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A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS'CHOICE The longest river in Europe, the Volga, divides the continent in two. On one side, mighty mountains, large Russian cities with white stone churches, translucent blue lakes of icy water, a cold wind blowing from the North Sea, and, in the early years of the twentieth century, the winds of momentous change blowing even harder, bringing with them revolution and ideologies that will shape the next two centuries of human history. On the other side, a world that belongs to the past, that is shored up by the vast Western Steppe, where small villages dot vast farmlands and life is perfumed by a hot, fragrant breeze that has its source in the Turkmen desert and the salty Caspian Sea. Two worlds that could not be further apart. Two worlds that will be brought together when Jakob Bach is hired by Udo Grimm to give lessons to Grimm's daughter, Klara. The love that grows between Jakob and Klara has unimaginable consequences. Expelled from Gnadenthal when their affair is discovered, they settle in a secluded hamlet hidden deep in the woods to live their lives in peace. But following a tragic episode, Jacob, psychically scarred, is forced to raise his daughter Anche alone. The fairy tales he invents and puts to paper in an effort to forge a bond with his daughter become widely known and slowly life in the German colonies along Volga begins to resemble the stories created by Bach. In the 18th century, the Russian empress Catherine the Great invited Europeans to immigrate and become Russian citizens and farm Russian lands while maintaining their language and culture. The settlers came mainly from Germany, and following the Russian Revolution, the Volga German Soviet Republic was founded, lasting until 1941, when it was abolished after the Germans invaded the region. In September 1941 all Volga Germans were deported. Over half a million were sent into exile in Siberia and Kazakhstan. Jacob Bach's life reflects and foreshadows that of his native colony, Gnadenthal, in this sweeping epic set in the dying years of the 19th century through to the mid-twentieth century of personal tragedy and resilience. In telling a stirring family story, Yakhina also recounts the story of a people, a republic, a nation, a tale that begins in quietude, flows and grows mighty, crosses space and time, like the Volga River itself.

Noam is a young man when the Flood wreaks havoc on the world, destroying the peaceful lakeside village he called home, and turning his whole life upside down. Destined to live forever as an immortal, Noam travels through the centuries in search of the meaning of life, and the events which shaped who we have become today. Paradises Lost is the first installment of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's monumental project of recounting the history of humanity, the fruits of more than thirty years of research. The first in a series, and in the form of a stylistic novel much like Yuval Noah Harari crossed with Alexandre Dumas. Schmitt combines his scientific, religious and philosophical research to propel readers from one world to another, and from pre-history to today.

Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs. Unbeknownst to her eleven-year-old son Eddie, Darlene has been lured away to a remote farm with false promises of a good job by a shady company named Delicious Foods, where she is held captive while she works the land to pay off alleged debts. Through Darlene's haunted struggle to reunite with Eddie, through the efforts of both to triumph over those who would enslave them, and through the irreverent and mischievous voice of the drug that narrates Darlene's travails, Hannaham's daring prose infuses this harrowing experience with compassion and humour. Along the way we experience a tale at once contemporary and historical that wrestles with timeless questions of love and freedom, forgiveness and redemption, tenacity and the will to survive.

In this darkly comic work of literary satire by New Zealand's most acclaimed and best-selling novelist Tama, a talking magpie and social media influencer, is the sole witness to a marriage in freefall. Tama is just a helpless chick when he is rescued by Marnie.'If it keeps me awake,'says Marnie's husband Rob, a farmer in the middle of a years-long drought,'I'll have to wring its neck.'But with Tama come new possibilities for the couple's future. Tama's fame is growing, and with it, his earning potential. The more Tama sees, the more the animal and the human worlds – and all the precarity, darkness and hope within them – bleed into one another. Like a stock truck filled with live cargo, the story moves inexorably towards its dramatic conclusion: the annual Axeman's Carnival. Part trickster, part surrogate child, part witness, Tama is the star of this story. And although what he says to humans is often nonsensical (and hilarious), the tale he tells makes disturbingly perfect sense. The Axeman's Carnival is Catherine Chidgey at her finest – comic, profound, poetic and true.

'Lovers of Europa Editions'other titles My Brilliant Friend and Fresh Water for Flowers will fall hard for this beautiful, heartbreaking, and healing story. Grab a box of tissues!'— Electric LitFull of humor and compassion, this Indie Next Pick is a profound exploration of sisterhood, healing, and the ineffable beauty of life.Sisters Emma and Agathe were thick as thieves when they were young but have always been as different as can be. Five years older, Emma was the defender, protector, and worrier for her fiery younger sister until tragedy marred their relationship.For a long time, Emma has kept her distance from Agathe and her chaos. But when their adored grandmother dies, they must return together to Spain to empty out her house and, in the process, reconcile, remember, and pour out what is hidden inside their hearts.Alternating between the sisters'childhood and the present day, Grimaldi's delicately wrought prose paints complex portraits of the two women, asking if the scars of the past can ever truly be healed, and what, in the end, is a good life.Laughter, tears, and the transformative power of love — these are the ingredients that combine to make this uplifting, unputdownable literary novel the summer read of 2024.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2024 FROM THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE MOST SECRET MEMORY OF MEN A polyphonic tale of immigration and community by “the most promising Senegalese writer of his generation” (Le Monde) and winner of the 2021 Prix Goncourt Seventy-two men arrive in the middle of the Sicilian countryside. They are “immigrants,” “refugees” or “migrants.” But in Altino, they're called the ragazzi, the “guys” that the Santa Marta Association have taken responsibility for. In this small Sicilian town, their arrival changes life for everybody. While they wait to know their fate, the ragazzi encounter all kinds of people: a strange vicar who rewrites their pasts, a woman committed to ensuring them asylum, a man determined to fight against it, an older ragazzo who has become an interpreter, and a reclusive poet who no longer writes. Each character in this moving and important saga is forced to reflect on what it means to encounter people they know nothing about. They watch as a situation unfolds over which they have little control or insight. A story told through a growing symphony of voices that ends only when one final voice brings silence to the choir.

