"A collection of short stories about family relationships and coming of age both in the United States and Rwanda during the 1990s Rwandan holocaust that offers a look at the wider subjects of race, religion, discrimination, and mental illness"--Provided by publisher.

EloIsa, an old woman who in her youth was brutally sexually abused by three masked men, remembers on the last day of her life the stark story that marked her. She tells it to one of the nurses in the sanatorium in which she is dying while allowing her to scrutinize a ringed booklet that contains printed all the letters that she exchanged in his youth with Abelard, the only love of her life.Maenza reflects on the psychological, ethical and philosophical aspects of western love and weaves a sweet and intelligent discourse where time, love rites and erotic presence are subtly addressed. It includes a singular vision of writing and a very particular and symbolic Theory of Affection that is used in its analysis of the metaphysics of colors, the zodiacs, the sensations coming from the senses, the imaginary of the alchemist beasts, the classic elements and the arcana of the Tarot. In an age where relationships are made with the dizzying modernity and liquid love swarms (according to Bauman), ”All love letters are ridiculous” claims that secular ritual of love correspondences, increasingly in decline, and he apologizes for the slowness that Kundera claims for romances. ”All love letters are ridiculous” is constructed as a parodic narration of romance novels, but at the same time it is a modern dissertation about love coupled with a story of affection and an ending of tragedy that brings taboo themes like abuse, reification of women and contemporary violence.

A satire of traditional Christmas stories and noir. A hardboiled elf is framed for murder in a North Pole world that plays reindeer games for keeps, and where favorite holiday characters live complex lives beyond December. Fired from his longtime job as captain of the Coal Patrol, two-foot-three inch 1,300-year-old elf Gumdrop Coal is angry. He's one of Santa's original elves, inspired by the fat man's vision to bring joy to children on that one special day each year. But somewhere along the way things went sour for Gumdrop. Maybe it was delivering one too many lumps of coal for the Naughty List. Maybe it's the conspiracy against Christmas that he's starting to sense down every chimney. Either way, North Pole disillusionment is nothing new: Some elves brood with a bottle of nog, trying to forget their own wish list. Some get better. Some get bitter. Gumdrop Coal wants revenge. Justice is the only thing he knows, and so he decides to give a serious wakeup call to parents who can't keep their vile offspring from landing on the Naughty List. But when one parent winds up dead, his eye shot out with a Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model BB gun, Gumdrop Coal must learn who framed him and why. Along the way he'll escape the life-sucking plants of the Mistletoe Forrest, battle the infamous Tannenbomb Giant, and survive a close encounter with twelve very angry drummers and their violent friends. The horrible truth lurking behind the gingerbread doors of Kringle Town could spell the end of Christmas-and of the fat man himself. Holly Jolly!

In The Secret Love Letters: A Family History, the author delves into the history of her Spanish ancestors, the once-illustrious San Miguels, and uncovers the forbidden love affair that tore the family apart. Fay Johnston told her daughter of a collection of letters she had kept hidden away for over 60 years, promising to show them to her when the time was right. It was only after her mother died that Dolores found the letters, concealed beneath a large piece of wood deep within a storage cupboard. Through endless research and close analysis, Dolores pieced together nearly a hundred letters, newspaper ads, doctors' notes, and postcards to unravel the story of her parents' romance, kept secret for over two decades. Dolores San Miguel, acclaimed author of The Ballroom: The Melbourne Punk and Post-punk Scene delivers a luminous, tightly woven account that places her own family saga in the wider context of early European immigration to Australia, as well as offering a fascinating glimpse into Melbourne life in the lead-up to World War 2.

Hailed as “Fallada’s best book” (The New Yorker), this sprawling post-WWI is a portrait of Berlin in a time of great upheaval—and of the common man’s struggle to survive it all Set in Weimar Germany soon after Germany’s catastrophic loss of World War I, the story follows a young gambler who loses everything in Berlin, then flees the chaotic city, where worthless money and shortages are causing pandemonium. Once in the countryside, however, he finds a defeated German army that has decamped there to foment insurrection. Somehow, amidst it all, he finds romance—it’s The Year of Living Dangerously in a European setting. Fast-moving as a thriller, fascinating as the best historical fiction, and with lyrical prose that packs a powerful emotional punch, Wolf Among Wolves is the equal of Fallada’s acclaimed Every Man Dies Alone as an immensely absorbing work of important literature. “An unmissably brilliant portrait of Berlin before the Nazis.” —The Times of London