A poetic immersion into the life and art of Joan Mitchell, the great American abstract expressionist painterA contemporary of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell is not as well known as her male counterparts, not only because she was a woman but also because she spent most of her working life in France. Still, in 2013 Bloomberg listed Mitchell as the best-selling female artist of all time.When asked to talk about her paintings, Joan Mitchell often ...

The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingale's life, leaving her middle-aged and alone, teaching in an impoverished borough of 1950s New York. A plea from her estranged brother gives Bea the excuse to escape lassitude by leaving for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows; but the siren call of Europe threatens to deafen Bea to the dangers of entangling herself in the lives of her brother's family. The story of Bea's travails on the continent is a fierce and heartbrea...

This astute, entertaining literary thriller features Helena Marsh, an art authenticator hot on the trail of an extorted painting in Budapest, skirting the law to return it to its rightful heir. In the vein of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels comes this year's smart new thriller with literary chops When wealthy octogenarian Geza Marton hires art expert Helena Marsh to buy back his family's Titian painting, Helena flies to Budapest to close what she expects will be a reasonably simple s...

When wealthy octogenarian Geza Marton hires art expert Helena Marsh to buy back his family’s Titian painting, Helena flies to Budapest to close what she expects will be a reasonably simple sale. But Helena discovers that there are multiple bidders for the painting, including some dangerous Slavs. Soon there are also dead bodies, and a complicated history that leads her to men Marton knew in Vorkuta, one of Stalin’s notorious gulags.

Critically acclaimed author Thomas Steinbeck, eldest son of the famous Nobel laureate John Steinbeck, pens a compelling tale of adventure and romance with The Silver Lotus. In the early 1800s, merchant Captain Jeremiah Macy Hammond is searching for new customers. Along the way, he comes up against pirates, storms, and illness. But when he falls for Lady Yee, prized daughter of a wealthy merchant family, he discovers that love is the greatest challenge of all.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Cynthia Ozick's fiction has been awarded multiple O. Henry Prizes. In Foreign Bodies, Ozick crafts a remarkable retelling of Henry James' The Ambassadors-deftly using its plot, yet boldly infusing the novel with an all new place, time, and meaning. It's 1952, and middle-aged Bea Nightingale reluctantly agrees to fly to Paris to help convince her estranged runaway nephew to return to his family. But Bea's experiences abroad will change her forever.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Night Watch**, a spectacularly riveting novel based on a real-life crime by a con man who preyed on widows: “a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction” (Stephen King).**In Chicago in 1931, Asta Eicher, a lonely mother of three, is desperate for money after the sudden death of her husband. She begins to receive seductive letters from a chivalrous, elegant man named Harry Powers, who promises to cherish...

A poignant and evocative novel of one Greek woman’s story of her own—and her nation’s—epic struggle in the aftermath of World War II.Aliki is one of the last of her kind, a lamenter who mourns and celebrates the passing of life. She is part of an evolving Greece, one moving steadily away from its rural traditions. To capture the fading folk art of lamenting, an American researcher asks Aliki to record her laments, but in response, Aliki sings her own story...

Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley' s Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many readers see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power-- all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor. Companion volume Where on Earth explores Le Guin's satirical, risky, political and experimental earthboun...

The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories-- as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself-- the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution...

Acclaimed author M.A.C. Farrant has been hailed as "a brave iconoclast" by Publishers Weekly and is well known for her pithy wit and maverick sensibilities. Broken into three sections, The Strange Truth About Us is a fusion of fragmented prose, probing questions and caustic satire. The result is both a meditation on absence and a commentary on the human penchant for complacency.

The ninth mystery in a series that "gets better with every book" (Globe and Mail) Twelve-year-old Bonnie MacDonald - the beloved stepdancing, fiddling youngest member of Cape Breton's famed Clan Donnie band - vanishes after a family party. There was no stranger spotted lurking around, but no one thinks for one minute that Bonnie ran away. Maura MacNeil, cousin to Clan Donnie, offers her husband's legal services to the family as the police search for the missing girl. But fame attracts some...