Seventy-two men arrive in the Sicilian countryside. They are'immigrants','refugees'or'migrants'. But in Altino, they are called the ragazzi, the'guys'that the Santa Marta Association have taken responsibility for. And their presence changes the course of life in this small Sicilian town. While they await their fate, the ragazzi encounter all kinds of people: a strange vicar who rewrites their pasts, a woman committed to offering them asylum, a man determined to refuse it, an older ragazzo who has become an interpreter, and a reclusive poet who no longer writes. Each character, wherever they may come from, is forced to reflect on what it means to meet people they know nothing about. As each brings a different view, a cacophony of discordant voices resonates to the end, when the final one reduces the choir to silence.

'Only Ms. Kashimada can create this kind of world.'—Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police (on Touring the Land of the Dead) A housewife finds herself haunted by visions of a mushroom cloud. She abruptly leaves her husband and son to travel alone to the city of Nagasaki, where she soon begins an affair with a young Russian-Japanese man. Inspired by Marguerite Duras's screenplay for'Hiroshima, Mon Amour,'this novel is an undeniable demonstration of Kashimada's distinctive voice, the polish and precision of her literary style, and her dedication to plumbing the depths of her characters'psychology. Thrilling and poised in equal measure, dealing with the travails of history, with gendered identity, and with the tension between private and public selves, Love at Six Thousand Degrees is a literary highwire act by one of the most unique voices in contemporary Japanese fiction.

The beginning of a unique adventure, the tremendous challenge of recounting the history of humanity. Noam is a young man when the Flood wreaks havoc on the world, destroying the peaceful lakeside village he called home, and turning his whole life upside down. Destined to live forever as an immortal, Noam travels through the centuries in search of the meaning of life, and the events which shaped who we have become today. Paradises Lost is the first installment of Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's monumental project of recounting the history of humanity, the fruits of more than thirty years of research. The first in a series, and in the form of a stylistic novel much like Yuval Noah Harari crossed with Alexandre Dumas. Schmitt combines his scientific, religious and philosophical research to propel readers from one world to another, and from pre-history to today.

From the master of French noir and winner of the French Voices Prize, a gripping mystery about the blossoming of poisonous passions set in the brooding landscapes of Gironde, France When Franck gets out after five years in jail, he expects to find the brother he protected with his silence—instead, waiting for him is his brother Fabien's girlfriend. Jessica takes him to the gloomy country house where she lives with her cantankerous, hard-drinking parents, her eight-year old daughter, Rachel—who doesn't speak, hardly eats, and seems to be carrying a secret much bigger than herself—and a large mastiff dog they all seem to fear. Time passes, Fabien doesn't return, and Franck is increasingly mystified by Jessica's behavior, seductive at times, hostile at others. Nonetheless, Franck follows her around on her crazy nocturnal rounds until he finds himself with a gun pointed at his head. It's the beginning of a crescendo of retaliation in a gang war in which Franck believes he is participating, only to realize he's merely a sacrificial pawn. In the scorching heat of the summer, love and violence, sweetness and blood, will result in an unpredictable ending, one that perhaps only the little girl knew from the start.

From the National Book Award Finalist Domenico Starnone comes a new novel about childhood, memory, obsession, and the fictions we live by. Children can be cruel, and children can love as passionately and obsessively as adults. These two observations combine, igniting the imagination of Italy's greatest contemporary novelist and producing a seemingly candid novel that belies remarkable psychological depths and infinite degrees of enchantment. Imagine a child, a daydreamer, one of those boys who is always gazing out windows. His adoring grandmother, busy in the kitchen, keeps an eye on him. The child stares at the building opposite, watching a black-haired girl as she dances recklessly on her balcony. He is in love. And a love like this can push a child to extremes. He can become an explorer or a cabin boy, a cowboy or castaway; he can fight duels to the death, or even master unfamiliar languages. His grandmother has told him about the entrance to the underworld, and he knows the story of Orpheus's failed rescue mission. He could do better, he thinks; he wouldn't fail to bring that dark-haired up from the underground if she were dead, and it only he had the chance. A short, sharp, perfectly styled and unforgettable novel about love, desire, memory, and death by the Strega Prize-winning Italian author of Ties and International Booker Prize-longlisted author of The House on Via Gemito.

