The Three Rooms

A piercing howl of a novel and "a tart pleasure...with echoes of Zadie Smith and Sally Rooney," about one young woman’s endless quest for an apartment of her own and the aspirations and challenges faced by the Millennial generation as it finds its footing in the world, from a shockingly talented debut author (Kirkus, starred review). “A woman must have money and a room of one’s own.” So said Virginia Woolf in her classic A Room of One’s Own, but in this scrupulously observed, gorgeously wrought debut novel, Jo Hamya pushes that adage powerfully into the twenty-first century, to a generation of people living in rented rooms. What a woman needs now is an apartment of her own, the ultimate mark of financial stability, unattainable for many. Set in one year, Three Rooms follows a young woman as she moves from a rented room at Oxford, where she’s working as a research assistant; to a stranger’s sofa, all she can afford as a copyediting temp at a society magazine; to her childhood home, where she’s been forced to return, jobless, even a room of her own out of reach. As politics shift to nationalism, the streets fill with protestors, and news drip-feeds into her phone, she struggles to live a meaningful life on her own terms, unsure if she’ll ever be able to afford to do so.

An actor, recently divorced, at loose ends in New York; a woman, no less lonely, perhaps even more desperate than the man: they meet by chance in an all-night diner and are drawn to each other on the spot. Roaming the city streets, hitting its late-night dives, dropping another coin into yet another jukebox, these two lost souls struggle to understand what it is that has brought them, almost in spite of themselves, together. They are driven—from moment to moment, from bedroom to bedroom—to improvise the most unexpected of love stories, a tale of suspense where risk alone offers salvation. Georges Simenon was the most popular and prolific of the twentieth century’s great novelists. Three Bedrooms in Manhattan—closely based on the story of his own meeting with his second wife—is his most passionate and revealing work.

Move into the Present Room and Enjoy Your Life “The Three Rooms is a heartfelt seminal text which addresses self-understanding in spatial and temporal terms, simple enough for a child to understand, yet deep enough to awaken a true spiritual seeker.” —Dr. Michael R. Cunningham, Chancellor, National University System ​Most of us are sleepwalking, focusing on the physical world when we should be paying attention to our inner selves, and to being in the present. The Three Rooms will help readers awaken and align with their Higher Self. The book uses the metaphor of rooms to represent places our thoughts go: backwards to the Past Room, forward to the Future Room, or now in the Present Room. In the Present Room, there are no regrets of the past or fears of the future; it is the ideal state “where we can find joy, peace, acceptance, and compassion,” among other positive emotions. That is where we are meant to be.

A piercing howl of a novel about one young woman's endless quest for an apartment of her own and the aspirations and challenges faced by the Millennial generation as it finds its footing in the world, from a shockingly talented debut author.

It’s a cold and dark winter afternoon when a doctor knocks on detective Asbjørn Krag’s door. He’s worried about his patient, who has turned overnight from a cheerful, eccentric elderly gentleman into a shivering wreck. Clearly he’s terrified – but can a series of minor incidents at his isolated country house really be the cause? And why won’t he tell anyone what he fears? Krag must go undercover as a guest at an isolated Norwegian mansion to try prevent a murder in its snowy grounds, and to find the secret behind the three mysterious rooms. Sven Elvestad, who also wrote under the pseudonym Stein Riverton, was one of Norway’s greatest crime writers. A journalist by training, he was the first foreign journalist to interview Adolf Hitler and was famous for stunts such as spending a day in a circus lion’s cage. His first novel was published in 1907 and he went on to write nearly a hundred novels, many featuring detective Asbjørn Krag. Only a few of his works have ever been translated into English, despite enjoying widespread success across Europe. Norway’s yearly Riverton prize for the best crime novel is named after him. This new translation features an introduction by Nils Nordberg, radio drama producer and Norwegian authority on crime fiction. “A brisk, pacey and thoroughly entertaining page-turner by one of crime fiction’s unsung heroes…well worth rediscovering.” – Tom Mead, author of Death and the Conjuror “An enjoyable example of the traditional murder mystery.”– Martin Edwards, novelist and author of The Life of Crime

British comedy blended with universal regret, this darkly funny graphic novel uses surreal and beautiful visions to explore the ways we remain haunted by our ex-lovers. Valerie has a rich interior life. Though serially unlucky in love, she finds comfort in imagining that her ex-boyfriends are dead and that their bodies are kept downstairs in the cellar in a strange, mummified state. Every day she brings them upstairs and speaks with them about what went wrong.