PURGATORY occupies an important place in our holy religion : it forms one of the principal parts of the work of Jesus Christ, and plays an essential role in the economy of the salvation of man. What then is the work which we, members of the Church, have to do for the souls in Purgatory ? We have to alleviate their sufferings. God has placed in our hands the key of this mysterious prison : it is prayer for the dead, devotion to the souls in Purgatory.

Titled after a small gallery of the same name found in Rome, the poems are devoted to meditations on religious relics and works of art. They explore the narrative power these objects carry—the way we imbue totemic figures with both meaning and story, and the potential they have to define the world.

The last memorable novel by the author of The Tango Singer, one of Latin America's leading novelists until his death in January 2010.

When mayhem descends on a tiny logging town, former sheriff Cork O’Connor is called upon to investigate a murder in this “wonderful page-turner” (The Denver Post) that “prolongs suspense to the very end” (Publishers Weekly) by Edgar Award-winning author William Kent Krueger. Not far from Aurora, Minnesota (population 3,752), lies an ancient expanse of great white pines, sacred to the Anishinaabe tribe. When an explosion kills the night watchman at wealthy industrialist Karl Lindstrom’s nearby lumber mill, it’s obvious where suspicion will fall. Former sheriff Cork O’Connor agrees to help investigate, but he has mixed feelings about the case. For one thing, he is part Anishinaabe. For another, his wife, a lawyer, represents the tribe. Meanwhile, near Lindstrom’s lakeside home, a reclusive shipwreck survivor and his sidekick are harboring their own resentment of the industrialist. And it soon becomes clear to Cork that danger, both at home and in Aurora, lurks around every corner…

After a week of hearing ghostly noises, a man is visited in his home by the spirit of his mother, dead for three decades. She reproaches him for his dissolute life and begs him to have Masses said in her name. Then she lays her hand on his sleeve, leaving an indelible burn mark, and departs... A Lutheran minister, no believer in Purgatory, is the puzzled recipient of repeated visitations from "demons" who come to him seeking prayer, consolation, and refuge in his little German church. But pity for the poor spirits overcomes the man's skepticism, and he marvels at what kind of departed souls could belong to Christ and yet suffer still... Hungry Souls recounts these stories and many others trustworthy, Church-verified accounts of earthly visitations from the dead in Purgatory. Accompanying these accounts are images from the "Museum of Purgatory" in Rome, which contains relics of encounters with the Holy Souls, including numerous evidences of hand prints burned into clothing and books; burn marks that cannot be explained by natural means or duplicated by artificial ones. Riveting!

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST The first English-language story collection from “one of Iran’s most important living fiction writers” (Guardian), “a playful, whip-smart literary conjuror: a Kundera or Rushdie of post-Khomeini Iran” (Wall Street Journal) In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.