Computer Technology and Computer Programming

A new novel from celebrated British novelist Jon McGregor—twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize—Reservoir 13 tells the story of a whole English village haunted by one family's loss.Midwinter in an English village. A teenage girl has gone missing. Everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed.As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together and those who break apart. There are births and deaths; secrets kept and exposed; livelihoods made and lost; small kindnesses and unanticipated betrayals. An extraordinary novel of cumulative power and grace, Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms

A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mindThe Coin’s narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory, and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start.In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in an intercontinental scheme reselling Birkin bags.But America is stifling her—her willfulness, her sexuality, her principles. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness, and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice"Calm and contemplative, softened by melancholy humor and always alive to beauty . . . Throughout My Heart, Mr. Mehmedinović takes up the exile’s perpetual investigation into memory, trying to reconcile the defining traumas of the past with the tendency of time to scrub them away: “Remembering and forgetting stand side by side, they’re made of the same substance.” That substance, whatever it is, pulses throughout this noble and large-souled work of literature." ―Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal "Though it deals with tragedy, My Heart is never depressing, partly because of the beauty of the language―expertly translated from the Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth―and partly because of its depth and honesty of emotion, its intelligence and generosity of spirit, and the precision and originality of Mehmedinovic’s observations . . . [A] powerful, at once profound and charming book." ―Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review"Today, it seems, was the

A collection of essays about the joys and struggles of being alone by 22 literary writers including: Lev Grossman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lena Dunham, Jesmyn Ward, Yiyun Li, and Anthony Doerr.If you're feeling lonely or if you've ever felt unseen, if you're emboldened by solitude or secretly longing for it: Welcome to The Lonely Stories. This cathartic collection of personal essays illuminates what the experience is like for all of us. Some of these stories are heartbreaking, such as Jesmyn Ward's reckoning with the loss of her husband, Imani Perry's confrontation with chronic illness, and Dina Nayeri's reflection on immigrating to a foreign country. Others are witty, such as Lev Grossman's rueful tale of heading to the woods alone or Anthony Doerr's struggles with internet addiction. Still others celebrate solitude and the kind of clarity it can bring about, such as Claire Dederer's journey toward sobriety and Lidia Yuknavitch's sensual look at women and desire. Thoughtful and ultimately affi

Girl, Woman, Other meets An American Marriage in this gripping story of a mixed-race woman who goes in search of the African father she never knew, by a prize-winning writer who brilliantly captures the essence of a people and a place (Nicole Dennis-Benn). Masterful in its examination of freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, Sankofa is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place. Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother--the only parent who raised her--is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president--some would say dictator--of a small nation in West Africa. And he is

A groundbreaking resource for fiction writers, teachers, and students, this manifesto and practical guide challenges current models of craft and the writing workshop by showing how they fail marginalized writers, and how cultural expectations inform storytelling. The traditional writing workshop was established with white male writers in mind; what we call craft is informed by their cultural values. In this bold and original examination of elements of writing--including plot, character, conflict, structure, and believability--and aspects of workshop--including the silenced writer and the imagined reader-- Matthew Salesses asks questions to invigorate these familiar concepts. He upends Western notions of how a story must progress. How can we rethink craft, and the teaching of it, to better reach writers with diverse backgrounds? How can we invite diverse storytelling traditions into literary spaces? Drawing from examples including One Thousand and One Nights, Curious George, Ursula K. L

German poet Anja Kampmann’s award-winning debut novel is the dazzling, heart-rending story of an oil rig worker whose closest friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confro

This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love" (Refinery29).A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew.Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist

For fans of Janet Fitch’s White Oleander and Emma Cline’s The Girls, a dazzling literary debut by Rona Jaffe Award winner Chelsea Bieker about one teenage girl’s feminist awakening and her search for

"Dina Nayeri's powerful writing confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience." —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees What is it like to be a

The essential annual guide to the newest voices in short fictionEvery year, PEN America Best Debut Short Stories celebrates twelve outstanding stories by today’s most promising new fiction writers and

“To understand my daughters and their sisterhood, you have to know the women, and sisters, who came before.” —Susan Straight In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susa

“A companion piece to his Man Booker-longlisted Reservoir 13, McGregor’s latest works perfectly well as a standalone, offering an alternately sweet and suspenseful depiction of a community as it react

“A volume brimming with humanitarian lessons in medicine and life alike.” —Kirkus Reviews"A generous, compassionate book about what it is to be human and what it is to care. Paul Seward writes in lang

"As fast-paced as the swiftest Mongolian race horse, Lara's searingly honest account of her astonishing rise from hopeless underdog to Mongol Derby Champion leaves grit in your teeth and dust in your

"I was reminded of John Berger's Ways of Seeing, enfolded in tender and exuberant personal narratives—it's so sophisticated and fascinating, yet has a Calvino-esque light touch. . . . Rigorous and mer

Pulsing to the soundtrack of Joy Division, Nick Cave, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sea Monsters offers an intoxicating portrait of Mexico in the late 1980s.One autumn afternoon in Mexico City, seven

"An exquisite meditation on time, the dark hours, and the complexities of longtime love, Insomnia is a poetic journey into the wide-awake, generous, exciting mind of Marina Benjamin. I couldn't put it

