Genre Literature

In the slums of 18th-century France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift - an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects. Then one day, he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume" - the scent of a beautiful young virgin.

A successful LA artist, Roman Velasco appears to have everything he could possibly want - money, women, fame. Only Grace Moore, his reluctant, newly hired personal assistant, knows how little he truly has. The demons of Roman's past seem to echo through the halls of his empty mansion and out across his breathtaking Topanga Canyon view. But Grace doesn't know how her boss secretly wrestles with those demons: by tagging buildings as the Bird, a notorious but unidentified graffiti artist - an alter ego that could destroy his career and land him in prison.

After a devastating layoff, attorney Eric Nash heads back to the town where he grew up - only to discover that his childhood home is being transformed into a bed-and-breakfast. Instead of plotting his next career move in peace, he's constantly distracted by noise, chaos - and BJ Stevens, the attractive but prickly blonde architect and construction chief who's invaded the house with her motley crew.

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act.

Kitten is quickly losing herself and her sanity under the hands of a man claiming to be her uncle. With her mind playing tricks on her and the emotional pain of being away from her guys, she isn't sure how much longer she can hold on. While the guys continue to wrestle with their sorrow and frustration, they find an unlikely accomplice that may be the key to helping them find their missing woman.

For plain and pure imaginative delight, Treasure Island is unsurpassed. From the moment narrator Jim Hawkins meets the blind pirate Pew at the Admiral Benbow Inn until the spirited battle for hidden treasure on a tropic island, the novel spawns unforgettable scenes and characters that have thrilled readers young and old since its original publication in 1883.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.

Lady Miranda Hawthorne acts every inch the lady, but inside she longs to be bold and carefree. Entering her fourth Season and approaching spinsterhood in the eyes of society, she pours her innermost feelings out not in a diary but in letters to her brother's old school friend, a duke - with no intention of ever sending these private thoughts to a man she's heard stories about but never met.

Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the 20th century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangiers, and, ultimately, a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone.

When Xerxes, king of Persia, issues a call for beautiful young women, Hadassah, a Jewish orphan living in Susa, is forcibly taken to the palace of the pagan ruler. After months of preparation, the girl known to the Persians as Esther wins the king's heart and a queen's crown. But because her situation is uncertain, she keeps her ethnic identity a secret until she learns that an evil and ambitious man has won the king's permission to exterminate all Jews - young and old, powerful, and helpless.

Knowledge is power. That would be the motto of Lander University, had it not been snatched up and used to death by others long before the school was founded. For while Lander offers a full range of courses to nearly all students, it also offers a small number of specialty classes to a very select few. Lander is home to the Hero Certification Program, a curriculum designed to develop students with superhuman capabilities, commonly known as Supers, into official Heroes.

À la suite d'un incendie qui ravage complètement leur maison, Marie-Thérèse et Jaquelin Lafrance doivent se retrousser les manches pour assurer leur survie et celle de leurs six enfants. Cordonnier de métier, Jaquelin est contraint de prendre le chemin des chantiers pour faire vivre sa famille puisque son atelier, attenant à la maison, a également été la proie des flammes. Il est difficile d'aller bûcher lorsqu'on est plus familier avec le travail du cuir et la réparation des bottines !

Emily Emerson is used to being alone; her dad ran out on the family when she was just a kid, her mom died when she was 17, and her beloved grandmother has just passed away as well. But when she's laid off from her reporting job, she finds herself completely at sea until the day she receives a beautiful, haunting painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field under a violet sky. That woman is recognizable as her grandmother - and the painting arrived with no identification other than a handwritten note saying, "He always loved her."

With the coming of dawn is the coming of death for a captured English officer in British-controlled Palestine. Elisha, a young Israeli freedom fighter, is his executioner. Ordered to kill the officer in reprisal for Britain's execution of a Jewish prisoner, Elisha thinks about his past, a sorrowful memory of the nightmare of Nazi death camps. As the only surviving member of his family, he dreamt of a wonderful future in his promised homeland.

Alan Moore channels both the ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert Einstein through the hardscrabble streets and alleys of his hometown of Northampton, UK. In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative, among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts, a different kind of human time is happening.

Esi Edugyan won wide acclaim for her stunning novel Half-Blood Blues - a Man Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In it, 83-year-old Sid Griffiths remembers his time during WWII playing in a Berlin jazz band called the Hot Time Swingers. When jazz music was denounced by the Nazis, Sid and his bandmates fled to Paris - a move that put Hieronymous, the band's brilliantly talented trumpeter, in constant danger due to his Afro-German heritage.

A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.

Abigail Foster fears she will end up a spinster, especially as she has little dowry to improve her charms and the one man she thought might marry her - a longtime friend - has fallen for her younger, prettier sister. When financial problems force her family to sell their London home, a strange solicitor arrives with an astounding offer: the use of a distant manor house abandoned for 18 years. The Fosters journey to imposing Pembrooke Park and are startled to find it entombed as it was abruptly left.

Kait Whittier has built her magazine column into a hugely respected read followed by fans across the country. She loves her work and adores her grown children, treasuring the time they spend together. But after two marriages she prefers to avoid the complications and uncertainties of a new love. Then, after a chance meeting with Zack Winter, a television producer visiting Manhattan from Los Angeles, everything changes.

Recently widowed, Rivkah refuses to submit to the Torah law compelling her to marry her husband's brother and instead flees Kedesh, hoping to use her talents as a scribe to support herself. Without the protections of her father, Kedesh's head priest, and the safety of the city of refuge, Rivkah soon discovers that the cost of recklessness is her own freedom. Malakhi has secretly loved Rivkah for years. After her disappearance, he throws himself into the ongoing fight against the Canaanites instead of dwelling on all he has lost.