From the author of Nives, a story of love, redemption, and resistance set in Italy during WWII Tuscany, November 1943. The village of Le Case is miles from any big city and appears rooted in an earlier century. Seen from there, even the war looks different—it is mostly a matter of waiting, praying, and mourning. As a fierce winter threatens, an order is issued by the local Fascist authorities: all Jews must be rounded up and detained in the bishop's villa to await deportation. Shy, solitary, and taciturn René is the town's cobbler. His only friend is the widow Anna, a woman with whom he has been secretly in love for years. When Anna's son joins the Resistance and is swiftly captured and shot by the Wehrmacht, the grieving woman vows to continue her son's mission, and one evening, she disappears into the woods. René later learns that a group of Resistance fighters has been ambushed and the survivors are imprisoned in the bishop's villa. A woman is among them, they say, a grieving mother and former inhabitant of Le Case. René can no longer stand by and watch as his town, his country, and his one great love become victims of the Nazis and their Fascist enablers, and he decides to take action. Perhaps for the first time in his life. Based on the true story of a nefarious collaboration between the Catholic diocese of Grosseto and the Fascist authorities, The Bishop's Villa is a masterful weaving together of fact and fiction by one of Italy's most exciting young writers.

A debut literary page-turner from a new South African voice about fatherhood and family, loyalty and betrayal, inheritance and belonging. Daniel is a worldly and urbane journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meager. A young gay man with no relationships outside of sexual ones, he can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, Daniel nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father's death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man's will: he will only inherit his half of his father's considerable estate once he has spent time with Theon, a cousin whom he hasn't seen since they were boys, who lives on the old family farm in the Free State. Once there, Daniel discovers that the young son of the woman Theon lives with is seriously ill. With the conditions bearing on Daniel's inheritance shifting in real time, Theon and Daniel travel with the boy to Japan for an experimental cure and a voyage that will change their lives forever. S.J. Naudé's masterful novel is many things at once: a literary page-turner full of vivid, unexpected characters and surprising twists; a loving and at times shockingly raw portrayal of its protagonist's complex psyche; and a devastatingly subtle look into South Africa's fraught recent history.

A symphony of interconnected lives that offers a compelling reflection on life in modern-day metropolises at the intersection of isolation and intimacy in Yoshida's English-language debut Set over several nights, between the hours of 1:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., in and around Tokyo, this mind-blowingly constructed book is an elaborate, energetic fresco of human nocturnal existence in all its mystery, an enigmatic literary mix of Agatha Christie, Teju Cole, and Heironymous Bosch. On this journey through the labyrinthine streets and hidden corners of one of the world's most fascinating cities, everybody is searching for something, and maybe searching in the wrong places. Elements of the fantastical and the surreal abound, as they tend to do in the early pre-dawn hours of the morning, yet the settings, the human stories, and each character's search are all as real as can be. Goodnight Tokyo offers readers a unique and intimate take on Tokyo as seen through the eyes of a large cast of colorful characters. Their lives, as disparate and as far apart as they may seem, are in fact intricately interconnected, and their fates converge against the backdrop of the city's neon-lit streets and quiet alleyways. In his English-language debut, Yoshida masterfully portrays in captivating and lyrical prose the complexities of human relationships, the mystery of human connection, and the universal quest for meaning.

Told through the alternating perspectives of five childhood friends from the same housing estate in England, I See Buildings Fall like Lightning is a story about friendship, place, loss, addiction and the ways in which lives, minds, and bodies can be limited by material conditions; it also speaks powerfully to the ways in which humor, loyalty, and family can bestow meaning and life even in the toughest circumstances. Only Rian has made it out of the estate and moved away to another city, but his money doesn't stop him from clinging to a vision of the past that is quickly slipping away. Oli is fading by the day, drinking and snorting his way through the endless boredom. Things are looking up for Conor, but he is never too far away from chaos. Patrick and Shiv are as in love as ever, always the calm in the eye of the storm, but even they are rocked when old secrets begin to open new wounds. Bold, ambitious, and stylistically striking, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning lays bare the economic, psychological, and spiritual impact of poverty, explores the redeeming and transforming beauty of friendship and examines the true limits of hope and forgiveness.

From the best-selling author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog comes a family story with a difference, a novel about the decisions one makes and the destiny they determine by one of Europe's most brilliant and stylistically subtle authors. Haru, a successful Japanese art dealer, loves beauty, harmony, art, balance, intriguing women, sophisticated conversation, and elegance. Months after a brief affair in Japan with a French woman, Maud, he discovers she is pregnant with his child. She warns him, however, that if he ever tries to see her or the child, she will kill herself. Quietly devastated at the thought of never knowing his daughter, who will become a dark presence in an otherwise elegantly orchestrated life, Haru decides he will respect Maud's wishes. His daughter grows to adulthood without ever knowing him. Is it too late to change things? This is Haru's story. In her poetically precise prose, Muriel Barbery explores the deep love of a father, and what is gained and what is lost when one chooses a “family” of friends over one's biological family. In doing so, she captures the darkness that pushes people apart and the circumstances that can draw them together again.

Shortlisted for the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger An award-winning urban thriller full of rage and raw emotion In a small town just like any other, a police identity check goes wrong. The victim, Saïd, was fifteen years old. And now he is dead. Mattia is just eleven years old, and witnesses the hatred and sadness felt by those around him. While he didn't know Saïd, his face can be seen all over the neighbourhood, graffitied on walls in red paint, demanding'Justice'. Mattia decides to pull together the pieces of the puzzle, to try to understand what happened. Because even the dead don't stay buried forever, and nothing is lost, ever.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAROprah Daily・Electric Literature・Gay Times・NBC Out A JULY 2023 INDIE NEXT PICK A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K Patrick In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of “matron.” Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body. That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster's wife, a woman who is her polar opposite—an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made. Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick's bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.

