From award-winning Indonesian author Laksmi Pamuntjak comes a tale of profound love against the backdrop of myth, culture, and politics.In this sweeping saga of love, loss, revolution, and the resilience of the human spirit, Amba must find the courage to forge her own path.Amba was named after a tragic figure in Indonesian mythology, and she spends her lifetime trying to invent a story she can call her own. When she meets two suitors who fit perfectly into her namesake’s myth, Amba cannot help but feel that fate is teasing her. Salwa, respectful to a fault, pledges to honor and protect Amba, no matter what. Bhisma, a sophisticated, European-trained doctor, offers her sensual pleasures and a world of ideas. But military coups and religious disputes make 1960s Indonesia a place of uncertainty, and the chaos strengthens Amba’s pursuit of freedom. The more Amba does to claim her own story, the better she understands her inextricable bonds to history, myth, and love.Revised edition: This edition of The Question of Red includes editorial revisions.

A wildly imaginative novel about a man who is reincarnated over ten thousand lifetimes to be with his one true love: Death herself.“Tales of gods and men akin to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman as penned by a kindred spirit of Douglas Adams.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) First we live. Then we die. And then . . . we get another try?  Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to “get it right.” Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything.     Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn’t make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her. More than just Milo’s lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living—as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he’ll never have to leave her side again.        But Reincarnation Blues is more than a great love story: Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle—if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity. As darkly enchanting as the works of Neil Gaiman and as wisely hilarious as Kurt Vonnegut’s, Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking. Because it’s more than Milo and Suzie’s story. It’s your story, too.Praise for Reincarnation Blues “The most fun you’ll have reading about a man who has been killed by both catapult and car accident.”—NPR   “This book made me laugh out loud. And then a page later, it made me sob. Reminiscent of Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore, Poore finds humor in the dark absurdities of life.”—Chicago Review of Books   “Charming . . . surprisingly light and uplifting . . . It reads like a writer having fun.”—New York Journal of Books

Jitterbug Perfume is an epic.Which is to say, it begins in the forests of ancient Bohemia and doesn’t conclude until nine o’clock tonight (Paris time).It is a saga, as well. A saga must have a hero, and the hero of this one is a janitor with a missing bottle.The bottle is blue, very, very old, and embossed with the image of a goat-horned god. If the liquid in the bottle actually is the secret essence of the universe, as some folks seem to think, it had better be discovered soon because it is leaking and there is only a drop or two left.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Three people take a road trip to Missouri in the early 1960s in “an eerie, haunting, beautifully realized novel populated by charming misfits and eccentrics” (Joseph Olshan, author of Cloudland).   When fifty-four-year-old Julianna Dapper slips out of a mental hospital in Bangor, Maine, on a June day in 1962, it’s with one purpose in mind. Julianna knows she must go back to the tiny farming community in northern Missouri where she was born and raised. It’s the place where she and her best friend, Ben Taylor, roamed as children, and where her life’s course shifted irrevocably one night long ago.   Embarking on her journey, Julianna meets Elijah Hunter, a shy teenage African American boy, and Jon Tate, a young hitchhiker on the run from the law. The three become traveling companions, bound together by quirks of happenstance. And even as the emerging truth about Julianna’s past steers them inexorably toward tragedy, their surprising bond may be the means to transform fear and heartache into the strength that finally guides Julianna home.   “With fresh language and uniquely imperfect characters, Noah Bly weaves a story of a cross-country trek that is both improbable and believable. This fresh, engrossing novel left me convinced of the power of memory, even as it arises from a disturbed mind, and taught me—as Bly promises—the wisdom of faith in the ridiculous.” —Anna Jean Mayhew, author of The Dry Grass of August   “A glorious, madcap American road novel in the picaresque tradition . . . Think On the Road written by Flannery O’Connor.” —Stephen Lovely, author of Irreplaceable

The international bestselling winner of the National Book Award and the basis for the Academy Award Best Picture film directed by John Ford.   Huw Morgan remembers the days when his home valley was prosperous, verdant, and beautiful—before the mines came to town. The youngest son of a respectable mining family in South Wales, he is now the only one left in the valley, and his reminiscences tell the story of a family and a town both defined and ruined by the mines.   Huw’s story is both joyful and heartrending—a portrait of a place and a people existing now only in memory.   Full of memorable characters, richly crafted language, and surprising humor, How Green Was My Valley is the first of four books chronicling Huw’s life, including the sequels Up into the Singing Mountain, Down Where the Moon is Small, and Green, Green My Valley Now.   “The reader emerges from these tense pages strangely aglow with sharing the happiness of the characters . . . The simplicity of the language and its delicately strange flavor give the book added charm.” —Chicago Tribune

“Powerful . . . It successfully recreates a time and place and the journey of a soul.”—The New York TimesAll beginnings are hard—that is the lesson David Lurie learns early and painfully in his life. As a boy in the depression-shadowed Bronx, he must begin to hold his own against neighborhood bullies and the treacherous frailties of his own health. As a young man in a world menaced by a distant, horrifying war, he must begin once more—this time to define a resolute path of personal belief that departs boldly from the tradition of his teachers and his own father, a courageous defender of their people.Learning how to remember his past as he nourishes the future, David struggles to complete his first long journey into ancient beginnings.“A major work in every sense.”—Pittsburgh Press