New Vessel Press – serie

Running the gamut from sweet and reverent to twisted and uproarious, and with many of the stories appearing in English for the first time, this is a collection that will satisfy every reader. Dostoevsky brings stories of poverty and tragedy, Tolstoy inspires with his fable-like tales, Chekhov's unmatchable skills are on full display in a story about a female factory owner and the wretched workers, Klavdia Lukashevitch delights with a sweet and surprising tale of a childhood in White Russia, and Mikhail Zoshchenko recounts madcap anecdotes of Christmas trees and Christmas thieves.

A French teacher on the verge of retirement is invited to a glittering opening that showcases the artwork of his former student, who has since become a celebrated painter. This unexpected encounter leads to the older man posing for his portrait. Possibly in the nude. Such personal exposure at close range entails a strange and troubling pact between artist and sitter that prompts both to reevaluate their lives. Blondel, author of the hugely popular novel The 6:41 to Paris, evokes an intimacy of dangerous intensity in a tale marked by profound nostalgia and a reckoning with the past that allows its two characters to move ahead in to the future.

Summer 1946. A man in his thirties is sailing on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, hoping to put off the inevitable return to work. Dropping anchor in a small port, he meets the owner of a nearby villa who invites him home for in his waterside mansion. The sailor in a guest room previously occupied by a now deceased bishop related to his host. The two men form an uneasy bond, recognizing in each other a shared taste for idling and erotic adventure. They soon set sail together, but sudden tragedy puts an end to their revels and shatters the tranquillity of the villa...

This searing novel tells the journey of a young Israeli soldier, accompanied by his father on drive to meet with a military psychiatrist because he can no longer tolerate army life. Yair Assulin penetrates the torn world of the hero, whose journey is npt just that of a young man facing a crucial dilemma, but a tour of the soul and depths of Israeli society and of those elsewhere who resist regimented existence. Weary of being forced to be part of a larger collective, can one fulfill a yearning for an existence free of politics, the news cycle and the imperative for perpetual battle-readiness - without risking the respect of those we love most?

16th October 1943, inside the Vatican as darkness descends upon Rome. Having been alerted to the Nazi plan to round up the city's Jewish population the next day, Monsignor M dispatches to bring Ludwig Pollak and his family to safety. But Pollak shows no sign of leaving his home; instead, he recounts his spell-binding life story: how he studied archaeology in Prague, his passion for Italy and Goethe, how he became a renowned antiquities dealer and advisor to great collectors, and his spectacular discovery of the missing arm from the ancient sculpture of Laocoên and his sons.

This absorbing, sensitive novel portrays a famed author in a moment of crisis: an aging Hugo von Hofmannsthal returns to a summer resort outside of Salzburg that he visited as a child. But in the spa town where he once thrilled to the joys of youth, he now feels unproductive and uninspired, adrift in the modern world born after World War One. Palace of Flies conjures up an individual state of distress and disruption at a time of fundamental societal transformation that speaks eloquently to our own age.

A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over fifty years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Cicero. But having grown up in an impoverished area of Brazil where the demands of manual labor thwarted his becoming literate, Raimundo has long been unable to read. As young men, he and Cicero fell in love, only to have Raimundo's father brutally beat his son when he discovered their affair. Even after Raimundo succeeds in making a life for himself in the big city, he continues to be haunted by this secret missive full of longing from the distant past. Now at age seventy-one, he at last acquires a true education and the ability to access the letter. Exploring Brazil's little-known hinterland as well its urban haunts, this is a sweeping novel of repression, violence, and shame, along with their flip side: survival, endurance, and the ultimate triumph of an unforgettable figure on society's margins. The Words That Remain explores the universal power of the written word and language, and how they affect all our relationships.

A novel celebrating a magical setting of both encounter and anonymity. At a classic cafe in the French provinces, Jean-Philippe Blondel, author of the bestselling The 6:41 to Paris, presents a moving fresco of intertwined destinies portrayed with humor, insight and tenderness. In less than twenty-four hours, a medley of characters resumes normal life patterns after a long disruption from Covid - a mother and son in heated conversation, a man and his childhood friend with whom he covertly fell in love, and a woman who crosses paths with the ex who abandoned her in Australia seventeen years earlier. The cafe's customers, waiters, and owners past and present, examine the threads of their existence, exposing the reader to their inner selves, their failed dreams and how they envisage moving forward in the uncertain future that awaits us all.

After emigrating to the United States in the mid-1960s, Leah maintains her connection to Israel by writing an annual letter on the Jewish New Year to her old friends from a women's teaching college. Composed of fifty-one letters penned between 1966 and 2016, the novel skillfully documents Leah's high hopes and deep disappointments, from relationships, marriage, and divorce to raising two children by herself, financial debt, and professional ups and downs. Leah rarely acknowledges the injustices she has had to overcome, but her letters turn increasingly introspective, ultimately exposing the secrets that shaped her trajectory from a naive but driven social climber to an independent woman at peace with herself.