Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant "The Shack" wrestles with the timeless question, "Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?" The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You'll want everyone you know to read this book!

Following her National Book Award finalist, "Evidence of Things Unseen," Marianne Wiggins turns her extraordinary literary imagination to the American West, where the life of legendary photographer Edward S. Curtis is the basis for a resonant exploration of history and family, landscape and legacy."The Shadow Catcher" dramatically inhabits the space where past and present intersect, seamlessly interweaving narratives from two different eras: the first fraught passion between turn-of-the-twentieth-century icon Edward Curtis (1868–1952) and his muse-wife, Clara; and a twenty-first-century journey of redemption.Narrated in the first person by a reimagined writer named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Hollywood, where top producers are eager to sentimentalize the complicated life of Edward Curtis as a sunny biopic: ""It's got the outdoors. It's got adventure. It's got the do-good element."" Yet, contrary to Curtis's esteemed public reputation as servant to his nation, the artist was an absent husband and disappearing father. Jump to the next generation, when Marianne's own father, John Wiggins (1920–1970), would live and die in equal thrall to the impulse of wanderlust.Were the two men running "from" or running to? Dodging the false beacons of memory and legend, Marianne amasses disparate clues — photographs and hospital records, newspaper clippings and a rare white turquoise bracelet — to recover those moments that went unrecorded, "to hear the words only the silent ones can speak." "The Shadow Catcher," fueled by the great American passions for love and land and family, chases the silhouettes of our collective history into the bright light of the present.

What would you do to be Number One?The Number Ones always get the glory. They win the races and take the gold medals, leaving the second-place kids in the dust. For Jared and Cheryl, nothing is worse than being second best, hidden in someone else’s shadow. Their idea to form a club of second-best kids seems harmless enough at first—they just want to air their bad feelings about their archrivals. But when that isn’t enough to keep everyone interested, Jared suggests that the Shadow Club members play anonymous practical jokes on each other’s enemies. What they don’t know is that Tyson McGaw, the school reject, is eavesdropping—and that he has a few ideas of his own.“This is a provocative novel. . . . The plot is ingeni­ously simple and the course of events compelling. It will leave readers thinking.” —Booklist, starred review“The mystery is well-constructed, with a logical yet unexpected finale that provides moral weight as well as plot satisfaction.” —BCCB“This engrossing book portrays how easily ‘good’ kids can lose control. Shusterman vividly conveys the over­whelming qualities of violent emotions and chillingly shows how a group of nice people can become a vengeful mob.” —“Powerfull. Every reader who has felt resentment will identify with these young people, their anger, and their terror.” —Kirkus Reviews

Tea-Bag, a young African girl, has fled a refugee camp in Spain for the promise of a new life in Sweden. Tanya has made a dangerous journey from Eastern Europe to escape the misery of life in a brothel. Leyla, the only girl who lives in Sweden legally, has travelled with her family from Iran. All of them are facing different challenges in their new home.Meanwhile, celebrated poet Jesper Humlin is looking for inspiration. Harried by his mother and girlfriend, misunderstood by his publisher and tormented by his stockbroker, Jesper needs a new perspective on life.A chance encounter with Tea-Bag leads him into the shadow world of the immigrant experience in Sweden. Initially he sees the girls purely as material for his next work, but he soon discovers that they have very different ideas about what role he will play in their lives.In The Shadow Girls, Henning Mankell tells the extraordinary stories of three young women who are determined to overcome the hardships they face to take control of their own lives. This inspiring novel encompasses both humour and tragedy and illuminates our understanding of those left on the margins of society.

A boy growing up in suburban Calcutta in the 1960s experiences the world through the eyes of others. When a seemingly random act of violence threatens his vision of the world, he begins piecing together events for himself, and in the process unravels secrets with devastating consequences.

A novel of the black markets of the South Vietnamese city of Danang during the Vietnam War, based on the author’s experiences as a self-described South Korean mercenary on the side of the South Vietnamese, this is a Vietnam War novel like no other, truly one that sees the war from all sides. Scenes of battle are breathtakingly well told. The plot is thick with intrigue and complex subplots. But ultimately The Shadow of Arms is a novel of the human condition rather than of the exploits and losses of one side or the other in war.

