San Antonio College Library

"A new collection of sixteen stories that explore disturbing, magical, and delightful phenomena in everyday American life, and the deepest and darkest desires that we keep hidden from even ourselves"--

"When we first meet U., the narrator of SATIN ISLAND, he is sitting in the airport at Turin, caught in a delay caused by a rogue airplane. Like everyone else in the waiting area, he is sifting through airport pages on his laptop, and then through news sites, social pages, corridors of trivia ... until he happens to stumble on information about an image on a famous shroud in Turin. The image itself isn't even visible on the shroud; it only emerged...

"Award-winning, bestselling novelist and travel writer Colin Thubron returns to fiction with his first novel in more than a decade, a searing, poetic masterwork of memory. A house is burning, threatening the existence of its six tenants--including a failed priest; a naturalist; a neurosurgeon; an invalid dreaming of his anxious boyhood; and their landlord, whose relationship to the tenants is both intimate and shadowy. At times, he shares their preoccupations...

"In The Science of Discworld, the wizards of Unseen University unwittingly created Earth (aka Roundworld) and our universe. At the time, they were so concerned with the rules of this new universe that they overlooked its inhabitants completely. Now, they have finally noticed humanity. And humanity has company: Elves, who want very much to take over human society. In this second installment in the Science of Discworld miniseries, Terry Pratchett and...

"From the Man Booker Prize shortlisted-author of the brilliant Seasonal Quartet series-a major new novel that promises to capture the present moment with Ali Smith's genius and bold spirit. "A story is never an answer. A story is always a question." Here we are in extraordinary times. Is this history? What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other? What have we lost? What stays with us? What does it take to unlock our future?...

In this wordless picture book, a boy imagines himself inside some of the exhibits when he goes on a field trip to a museum.

An indelible novel of teenage alienation and adult complacency in an unraveling world. Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's sublime new novel--her first since the National Book Award--longlisted Sweet Lamb of Heaven-- follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, their children feel...