'A DISTINCTLY KOREAN TAKE ON GREAT EXPECTATIONS.'Financial Times A woman sells her daughter to a passing beekeeper for two jars of honey. A baby weighing fifteen pounds is born in the depths of winter but named'Girl of Spring'. A storm brings down the roof of a ramshackle restaurant to reveal a hidden fortune. These are just some of the events that set Myeong-Kwan's beautifully crafted, wild world in motion. Set in a remote village in South Korea, Whale follows the lives of its linked characters: Geumbok, who has been chasing an indescribable thrill ever since she first saw a whale crest in the ocean; her mute daughter, Chunhui, who communicates with elephants; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle. Brimming with surprises and wicked humour, Whale is an adventure-satire of epic proportions, by one of international literature's the most original voices.

For fans of Truman Capote and Emmanuel Carrere'Psychogeography at its most perceptive.'—Financial Times In March 2016, in an apartment on the outskirts of Rome, two'ordinary'young men brutally tortured and murdered twenty-two-year-old Luca Varani. News of the seemingly inexplicable crime sent shockwaves across Rome and beyond. After the crime comes to light, Lagioia begins investigating the crime by meeting with the victim's family and corresponding with one of the killers. It soon becomes clear, however, that to investigate this crime means to descend into the darkest corners of Rome and of the human psyche. Lagioia leads us through a maze of betrayed expectations, sexual confusion, economic grievances and identity crises to locate the breaking point, the point after which anything is possible. Sharp, hypnotic, devastating, The City of The Living is not just the story of a crime, but of human nature itself: the tension between responsibility and guilt, between the drive to oppress and the desire to be free, between who we are and who we can become.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2024'Starnone uses languages the way a great painter works with colour, conjuring the illusion of three dimensions from a blank flat surface.'—Jhumpa Lahiri'One of Italy's most accomplished novelists.'—The Guardian'Masterly.'—Times Literary Supplement The modest apartment on Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night. Federì, a railway clerk, is convinced that, if he didn't have a family to feed, he'd be a world-famous painter. Talented, ambitious, and frustrated, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. Years later, his first-born son will tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and first published in Italy over 20 years ago, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.

WINNER OF THE MISHIMA YUKIO PRIZEA WORLD LITERATURE TODAY NOTABLE BOOK 2023 An ordinary housewife finds herself haunted by visions of a mushroom cloud and abruptly leaves her husband and son to travel alone to the city of Nagasaki, where she soon begins an affair with a young half-Russian, half-Japanese man. Inspired by Marguerite Duras's screenplay for “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” this novel is a further demonstration of Kashimada's distinctive literary style and technique and her commitment to plumbing the depths of her characters'psychology. Dealing with the travails and traumas of history, with gendered identity, with the tension between private and public selves, Love at Six Thousand Degrees is a distinctive and intriguing novel by one of Japan's most unique contemporary authors.

WINNER OF THE 2021 PRIX FEMINA FOR BEST FOREIGN NOVEL The third volume of the internationally acclaimed Ottoman Quartet, written by Ahmet Altan while he was imprisoned by the Turkish regime This masterly constructed, sweeping novel centers on the story of Nizam's tormented love affair with a Russian pianist, Anya, and is told against the backdrop of the Ottoman Empire's tumultuous history in the years leading up to WWI. Underlying the novel's tale of war and love and Altan's absorbing exploration of the inner lives of a vast cast of characters, is a fierce criticism of masculinity and of its degeneration into violence against women, nationalism, and authoritarianism. Once again, Altan confirms to be an elegant, powerful, and courageous writer, who is not afraid to denounce an arrogant and undemocratic government that, today as a century ago, relies on bigotry, censorship, and intimidation to cling to power and control the lives of its people.

David Keenan is one of today's most exciting, fearless, and entertaining writers. Monument Maker is his most daring book to date. Is it possible for books to dream? For books to dream within books? Is there a literary subterranea that would facilitate ingress and exit points through these dreams? These are some of the questions posed by David Keenan's Monument Maker, an epic romance set in an eternal summer, and a descent into history and the errors of the past; a novel with a sweep and range that runs from the siege of Khartoum and the conquest of Africa in the 19th century through the Second World War and up to the present day, where the memories of one summer and an unforgettable love affair unravel. A book within a book within a book, a meditation on art and religion, and on what it means to make monuments. A hallucinatory epic and a forward-looking history of the world, Monument Maker was written over the course of ten years and represents the apex of Keenan's project to create books that are themselves teeming with organic life. “I sometimes think David Keenan dreams aloud. His prose has the effortless enigmatic, unsettling quality of dream.”—Edna O'Brien

An absorbing bildungsroman that tells the story of three sisters during a decade of radical societal transformationThree sisters were born into a modest Catholic family in Aix-en-Provence. Sabine, the eldest, dreams of an artist's life in Paris; Hélène, the middle girl, grows up divided between the bourgeois environment of Neuilly-sur-Seine and the simple life led by her parents; Mariette, the youngest, learns the secrets and silences of a dazzling and crazy world. In 1970, French society is changing. Women have emancipated themselves whilst men have lost their bearings, and the three sisters, each in their own way, find ways to live a life of their own—a strong life, far from the morality, education, and the religion of their childhood. This family chronicle, which takes us from the May 1968 protests to the 1981 elections, is as much a tender and tragic stroll through the 20th century as it is the chronicle of an era, where consciousnesses are awakening to the upheaval of the world, and heralding the chaos to come.

