Adult

Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork, WALKING THE BOWL immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities. When the dead body of a 10-year-old boy is discovered under a heap of garbage in Lusaka’s largest landfill, a murder investigation quickly heats up. The children’s lives become more closely intertwined as each child engages in a desperate bid for survival against forces they never could have imagined.

Texas Ranger Tom Bell is simply tracking a fugitive killer in 1931 when he rides into Kilgore, a hastily erected shanty town crawling with oil drillers in search of work. The sheriff of the boomtown is overwhelmed, and none of the roughnecks are inclined to assist the young Ranger in his search for the wanted man. In fact, it soon becomes apparent that the lawman's presence has irritated the wrong people. When two failed attempts are made on his life, Bell knows he's getting closer to finding out who is responsible for cheating and murdering local landowners to access the rich oil fields flowing beneath their farms. When they ambush him for a third time, they make the fatal mistake of killing someone close to him and leaving the Ranger alive.

Before he was the Gray Man, Court Gentry was Sierra Six, the junior member of a CIA action team. In their first mission they took out a terrorist leader, at a terrible price. Years have passed. The Gray Man is on a simple mission when he sees a ghost: the long-dead terrorist, but he's remarkably energetic for a dead man. A decade of time hasn't changed the Gray Man. He isn't one to leave a job unfinished or a blood debt unpaid.

Fleeing the comfort and wealth of her East Coast upbringing, Inez Stannert became a saloon owner and card sharp in the rough silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado. Then the teenaged daughter of a local prostitute is orphaned by her mother's murder, and Inez steps up to raise the troubled girl as her own. When a skeleton tumbles from the wall of her latest business investment, the police only seem interested in the bag of Civil War-era gold coins that fell out with it. With her trusty derringer tucked in the folds of her gown, Inez uses her street smarts and sheer will to unearth a secret that someone has already killed to keep buried. The more she digs, the muddier and more dangerous things become.

Here we are, just living in the first draft of creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart. In this first draft, a woman named Mira leaves home for school. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal --- to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and she enters the strange and dizzying dimension that true loss opens up. PURE COLOUR tells the story of a life, from beginning to end. It is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling and a shape-shifting epic. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.

Paris, 1974. Lara Orlov and her family arrive from Moscow at the height of the Cold War, thanks to her father’s position as a diplomat. The years pass, and Lara becomes more and more enamored with the City of Lights. As a teenager in Paris, she falls deeply in love with fellow Russian expat Sasha, who opens her eyes to the ills of the Soviet Union. Decades later, journalist Sofie Morse gets a call from the office of First Lady Lara Caine. She knows little about Lara --- only that she was born in Soviet Russia and raised in Paris before marrying Henry Caine, the brash future president. After decades of silence, Lara is finally ready to speak candidly about her past. As Sofie begins to write Lara’s biography, she can’t help but wonder: Why is Lara revealing such sensitive information? And why now?

In the ultra-modern city of Olympus, there's always a price to pay. Psyche Dimitriou knew she'd have to face Aphrodite's jealous rage eventually, but she never expected her literal heart to be at stake...or for Aphrodite's gorgeous son to be the one ordered to strike the killing blow. Eros has no problem shedding blood. Raised to be his mother's knife in the dark, he's been conditioned to accept that he's more monster than man. But when it comes time to take out his latest target, he can't do it. Confused by his reaction to Psyche's unexpected kindness, he does the only thing he can think of to keep her safe: he binds her to him, body and soul. Psyche didn't expect to find herself married to the glittering city's most dangerous killer, but something about Eros wakens a fire inside her she's never felt before.

Twenty-four-year-old New York bookseller Naomi Ackerman is desperate to write a novel, but she struggles to find a story to tell. When, after countless disastrous dates, she meets Caleb, she thinks she's finally stumbled onto a time-honored subject: love. Then Caleb's ex-girlfriend, Rosemary, enters the scene. Upon learning that Rosemary is not safely tucked away in Caleb’s homeland overseas, but in fact lives in New York and also works in the literary world, Naomi is threatened and intrigued in equal measure. If they both fell for the same man, what else might they have in common? The more Naomi learns about Rosemary, the more her curiosity consumes her. Before she knows it, her casual Instagram stalking morphs into a friendship under false pretenses --- and becomes the subject of her nascent novel.

For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families by the tail end of the 20th century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape, Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. As she grows older, she slowly learns how the town’s prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm --- from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.

Imagine everyone’s surprise when Carter von Oehson, a sophomore in Dr. Dylan Reinhart’s Abnormal Psychology class, posts on Instagram that he plans to kill himself. Twenty-four hours later, and still no one has seen him. A massive search ensues. But when Carter’s sailboat rolls in with the tide without him or anyone else on it, the worst seems to be confirmed. He really did it. Or did he? The one person convinced he’s still alive is his father, Mathias von Oehson, founder and CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund. But what Mathias knows and how he knows it ultimately would reveal a secret so damaging that it would be as if he were committing suicide himself.