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A picture-book journey through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in winter, snowshoeing the frozen lakes and silent forest with family, encountering the wonders of northern wildlife in the cold season
 

In winter the Boundary Waters, way up north in Minnesota, is not the same place you canoed last summer—but still it beckons and welcomes you. Grab a pack, strap on snowshoes, make a path (Oh! they take some getting used to!), and venture out across the frozen lakes and through the snowy woods. The vast wintery world here is so still and quiet, you might think you’re all alone—but no! Who made these tracks? A deer? A hare? A fox? And far off there’s a musher, making tracks with his sled dogs.

It’s a magical place. The bright sun brilliant on the snow, the sparkling silence—wait, is that a wolf calling? Try to answer! And when the dark descends, the stars and pine trees holding up the night, your nose gets cold and it’s back to camp, to your warm winter tent, where Father feeds the stove with wood you gathered, Mother snuggles into her big sleeping bag, and you curl up in the fire’s glow and know that in your dreams and memories you will return again and again to this one winter up north. 

A wintery adventure that unfolds in pictures, John Owens’s delightful book gives readers a chance to discover—or rediscover—another season full of wonder in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

A shotgun misfires inside the American Fur Company store in Northern Michigan, and Alexis St. Martin's death appears imminent. It's 1822, and, as the leaders of Mackinac Island examine St. Martin's shot-riddled torso, they decide not to incur a single expense on behalf of the indentured fur trapper. They even go so far as to dismiss the attention of U.S. Army Assistant Surgeon William Beaumont, the frontier fort's only doctor.

Beaumont ignores the orders and saves the young man's life. What neither the doctor nor his patient understands—yet—is that even as Beaumont's care of St. Martin continues for decades, the motives and merits of his attention are far from clear. In fact, for what he does to his patient, Beaumont will eventually stand trial and be judged.

Rooted deeply in historic fact, Open Wound artfully fictionalizes the complex, lifelong relationship between Beaumont and his illiterate French Canadian patient. The young trapper's injury never completely heals, leaving a hole into his stomach that the curious doctor uses as a window to understand the mysteries of digestion. Eager to rise up from his humble origins and self-conscious that his medical training occurred as an apprentice to a rural physician rather than at an elite university, Beaumont seizes the opportunity to experiment upon his patient's stomach in order to write a book that he hopes will establish his legitimacy and secure his prosperity. As Jason Karlawish portrays him, Beaumont, always growing hungrier for more wealth and more prestige, personifies the best and worst aspects of American ambition and power.

A mysterious death, a techno-dystopian backdrop, a crumbling climate. A young woman searches for answers in this meditative, lyrical thriller.

In 2060 Orlando, FL, the state’s corruption festers amid unpredictable storms and climate upheaval, plunging society into a desperate eat the rich struggle for survival. As the world crumbles around her, 23-year-old Savannah fights to secure the bare essentials—drinkable water, dwindling food rations, and coveted orange juice. With only her father to rely on, Savannah navigates a world where tech reigns over humanity; and healthcare, climate-controlled housing, and life-saving news alerts are a privilege for the wealthy elite. Everything changes the day she stumbles upon her late sister's journal. Grief morphs into determination as she learns about her sister’s involvement in a pharmaceutical project that could revolutionize medicine for all.

Armed with this knowledge, Savannah holds the key to completing her sister's work. Will she have the courage to do so? Or will fear and despair shackle her to a fate worse than death?
 

Faris argues that by combining realistic representation with fantastic elements so that the marvelous seems to grow organically out of the ordinary, magical realism destabilizes the dominant form of realism based on empirical definitions of reality, gives it visionary power, and thus constitutes what might be called a "remystification" of narrative in the West. Noting the radical narrative heterogeneity of magical realism, the author compares its cultural role to that of traditional shamanic performance, which joins the worlds of daily life and that of the spirits. Because of that capacity to bridge different worlds, magical realism has served as an effective decolonizing agent, providing the ground for marginal voices, submerged traditions, and emergent literatures to develop and create masterpieces. At the same time, this process is not limited to postcolonial situations but constitutes a global trend that replenishes realism from within.

In addition to describing what many consider to be the progressive cultural work of magical realism, Faris also confronts the recent accusation that magical realism and its study as a global phenomenon can be seen as a form of commodification and an imposition of cultural homogeneity. And finally, drawing on the narrative innovations and cultural scenarios that magical realism enacts, she extends those principles toward issues of gender and the possibility of a female element within magical realism.

Robert Finn's translation of Turkish author Nazli Eray's Orphée makes available to the English-language reader a rewriting of the myth from the perspective of Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus. Eray's surrealistic version takes place in a hot resort town in contemporary Turkey. The setting of an archaeological dig gives a connection to the past and literally to the underworld. Found in the dig is a statue of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who proceeds to offer an unusual perspective on modern life and values through mysterious letters carried by a messenger pigeon. Eray also comments on modernity, as the city of Ankara emerges as a character in the novel's fantasy. Set in junta-ruled Turkey of the 1980s, the novel takes its place as a crucial slice of Turkish literary history.

Resonating with haunting references to the film Last Tango in Paris, the novel evolves as a mystery story with a humorous bent. Thus Eray illuminates her insatiable curiosity about other cultures, particularly those of the West. Finally, the style of the translation is simple and clear, with crisp dialogue. Sibel Erol, professor of Turkish literature at New York University, has written an introduction that places this fantastic plot in a literary context, as well as in understandable terms that relate to the reality of today's Turkey.