"This book moved me to my very core. As in all her writing, Nicole Chung speaks eloquently and honestly about her own personal story, then widens her aperture to illuminate all of us. All You Can Ever

"Capacious, unsentimental, and yet forgiving, Ultraviolet brings us both the intimacy of women's lives and their trajectories across continents and generations. This is Suzanne Matson at her wisest an

As with last year’s inaugural edition, selections for the second volume of PEN America Best Debut Short Stories will be made by three award-winning writers, themselves champions and innovators of the

A boy is pulled from a river and brought back to life: Will he be the same child he was? A priest on the verge of a heart attack leaves the hospital to see old friends: Is an evening of reunion worth

"The authors look at art and science together to examine how innovations--from Picasso's initially offensive paintings to Steve Jobs's startling iPhone--build on what already exists and rely on three brain operations: bending, breaking and blending. This manifesto . . . shows how both disciplines foster creativity." --The Wall Street Journal "The Runaway Species approach es] creativity scientifically but sensitively, feeling its roots without pulling them out." --The Economist The Runaway Species is a deep dive into the creative mind, a celebration of the human spirit, and a vision of how we can improve our future by understanding and embracing our ability to innovate. David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt seek to answer the question: what lies at the heart of humanity's ability--and drive--to create? Our ability to remake our world is unique among all living things. But where does our creativity come from, how does it work, and how can we harness it to improve our lives, schools, business

Out at sea, in a sudden storm, a man is struck by lightning. When he wakes, injured and adrift on a kayak, his memory of who he is and how he came to be here is all but shattered. He will need to rely

Set in Australia, France, and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies, and as nations. Driven by a vivid cast of characters, it e

"I am stunned by the daring, meticulous, and unsentimental intelligence of this riveting book . . . Vengeance is a masterwork, the most important American book I've read this year, and the most moving

"What do you get when a writer of extreme intelligence, insight, style and beauty chronicles the lives of self-absorbed hedonists—The Great Gatsby, Bright Lights, Big City, and now Neon in Daylight. H

New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist David Eagleman teams up with composer Anthony Brandt in this powerful, wide-ranging exploration of human creativity. Together, they incisively expl

“Landslide is that rare book that somehow succeeds in being both knowing and open-hearted, both formally sly and emotionally direct. Its timeless subjects—grief, storytelling, the giving up of childis

[Edisto] is a sparkling read, so full of an energetic intelligence, inventiveness, love of language and love of people. . . . Padgett Powell is an extravagantly talented writer.” —Ron Loewinsohn, The

Lu Spinney’s memoir Beyond the High Blue Air is at once a portrait of the fearlessness of familial love and the profound dilemma posed by modern medicine. When Spinney’s twenty-nine-year-old son, Mile

After his mother’s recent death, sixteen-year old Murdo and his father travel from their home in rural Scotland to Alabama to be with his American aunt and émigré uncle for a few weeks. Stopping at a

Jess Arndt’s striking debut collection confronts what it means to have a body. Boldly straddling the line between the imagined and the real, the masculine and the feminine, the knowable and the imposs

The Middlepause offers a vision of contentment in middle age, without sentiment or delusion. Marina Benjamin weighs the losses and opportunities of our middle years, taking inspiration from literature

In pursuit of the story behind a beguiling drink Granville Greene embarks on a journey through the remote Mexican highlands to discover the histories and traditions behind this smoke-drenched agave distillate that has quickly become a craft cocktail darling, rivaling even its better-known cousin tequila.Greene visits the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Nahua communities, sipping rare, small-batch mezcals poured straight from the stills of mezcaleros who craft the drink using local agaves, family recipes, and production methods passed down through generations. Here, the drink is reserved for special occasions and puro, celebrating the diverse characters of numerous agave varieties and the deeply smoky flavor imparted by the underground wood-fired ovens in which their hearts are baked. A seasoned travel writer, Greene brings readers along on his captivating quest for the soul of the oldest distillate in The Americas, detailing the sights, smells, and intoxicating flavors of the mountainous Oaxaca a

Peter Orner reads and writes wherever he finds himselfin a hospital cafeteria, a canoe in northern Minnesota, the Las Vegas Cafe in Albania, or on a bus in Haiti. Stories have always been his lifebloo

Having just returned to Miami from a failed, month-long reunion with an old flame, "Sir Gold," and a visit to her fragile mother, our narrator, J, begins an assignment to translate Ovid's ma

In the early seventies, some of us were shot like stars from our parents’ homes. This was an act of nature, bigger than ourselves. In the austere beauty and natural reality of Hell’s Canyon of Eastern Oregon, one hundred miles from pavement, Pam, unable to identify with her parent’s world and looking for deeper pathways has a chance encounter with returning Vietnam warrior Skip Royes. Skip, looking for a bridge from survival back to connection, introduces Pam to the vanishing culture of the wandering shepherd and together they embark on a four-year sojourn into the wilderness. From the back of a horse, Pam leads her packstring of readers from overlook to water crossing, down trails two thousand years old, and from the vantages she chooses for us, we feel the edges of our own experiences. It is a memoir of falling in love with a place and a man and the price extracted for that love.Written with deep lyricism, Temperance Creek is a work of haunting beauty, fresh and irreverent and rooted

In Watchlist, some of today’s most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, meditate on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live. With contr