Europa Editions First Blood Нотомб Амели

Ever since he was murdered, life has not been the same for Andrew Stilman. On the morning of July 9, 2012, New York Times investigative reporter Andrew Stilman is jogging along the Hudson River when he feels a sudden, sharp pain in his lower back. He collapses in a pool of blood. When he regains consciousness, it’s May 7, 2012—exactly two months earlier. Andrew now has sixty days to find out who wants him dead and why. This may be his only chance. From New York City to Buenos Aires, Andrew embarks on a gripping race against time. Expertly plotted and cleverly told, this thrilling page-turner by France’s most popular contemporary novelist builds up to a mind-blowing denouement

Whoever the lambdas might be, and wherever they really come from, they’re already here among us • Outwardly alien arrivals from a distant sea, the lambdas are genetically human. They slip quietly into low- to middle-income jobs and appear to want nothing more than to be left alone. For Cara Gray, they are first a haunting presence in her otherwise ordinary childhood, then the inscrutable target of her police surveillance work • When a bomb goes off at a school, a nebulous group of lambda extremists claims responsibility for the attack—but how could a vulnerable community of tiny aquatic humans, barely visible in society and seemingly indifferent to their own exploitation, be capable of something so horrific? • In Cara’s world a toothbrush can be legally alive, a quantum computer has the power to decide who dies, and a government employee made of slime mould protein needs help to relieve his neuroses

This heartwarming story is about two unlikely friends who give each other the courage to do what they never thought possible. Through their trials and tribulations, they realize that they can always rely on each other to be there • Our story opens with Billie and Franck trapped in a gorge in the Cevennes Mountains. As Franck lies unconscious, Billie appeals to a star for protection by telling stories from their lives. Billie vividly recollects how her friendship with Franck changed her life and struggles with the idea that–thanks to her mistake–she might lose him forever • They met a decade prior when they were assigned as acting partners in class. For the first time, Billie felt someone respected her and Franck didn’t feel so alone. The blossoming of their friendship was comforting for both pitted against the harsh realities they faced

The second instalment in the Ottoman Quartet—the masterful saga of Turkish history by Ahmet Altan—follows the vast and vivid cast of characters introduced in the first volume of the series, Like a Sword Wound. By weaving together tortured love affairs, political intrigue, power struggles, and social upheavals, the novel offers a powerful and vivid tableau of the crisis of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century • The second instalment opens with the attempted suicide of Hikmet Bey, the son of the sultan’s personal physician. The reason for his extreme gesture is, to forget the extremely beautiful and proud Mehpare Han?m, his wife and the cause of all his suffering. While Hikmet recovers in a hospital in Thessaloniki, slowly regaining his strength and will to live, radical changes are afoot in the Ottoman capital

The Gospel according to Amelie • Jesus is perhaps the most universally known figure in the Western world, yet he remains one of the most obscure. In her reinterpretation of the story of the Passion and crucifixion, Nothomb gives voice to a transgressive Messiah, the son of God portrayed as deeply human. Not so much because of his broken chastity vows, rather because of his inability to forgive himself for the pointless and sadistic mise-en-scene that is the Passion • It all starts with the farcical trial at the court of Pontius Pilate. When the witnesses for the prosecution stand up one by one, they turn out to be, paradoxically, the very ones who were healed by Jesus’ miracles, from the disgruntled beggar no longer able to solicit alms, to the man who, freed from satanic possession, now finds his life fatally boring

Diane is raised by a mother so plagued by jealousy of her own daughter that she is incapable of showing affection to her. Despite this, Diane grows up to become a brilliant young woman who rejects societal expectations. She forges her own path, dismissing suitors and pursuing her dream of becoming a cardiologist. At university, she befriends the assistant professor Olivia. Intelligent and cold, Olivia’s ambition and need to feel superior to others drags Diane down to a dark place • This is the story of Diane’s relationships with other women: her best friend, the sweet Elisabeth; her mentor, the selfish Olivia; her sister, the coddled Celia; and, of course, her mother, Marie. Nothomb balances light-hearted observations with crushing revelations, exposing the spectrum of female bonds

A poignant bestselling novel full of French charm and memorable characters • Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of the hilarious and touching confidences of random visitors and her colleagues • Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of a local police chief, Julien Seul, who insists on depositing the ashes of his mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. The grave Julien is looking for, and his mother’s story of clandestine love, is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past • The funny, moving, intimately told story of a woman who believes obstinately in happiness, Fresh Water for Flowers brings out the exceptional and the poetic in the ordinary

A kaleidoscopic, cosmopolitan novel infused with inky noir • Return to the Dark Valley tells the stories of four immigrants united by their need to return to their place of origin and exact vengeance in some form. Manuela Beltran, haunted by a troubled childhood she tries to escape through books and poetry; Tertuliano, an Argentine preacher who claims to be the Pope’s son, ready to resort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society; Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary past now confronted with his guilt; Juana and the consul, central characters in Gamboa’s Night Prayers, who are united in a relationship based equally on hurt and need. And Rimbaud, the precocious, brilliant poet whose life was incessant exploration

It’s the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth will she deliver? Like a whirlwind, Adriana breaks into her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations • Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister’s youth, their loves and losses, their secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town’s fishermen’s quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and perhaps make peace with the past • Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a novel focussed on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters

From her home in Paris, Lina recalls the story of three women whose lives unfold in the conservative city of Barranquilla in Colombia. Amongst parties at the Country Club and strolls along the promenade in Puerto Colombia, unfurls a story of sensuality supressed by violence; a narrative of oppression in which Dora, Catalina and Beatriz are victims of a patriarchal system living in and among the fragile threads of the fabric of society • In Lina’s obsessive recounting of the past, this masterful novel transforms anecdotes of a life into an absolute view of the world, a profound panorama of Colombian society towards the end of the 50s • Written from personal memories and historical research, this is a novel that is both precise and poetic, a novel that immortalises—from the distant perspective of its narrator—the events that took place in a small seaside town

A family story about the unbreakable connection between the living and the dead • Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land and its people. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning • The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: He’s merely Generic Asian man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but he is always relegated to a prop. Yet every day he leaves his tiny room and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. At least that’s what he has been told, time and time again. Except by one person, his mother. Who says to him: Be more • Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterly novel yet