Новинки Джесси Болла

Яркий, захватывающий и непредсказуемый роман-детектив с японским колоритом и серьезными выводами.

Жена главного героя, носящего, как и автор романа, имя Джесси Болл, без всяких видимых причин замолкает. Пытаясь найти причину этой внезапной перемены, Болл изучает схожие случаи и наталкивается на дело Оды Сотацу, потрясшее Японию в семидесятых годах. Сотацу – тихий сотрудник конторы, занимающиеся продажей ниток – однажды заключает странное пари, проиграв которое, берет на себя ответственность за чудовищное преступление. Ода пишет чистосердечное признание в том, что именно он ответственен за серию загадочных исчезновений в Нарито. Восемь пожилых людей пропали бесследно в деревнях в окрестностях Сакаи, никаких зацепок, никаких улик, никаких свидетелей, только игральные карты, которые оставляет таинственный похититель на месте преступления. Кроме сделанного признания, Сотацу не сказал больше ни слова. Он молчал на суде, молчал, когда огласили приговор – смертная казнь, – молчал, когда приговор привели в исполнение. Болл решает разобраться в этом запутанном и таинственным деле, даже не подозревая, куда его это приведет.

Жена главного героя, носящего, как и автор романа, имя Джесси Болл, без всяких видимых причин замолкает. Пытаясь найти причину этой внезапной перемены, Болл изучает схожие случаи и наталкивается на дело Оды Сотацу, потрясшее Японию в семидесятых годах. Сотацу – тихий сотрудник конторы, занимающиеся продажей ниток – однажды заключает странное пари, проиграв которое, берет на себя ответственность за чудовищное преступление. Ода пишет чистосердечное признание в том, что именно он ответственен за серию загадочных исчезновений в Нарито. Восемь пожилых людей пропали бесследно в деревнях в окрестностях Сакаи, никаких зацепок, никаких улик,…

When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son.

Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their arms are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach “Z,” the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son?

Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers. 

Lucia Stanton’s father is dead, her mother is in a mental hospital, and she’s recently been kicked out of school—again. Living with her aunt in a garage-turned-bedroom, and armed with only a book, a Zippo lighter, and a pocketful of stolen licorice, she spends her days riding the bus to visit her mom and following the only rule that makes any sense: Don’t do things you aren’t proud of.

When Lucia discovers that her school has a secret Arson Club, her life is suddenly lit up; she’ll do anything to join. Edgy, raw, and hilarious, How to Set a Fire and Why is a thrilling story about growing up the hard way.

The highly acclaimed author of A Cure for Suicide now gives us a singular, blistering novel about a teenage girl who has lost everything—and will burn anything. Lucia's father is dead; her mother is in a mental institute; she's living in a garage-turned-bedroom with her aunt. And now she's been kicked out of school—again. Making her way through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocket full of stolen licorice, a biting wit, and striking intelligence she tries to hide, she spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother and following the only rule that makes any sense to her: Don't do things you aren't proud of. But when she…

In The Deaths of Henry King, the hapless Henry King, as advertised, dies. Not just once or even twice, but seven dozen times, each death making way for a new demise, moving from the comic to the grim to the absurd to the transcendent and back again. With text by Jesse Ball and Brian Evenson complimented by Lilli Carré's macabre, gravestone-rubbing-style art, Henry King's ends are brought to a vividly absurd life.

Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Windeye and the novel Immobility (both finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award). His novel Last Days won the ALA's RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he teaches in Brown University's literary arts department.

Jesse Ball is the author of five novels, including the forthcoming A Cure for Suicide (Pantheon, 2015), Silence Once Begun, and several others. He received numerous awards, including a 2014 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and the 2008 Paris Review George Plimpton Prize. He gives classes on lucid dreaming and lying in the SAIC's MFA writing program.

Lilli Carré is an artist living in Chicago. She has created several books of comics: Heads or Tails (Fantagraphics), and her first children's book, Tippy and the Night Parade (TOON Books). Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Best American Comics.

***LONG-LISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD*** From the author of "Silence Once Begun", a beguiling new novel about a man starting over at the most basic level, and the strange woman who insinuates herself into his life and memory. A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an “examiner,” the man, her “claimant.” The examiner is both doctor and guide, charged with teaching the claimant a series of simple functions: this is a chair, this is a fork, this is how you meet people. She makes notes in her journal about his progress: he is showing improvement yet his dreams are troubling. One day the…

From the celebrated author of The Curfew, Jesse Ball’s Silence Once Begun is an astonishing novel of unjust conviction, lost love, and a journalist’s obsession.

Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, a single playing card found on each door. Known as the “Narito Disappearances,” the crime has authorities baffled—until a confession appears on the police’s doorstep, signed by Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman. Sotatsu is arrested, jailed, and interrogated—but he refuses to speak. Even as his parents, brother, and sister come to visit him, even as his execution looms, and even as a young woman named Jito Joo enters his cell, he maintains his vow of silence. Our narrator, a journalist named Jesse Ball, is grappling with mysteries of his own when he becomes fascinated by the case. Why did Sotatsu confess? Why won’t he speak? Who is Jito Joo? As Ball interviews Sotatsu’s family, friends, and jailers, he uncovers a complex story of heartbreak, deceit, honor, and chance.

Wildly inventive and emotionally powerful, Silence Once Begun is a devastating portrayal of a justice system compromised, and evidence that Jesse Ball is a voraciously gifted novelist working at the height of his powers.

William and Molly lead a life of small pleasures, riddles at the kitchen table, and games of string and orange peels. All around them a city rages with war. When the uprising began, William’s wife was taken, leaving him alone with their young daughter. They keep their heads down and try to remain unnoticed as police patrol the streets, enforcing a curfew and arresting citizens. But when an old friend seeks William out, claiming to know what happened to his wife, William must risk everything. He ventures out after dark, and young Molly is left to play, reconstructing his dangerous voyage, his past, and their future. An astounding portrait of fierce love within a world of random violence, The Curfew is a mesmerizing feat of literary imagination.