WINNER OF THE 2020 YOUTH STREGA PRIZE From one of the most exciting voices in a new generation of Italian writers, a powerful and moving novel that explores both the darkest recesses and the most luminous regions of the human heart June 1994. Twenty-year-old Daniele wakes up in a hospital room, confused and surrounded by strangers. Slowly, memories of the previous night return to him: a spiral of anxiety and anger, an explosion of violence so intense that it almost inflicted irreparable damage to him and his family… To his horror, Daniele learns from the doctors that he's been sentenced to a week of mandatory treatment in a psychiatric ward. Writing with lucid realism and stunning emotional force, and drawing from the author's own personal experience of mental illness, Mencarelli chronicles Daniele's seven days in the hospital as he struggles to find a way out of the darkness. Daniele finds unexpected companions in his fellow patients—men who, like him, have felt the full brunt of life's pain. Together they will realize the hidden strength and value of their common fragility and of the boundless empathy they feel towards others. By focusing on some of the most marginalized people in our society, Mencarelli has written a heartbreaking and unforgettable novel that challenges our notion of normality and celebrates the salvific power of solidarity and vulnerability.

Justine is 21 years old and has lived with her grandparents and cousin Jules since the death of her parents. She works as a carer at a retirement home and spends her days listening to her residents'stories. After bonding with Hélène, an almost 100-year-old resident, the two women slowly reveal their stories to one another. Whilst Justine helps Hélène to relive her memories of love and war, Hélène encourages Justine to confront the secrets of her own past, and the loss she has buried deep within. One day, trouble arrives in the form of a mysterious phone call that shakes the retirement home to its core and uncovers a shocking revelation. At once humorous and melancholic, Valérie Perrin's debut novel is a story of how the past can shape our present, and the scars of undeclared love.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2023 A best historical fiction book of 2023 (The Sunday Times)'Unbearably moving.'–Financial Times'Enthralling.'–Victoria Hislop'Compelling, atmospheric and raw.'–Ruth Jones, writer, actor and comedian Isolated from society, Emily Brontë and her siblings spend their days inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape to which she has become so passionately bound, she is simply unable to function. To the outside world, Emily Brontë appears taciturn and unexceptional, but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment. A violent phenomenon is about to burst forth that will fuse her imaginary world with the landscape of her beloved Yorkshire and change the literary world forever. Fifteen Wild Decembers is the dazzling second novel from a writer who has been compared to Shirley Hazzard and Graham Greene, and whose first novel was described as'utterly stunning','mesmerizing'and hailed as'a masterpiece.'

A story of conflicted friendship and its unravelling, told against the background of an ever-present, mind-twisting social media verse.'A truly precious book.'—Grazia Maia is 26. Stuck in a dead-end job and a dysfunctional relationship, she's treading water. Gloria, 18, is an influencer with 2 million followers, and the fragility of those who grow up too fast. Both are bereft. Maia, of purpose, and of the sister who took her own life, even though they weren't close, and she doesn't miss her. Gloria, of someone to help her grow and become stronger, but also of ideas and words that are truly hers. When Maia starts working for Gloria, both their lives change forever. The two young women weave a complex, intense relationship. Its yarn will unwind behind the scenes of the virtual world Gloria inhabits, and for the first time both will see themselves as they really are. But in this dangerous game of mirrors, will Maia and Gloria still be able to distinguish what belongs to whom?

'Black gay American friends explore Ghana's queer underground while a killer commits a grisly string of murders in this thrilling read.'—Guardian 2019, The Year of Return. It has been exactly 400 years since the first slave ships left Ghana for America. Ghana has now opened its doors to Black diasporans, encouraging them to return and get to know the land of their ancestors. Elton, Vincent, and Scott arrive from America to visit preserved sites from the transatlantic slave route, and to explore the country's underground queer scene. Their activities are narrated by their two combative guides: Kobby, their way into Accra's privileged circles; and Nana, the voice of tradition and religious principle. The pair's tense relationship sets the tone for what becomes a shocking and unsettling tale of murder that is at times funny, at times erotic, yet always outspoken and iconoclastic. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:'The kind of book people study. It's dark, frank, sharp-witted, and reflective. It immediately struck me as a classic and will undoubtedly linger in my thoughts for a while to come.'—Hannah on Netgalley'What a marvellous debut for Ghanaian author Kobby Ben Ben. I devoured this book with gusto!'—Caleb on Netgalley'Wow. Such a rollercoaster... One of the most powerful and intense books I read in a long time.'—Dmitri on Netgalley'This is an epic and experimental book.'—Siobhan on Netgalley

Winner of the 2019 John Fante First Novel Prize The critically acclaimed novel from the author of Everything Calls for Salvation, adapted into a Netflix Original series, is a powerful coming-of-age story about loss, identity, and rebirth Daniele is a young poet plagued by an unknown darkness, “an invisible disease of the heart, or of the mind.” He refuses to conform to society's expectations—finding a job, starting a family—yet he struggles to define a path of his own and find a sense of purpose in life.In a desperate attempt to pull himself out of a dangerous spiral of emptiness and self-destruction, Daniele accepts a job at a pediatric hospital in Rome, the Bambino Gesù, where he'll work with sick children, many of them terminally ill. In the “house of gazes,” that is, the hospital, through his interactions with patients and co-workers, and forced to confront pain in some of its most heartbreaking forms, Daniele will slowly start to look at life with new eyes, and learn to accept it in all its brutality and beauty. Writing with the evocative power and sharp focus of a poet, Mencarelli tells a raw and moving story of self-discovery, renewal, and liberation achieved through solidarity and compassion, a story closely inspired by the events of his own life.

