of The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories

Salman Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work: India, England and America. “In the South” introduces a pair of quarrelsome old men and their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In “The Musician of Kahani,” a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In “Late,” the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. “Oklahoma” plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And “The Old Man in the Piazza” is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech.

Week of August 3, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of August 3rd include John Grisham's first-ever whodunit, THE WIDOW, in which a small-time lawyer accused of murder races to find the real killer to clear his name; THE ELEVENTH HOUR by Salman Rushdie, a spellbinding exploration of life, death and what comes into focus at the proverbial 11th hour of life; Philippa Gregory's BOLEYN TRAITOR, a dazzling historical novel of ambition, betrayal and survival in the court of Henry VIII; THE BREAK-IN by Katherine Faulkner, a gripping domestic thriller in which a wealthy London mother must unravel a terrifying mystery filled with twists and turns after killing an intruder in self-defense; and FLESH, David Szalay's Booker Prize-winning novel about a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances.