World Literature

Joanna Klink's fifth book begins with personal poems of loss - a tree ripped out by a windstorm, a friendship broken off after decades, the nearing death of parents. Other poems take on the cost of not loving fully, or are written from disbelief at the accumulation of losses and at the mercilessness of having, as one ages, to rule things out. There are elegies for friends, and a group of devotional poems. The Nightfields closes with "Night Sky", 30 metaphysical poems inspired by the artist James Turrell's Roden Crater....

The next day Urashima Taro went to the shore again and saw the turtle's head poking out from the waves. "I owe you my life!" said the grateful turtle as it came out of the sea to meet Urashima Taro. "As a token of my thanks, I would like to take you to the Dragon Palace." Urashima Taro thought this was a splendid idea, but felt that he could not leave his old mother alone at home. "We won't be long," assured the turtle, so Urashima Taro accepted the invitation and climbed onto the turtle's back. The turtle dived deep into the sea. 

Book of Cool Poems is an insightful, poetic book, written to two different females, Marie and Christine. The idea to write to my muses came from reading other poets throughout history who have written to their own muses. Inspiration for the style of writing used came primarily from reading Fernando Pessoa, a Portugese National Hero, whose work was published posthumously. Many of the poems are inspirational, some are fun, some are romantic in a sense, and all of them are, well, just cool.

Meet Kiran Sharma: lover of music, dance, and all things sensual; son of immigrants, social outcast, spiritual seeker. A boy who doesn't quite understand his lot - until he realises he's a god. As an only son, Kiran has obligations - to excel in his studies, to honor the deities, to find a nice Indian girl, and, above all, to make his mother and father proud - standard stuff for a boy of his background. If only Kiran had anything in common with the other Indian kids besides the colour of his skin. 

Raj Bhatt is often unsure of where he belongs. Having moved to America from Bombay as a child, he knew few Indian kids. Now middle-aged, he lives mostly happily in California with a job at a university. Still, his white wife seems to fit in better than he does at times, especially at their tennis club, a place he's cautiously come to love. But it's there that, in one week, his life unravels. It begins at a meeting for potential new members: Raj thrills to find an African American couple on the list; he dreams of a more diverse club. But in an effort to connect, he makes a racist joke.

When Jozef is commissioned to paint a portrait of the younger daughter of Krakow's grand Oderfeldt family, it is only his desperate need for money that drives him to accept. He has no wish to indulge a pampered child-princess or her haughty, condescending parents - and almost doesn't notice Alicia's bookish older sister, Karolina. But when he is ushered by a servant into their house on Krakow's fashionable Bernadynska street in the winter of 1937, he has no inkling of the way his life will become entangled with the Oderfelts.

Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home.

Kim Wall was a thirty-year-old Swedish freelance journalist with a rising career. Then, in the summer of 2017, she followed a story that led to an eccentric inventor in Copenhagen. Instead of writing the next days headline, she'd become one. As the bizarre events of Kim's murder unfolded, the world watched in shocked disbelief. For Kim's distraught parents, Ingrid and Joachim, it was a devastating personal struggle. In the ensuing months, day by grueling day, they had to come to terms with their loss, process the global media attention, and endure the investigation and trial.

When he’s not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend, Sab, (occasionally in one of their town’s 17 cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight. But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial-arts trainer.

Daniel Abe, a young doctor in Chicago, is finally coming back to Hawai'i. He has his own reason for returning to his childhood home, but it is not to revisit the past, unlike his Uncle Koji. Koji lives with the memories of Daniel’s mother, Mariko, the love of his life, and the scars of a life hard-lived. He can’t wait to see Daniel, who he’s always thought of as a son, but he knows the time has come to tell him the truth about his mother, and his father.

After the unexpected deaths of her parents, academic Mira returns to her childhood home in Athens. On her first night back, she encounters a new neighbor, a longtime ship captain who has found himself, for the first time in years, no longer at sea. As one summer night tumbles into another, Mira and the Captain’s voices drift across the balconies of their apartments, disclosing details and stories: of careers, of families, of love.

