Acclaimed author Xavier Bosch weaves an emotional tale of love and intrigue in this novel about a woman on the cusp of middle age, her beloved grandma, and a strange houseguest who changes everything.
Seventeen-year-old Margaux doesn't realize one photo could change the course of her life. But in German-occupied Paris, nothing makes sense anymore. Margaux fears the worst when her lover is arrested. And when her photo appears in Nazi propaganda, her family's reputation and prospects suffer the consequences.
In 2008, Margaux has moved into a retirement home, and her granddaughter Barbara continues to live in the Paris apartment they used to share. Eager to escape unhappy circumstances, Barbara works remotely for a publishing company and rents out a room in Mamie Margaux's apartment to help pay the bills.
One day, Barbara finds a stranger on her couch. Roger, who's a curious photographer, uncovers shocking secrets about Barbara's family. And when a snowstorm triggers a lockdown, he opens the door to tempting new possibilities.
A bestseller in its original Catalan at the 2023 Sant Jordi Book Fair, Bosch's sweeping novel alternates between the two timelines, offering sustenance for historical fiction readers, WWII enthusiasts, and romantics alike.
For a young woman coming of age in sixteenth-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people's legacy is a dangerous pursuit in a mystical, empowering, and richly imagined historical novel.
Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the oppressive Spanish hierarchy, Don Alonso holds sway over the newly relegated lower class of Indigenous communities. Fiercely independent, Catalina struggles to honor her father and her late mother, a Maya noblewoman to whom Catalina made a vow that only she can keep: preserve the lost sacred text of the Popol Vuh, the treasured and now forbidden history of the K'iche' people.
Urged on by her mother's spirit voice, and possessing the gift of committing the invaluable stories to memory, Catalina embarks on a secret and transcendent quest to rewrite them. Through ancient pyramids, Spanish villas, and caves of masked devils, she finds an ally in the captivating Juan de Rojas, a lord whose rule was compromised by the invasion. But as their love and trust unfold, and Don Alonso's tyranny escalates, Catalina must confront her conflicted blood heritage--and its secrets--once and for all if she's to follow her dangerous quest to its historic end.
After Alejandro Velasco is found dead, a handsome stranger visits the family. But when this newcomer's secrets collide with those of Alejandro's sister, sparks fly--and blood is shed.
A handsome young man named Julian Villareal arrives at the opulent Velasco estate to pay his respects after the unexpected death of Alejandro Velasco, his close friend and tennis rival. But he soon becomes entwined in the Velasco family's glamourous lifestyle--and their daughter Sofia's mysterious allure. Mercurial and quick-witted, Sofia seems determined to give Julian a run for his money. And he's prepared to play along--both on and off the tennis courts.
As the tension between Julian and Sofia sizzles, Julian hides a much darker secret: Alejandro's death was no accident. And the more Julian learns about the inner workings of the Velasco family, the greater the danger he uncovers. With power and status come opponents bent on toppling the empire--by blackmail, revenge, or even murder. Julian's quest for answers will only lure him deeper into this den of vipers, but teasing out Sofia's own intentions may be the steamiest--and deadliest--game of all.
In this haunting novel about the enduring bonds of womanhood, a young girl weaves together the truth behind her family history and the secrets that resonate through generations.
Eighteen-year-old Alice Ribeiro is constantly fighting--against the status quo, female oppression in Brazil, and even her own mother. But when a family veil is passed down to her, Alice is compelled to fight for the rights of all womankind while also uncovering the hidden history of the women in her family.
Seven generations ago, the small town of Bom Retiro shunned the Flores women because of a curse that rendered them unlucky in love. With no men on the horizon to take care of them, the women learned the art of lacemaking to build lives of their own. But their peace was soon threatened by forces beyond any woman's control.
As Alice begins piecing together the tapestry that is her history, she discovers revelations about the past, connections to the present, and a resilience in her blood that will carry her toward the future her ancestors strove for.
From acclaimed author Han Song comes the final installment in Yang Wei's journey through a dystopian hospital system, touching down on the red planet, where more than Yang's nightmare is reborn.
The Hospital Ship is no more, and Yang Wei awakens to find himself at the mercy of monstrous doctors and the tumult of his own mind. Not helping matters, of course, is the Mars Hospital's Pool of Dead Souls. A ghastly body of water, it traps people in an endless cycle of treatment, death, and resurrection.
When an unruly band of patients revolts against this suffering, the Hospital descends into chaos, the likes of which have never been seen before. Strident order falls to madness, unfolding in fits and bursts of violence and carnivalesque celebration. The effect is so jarring that Yang Wei begins to question what he can trust to be real--is reality what he sees...or what he thinks?
Told through an absurdist lens, Dead Souls takes sharp twists and turns ever deeper into Yang Wei's strange world of the grotesque and ambiguous, bringing the Hospital series to its shocking conclusion.