A tender and wickedly funny portrait of England told through four generations of one family. Bournville is a quiet village in the heart of England famous for its chocolate. For eleven-year-old Mary, it is the center of her world, the place where most of her family's friends and neighbors have worked for decades and where the streets smell faintly of chocolate. During the next three-quarters of a century, Mary will have children and grandchildren and great-children. She will live through the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the 1966 World Cup final (the last time England won), royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, and Bournville itself will gradually disappear into the sprawl of the growing city of Birmingham. As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family—and their country—closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before? Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself.

“An absolutely fantastic debut novel.”—Fredrik Backman, author of A Man Called Ove A deeply atmospheric debut novel about three young people testing the boundaries of intimacy that is being hailed as “the love child of Normal People and Brideshead Revisited.” When Hugo takes a room in the house of one of Stockholm's wealthiest families, he unwittingly invites himself into the lives of people he will be unable to forget: Thora, a beautiful descendant of old money, and her childhood best friend August, who dreams of art. None of them have anything in common, but find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other. Decades later, a young woman shows up on Hugo's door in New York one morning, hoping to stay with him. She introduces herself as the child of Thora and August, and comes carrying questions about her parents that send Hugo reeling back to his youth—to two euphoric summers in Stockholm, and people to whom he is now a stranger. Timelessly familiar, tender and exultant, The Trio is a novel about the choices we could have made. About who we may have been, and the relationships that influence and linger on with us, long after they have come to an end.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEARThe Washington Post・The New Yorker ・Slate・CrimeReads・Good Housekeeping・Amazon Book Review A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS'CHOICE A suspenseful new psychological thriller from the Women's Prize for Fiction longlisted and Dublin Literary Award shortlisted author of Remote Sympathy, Catherine Chidgey. Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine's sense that something isn't quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Justine must decide where her loyalties lie. Set in New Zealand in the 1980s and probing themes of racism, misogyny and the oppressive reaches of Catholicism, Pet will take a rightful place next to other classic portraits of childhood betrayal and psychological suspense: Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping among them. “Refreshing, compelling and surprising.”—Ann Morgan, author of Beside Myself and Reading the World

'Timeless, vivid and utterly essential.'Fergal Keane, author of The Madness AN AWARD WINNING NOVEL FOLLOWING THREE GENERATIONS TORN APART BY THE TUTSI GENOCIDE Blanche returns to Rwanda after building a life in Bordeaux with her husband and young son, Stokely. Reuniting with her mother Immaculata, old wounds are reopened for both mother and daughter while Stokely, caught between two countries, tries to understand where he comes from and where he belongs. Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse's unforgettable debut novel follows three generations torn apart by the genocide against the Tutsis, as they try to reconnect with one another, rebuild broken links and find their place in today's world. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING'Beautiful and breath-taking.'Lizzy on Netgalley'This is a book to read and re-read.'Jo Ann on Goodreads'This book was intense and filled me with emotion... Truly memorable and lyrical.'Rachel on Netgalley'Raw, heartfelt and full of pain [with] so many poetic and spine tingling quotes.'Sharmila on Netgalley'A literary feat through and through.'Thomas on Goodreads'I just can't recommend it enough.'Kacey on Netgalley'A beautiful and heartbreaking book.'Elizabeth on Goodreads

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR The Washington Post·Kirkus Reviews A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS'CHOICE This extraordinary Strega Prize-winning novel confirms Domenico Starnone's reputation as one of Italy's greatest living writers. Told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that itself becomes a vivid character in this lush, atmospheric novel, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of Italian fiction, one that is steeped in Neapolitan lore. A modest apartment in Via Gemito smelling of paint and turpentine. Its furniture pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio. Drying canvases moved from bed to floor each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced that he possesses great artistic promise. If it weren't for the family he must feed and the jealousy of his fellow Neapolitan artists, nothing would stop him from becoming a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but also arrogant and resentful, Federí is scarred by constant disappointment. He is a larger-than-life character, a liar, a fabulist, and his fantasies shape the lives of those around him, especially his young son, Mimi, short for Domenico, who will spend a lifetime trying to get out from under his father's shadow. Starnone, a finalist for the National Book Award with Trick, author of New York Times notable book of the year, Ties, and the critically acclaimed Trust, takes readers beyond the slim, novella-length works for which he is known by American readers to create a vast fresco of family, fatherhood, and modern Naples.

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A bittersweet and hilarious novel about a marriage whose decades-old routine is suddenly upended. Walter Schmidt has lived his whole life within the narrow, “comfortable” confines of traditional gender roles: he has made it to retirement without learning how to fry an egg or use a vacuum cleaner. After all, he could always count on his wife, Barbara. But when one morning she can't get up from bed anymore, everything changes. With biting humor and great warmth, Alina Bronsky writes about how Walter, nearing the end of his life, is suddenly forced to reinvent himself as a caregiver and house-husband, and become the caring partner he never was in all his years with Barbara. Little by little, Walter's rough facade begins to crumble—and with it his old certainties about his life and family.

