World Fiction

Kabul, 1978: The daughter of a prominent family, Sitara Zamani lives a privileged life in Afghanistan’s thriving cosmopolitan capital. The 1970s are a time of remarkable promise under the leadership of people like Sardar Daoud, Afghanistan’s progressive president, and Sitara’s beloved father, his right-hand man. But the ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists stage a coup, assassinating the president and Sitara’s entire family. Only she survives.

Georgian mansion Wharton Park was a place of childhood solace for Julia Forrester, spending summers in the Norfolk countryside with her beloved grandfather. So after tragedy strikes, she finds herself seeking comfort at Wharton and the allure of its hothouse, once home to exotic flowers from all corners of the globe but now lying abandoned. There she meets the new owner, the charming and magnetic Kit Crawford, whose own past is shrouded in sadness and mystery.

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road. One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen, but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.”

The thrilling new novel from number-one New York Times best-selling author Lisa See explores the lives of a Chinese mother and her daughter who has been abandoned and adopted by an American couple.

In the late 19th century, a cylinder crashes down near London. When George investigates, a Martian activates an evil machine and begins destroying everything in its path! George must find a way to survive a War of the Worlds.

When Rin aced the Keju - the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies - it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard - the most elite military school in Nikan - was even more surprising.

France, 1918. In the final days of the First World War, Pauline Deng runs away from her uncle’s home in Paris to evade a marriage being arranged for her in Shanghai. To prevent the union, she needs the help of her cousin Theo, who is working in the French countryside as a translator for the Chinese Labour Corps.

Be warned! Awful animals lurk inside. These 10 tales of the world’s craziest creatures will have you shaking with laughter. You’ll never look at pets in the same way again! Marvel at Houdini, the magician’s rabbit. Take a trip around the world with Zoom, the supersonic tortoise. Gasp at the chaos created by Griselda, a grizzly bear with a big secret. And run for your lives! It’s Furp, the monstrous goldfish!

A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

Being alive is hard. Being human is harder. But since his recent recovery from death, R is making progress. He's learning how to read, how to speak, maybe even how to love, and the city's undead population is showing signs of life. R can almost imagine a future with Julie, this girl who restarted his heart - building a new world from the ashes of the old one.

Award-winning journalist and author Simon Winchester takes readers on a personal tour of the Balkans. Combining history and interviews with the people who live there, Winchester offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex issues at work in this chaotic region. Unrest in the Balkans has gone on for centuries. A seasoned reporter, Winchester visited the region twenty years ago. When Kosovo reached crisis level in 1997, Winchester thought a return visit to the beleaguered area would help to make sense out of the awful violence.

Life on the Rush farm in South Dakota is not easy. Even so, over the past four years, Ethan Cooper and his siblings have grown to feel they belong with their adoptive family. Then Chad Rush makes an unexpected announcement. The family is moving again - this time to Mexico! Ethan is scared. What dangers will they face in another country? What will it be like to live on an oil homestead instead of a farm? And what about his dreams of getting an education? He can't leave his siblings after he's promised they would stay together - can he?

When Lewis, his uncle Jonathan, and their friends Rose Rita Pottinger and Mrs. Zimmermann take a trip to a small town near Lake Superior, they expect a pleasant vacation. Instead, they find themselves facing the ghastly Ishmael Izard, son of the fiendish creator of the Doomsday Clock that was once hidden in the walls of Uncle Jonathan's house. Ishmael himself is a cruel and heartless sorcerer, and he is determined to wreak vengeance upon the entire world. Will Lewis and his friends be strong enough to defeat him, or will their fate be decided by their most formidable foe yet?

Soline Roussel is well schooled in the business of happy endings. For generations her family has kept an exclusive bridal salon in Paris, where magic is worked with needle and thread. It’s said that the bride who wears a Roussel gown is guaranteed a lifetime of joy. But devastating losses during World War II leave Soline’s world and heart in ruins and her faith in love shaken. She boxes up her memories, stowing them away, along with her broken dreams, determined to forget.

"Je suis incapable de faire mon autobiographie", déclare Nathalie Sarraute en 1979. Et pourtant... ce texte, écrit sous la forme d'un dialogue entre Nathalie Sarraute et son double, fait émerger comme par vagues, et avec une stupéfiante lucidité, des moments d'une enfance passée entre Paris, Ivanovo en Russie, la Suisse, Saint-Pétersbourg et de nouveau Paris.

It is June 1940. The war against Hitler’s forces is raging. And the tide is turning against the British. In this hour of despair, Prime Minister Winston Churchill receives a mysterious letter from an even more mysterious woman, offering a Faustian bargain and a promise of victory. But if Churchill accepts, will he be condemning his nation’s very soul?

As the dutiful daughter of a high-ranking Nazi officer, Hetty Heinrich is keen to play her part in the glorious new Thousand Year Reich. But she never imagines that all she believes and knows about her world will come into stark conflict when she encounters Walter, a Jewish friend from the past, who stirs dangerous feelings in her. Confused and conflicted, Hetty doesn’t know whom she can trust and where she can turn to, especially when she discovers that someone has been watching her.

Catherine Morland reads tales of Gothic romance, yet leads a country life in Wiltshire. When she travels to Bath, she meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney. She is invited by his sister and father to stay at Northanger Abbey, where she meets all the trappings of Gothic horror that she has read about. Fortunately, she has her own good sense and irresistible but unsentimental hero, Henry Tilney.

This spellbinding historical novel by celebrated Israeli author Yochi Brandes tells the story of the venerated yet enigmatic Rabbi Akiva, placing him in the context of his contemporaries, the Sages of Jewish tradition and of early Christianity. Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Ishmael, Rabban Gamaliel, Paul of Tarsus, and many others become flesh and blood in this stunning interweaving of biblical and Talmudic lore.

Thrall, wise shaman and the warchief of the Horde, has sensed a disturbing change . . . Long ago, Azeroth’s destructive native elementals raged across the world until the benevolent titans imprisoned them within the Elemental Plane. Despite the titans’ intervention, many elementals have ended up back on Azeroth. Over the ages, shaman like Thrall have communed with these spirits and, through patience and dedication, learned to soothe roaring infernos, bring rain to sun-scorched lands, and otherwise temper the elementals’ ruinous influence on the world of Azeroth.