The splendor of the Swedish mountains becomes the backdrop for a bone-chilling crime.
On the day Stockholm police officer Hanna Ahlander's personal and professional lives crash, she takes refuge at her sister's lodge in the Swedish ski resort paradise of Åre. But it's a brief comfort. The entire village is shaken by the sudden vanishing of a local teenage girl. Hanna can't help but investigate, and while searching for the missing person, she lands a job with the local police department. There she joins forces with Detective Inspector Daniel Lindskog, who has been tasked with finding the girl. Their only lead: a scarf in the snow.
As subzero temperatures drop even further, a treacherous blizzard sweeps toward Åre. Hanna and Daniel's investigation is getting more desperate by the hour. Lost or abducted, either way time is running out for the missing girl. Each new clue closes in on something far more sinister than either Hanna or Daniel imagined. In this devious novel by the bestselling author of the Sandhamn Murders series, discover what it will take to solve a case when the truth can be so easily hidden in the coming storm.
From the acclaimed author of The Blue Book of Nebo comes a heartbreaking journey into a small town's grief when their beloved golden girl is found murdered.
Greta Pugh is dead.
The small village of Bethesda, Wales, is no stranger to tragedy. Once a thriving, prosperous community, the town has been marred by an ever-deepening class divide. But now, with rich and popular Greta Pugh found murdered in the local quarry, everyone in Bethesda is rattled, and all their secrets are at risk.
No one is more aware of this than Greta's friends, especially Shane, a classmate and the son of the Pughs' cleaner. Everyone knows more than they're letting on, but when the police and the media descend with all their probing questions, there's soon nowhere left to hide the answers.
As Shane watches the investigation unfold, he grapples with everything he knows about the Pugh family and all he's learning about the people around them. Each revelation brings the town a step closer to the truth of who killed Greta...but only one person may truly know why
.This atmospheric novel about friendship and self-discovery from Korean author Hyun-Joo Park buzzes with romance, mystery, and just a hint of danger.
Romi is an illustrator and hopeless romantic. When she can't stop obsessing over a brief encounter with a handsome stranger, there's just one thing to do: hop on a plane and find him.
But Romi's not leaving without her two best friends. Hadam, a budding filmmaker, suggests the trip in the first place. Facing her fear of failure, she envisions Romi's search for love as the perfect subject for her first documentary. And Chakyung, marketing pro, sees a chance to build a new ad campaign for her cosmetics client--plus get some quality me time to figure out why she's secretly so unhappy.
The journey from Seoul to Jeju Island goes off without a hitch. The emerald waterfalls and sandy beaches are a balm to the trio's souls. But then misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and a mysterious stalker stir up trouble in paradise. Will a conspiracy to nab a legendary queen bee keep these friends from discovering real love--and purpose?
From Shion Miura, the award-winning author of The Great Passage, comes a rapturous novel where the contemporary and the traditional meet amid the splendor of Japan's mountain way of life.
Yuki Hirano is just out of high school when his parents enroll him, against his will, in a forestry training program in the remote mountain village of Kamusari. No phone, no internet, no shopping. Just a small, inviting community where the most common expression is take it easy.
At first, Yuki is exhausted, fumbles with the tools, asks silly questions, and feels like an outcast. Kamusari is the last place a city boy from Yokohama wants to spend a year of his life. But as resistant as he might be, the scent of the cedars and the staggering beauty of the region have a pull.
Yuki learns to fell trees and plant saplings. He begins to embrace local festivals, he's mesmerized by legends of the mountain, and he might be falling in love. In learning to respect the forest on Mt. Kamusari for its majestic qualities and its inexplicable secrets, Yuki starts to appreciate Kamusari's harmony with nature and its ancient traditions.
In this warm and lively coming-of-age story, Miura transports us from the trappings of city life to the trials, mysteries, and delights of a mythical mountain forest.
An award-winning story of love, friendship, and the power of human connection.
Kohei Araki believes that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years of creating dictionaries, it's time for him to retire and find his replacement.
He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime--a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics--whom he swipes from his company's sales department.
Along with an energetic, if reluctant, new recruit and an elder linguistics scholar, Majime is tasked with a career-defining accomplishment: completing The Great Passage, a comprehensive 2,900-page tome of the Japanese language. On his journey, Majime discovers friendship, romance, and an incredible dedication to his work, inspired by the words that connect us all.
An Amazon Charts most-read and most-sold book.
Author Barbara Davis deftly explores an emotionally charged landscape of pain, loss, and despair--and the risk one woman will take in the hope of loving again.
As a teenage runaway and child of an addict, Christy-Lynn learned the hard way that no address was permanent, and no promise sacred. For a while, she found a safe haven in her marriage to bestselling crime novelist Stephen Ludlow--until his car skidded into Echo Bay. But Stephen's wasn't the only body pulled from the icy waters that night. When details about a mysterious violet-eyed blonde become public, a media circus ensues, and Christy-Lynn runs again.