A FEBRUARY 2023 INDIE NEXT PICK LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE A short, lyrical debut novel about love, loss, work, time, and the unquenchable desire for connection with others—for fans of Jenny Offill, Mieko Kawakami, David Szalay and Sheila Heti The second time you came, we went from bar to bar to bar. It made the city feel smaller. Like a map we were folding to the size of a stamp. We were good at that. We could have fit an entire universe inside a matchbox. Exquisitely crafted, richly imagined, and as funny as it is moving, Hourglass is an unusual and uniquely told love story. Turning time upside down, it combs the wreckage of personal heartbreak for something universal and asks what it means to lose what you love. “This book is such a sneaky head f•ck—an epic poem in an ancient style about the brutalities of modern love, a masculine interrogation of feminine heartbreak, a really beautiful way to spend an evening”—Lena Dunham

'Captivating and entertaining.'—Sololibri'Alan Gillot tells the universal story of a new beginning.'—La Repubblica'A novel that shows how when life comes knocking, it cannot be ignored.'—ThrillerNord Antoine is a script doctor: a high-flying consultant hired to cut the script of a movie before it's green-lighted. Called to a film set on the Côte d'Azur, he casually cancels the role young hopeful Emma was cast in. When she confronts him, her words – and actions – impart a few home-truths. Antoine chases after Emma to apologise. Little does he know that from then on, he won't be able to return to his old colourless life. At Emma's side, Antoine embarks on an unexpected journey through a provincial France he's never seen before, right into the bizarre, exciting world of her eccentric family and the itinerant theatre company she belongs to. A love story and a road movie, this charming tale proclaims the need to overcome our fears and reach out to others.

A Best Book Of 2022 (New Yorker) A Best Book Of Fall 2022 (Wall Street Journal) From Costa Award-winning and Booker Prize-shortlisted author Andrew Miller comes a tender tale of guilt, trust, and a father's yearning to atone. A harmless-looking letter drops onto the doormat in Stephen Rose's Somerset home like an unexploded bomb. It is a summons to an inquiry in Belfast, asking him to give testimony about his participation in a disastrous event during the Troubles–one he has long worked to forget. An ailing ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic, Stephen has just begun to build a fragile bond with Maggie, the adult daughter he barely knows. For two years, he has worked hard to earn her trust, but the tragedy of what occurred back in the summer of 1982 has the power to destroy their new relationship. To buy time, he decides to write her an account of his life. Part explanation, part confession, it is also a love letter to Maggie. When the moment comes that he must face what happened in Belfast that summer, the consequences are devastating––but ultimately liberating. Giving voice to those little heard in the literature of the Irish Troubles, The Slowworm's Song is an unforgettable story about a man who learns that the only way back from the underworld is up.

A bold novel about ambition, grief, creativity, beauty, and existential emptiness that retraces the arc of American life and culture in the first decades of the 21st century. It is early 2017 in New York City, Donald Trump is President, and Solomon Fields, a young Jewish journalist-turned-advertising hack, finds himself disillusioned by the hollowness and conformity of American life and language. Once brimming with dreams and ideals instilled in him by his eternally bohemian grandmother, a survivor of the Holocaust who has dedicated her life to passion and pleasure, Sol now finds the senseless jargon he produces at work seeping into all aspects of the world around him—and most disturbingly, into the art that his beloved grandmother taught him to revere. A personal tragedy drives Sol to leave New York and accept an invitation to The Coded Garden, an artists'colony on a tropical island, whose mysterious patron, Sebastian Light, seems to offer the very escape Sol desperately needs. But the longer he remains in the Garden, the more Light comes to resemble Trump himself, and the games he plays with Sol become more dangerous. Slowly lines begin to blur—between reality and performance, sincerity and manipulation, art and life, beauty and emptiness—until Sol finds that he must question everything: his past, his convictions, and his very sanity. “Alexander Maksik is a sorcerer of the first order.'—Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies

Based on the true story of the 1965 “dolphin house” experiment, this spellbinding novel captures the tenor of the social experiments of the 1960s in award-winning author Audrey Schulman's tightly paced and evocative style. It is 1965, and Cora, a young, hearing impaired woman, buys a one-way ticket to the island of St. Thomas, where she discovers four dolphins held in captivity as part of an experiment led by the obsessive Dr. Blum. Drawn by a strong connection to the dolphins, Cora falls in with the scientists and discovers her need to protect the animals. Recognizing Cora's knack for communication, Blum uses her for what will turn into one of the most fascinating experiments in modern science: an attempt to teach the dolphins human language by creating a home in which she and a dolphin can live together. As the experiment progresses, Cora forges a remarkable bond with the creatures, until her hard-won knowledge clashes with the male-dominated world of science. As a terrible scandal threatens to engulf the experiment, Cora's fight to save the dolphins becomes a battle to save herself.

FINALIST for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction A BEST BOOK OF 2022 Oprah Daily·TIME Magazine·Washington Post·Publishers Weekly·Lit Hub Bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami invites readers back into her immediately recognizable fictional world with this new, extraordinary novel and demonstrates yet again why she is one of today's most uncategorizable, insightful, and talented novelists. Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyuko stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it. As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko's past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it. “In the skilled hands of Bett and Boyd, Kawakami's prose is instantly recognizable—immediate, incisive, and unfailingly honest.”—Katie Kitamura, Entertainment Weekly (A Most Anticipated Book of 2022)