Set in a fictitious African nation, this novel by the distinguished writer Sony Labou Tansi takes aim at the corruption, degeneracy, violence, and repression of political life in Africa. At the heart of The Shameful State is the story of Colonel Martillimi Lopez, the nation’s president, whose eccentricity and whims epitomize the “shameful situation in which humanity has elected to live.” Lopez stages a series of grotesque and barbaric events while his nation falls apart. Unable to resist the dictator’s will, his desperate citizens are left with nothing but humiliation. The evocation of this deranged world is a showcase for the linguistic and stylistic inventiveness that are the hallmark of Sony Labou Tansi’s work.This first English translation by Dominic Thomas includes a foreword by Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou that contextualizes the novel’s importance in literary history and the significance of Sony Labou Tansi for future generations of writers.

Laura Rivera can’t believe what has happened. Her best friend has been killed in cold blood in the living room of her home, in front of her two young daughters! Nobody knows who pulled the trigger, but Laura will not rest easy until she finds out. Her dizzying, delirious, hilarious, and blood-curdling one-sided dialogue carries the reader on a rough and tumble ride through the social, political, economic, and sexual chaos of post-civil war San Salvador. A detective story of pulse-quickening suspense, The She-Devil in the Mirror is also a sober reminder that justice and truth are more often than not illusive. Castellanos Moya’s relentless, obsessive narrator — female, rich, paranoid, wonderfully perceptive, and, in the end, fabulously unreliable — paints with frivolous profundity a society in a state of collapse.Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness was acclaimed “an innovative and invigoratingly twisted piece of art” (Village Voice) and “a brilliantly crafted moral fable, as if Kafka had gone to Latin America for his source materials” (Russell Banks).

American novelist and short-story writer, poet, translator, classical music composer, and filmscorer Paul Bowles has lived as an expatriate for more than 40 years in the North African nation of Morocco, a country that reaches into the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert. The desert is itself a character in The Sheltering Sky, the most famous of Bowles’ books, which is about three young Americans of the postwar generation who go on a walkabout into Northern Africa’s own arid heart of darkness. In the process, the veneer of their lives is peeled back under the author’s psychological inquiry.

American novelist and short-story writer, poet, translator, classical music composer, and filmscorer Paul Bowles has lived as an expatriate for more than 40 years in the North African nation of Morocco, a country that reaches into the vast and inhospitable Sahara Desert. The desert is itself a character in The Sheltering Sky, the most famous of Bowles’ books, which is about three young Americans of the postwar generation who go on a walkabout into Northern Africa’s own arid heart of darkness. In the process, the veneer of their lives is peeled back under the author’s psychological inquiry.

WINNER OF THE 1994 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTIONWINNER OF THE 1993 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTIONWINNER OF THE IRISH TIMES INTERNATIONAL FICTION PRIZENamed one of the notable books of the year by The New York TimesWinner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award“Ms. Proulx blends Newfoundland argot, savage history, impressively diverse characters, fine descriptions of weather and scenery, and comic horseplay without ever lessening the reader’s interest.” – The Atlantic“Vigorous, quirky… displays Ms. Proulx’s surreal humor and her zest for the strange foibles of humanity.” – Howard Norman, The New York Times Book Review“An exciting, beautifully written novel of great feeling about hot people in the northern ice.” – Grace Paley“The Shipping News … is a wildly comic, heart-thumping romance… Here is a novel that gives us a hero for our times.” – Sandra Scofield, The Washington Post Book World“The reader is assaulted by a rich, down-in-the-dirt, up-in-the-skies prose full of portents, repetitions, hold metaphors, brusque dialogues and set pieces of great beauty.” – Nicci Gerrard, The Observer (London)“A funny-tragic Gothic tale, with a speed boat of a plot, overflowing with Black-comic characters. But it’s also that contemporary rarity, a tale of redemption and healing, a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit, and most rare of all perhaps, a sweet and tender romance.” – Sandra Gwynn, The Toronto Star

“Blood is a terrible gossip, it tells everything.”Dr. Miranda is faced with a tragedy: his father has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has only a few weeks to live. He is also faced with a dilemma: How does one tell his father he is dying?Ernesto Duran, a patient of Dr. Miranda’s, is convinced he is sick. Ever since he separated from his wife he has been presenting symptoms of an illness he believes is killing him. It becomes an obsession far exceeding hypochondria. The fixation, in turn, has its own creeping effect on Miranda’s secretary, who cannot, despite her best intentions, resist compassion for the man.A profound and philosophical exploration of the nature and meaning of illness, Alberto Barrera Tyszka’s tender, refined novel interweaves the stories of four individuals as they try, in their own way, to come to terms with sickness in all its ubiquity.

