The Salt Roads

From the SFWA Grand Master, a“sexy, disturbing, touching, wildly comic . . . tour de force” that blends fantasy, women’s history, and slavery (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). In 1804, shortly before the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue is renamed Haiti, a group of women gather to bury a stillborn baby. Led by a lesbian healer and midwife named Mer, the women’s lamentations inadvertently release the dead infant’s “unused vitality” to draw Ezili—the Afro-Caribbean goddess of sexual desire and love—into the physical world. As Ezili explores her newfound powers, she travels across time and space to inhabit the midwife’s body, as well as those of Jeanne—a mixed-race dancer and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire living in 1880s Paris—and Meritet, an enslaved Greek-Nubian prostitute in ancient Alexandria. Bound together by Ezili and “the salt road” of their sweat, blood, and tears, the three women struggle against a hostile world, unaware of the goddess’s presence in their lives. Despite her magic, Mer suffers as a slave on a sugar plantation until Ezili plants the seeds of uprising in her mind. Jeanne slowly succumbs to the ravages of age and syphilis when her lover is unable to escape his mother’s control. And Meritet, inspired by Ezili, flees her enslavement and makes a pilgrimage to Egypt, where she becomes known as Saint Mary. With unapologetically sensual prose, Nalo Hopkinson, the Nebula Award–winning author of Midnight Robber, explores slavery through the lives of three historical women touched by a goddess in this “electrifying bravura performance by one of our most important writers” (Junot Díaz).

From the New York Times bestselling author of Falling and Sister Stardust comes a timely novel about the challenges of starting over. In the Gold Coast town of Highfield, Connecticut, recent divorcée Kit Hargrove has joyfully exchanged the requisite diamond studs and Persian rugs of a “Wall Street Widow” for her true dream home: a clapboard Cape with sea green shutters and sprawling impatiens. Her kids are content, her ex cooperative, and each morning she wakes up to her dream job assisting novelist Robert McClore. But when a figure from the past arrives just as the shifting financial market turns Highfield upside down, Kit is forced to realize that her blissfully constructed life and blossoming new romance aren’t as foolproof as she thought...

The SFWA Grand Master’s award-winning collection “combines a richly textured multicultural background with incisive storytelling” (Library Journal). In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best, spinning tales like “Precious,” in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In “A Habit of Waste,” a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she’s shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus. In “The Glass Bottle Trick,” the young protagonist ignores her intuition regarding her new husband’s superstitions—to horrifying consequences. Hopkinson’s unique pacing and vibrant dialogue sets a steady beat for stories that illustrate why she received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Entertaining, challenging, and alluring, Skin Folk is not to be missed. Praise for Nalo Hopkinson and the World Fantasy Award–winning Skin Folk “Hopkinson’s prose is vivid and immediate.” —The Washington Post Book World “An important new writer.” —The Dallas Morning News “Her descriptions of ordinary people finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances ring true, the result of her strong evocation of place and her ear for dialect.” —Publishers Weekly “A marvelous display of Nalo Hopkinson’s talents, skills and insights into the human conditions of life, especially of the fantastic realities of the Caribbean . . . Everything is possible in her imagination.” —Science Fiction Chronicle

Sweeping from New Mexico's desert to Auckland's wild west coast beaches, from the bloodied jungles of Vietnam to the dry valleys of Antarctica, Ocean Roads warms us with desert sun, fills our lungs with salt air, drenches us with jungle rain and chills us with glacial ice. This novell tells the powerful, unnerving story of three generations of a family that has been scarred by war, the horror of the first nuclear detonations, of Nagasaki, of Vietnam. When the formal hostilities end, war carries on in the bodies and hearts and minds of the former combatants, and it provides a bitter legacy. But love grows out of the detritus of conflict, and with love comes and understanding of human limitations, frailty, and the possibilities of trust. Shortlisted for the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in the South East Asia and South Pacific region

Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" Seasonal PickAn American's life-or-death adventure to the salt mines of the Sahara Desert

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). • From the bestselling author of The Passenger A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

#1 New York Times bestseller and winner of the Carnegie Medal! "A superlative novel . . . masterfully crafted."--The Wall Street Journal Based on "the forgotten tragedy that was six times deadlier than the Titanic."--Time Winter 1945. WWII. Four refugees. Four stories. Each one born of a different homeland; each one hunted, and haunted, by tragedy, lies, war. As thousands desperately flock to the coast in the midst of a Soviet advance, four paths converge, vying for passage aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship that promises safety and freedom. But not all promises can be kept . . . This paperback edition includes book club questions and exclusive interviews with Wilhelm Gustloff survivors and experts.

An alluring new collection from the author of the New York Times Notable Book, Midnight Robber Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, The Salt Roads, Sister Mine) is an internationally-beloved storyteller. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as having "an imagination that most of us would kill for," her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences shine in truly unique stories that are filled with striking imagery, unlikely beauty, and delightful strangeness. In this long-awaited collection, Hopkinson continues to expand the boundaries of culture and imagination. Whether she is retelling The Tempest as a new Caribbean myth, filling a shopping mall with unfulfilled ghosts, or herding chickens that occasionally breathe fire, Hopkinson continues to create bold fiction that transcends boundaries and borders.

At last! Return to the enchanted realm of Alpennia for the eagerly awaited sequel to Daughter of Mystery and The Mystic Marriage. All her life, Serafina Talarico has searched in vain for a place where she and her mystical talents belong. She never found it in Rome—the city of her birth—where her family’s Ethiopian origins marked them as immigrants. After traveling halfway across Europe to study with Alpennia’s Royal Thaumaturgist, her hopes of finding a home among Margerit Sovitre’s circle of scholars are dashed, for Serafina can perceive, but not evoke, the mystical forces of the Mysteries of the Saints and even Margerit can’t awaken her talents. When Serafina takes lodgings with Luzie Valorin, widowed music teacher and aspiring composer, both their lives are changed forever. Luzie’s music holds a power to rival the Mysteries, and Serafina alone has the vision to guide her talents. For sorcery threatens the fate of Alpennia—indeed of all of Europe—locking the mountains in a malevolent storm meant to change the course of history. Alpennia’s mystic protections are under attack and the key to survival may lie in the unlikeliest of places: Luzie’s ambition to write an opera on the life of the medieval philosopher Tanfrit.

A breathtaking novel from the award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson about two women, two worlds, fated to encounter one another. Sheeny lives in a world scoured clean by the glass wind that comes roaring out of the empty space where a mountain used to be. A wind whose gusts can strip flesh from bone and whose breezes leave a dust of glass so fine it accumulates in the lungs with every sip of air. Delpha lives in an otherwhere, an otherwhen in which no glass wind blows. Her world is poised on the precipice of its reality, needing only the faintest push to fall. And if that should happen, there will be no picking up the pieces. Two women, two worlds, rush toward a shattering collision. Unless...