Adrien, Etienne and Nina are 10 years old when they meet at school and become inseparable. Years later, a car is pulled up from the bottom of a lake, with a body inside. Virginie, a local journalist with an enigmatic past, follows the case. Step by step she reveals the extraordinary bonds that unite the three childhood friends. How is the car wreck connected to their story? Why did their friendship fall apart? Three is a compelling story of love and loss, hope and grief, and of the distance that comes with the passing of time. A masterly crafted story full of suspense and unexpected plot twists. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:'This book owns my soul.'Booksnpenguins – 5•'Valérie Perrin is always a delight.'Alexandra Jundler – 5•'A stellar read that I highly recommend.'Paromjit Hayers – 5•'I flew threw the pages with Olympic speed!'Michelle Coates – 5•'Three is a totally consuming book that makes it hard to come up for air while reading it.'Jill – 5•'Such a great book, that I found very hard to put down.'Mel – 5•'One of the most beautifully written stories I have ever read.'Alison – 5•'I'm so dumbstruck by this novel.'June Schwartz – 5•

An unforgettable novel about sisterhood, familial duties and love The Betrayed tells the story of two sisters who love the same man. As dictatorship and political upheaval ravage the Philippines, the sister's conflicting passions threaten to lead them to betray not only each other, but all that their father stood for. Shy, idealistic Pilar initially resolves to carry on her father's fight against the regime, while her flamboyant older sister Lali reacts by marrying the enemy – Arturo, the dictator's godson. Each tries to find their place in this violent world, but can they withstand the corruption of politics and the relentless pull of their own desires? Taking in the Philippines'troubled history from the Marcos dictatorship to the establishment of the present totalitarian regime, and expertly layering the many aspects of the human condition, The Betrayed is a complex and luminous novel.

A man's quest to bring new life to a desolate world'In this radiantly beautiful book, Sandrine Collette achieves a perfect balance between horror and beauty, finding poetry even in the dust.'—ELLE Nobody wanted Corentin. His father left him, his mother dreams of getting rid of him. Dragged from home to home, his childhood is an aimless pilgrimage, until the day his mother leaves him with old Augustine. Life begins anew for him. Deep into the remote, verdant Valley of the Forests, Corentin finds the care and love he's been missing. When he grows up and moves to the city, Corentin immerses himself in the dazzling pleasures and distractions of urban life. But all around him, the world is on fire. Temperatures rise, rivers dry up, trees shed their leaves in June: a catastrophe is brewing. The night the worst happens, Corentin survives, hidden in the depths of the city's catacombs. When he emerges, he finds a devastated landscape devoid of life. Human, tree, or beast: nothing is left. But Corentin, armed only with hope, sets off on a journey to find Augustine.

'Like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, De Gregorio takes a true story and reveals what life cannot. Extraordinary.'–Grazia Irina's life with her husband and her twin daughters is orderly. An Italian living in Switzerland, she works as a lawyer. One day, something breaks. The marriage ends without apparent trauma, but on a weekend seemingly like any other, the girls'father takes Alessia and Livia away with him. They disappear. A few days later the man takes his own life. Of the girls, there is no trace. Concita De Gregorio takes the unadorned, terrible facts of this true story and embodies the protagonist's voice. In a narrative that is fast and urgent, she unravels these traumatic events to tell the story of a mother bereft of her children – a state for which there is no word. An urgently told story and a fierce portrait of a woman in all her frailty and courage, The Missing Word delves deep into Irina's thoughts and memories as she grasps at the shreds of truth and, piece by piece, stitches her life back together.

FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF A GIRL RETURNED, COMES A MOVING NEW NOVEL ABOUT SISTERHOOD, THE PAST AND ITS INDELIBLE MARKS • NATALIE PORTMAN'S BOOK CLUB PICK FOR JULY 2022• •A Strega Prize 2021 finalist • It's the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth will she deliver? Like a whirlwind, Adriana breaks into her sister's life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations. Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister's youth, their loves and losses, their secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town's fishermen's quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and perhaps make peace with the past. Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a novel focussed on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters.

FINALIST FOR THE 2023 FRENCH-AMERICAN FOUNDATION TRANSLATION PRIZE WINNER OF THE PRIX ÉTHIOPHILE, THE PRIX DES RACINES ET DES MOTS, AND THE PRIX DES CINQ CONTINENTS DE LA FRANCOPHONIE Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse's debut novel follows three generations torn apart by the genocide against the Tutsis, as they try to reconnect with one another, rebuild broken relationships, and find their place in today's world. Blanche returns to Rwanda after building a life in Bordeaux with her husband and young son, Stokely. Reuniting with her mother Immaculata, old wounds are reopened for both mother and daughter while Stokely, caught between two countries, tries to understand where he comes from and where he belongs. “This story tells all our stories.”—Gaël Faye, author of Small Country

An absorbing bildungsroman that tells the story of three sisters amidst France's rapid transformation in the'70s Three sisters were born into a modest Catholic family in Aix-en-Provence. Sabine, the eldest, dreams of an artist's life in Paris; Hélène, the middle girl, grows up divided between the bourgeois environment of Neuilly-sur-Seine and the simple life led by her parents; Mariette, the youngest, learns the secrets and silences of a dazzling and crazy world. In 1970, French society is changing. Women have emancipated themselves whilst men have lost their bearings, and the three sisters, each in their own way, find ways to live a life of their own—a strong life, far from the morality, education, and the religion of their childhood. This family chronicle, which takes us from the May 1968 protests to the 1981 elections, is as much a tender and tragic stroll through the 20th century as it is the chronicle of an era, where consciousnesses are awakening to the upheaval of the world, and heralding the chaos to come.