“I recommend a book, Little Brother. . . . It makes us understand what the desert crossing is like: the trafficking of migrants, imprisonment, torture, the sea journey" (Pope Francis, quoted in La Civilta Cattolica). This heartbreaking story about an African migrant takes you inside the refugee crisis and is based on the author's own life.Ibrahima is still a boy when his father dies, but as the eldest son he must leave their home village in the Gu...

If you look at a map of Africa, you can see how far Libya is from Konakry. But you cannot know all that lies in between.In Guinea, West Africa, Ibrahima works tirelessly to support his family. When he discovers that his little brother has secretly run away from school and is heading to Europe, he drops everything to follow him. Travelling the harsh migrant routes of the Sahara towards the Mediterranean, Ibrahima encounters the best and worst of humanity along the perilous ...

For fans of Christina Baker Kline and Fiona Davis, a coming-of-age story about a young woman discovering love, loss, and the power of her own creativity in World War II San Francisco.San Francisco in 1944 is a bustling place, a revolving door of soldiers and sailors passing through on their way to the war in the Pacific. Twenty-year-old Irene Cleary, however, is not going anywhere. Although she’d love to travel, the seamstress shop she inherited from her mentor kee...

Three young people from vastly different backgrounds – Armando from Mozambique, Lolita from India and East German national Theo – are drawn together in a small Baltic city in 1989, just as the DDR begins to collapse around them.While a quiet revolution sweeps through Eastern Europe, they find themselves in a poignant love triangle, as their lives intertwine and collide with each other in messy, beautiful ways."An expert novel, The Others is superbly organiz...

**A captivating reimagining of the intrepid woman who – 8 months pregnant and with a toddler in tow – braved violent earthquakes and treacherous waters on the first steamboat voyage to conquer the Mississippi River and redefine America.The acclaimed author of The Seamstress of New Orleans brings to life Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt’s defiant journey of 1811 in this lush, evocative biographical novel for fans of Paula McLain, Gill Paul, Allison Pataki, and stories about extr...

A roofing family’s bonds of loyalty are tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town—from Amy Jo Burns, author of the critically acclaimed novel ShinerIt’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a ro...

A moving memoir about one mother's unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.A People Book of the WeekA Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the Year"A modern-day Sophie's Choice , this memoir about a mother's love for her child and country...

In this "beautiful and lush novel," the renowned Irish author "encapsulates the afflictions of a culture within the afflictions of a particular doomed family." ( The New York Times Book Review ).Wild Decembers charts the quick and critical demise of relations between Joseph Brennan and Mick Bugle—"the warring sons of warring sons"—in the countryside of Western Ireland. With her gift for describing the occasions of ...

**The hilarious and profound novel from National Book Award finalist Joshua Ferris is about an American family in all messy forms—and one man at the head of it.“A fine American novel about family, love, and a decent but flawed man trying to be better." —Stephen King**Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eter...

On an ordinary day in June of 1964 in a small town in the Altiplano of Peru, Sister Mary Katherine (formerly known as Kate), a young American nun recently arrived in this very foreign place, walks away from her convent with no money and no destination. Desperate and afraid of her feelings for an Irish priest with whom she has been working, she spends eight days on the run, encountering a variety of characters along the way: a cynical Englishman who helps her out; a suspicious Peruvian poli...

A Pulitzer Prize FinalistA Library Journal Best Book of 2020This collection of moving short stories is “a treasure trove of lush scene setting in faraway times and places” (San Francisco Chronicle).On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is pos...

For fans of All the Light You Cannot See and The German Girl, Keeping Secrets is a remarkable debut, by a veteran American magazine journalist exploring her own family's flight from Poland.Hannah Stone, now a successful New York City journalist, was smuggled out of Poland as a child with her parents after surviving the Holocaust. They remade themselves in America, harboring the deep scars of stories never told. Now in her thirties, Hannah...