Winter Literary

1910: people are mysteriously dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Strangely, some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. During a dangerously cold winter in a city gripped by fear, the Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city's medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Battling local customs, an occupying army, and a brutal epidemic with no name, the Baron is torn between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition.

As the dark specter of the Nazis settles over Germany, two wealthy and educated brothers are suddenly thrust into the rising tide of war. Karl, a former soldier and successful businessman, dutifully answers the call to defend his country, while contemplative academic Gerhard is coerced into informing for the Gestapo. Soon the brothers are serving in the SS, and as Hitler's hateful agenda brings about unspeakable atrocities, they find themselves with innocent blood on their hands.

Gripping and atmospheric, Winter in Tabriz tells the story of four young people living in 1970s Iran during the months immediately prior to the revolution and the choices they have to make as a result of the ensuing upheaval. The lives of Damian and Anna, both from Oxford University, become enmeshed with two Iranians - Arash, a poet, and his older brother, Reza, a student sympathetic to the problems of the dissident writers in Iran and a would-be photojournalist, interested in capturing the rebellion on the streets.

In 1911, a young John Shaw from South Carolina had his first taste of flying. In 1926, two years after the plane crash death of his best friend, he attempted a solo flight record in a refitted 1923 Curtiss Jenny. Then, with half the journey completed, his plane was caught in a storm, went down, and for 17 years he was listed as missing, presumed dead. The Longest Winter is a work of fiction, the tale of one man's life. His story is one of despair and courage, tragedy and triumph.

On a farm in Jutland, Fredrik Gregersen struggles to keep his children fed, supplementing his income by smuggling refugees through Denmark into Sweden. Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, Polina, a young Polish Jew, has been forced into prostitution by the Nazis. When Fredrik steals an heirloom necklace from a helpless Jewish family, his fate becomes intertwined with Polina's, entrapping them both in a complex web that takes decades to unravel.

Decades after her divorce, a lady returns to the village of her tumultuous marriage. A railway carriage hosts a charged schoolboy encounter. A murder raises fears of blackmail. A woman waits anxiously in a café before eloping to Paris. Another steals a friend's kitchen knife. In these bittersweet tales, the author of Lolly Willowes reveals her mastery of the short story, celebrated by the New Yorker for decades. Sylvia Townsend Warner is a tragicomic chronicler of the heart's entanglements.

Get the first three books in the Year of Discovery series in one box set: January, February, and March. Over 350 pages of tragedy, tribulation, and triumph in one volume. Twelve women connected by the death of another, realizing what they most want from life, and reaching for it - this is the year of discovery, the year of new beginnings. This compilation includes the titles: January, February, and March.

There is a middle world between life and death, and Tess must navigate it to save her brother in this heart-wrenching story infused with the fractured and fantastical realms of Finnish mysticism. Axel and Tess are bewildered when a stranger shows up in their backyard accompanied by a giant brown bear, but before they can investigate the bizarre encounter, something more harrowing happens: their father is killed in a freak car accident.

Ulli is a young woman, half English and half German, squatting in a dismal, empty Berlin apartment one year after the war has ended. She's scraping together a living as an interpreter between Berlin-based GIs and the wide-eyed local girls eager to meet them. One night Ulli meets two American soldiers: Leo, handsome and ambitious and desperate to escape his small-town upbringing, and intellectual, asthmatic Isaac, whose refugee parents had fled Russia and then Paris for New York. Winter Kept Us Warm follows Ulli, Leo, and Isaac through the next six decades of their lives - from Berlin to postwar Manhattan, 1960s Los Angeles, and Morocco.

Kyra and David Winter are happier than they ever expected to be. They have a comfortable home, stable careers, and a young son, Michael, whom they adore. Though everyone who knows the Winters considers them extremely overprotective parents, both Kyra and David believe they have good reasons for fearing that something will happen to their little boy. And then, on a perfectly average summer day, it does, when Michael disappears from his own backyard. The only question is whose past has finally caught up with them: David feels sure that Michael was taken by his troubled ex-wife....

When Eric drops out of college and lucks into a job with a small-town newspaper, he meets Anna, an older woman with a story that will both haunt and inspire him for the rest of his life. Set in a remote North Dakota community in the last days before the Internet, the story unfolds around a romance that almost was and a meditation on what constitutes a life well-lived. Narrated by Eric as he looks back on their days together, he struggles to reconcile his memories with what he has since learned about Anna.

Reluctant to leave her cherished New England hometown after her sister's winter wedding, former journalist Vera Sterling makes a sudden decision. She takes what's left of her severance pay and invests it in real estate ... in one particular drafty colonial home and old timber barn set upon the pretty banks of Addison Cove. In that rough-hewn barn, she discovers a secret treasure left behind by the previous owner, the proprietor of the long-forgotten Christmas Barn gift shop. While restoring her run-down, wood-sided home--its creaking floors, broken banister, and neglected widow's walk--that secret slowly unfolds like a bit of snowflake wonder, crystallizing hopes and dreams for many in this small Connecticut town.

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.

A breathtaking novel, rare and moving, about the world's greatest chef and his unruly heart. White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who changed how we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz. A man of contradictions - kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry - Escoffier was also torn between two women: The famous, beautiful, and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the independent and sublime poet Delphine Daffis, who refused ever to leave Monte Carlo.

With this collection of beautifully written, interconnected stories, Nalini Jones establishes herself as a strong, new voice in contemporary fiction. Home to her characters is a Catholic town in India - an India unfamiliar to most American readers - but the tales of their relationships, ambitions, and concerns are altogether universal, capturing the miscommunication, expectations, joys, and losses experienced by families everywhere.

Darcy, a restless young artist, travels to the Soviet Union to visit his elusive half-sister, Fin. Upon his arrival in the depths of a bleak Moscow winter, Darcy is immediately embroiled in Fin's mysterious life there and also drawn to Moscow's forbidden underground, finding himself swept up in political and sexual intrigues of a nature he could never have imagined.

It’s the fall of 1979 in New York City when 23-year-old Anton Winter, back from the Peace Corps and on the mend from a nasty bout of malaria, returns to his childhood home in the Dakota. Anton’s father, the famous late-night host Buddy Winter, is there to greet him, himself recovering from a breakdown. Before long, Anton is swept up in an effort to reignite Buddy’s stalled career, a mission that takes him from the gritty streets of New York, to the slopes of the Lake Placid Olympics, to the Hollywood Hills, to the blue waters of the Bermuda Triangle.

Scott is spending his winter in the Hamptons with his wife, Elise, who is taking care of her terminally ill father. With Elise in the hospital every day and their marriage growing increasingly strained, Scott spends a lot of time alone. He finds himself fascinated with the seemingly empty house next door, where every night the lights go out at exactly 11:00 p.m. Convinced no one is home, he decides to break in the next day. Although he doesn't discover much of interest, trespassing gives him a thrill he hasn't felt in a long time.

Join Danny and his friends as they have many misadventures in a southwestern Pennsylvania steel town during the late 1950s and early 60s. The story has many memorable and odd characters. It was a much simpler time; there were no cell phones, computers, or video games. People still gathered around the radio to listen to Superman and Fiber Magee and Molly. If they were lucky enough to have a TV, it was black and white and all kitchen appliances were white.

Kachemak Winkel never intended to come back to his hometown of Caboose, Alaska, where his family died in a plane crash 20 years earlier. When he finally musters the courage to return and face his painful memories, he's surprised to find a mysterious young woman living in his abandoned house.