The “other emergencies” experienced by Sarah Freligh’s characters range from mildly disruptive to life-altering. In “All That Water,” a college dropout struggling with addiction forges an unlikely alliance with a bank teller following a botched robbery. In “Aftershocks,” a writer grieving the loss of her support dog is haunted by the memory of what she witnessed on 9/11. In “Happenstance,” two women from different backgrounds form a tenuous connection over the shared experience of their histories. And in “Heaven,” a detective and a high school girl navigate the fraught terrain in the days following a mass shooting in a small town. Ultimately the stories in Other Emergencies revolve around the resilience of people and the capacity for authentic connection in times of great change.

From reviews of the Spanish edition:

"...among the best works that Mexican fiction has produced."

—Héctor Gally, Sábado

"With homely features, but with a body so shapely and exciting that it sets men (priests included) aflame throughout the novel, with an incandescent voluptuousness and delightful amorality (surely explosive in the conservative Mexican society of her time and place) ...Otilia Rauda could be the protagonist of a Greek tragedy or of a soap opera made of improbable happenings and as many turns of fate as there are chapters used to tell the story of her life."

—Jorge Ruffinelli, Punto y Aparte

Winner of Mexico's prestigious Xavier Villaurrutia prize in 1986, Otilia Rauda is here translated into English for the first time as Otilia's Body. Widely considered Sergio Galindo's best work, the novel dramatizes a sexually liberated woman's obsession with an outlaw lover, played against the backdrop of Mexican history from 1910 to 1940. A fine example of "intimist" fiction, Otilia's Body is noteworthy for its penetratingly described characters who transcend time and place to become universally recognizable.

A groundbreaking collection of fiction from Iceland’s best contemporary authors

This extraordinary collection, the first anthology of Icelandic short fiction published in English translation, features work by twenty of Iceland’s most popular and celebrated living authors—including Andri Snær Magnason, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Kristín Ómarsdóttir, and Auður Jónsdóttir—granddaughter of Halldór Laxness, who won the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Celebrated in Europe and Scandinavia but less known in the English-speaking world, these writers traverse realms of darkness and light that will be familiar to readers who have fallen under the spell of Scandinavian fiction. While uniquely Icelandic in topography and tenor, with a touch of the island’s supernatural charm, the stories traffic in the enduring and universal complexities of human nature. Here is a fictional universe where the ghosts of Vikings and spirits tread, volcanoes grumble underfoot, and writers trip the Northern Lights fantastic across the landscape of the Icelandic imagination. 

At long last, readers can enjoy award-winning stories now expertly rendered into English by the country’s most renowned translators. In “Killer Whale” a father contemplates euthanasia for a terminally ill child, in “Self Portrait” a vacationing family in Spain crosses paths with migrants, in “Escape for Men” a woman searches for an ex-lover in the South of France, and in “The Most Precious Secret” the nature of artists and the art world is mercilessly revealed. Both the Viking myths of Iceland’s forefathers and the cutting-edge modern world of the country today are brilliantly alive in these remarkable and original stories.

This collection is an excursion to an island where almost two million travelers descend yearly on a population of 345 thousand natives. Iceland is the place Björk calls home, the location where Game of Thrones was filmed—a place with open lava fields, glaciers, and iceberg lagoons among other natural wonders that is becoming one of the “hottest” tourist destinations on earth.

Out of the Blue transports readers to Iceland’s timeless and magical island of Vikings and geographical wonders, and it promises to be a seminal collection that will define Icelandic literature in translation for decades to come. 

Contributors: Auður Ava Olafsdóttir, Kristín Eiríksdóttir, Þórarinn Eldjárn, Gyrðir Elíasson, Einar Örn Gunnarsson, Ólafur Gunnarsson, Einar Már Guðmundsson, Auður Jónsdóttir, Gerður Kristný, Andri Snær Magnason, Óskar Magnússon, Bragi Ólafsson, Kristín Ómarsdóttir, Óskar Árni Óskarsson, Magnús Sigurðsson, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Ágúst Borgþór Sverrisson, Guðmundur Andri Thorsson, Þórunn Erlu-Valdimarsdóttir, Rúnar Helgi Vignisson.

A treasure chest of stories by Swedish authors from the 1880s to the 1950s, many appearing for the first time in English

In the late nineteenth century, Swedish romanticism gave way to vibrant new literary styles that flourished through the 1950s. Out of the Darkness is the first anthology to bring the short fiction of this golden age of Swedish literature to English readers, celebrating the country’s rich literary tradition and several of its most renowned authors. The stories in this volume (many in entirely new translations, and most never before published in English) reflect the arc of the short story in Sweden, from realism to symbolism to modernist experimentation, and stand as lyrical exemplars of the creativity and depth of Swedish literature.

Some stories explore themes of crime and refuge, others ask what makes life meaningful, and some challenge sexual and social constructs of their time. All are fueled by shadows—of evil, madness, or fate, eerie fantasy or grim reality. Including internationally famous authors like August Strindberg, Stig Dagerman, and Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf, Out of the Darkness also features writing by influential women such as Victoria Benedictsson and Agnes von Krusenstjerna, who are less familiar to English readers. A showcase of stylistic virtuosity and incisive social commentary, Out of the Darkness at last brings this remarkable period of Swedish prose into the light.

Contributors: Victoria Benedictsson, Hjalmar Bergman, Karin Boye, Stig Dagerman, Thorsten Jonsson, Agnes von Krusenstjerna, Selma Lagerlöf, August Strindberg, Hjalmar Söderberg.

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