Desperate for answers, she's shattered to learn that Stephen and his mistress had a child--a little girl named Iris, who now lives in poverty with her ailing great-grandmother. The thought of Iris abandoned to the foster care system--as Christy-Lynn once was--is unbearable. But she's spent her whole life running--determined never to be hurt again. Will she finally stand still long enough to open herself up to forgiveness and love?
The Gray House is enigmatic and fantastical, comic and postmodern...Rowling meets Rushdie via Tartt...Nothing short of life-changing. --The Guardian
The Gray House is an astounding tale of how what others understand as liabilities can be leveraged into strengths.
Bound to wheelchairs and dependent on prosthetic limbs, the physically disabled students living in the House are overlooked by the Outsides. Not that it matters to anyone living in the House, a hulking old structure that its residents know is alive. From the corridors and crawl spaces to the classrooms and dorms, the House is full of tribes, tinctures, scared teachers, and laws--all seen and understood through a prismatic array of teenagers' eyes.
But student deaths and mounting pressure from the Outsides put the time-defying order of the House in danger. As the tribe leaders struggle to maintain power, they defer to the awesome power of the House, attempting to make it through days and nights that pass in ways that clocks and watches cannot record.
A Read Russia Prize Finalist.
A passionate musician growing up in the war-torn streets of Kabul takes her forbidden talents abroad in this triumphant memoir from debut author Zarifa Adiba.
As an Afghan girl, Zarifa Adiba has big, unfathomable dreams. Her family is poor, her country mired in conflict. Walking to school in Kabul, Zarifa has to navigate suicide bombers.
But Zarifa perseveres, nurturing her passion for music despite its sinful nature under Taliban law. At sixteen she gains admission to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, and at eighteen she becomes the lead violist, co-conductor, and spokesperson for Zohra, the first all-female orchestra in the Muslim world.
Despite Zarifa's accomplishments--which include a stunning performance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland--her future in music demands a reckoning with her life back home. Many of the girls in Zohra are forced to marry, but Zarifa yearns to study, travel, and explore her independence. Her so-called bad girl identity puts her at odds with her culture and her family.
Playing for Freedom is the deeply compelling story of a woman who dares to compose a masterpiece even with all odds stacked against her.
A woman delves into science and superstition, fear and persecution, and the hope and courage of belief in an award-winning and internationally bestselling novel by Kateřina Tučková.
Last in a centuries-old lineage of healing women, Dora Idesová was raised by her aunt Surmena in the White Carpathians. Resistant to superstition, Dora grew up hearing stories of the goddesses who were said to conjure love and curses and, through divine connection, cure the spirit and the body. Now an academic, Dora is researching the tales that for generations spellbound the hillside where she grew up. As the mysteries become truths, they reveal a stunning discovery that reaches back from the witch trials of the seventeenth century through Nazi-occupied Germany. Embarking on an emotional journey, Dora is about to find out how deeply and fatefully she is entwined with secret tradition.
Beautifully weaving together fact, folklore, and fiction, Kateřina Tučková draws on the stories of her ancestors to explore the extraordinary history of goddesses who walked the earth.
Spanning sixty tumultuous years of Ukrainian history, this multigenerational saga weaves a dramatic and intricate web of love, sex, friendship, and death. At its center: three women linked by the abandoned secrets of the past--secrets that refuse to remain hidden.
While researching a story, journalist Daryna unearths a worn photograph of Olena Dovgan, a member of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed in 1947 by Stalin's secret police. Intrigued, Daryna sets out to make a documentary about the extraordinary woman--and unwittingly opens a door to the past that will change the course of the future. For even as she delves into the secrets of Olena's life, Daryna grapples with the suspicious death of a painter who just may be the latest victim of a corrupt political power play.
From the dim days of World War II to the eve of Orange Revolution, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets is an epic of enlightening force that explores the enduring power of the dead over the living.
From the author of After the Crash comes a gripping new thriller about one woman's descent into grief and madness after her ten-year-old son disappears without a trace.
Maddi Libéri is a successful doctor living an idyllic life in the South of France. On the morning of her son's tenth birthday, they walk to the beach together. The boy presses for a quick swim, but when the surf is too rough, she sends him off to buy a baguette instead.
He never returns.
Ten years later, Maddi stands at the spot where she last saw her son. A pilgrimage of sorts. And she can't believe her eyes. There, standing at the water's edge, is a young boy--and he looks exactly like her son. Same face, same suit...even the same birthmark.
Rattled, Maddi becomes obsessed with the boy. She upends her life to get closer to him. And the more she learns about her son's doppelgänger, the more unhinged she becomes. Dangerous secrets brought to light put people's lives at risk, and plot twists reveal truths you'll never see coming.
