The Sky Unwashed

The Shell Seekers

Rosamunde Pilcher · 582 pages

The Shell Seekers is a novel of connection: of one family, and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations. The Shell Seekers is filled with real people--mothers and daughters, husband and lovers--inspired with real values. The Shell Seekers centers on Penelope Keeling--a woman you'll always remember in world you'll never forget. The Shell Seekers is a magical

Baba Dunja's Last Love

Alina Bronsky · 163 pages

"Baba Dunja is a Chernobyl returnee. Together with a motley bunch of former neighbours, they set off to create a new life for themselves in the radioactive no-man's land. Geiger counter and irradiated forest fruits be damned, there in that abandoned patch of Earth they have everything they need. Terminally ill Petrov passes the time reading love poems in his hammock; Marja takes up with 100-year-o

The House I Loved

Tatiana de Rosnay · 222 pages

"Paris, France: 1860's. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, moulding it into a modern city. The reforms will erase generations of history-but in the midst of the tumult, one woman will take a stand. Rose Ba

The Story of Beautiful Girl

Rachel Simon · 346 pages

A novel about a woman who can't speak, a man who is deaf, and a widow who finds herself suddenly caring for a newborn baby. Pennsylvania, 1968. Lynnie, and her sweetheart Homan, have escaped from The School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, an institution where people with disabilities were routinely shut off from society, and left to languish, forgotten.

The Four Winds

Kristin Hannah · 472 pages

Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is

The Dollmaker

Harriette Simpson Arnow · 624 pages

Fire On The Mountain

Anita Desai · 145 pages

In this novel of India, Nadia Kaul's great-granddaughter is sent to spend the summer with her. Nadia is upset by having her routine disturbed but finds herself attempting to draw out and communicated with the strange and unfathomable girl who is strangely like herself.

The Pecan Man

Cassie Dandridge Selleck

The Woman from Tantoura

Radwa Ashour · 376 pages

When the Emperor Was Divine

Julie Otsuka · 143 pages

Shanghai Girls

Lisa See · 417 pages

In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father's prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Th

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell · 864 pages

Margaret Mitchell's monumental epic of the South won a Pulitzer Prize, gave rise to the most popular motion picture of our time, and inspired a sequel that became the fastest selling novel of the century. It is one of the most popular books ever written: more than 28 million copies of the book have been sold in more than 37 countries. Today, more than 60 years after its initial publication, its ac

Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen · 336 pages

When Mr. Dashwood dies, he must leave the bulk of his estate to the son by his first marriage, which leaves his second wife and three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) in straitened circumstances. They are taken in by a kindly cousin, but their lack of fortune affects the marriageability of both practical Elinor and romantic Marianne. When Elinor forms an attachment for the wealthy Edward

Salt Houses

Hala Alyan · 320 pages

"From a dazzling new literary voice, a debut novel about a Palestinian family caught between present and past, between displacement and home ... On the eve of her daughter Alia's wedding, Salma reads the girl's future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they wi

When the Wind Blows

Raymond Briggs · 46 pages

Raymond Briggs' now famous bestselling comic cartoon book depicts the effects of a nuclear attack on an elderly couple in his usual humorous yet macabre way.

Burnt Shadows

Kamila Shamsie · 384 pages

A powerful, sweeping epic crossing generations, cultures and continentsIn a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders...August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes sw

Dungeon

Svetlana Velmar-Jankovic · 219 pages

Every Last Cuckoo

Kate Maloy · 290 pages

Sarah Lucas imagined the rest of her days would be spent living peacefully in her rural Vermont home in the steadfast company of her husband. But now, with Charles's sudden passing, seventy-five-year-old Sarah is left inconsolably alone. As grief settles in, Sarah's mind lingers on her past: her imperfect but devoted fifty-year marriage to Charles; the years they spent raising their three very

All That Is Solid Melts into Air

Darragh McKeon · 418 pages

In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster the Soviet Union begins to collapse changing forever the lives of a nine-year old child prodigy, his aunt, a leading surgeon, and a teenage boy in a rural village. Russia, 1986. In a run-down apartment block in Moscow, a nine-year-old piano prodigy practices silently for fear of disturbing the neighbours. In a factory on the outskirts of the city, his aunt mak

Farewell to Matyora

Valentin Rasputin · 227 pages

Mornings in Jenin

Susan Abulhawa · 352 pages

Forcibly removed from the ancient village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejas are moved into the Jenin refugee camp. There, exiled from his beloved olive groves, the family patriarch languishes of a broken heart, his eldest son fathers a family and falls victim to an Israeli bullet, and his grandchildren struggle against tragedy toward freedom, peace, and home. Th

The Winter Vault

Anne Michaels · 341 pages

Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives.In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for the dismantling a

Sweetland

Michael Crummey · 322 pages

For twelve generations, the inhabitants of a remote island in Newfoundland have lived and died together. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, they are facing resettlement. They have each been offered a generous compensation package to leave the island for good. There's just one proviso: everyone must go. Gradually, all of the residents surrender to the inevitable. All of the residents, t

Long Man

Amy Greene · 271 pages

"In the summer of 1936, the TVA plans to build a dam in a Tennessee town at the same time a little girl goes missing--possibly stolen by a drifter determined to blow up the dam"--