“Well, here I am at five and three quarters. It’s Christmas 1939 in a little Austrian village in Hitler’s Third Reich and I’m just beginning to notice things. Like what my brothers and sisters are about and why my parents are often crying and my father usually shouting when he isn’t crying. I think it has something to do with the war we’re fighting, which according to the wireless is due to The International Jewish Conspiracy, whatever that is, but that’s not all. I don’t know it yet, but ...

Almost the first thing callow young Englishman John Denton sees when he steps ashore in Shanghai in 1903 is the public beheading of some pirates. Shocked and sickened though he is, he must adapt himself to the brutal but fascinating city of extremes, and he spends the rest of his life there, through all the vicissitudes of revolution, riot, lawlessness and war. He makes, loses, and regains a fortune, dangerously crosses a powerful triad leader, enters politics, is imprisoned by the Japanes...

Literature, like the visual arts, poses its own philosophical problems. While literary theorists have discussed the nature of literature intensively, analytic philosophers have usually dealt with literary problems either within the general framework of aesthetics or else in a way that is accessible only to a philosophical audience. The present book is unique in that it introduces the philosophy of literature from an analytic perspective accessible to both students of literature and student...

Hong Kong's demi-monde at the height of the British Empire... Franziska Goldmann, an opera singer fallen on hard times, has become the star courtesan in 19th century Hong Kong. A chance encounter with Queen Victoria's musical second son seems to offer Franziska an opportunity to resume her career as a singer. But it is the other unpredictable characters in her life, including her German anarchist lover and a devious procurer, who may ultimately determine her destiny. The haunting story of ...

**** Longlisted for The Center for Fiction's best debut novel of 2019 **With the hypnotic intensity of Emily Fridlund’s The History of Wolves and Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest, Katherine Forbes Riley has created a mesmerizing love story, in lush, gorgeous prose, that examines art, science, and the magic of human chemistry.**"Teeming with lush imagery and mystical settings, and brimming with alluring magical realism, Riley’s tale is a beguil...

Introducing Victorian England’s most illustrious amateur sleuth (if not necessarily its most adept): Bertie, Prince of Wales, who can’t help but poke his royal nose into a suspicious-sounding circumstance.Bertie, Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII, is a charismatic but self-indulgent man who enjoys the finer things in life, including dining, flirting, and flitting from party to party with his entire thirty-person staff in tow. But the fun and games come to ...

”[A] primer on the threat to democracy posed by—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—the current president of the United States.”—David Litt, New York Times bestselling authorDonald Trump isn’t a despot. But he is increasingly acting like The Despot’s Apprentice, an understudy in authoritarian tactics that threaten to erode American democracy, including:Attacking the pressThreatening rule of law by firing tho...

A startling debut novel about the burden of Holocaust memory and the implacable zest for life.Thirty-six years after her mother was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, the unnamed narrator lives a comfortable life in Paris. Her mother sees ghosts at every turn, longing to find the family that disappeared behind the miasma of the Holocaust, but she cannot reconcile her mother’s trauma to the cheery bustle of daily life that surrounds them. The pain of memories that are no...

A long-denied love reignites after decades—and puts a marriage at risk—in this "absorbing" New York Times bestseller ( People).Twenty-five years ago, Martin Roth made the most difficult decision of his life. He gave up the girl he loved, married a different woman, and raised a family. But he's just been given another shot at happiness.Sylvia has loved Martin since she was a young girl. They have two great children and a wonderful life toget...

This powerful, meticulously researched novel is a moving tale of one girl’s struggle against a world in turmoil. In 1930s Berlin, choked by the tightening of Hitler’s fist, the Klein family is gradually losing everything that is precious to them. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, Rosa, slips out of Germany on a Kindertransport train to begin a new life in England. Charged with the task of securing a safe passage for her family, she vows that she will not rest until they are safe. But as war...

From Anne Griffin, the bestselling author of When All is Said, comes Listening Still, a refreshing new novel about a young woman who can hear the dead—a talent which is both a gift and a curse.Jeanie Masterson has a gift: she can hear the recently dead and give voice to their final wishes and revelations. Inherited from her father, this gift has enabled the family undertakers to flourish in their small Irish town. Yet she has always been uneasy abo...

“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...