This book contains a few occurrences of upside-down text.
About the Book
A MASSIVE BESTSELLER THAT HAS SOLD OVER 1,00,000 COPIES IN MARATHI.
Even as a child, Sambhaji has known he must stand alone. His mother died when he was barely two, and his father was always absent-chasing his own dream of 'Swaraj', fighting to keep the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb at bay. As the eldest son, Sambhaji is the true heir to Shivaji. He is valorous, wise and has the makings of a capable statesman. But there are dark forces at play in the palace.
Shivaji's other queen, Soyrabai, is scheming to place her son Rajaram on the throne, and she has the support of several ministers whose misdemeanours Sambhaji is determined to expose. On 3 April 1680, Shivaji dies unexpectedly, and it is finally time for Sambhaji to rise to the challenge. He must now fight Aurangzeb, who has spent twenty years trying to smoke out the 'mountain rat', and whose presence in the Deccan poses an increasingly grave threat to the Maratha empire. And what could be better than the enemy's own brother-in-law willing to hand him the rat on a platter.
Cinematic and ambitious in its scope, this is a keenly researched and splendidly executed period drama about one man's struggle to preserve his father's legacy and of the price extracted by the throne and the homeland.
About the Author
Vishwas Patil is one of the most acclaimed Marathi writers today. He has written iconic novels like Ranangan, Chandramukhi, Pangira, Zadazadati, Panipat and Sambhaji. He received the Nath Madhav Award and the Bhartiya Bhasha Parishad Award for Panipat; the Priyadarshini National Award, the Vikhe Patil Award and the Sahitya Akademi Award for Zhadazdati; and the Gadkari Award for Mahanayak.
From the internationally bestselling author of Bonjour Tristesse comes the surprise publication of a novel she never finished--and a story that evokes her greatest works.
French literary star Françoise Sagan was just eighteen when she published her first bestseller, Bonjour Tristesse, in 1954. Decades later, this short novel surfaced: an unfinished manuscript that wittily dissects the romantic lives of its bourgeois characters.
The glamorous Marie-Laure never expected her wealthy older husband to survive a devastating car accident that left him in a fragile mental and physical condition. But three years later, Ludovic Cresson returns home to the family estate and finds himself in the throes of a tumultuous marriage.
Overseeing this tense dynamic is Henri, the patriarch, who wants to see his son recover but detests various members of his own family. When Marie-Laure's mother visits the estate, the family equilibrium falters spectacularly. As Ludovic's virility returns, he cannot resist the charms of his mother-in-law--and neither can his father.
The story ends abruptly, but it offers a vivid, if open ended, look into some of Sagan's final undiscovered characters.
From the bestselling author of The Murmur of Bees comes a transportive novel of two families uprooted by war and united by the bonds of love and courage.
With war looming dangerously close, Ilse's school days soon turn to lessons of survival. In the harshness of winter, her family must join the largest exodus in human history to survive. As battle lines are drawn and East Prussia's borders vanish beneath them, they leave their farm and all they know behind for an uncertain future.
But Ilse also has Janusz, her family's young Polish laborer, by her side. As they flee from the Soviet army, his enchanting folktales keep her mind off the cold, the hunger, and the horrors unfolding around them. He tells her of a besieged kingdom in the Baltic Sea from which spill the amber tears of a heartbroken queen.
Neither of them realizes his stories will prove crucial and prophetic.
Not far away, trying and failing to flee from a vengeful army, Arno and his mother hide in the ruins of a K nigsberg mansion, hoping that once the war ends they can reunite their dispersed family. But their stay in the walled city proves untenable when they find themselves dodging bombs and scavenging in the rubble. Soon they'll become pawns caught between two powerful enemies, on a journey with an unknown destination.
Hope carries these children caught in the crosshairs of war on an extraordinary pilgrimage in which the gift of an amber teardrop is at once a valuable form of currency and a symbol of resilience, one that draws them together against insurmountable odds.
Bestselling author Keiichiro Hirano offers a timeless ode to love's fragility and its resilience in this delicate, award-winning novel.
Classical guitarist Satoshi Makino has toured the world and is at the height of his career when he first lays eyes on journalist Yoko Komine. Their bond forms instantly.
Upon their first meeting, after Makino's concert in Tokyo, they begin a conversation that will go on for years, with long spells of silence broken by powerful moments of connection. She's drawn by Makino's tender music and his sensitivity, and he is intrigued by Yoko's refinement and intellect. But neither knows enough about love to see it blooming nor has the confidence to make the first move. Will their connection endure, weaving them back together like instruments in a symphony, or will fate lead them apart?
Blending the harmonies of Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes and the sensuality of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, At the End of the Matinee is an enchanting and thought-provoking love story.