From Ismail Kadare, winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize — a novelist in the class of Coetzee, Pamuk, Marquez, and Rushdie-the stunning new translation of one of his major works.In the early fifteenth century, as winter falls away, the people of Albania know that their fate is sealed. They have refused to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire, and war is now inevitable. Soon enough, dust kicked up by Turkish horses is spotted from a citadel. Brightly coloured banners, hastily constructed minarets, and tens of thousands of men fill the plain below. From this moment on, the world is waiting to hear that the fortress has fallen.The Siege tells the enthralling story of the weeks and months that follow — of the exhilaration and despair of the battlefield, the constantly shifting strategies of war, and those whose lives are held in the balance, from the Pasha himself to the artillerymen, astrologer, blind poet, and harem of women who accompany him."Believe me," the general said. "I've taken part in many sieges but this," he waved towards the castle walls, "is where the most fearful carnage of our times will take place. And you surely know as well as I do that great massacres always give birth to great books. You really do have an opportunity to write a thundering chronicle redolent with pitch and blood, and it will be utterly different from the graceful whines composed at the fireside by squealers who never went to war."Brilliantly vivid, as insightful as it is compelling, The Siege is an unforgettable account of the clash of two great civilisations, and a portrait of war that will resonate across the centuries.

Everyone Anton Waker grew up with is corrupt. His parents deal in stolen goods and his first career is a partnership venture with his cousin Aria selling forged passports and social security cards to illegal aliens. Anton longs for a less questionable way of living in the world and by his late twenties has reinvented himself as a successful middle manager. Then a routine security check suggests that things are not quite what they appear. And Aria begins blackmailing him to do one last job for her. But the seemingly simple job proves to have profound and unexpected repercussions.

Entering a weird, remote hamlet, Andrei calls himself "a simple wayfarer," but he is in fact highly compromised: he has no identity papers. Taken under the wing of the military zone's commander, Andrei is first assigned to guard the blueberries that supply a nearby bear reserve. He is surrounded by human wrecks, supernatural umbrellas, birds carrying plagues, albino twins.The bears — and an affair with a married woman — occupy Andrei until his protector is replaced by a new female commander, "a slender creature, quiet, diaphanous, like a dragonfly," and yet an iron-fisted harridan. As things grow ever more alarming, Andrei becomes a "corpse watchman," standing guard over the dead to check for any signs of life, and then…

International bestselling author Jeffrey Archer returns with his most ambitious work of epic storytelling – a multi-generational saga of fate, fortune, and redemption that began with ONLY TIME WILL TELL.On the heels of the international bestseller ONLY TIME WILL TELL, Jeffrey Archer picks up the sweeping story of the Clifton Chronicles.Only days before Britain declares war on Germany, Harry Clifton, hoping to escape the consequences of long-buried family secrets recently revealed, and forced to admit that his wish to marry Emma Barrington will never be fulfilled, has joined the Merchant Navy. But his ship is sunk in the Atlantic by a German U-boat, drowning almost the entire crew. An American cruise liner, the SS Kansas Star, rescues a handful of sailors, among them Harry and the third officer, an American named Tom Bradshaw. When Bradshaw dies in the night, Harry seizes on the chance to escape his tangled past and assumes his identity.But on landing in America, he quickly learns the risks of such a scheme, when he discovers what is awaiting Bradshaw in New York. Without any way of proving his true identity, Harry Clifton is now chained to a past that might be far worse than the one he had hoped to escape.

The third novel in Yasmina Khadra's bestselling trilogy about Islamic fundamentalism has the most compelling backdrop of any of his novels: Iraq in the wake of the American invasion. A young Iraqi student, unable to attend college because of the war, sees American soldiers leave a trail of humiliation and grief in his small village. Bent on revenge, he flees to the chaotic streets of Baghdad where insurgents soon realize they can make use of his anger. Eventually he is groomed for a secret terrorist mission meant to dwarf the attacks of September 11th, only to find himself struggling with moral qualms. The Sirens of Baghdad is a powerful look at the effects of violence on ordinary people, showing what can turn a decent human being into a weapon, and how the good in human nature can resist.

Born into a long line of distinguished lepidopterists, scientists who study moths and butterflies, Ginny and Vivien grew up in a sprawling Victorian home. Forty-seven years later, Ginny lives there alone, tending to her moths and obsessions amid the ghosts of her past.But when her sister Vivien returns to the crumbling family mansion, dark, unspoken secrets rise, disrupting Ginny's ordered life and threatening the family's fragile peace. Told in Ginny's unforgettable voice, this debut novel tells a disquieting story of two sisters and the ties that bind-sometimes a little too tightly.