After fleeing crumbling, volatile Venezuela, Yola Palacio wants nothing more than to settle into a peaceful new life in Trinidad with her family. And who cares if they’re there illegally - aren’t most of the people on the island? But life for the Palacios is far from quiet - and when Yola’s aunt Celia dies, the family once again find their lives turned upside down. For Celia had been keeping a very big secret - she owed a lot of money to a local criminal called Ugly. And without the funds to pay him off, Ugly has the entire family do his bidding until Celia’s debt is settled.

Michael and Wendy Mixner are a Brooklyn-based couple whose marriage is failing in the wake of a personal tragedy. Michael, a Wall Street trader, is meanwhile keeping a secret: He's lost the couple's life savings. And Wendy, a digital marketing strategist, has been hired onto a data-mining project of epic scale, whose mysterious creator has ambitions to reshape America's social and political landscapes. When Michael's best friend is murdered, the evidence leads back to Wendy's client, setting off a dangerous chain of events that will profoundly change the couple - and the country.   

A luminous collection of heartbreaking, startling, and gloriously unique stories set among the Filipino communities of California and the Philippines - now with a new preface by the author, Monstress stands as a landmark of American multicultural short fiction. Lysley Tenorio's tales are framed by tense, fascinating dichotomies: tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, pop culture and high culture, the American and the Filipino. 

Forever England explores Rupert Brooke’s life, from schooldays to the Great War, and in so doing builds a remarkable picture of a long-lost England and a generation’s descent into war. Brooke’s poems emerge dramatically from a tangled web of love, friendship, mental illness and politics. He reveals also the existence of a previously unrecorded love child from a South Seas romance. The WW1 legend was largely brought about by the words of one of his sonnets: "If I should die, think only this of me/That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England".

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist....

A riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives....

After a political scandal, fledgling lobbyist Dempsey Jo Killebrew is left almost broke, unemployed, and homeless....

A haunting debut novel about a mixed-race family living in 1970s Ohio and the tragedy that will either be their undoing or their salvation....

When Cara stumbles across a stash of old postcards in the attic, their contents make her question everything she thought she knew. The story she pieces together is confusing and unsettling, and appears to have been patched over with lies. But who can tell her the truth? 

In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny...and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century....

When a wealthy industrialist offers him a large sum of money to devise secret hiding places for Jews, Lucien struggles with the choice of risking his life for a cause he doesn't really believe in....

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career....

Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch....

This beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov - an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity....

It has been two years since the death of Merritt Heyward's husband, Cal, when she receives unexpected news....

The smallest items can hold centuries of secrets. Inara Erickson is exploring her deceased aunt's island estate when she finds an elaborately stitched piece of fabric hidden in the house....

Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking musical Hamilton is as revolutionary as its subject: the poor kid from the Caribbean who fought the British and defended the Constitution....

A resident of one of LA's toughest neighborhoods uses his blistering intellect to solve the crimes the LAPD ignores....

Set in the London of the 1660s and of the early 21st century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect....

This is an intense detective thriller instilled with philosophical, religious, and social commentary....

On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert, gunmen stormed his house, machine guns blazing....

As teenagers, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love in a Nigeria under military dictatorship....

On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Mercedes, having that very day been made captain of his ship, the young sailor Edmond Dantès is arrested on a charge of treason....

An ambitious and startling debut novel that follows the lives of four women at a resort popular among slaveholders who bring their enslaved mistresses....

Daevabad has fallen. After a brutal conquest stripped the city of its magic, Nahid leader Banu Manizheh and her resurrected commander, Dara, must try to repair their fraying alliance and stabilize a fractious, warring people.... 

Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery....

Patricia Campbell's life has never felt smaller. Her ambitious husband is too busy to give her a goodbye kiss in the morning, her kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she's always a step behind on thank-you notes and her endless list of chores....

In 1935, three women are forever changed when one of the most powerful hurricanes in history barrels toward the Florida Keys....

In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss....

Crazy Rich Asians is the outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families....

The future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom rests in the hands of a clever and defiant young con artist with miraculous healing gifts....

Ever since Colin Firth's Mr Darcy emerged from the lake in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the novels of Jane Austen have become more popular than ever, delighting millions of fans all over the world....

The story of a pole, searching for his purpose in life....

Profoundly moving and gracefully told, Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea....