Since time immemorial, the Haddesley family has tended the cranberry bog. In exchange, the bog sustains them. The staunch seasons of their lives are governed by a strict covenant that is renewed each generation with the ritual sacrifice of their patriarch, and in return, the bog produces a “bog-wife.” Brought to life from vegetation, this woman is meant to carry on the family line. But when the bog fails—or refuses—to honor the bargain, the Haddesleys, a group of discordant siblings still grieving the mother who mysteriously disappeared years earlier, face an unknown future.

Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece.

From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the "Terrible Year" by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans-then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris.

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, Laura receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital, where she soon hears whispers about haunted trenches and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion.

Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it. Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her.

Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name.

Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins—resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories—have only three unbreakable vows. First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade. Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. The third and the simplest: once you accept a job, you must carry it out.

Gav isn't really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. But as he realizes that nothing—from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess—is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he'll have to answer the hardest question of all—who does he want to be?

Anna Fort wants to be a supportive wife, even if that means accompanying her husband for the winter of 1918 to a remote, frozen island estate so he can finish his book as the guest of an eccentric millionaire. When she learns three girls are missing from a school run by their host, Anna realizes finding them is up to her—even if that means risking her husband’s career, and possibly her life.

Sixteen-year-old Odile vies for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. To the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness. When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present.

The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.

Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy. When Marshall arrives in Raeford, she finds an insular town that is kinder to the horses they are famous for breeding than to their own people. But when two horribly mangled bodies are discovered in a field—one a horse, one a human—she realizes that there might be a real story here.

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family's social position.

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He’s good with his gun and drawn to trouble but he’s also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing. In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment.

Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.

Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter, Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter, Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child.

J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world. J is one of only 26 students, all of whom think of the school’s enigmatic founder as their father. J’s peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know - and all they are allowed to know. But J suspects that there is something out there, beyond the pines, that the founder does not want him to see, and he’s beginning to ask questions. What is the real purpose of this place?

When novice monk Tenzin Dorje is told by his lama that the Red Army is invading Tibet, his country's darkest moment paradoxically gives him a sense of purpose like no other. He accepts a mission to carry two ancient, secret texts across the Himalayas to safety. Half a century later, in a paradox of similarly troubling circumstances, Matt Lester is called upon to convey his own particular wisdom as a scientist, when Matt's nanotech project is mysteriously moved from London to a research incubator in Los Angeles.

Next to the colonial town of Essenwald sits the Vorrh, a vast - perhaps endless - forest. It is a place of demons and angels, of warriors and priests. Sentient and magical, the Vorrh bends time and wipes memory. Legend has it that the Garden of Eden still exists at its heart. Now a renegade English soldier aims to be the first human to traverse its expanse. Armed with only a strange bow, he begins his journey, but some fear the consequences of his mission, and a native marksman has been chosen to stop him.

The life of a courtesan in Pompeii is glamorous yet perilous. At night in the home her patron bought for her, the house with the golden door, Amara’s dreams are haunted by her past. She longs for her sisterhood of friends—the women at the brothel she was forced to leave behind—and worse, finds herself pursued by the cruel and vindictive man who once owned her. To be truly free, she will need to be as ruthless as he is. Amara knows her existence in Pompeii is subject to Venus, the goddess of love. Yet finding love may prove to be the most dangerous act of all.

Rome, 77 B.B. The corrupt Senator Dolabella is about to go on trial for his crimes. But Dolabella owns the jury. He’s hired the best lawyers in the city. And he’s very willing to use violence against those who oppose him. In all of Rome, no man dares accept the role of prosecutor—until, against all odds, an unknown twenty-three-year-old steps out to lead the case, defend the people of the city, and defy the power of the ruling elite. That lawyer’s name is Gaius Julius Caesar.

When tragedy forces Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in postwar Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she's long dreamed of: finding the father she has never known. But her quest—spanning from Paris to New York’s Harlem, to Havana and Key West—is complicated by the fact that she believes him to be famed luminary Ernest Hemingway, a man just as elusive as he is iconic. She desperately yearns for his approval, as both a daughter and a writer, convinced that he holds the key to who she's truly meant to be.

In this hilariously savage, poignant novel by acclaimed author Katherine Min, a grieving daughter’s revenge on the man who caused her mother’s death sets off a series of unexpected reckonings.

In 1950, a young doctor called Norton Perina signs on with the anthropologist Paul Tallent for an expedition to the remote Micronesian island of Ivu'ivu in search of a rumored lost tribe. They succeed, finding not only that tribe but also a group of forest dwellers they dub "The Dreamers", who turn out to be fantastically long-lived but progressively more senile. Perina suspects the source of their longevity is a hard-to-find turtle; unable to resist the possibility of eternal life, he kills one and smuggles some meat back to the States.

Twelfth-century Europe. Newly crowned King Philip of France is determined to restore his nation to its former empire and bring glory to his name. But when his greatest enemy, King Henry of England, threatens to end his reign before it can even begin, Philip is forced to make a precarious alliance with Henry’s volatile son—risking both his throne, and his heart.

The Betrothed is a cornerstone of Italian culture, language, and literature. Published in its final form in 1842, The Betrothed has inspired generations of Italian readers and writers. Giuseppe Verdi composed his majestic Requiem Mass in honor of Manzoni. Italo Calvino called the novel “a classic that has never ceased shaping reality in Italy” while Umberto Eco praised its author as a “most subtle critic and analyst of languages.”

In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—“victory city”—the wonder of the world.

Young Elly's world is shaped by those who inhabit it: her loving but maddeningly distractible parents; a best friend who smells of chips and knows exotic words like 'slag'; an ageing fop who tapdances his way into her home, a Shirley Bassey impersonator who trails close behind; lastly, of course, a rabbit called God. In a childhood peppered with moments both ordinary and extraordinary, Elly's one constant is her brother Joe. Twenty years on, Elly and Joe are fully grown and as close as they ever were. Until, that is, an earth-shattering event that threatens to destroy their bond for ever.

All through her childhood in Tehran, Forugh Farrokhzad is told that Persian daughters should be quiet and modest. She is taught only to obey, but she always finds ways to rebel - gossiping with her sister among the fragrant roses of her mother's walled garden, venturing to the forbidden rooftop to roughhouse with her three brothers, writing poems to impress her strict, disapproving father, and sneaking out to flirt with a teenage paramour over café glacé. During the summer of 1950, Forugh's passion for poetry takes flight - and tradition seeks to clip her wings.

Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper seeking a bloodmaid. Though she knows little about the far north—where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service—Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery.