New Books from City Lights Books

We Need New Names

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Darling is only 10 years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed...

The Infinite Tides, Christian Kiefer

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

An impressive debut novel from NorCal poet, songwriter and recording artist Kiefer, full of achingly beautiful passages on loss and regret, yet leavened with self-aware humor and with wonderment at the banality of contemporary suburbia.

Capital, John Lanchester

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

From the best-selling author of The Debt to Pleasure, a sweeping social novel set at the height of the financial crisis. Celebrated novelist John Lanchester ("an elegant and wonderfully witty writer"-New York Times) returns with an epic novel that...

Spectacle of Disintegration, McKenzie Wark

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Following his acclaimed history of the Situationist International, The Beach Beneath the Street, McKenzie Wark continues the SI's story, charting its post-sixties legacy and putting the late work of the Situationists in a broader, deeper context.

Southern Cross the Dog, Bill Cheng

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

In the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O'Connor, Bill Cheng's Southern Cross the Dog is an epic literary debut in which the bonds between three childhood friends are upended by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. In its aftermath, one young...

A Questionable Shape, Bennett Sims

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Mazoch discovers an unreturned movie sleeve, a smashed window, and a pool of blood in his father's house; the man has gone missing. So he creates a list of his father's haunts and asks Vermaelen to help track him down.

Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

This book will prove to be a template for pranksters, artists, adventurers and anyone interested in rampant creativity, for years to come.

Sparks-Tastic, Tosh Berman

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

In 2008, Tosh Berman - author and publisher of TamTam Books - got on a plane with a single motive: "Sparks Spectacular."

Astragal, Albertine Sarrazin

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

As if the reader were riding shotgun, this intensely vivid novel captures a life on the lam. "L'astragale" is the French word for the ankle bone Albertine Sarrazin's heroine Anne breaks as she leaps from her jail cell to freedom....

Maya's Notebook, Isabel Allende

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

This contemporary coming-of-age story centers upon Maya Vidal, a remarkable teenager abandoned by her parents. Maya grew up in a rambling old house in Berkeley with her grandmother Nini, whose formidable strength helped her build a new life...

Arming Mother Nature, Jacob Darwin Hamblin

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

As a Cold War aggressor, the United States, along with its allies, needed to maintain parity, or better yet attain superiority, in ecological warfare. This fascinating book explores how this perceived "unconventional warfare gap" was one of the main...

Several Short Sentences About Writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer.

Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Rachel Kushner's first novel, Telex from Cuba, was nominated for a National Book Award and reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. Her second novel, even more ambitious and brilliant, is the riveting story of a young artist...

Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white...

Granta 123