Granta Publication The Number Devil. A Mathematical Adventure Enzensberger Hans Magnus

The Mezzanine is the story of one man’s lunch hour. It addresses the big questions of corporate life, like: Why does one shoelace always wear out before the other? Whose genius lies behind the folding spout on the milk carton? Whatever happened to the paper drinking-straw? • Nicholson Baker’s hilarious debut novel documents the thoughts of an office worker as he day-dreams on the escalator, on his way to buy shoe-laces. Sparklingly original, intelligent and digressive, it paved the way for authors such as David Foster Wallace and Joshua Ferris and introduced one of the most controversial and acclaimed authors in America today

The Big Guy loves his family, money and democracy. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of America. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family, and must take responsibility for his past actions. Closely guarded secrets surface when his wife Charlotte stops self-medicating to numb her emotions. And when eighteen-year-old Meghan votes for the first time, she awakens to the dissonance between her father’s expectations and her own dreams for the future • In a story as much about the dynamics of a family as the desire for power, A.M. Homes unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, where words mean different things to different people, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth and freedom

The Emperor’s Tomb is a magically evocative, haunting elegy to the vanished world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to the passing of time and the loss of youth and friends. Prophetic and regretful, intuitive and exact, Roth’s acclaimed novel is the tale of one man’s struggle to come to terms with the uncongenial society of post-First World War Vienna and the first intimations of Nazi barbarities

The stories in The Safety of Objects are both bizarre and believable, very funny but also frightening and sad. A girl’s blonde Barbie doll seduces her teenage brother in an intense episode of erotic obsession; a couple go off the rails and smoke crack while their children are staying with their grandmother; and a lawyer seeks revenge on his boss by urinating into his potted plant every evening

Lyrical, dark, comic or iconoclastic, the Irish short story has always punched well above its weight. Anne Enright has brought together a dazzling collection of Irish stories by authors born in the twentieth century – from Mary Lavin and Frank O’Connor to Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry. With a pithy and passionate introduction by Enright, The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story traces this great tradition through decades of social change and shows the pleasure Irish writers continue to take in the short-story form. Deft and often devastating, the short story dodges the rolling mythologies of of Irish life to produce truths that are delightful and real • Also includes stories by: Maeve Brennan, Roddy Doyle, Mary Lavin, Colum McCann, William Trevor, John McGahern, Colm Toibin, Claire Keegan and Kevin Barry

Fear and destruction take root in a community of women when the Witchfinder General comes to town, in this dark and thrilling debut • England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow • In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers – the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued. Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes

In an old wooden sloop, Philip Marsden plots a course north from his home in Cornwall. He is sailing for the Summer Isles, a small archipelago near the top of Scotland that holds for him a deep and personal significance. On the way, he must navigate the west coast of Ireland and the Inner Hebrides. Bearing the full force of the Atlantic, it is a seaboard which is also a mythical frontier, a place as rich in story as anywhere on earth • Through the people he meets and the tales he uncovers, Marsden builds up a haunting picture of these shores – of imaginary islands and the Celtic otherworld, of the ageless draw of the west, of the life of the sea and perennial loss – and the redemptive power of the imagination • Exhilarating and poignant, Marsden’s prose has been widely praised

Adam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of ’97. His parents are psychologists, his mom a famous author in the field. A renowned debater and orator, an aspiring poet, and – although it requires a lot of posturing and weight lifting – one of the cool kids, he’s also one of the seniors who brings the loner Darren Eberheart into the social scene, with disastrous effects • Deftly shifting perspectives and time periods, The Topeka School is a riveting story about the challenges of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a startling prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the tyranny of trolls and the new right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men

Ireland is flooded, derelict. It never stops raining. The Kid in Yellow has stolen the babba from the Earlie King. Why? Something to do with the King’s daughter, and a talking statue, something godawful. And from every wall the King’s Eye watches. And yet the city is full of hearts-defiant-sprayed in yellow, the mark of the Kid • It cannot end well. Can it? Follow the Kid, hear the tale. Roll up! Roll up!

In the piazza, a man lies dead. No one will say if they witnessed his killing. This presents a challenge to the investigating officer, a man who earnestly believes in the values of a democratic and modern society. Indeed, his enquiries are soon blocked off by a wall of silence and vested interests; he must work against the community to save it and expose the truth.The narrative moves on two levels: that of the investigator, who reveals a chain of savage crimes; and that of the bystanders and watchers, of those complicit with secret power, whose gossipy, furtive conversations have only one end – to stop the truth coming out • This novel about the Mafia is also a mesmerizing demonstration of how that organization sustains itself. It is both a beautifully, tautly written story and a brave act of denunciation

Dinslaken, Germany. July 1945. The war is over, and the Allied forces are beginning to assess the damage. Among them is a war photographer. As the rest of the press corps return home, he finds himself reluctant to leave and, in the company of the young and sensitive driver he has been assigned, he sets out to photograph ordinary German people in front of their homes. As the pair continue their journey, it becomes clear that the young driver has his own reasons for not wishing to return home • Told with Mingarelli’s trademark restraint and elegance, this is a tense, tender story of the emotional and moral repercussions of violence

Gustavo ‘Highway’ Sanchez is a man with a mission: he is planning to replace every last one of his unsightly teeth. He has a few skills that might help him on his way: he can imitate Janis Joplin after two rums, he can interpret Chinese fortune cookies, he can stand an egg upright on a table, and he can float on his back. And, of course, he is the world’s best auction caller – although other people might not realise this, because he is, by nature, very discreet • Studying auctioneering under Grandmaster Oklahoma and the famous country singer Leroy Van Dyke, Highway travels the world, amassing his collection of ‘Collectibles’ and perfecting his own specialty: the allegoric auction. In his quest for a perfect set of pearly whites, he finds unusual ways to raise the funds, culminating in the sale of the jewels of his collection: the teeth of the ‘notorious infamous’ – Plato, Petrarch, Chesterton, Virginia Woolf et al