
A major novel. Victor brombert, the New York Times Book Review. Winner of the prix goncourt and prix médicis: “One of the great novels of this century” Donald Newlove, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Skillfully constructed and elegantly written . . . Hailed as extraordinary from coast to coast, this bestselling novel by National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Andreï Makine traces a sentimental journey that embraces many of the dramatic events in Russia during the twentieth century.
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Night Train to Lisbon

. . The closer raimund comes to the truth of prado’s life, and eventual fate, working in utmost secrecy to fight dictatorship, an extraordinary tale takes shape amid the labyrinthine memories of Prado’s intimate circle of family and friends, and the betrayals that threaten to expose them. Night train to lisbon was adapted into bille august’s award-winning 2013 film starring Jeremy Irons, Lena Olin, Christopher Lee, and Charlotte Rampling.
Then, an enigmatic portuguese woman stirs his interest in an obscure, and mind-expanding book of philosophy that opens the possibility of changing Raimund’s existence. Raimund, now obsessed with unlocking the mystery behind the man, is determined to meet all those on whom Prado left an indelible mark.
Among them: his eighty-year-old sister, who maintains her brother’s house as if it were a museum; an elderly cleric and torture survivor confined to a nursing home; and Prado’s childhood friend and eventual partner in the Resistance. Allusive and thought-provoking, intellectually curious and yet heartbreakingly jaded, ” and inexorably propelled by the haunting mystery at its heart The Providence Journal.
That same night, he takes the train to lisbon to research the book’s phantom author, Amadeu de Prado, a renowned physician whose principles led him to confront Salazar’s dictatorship.
The Zone: A Prison Camp Guard's Story

Snapshots of the prison are juxtaposed with the narrator’s letters to Igor Markovich of Hermitage Press in which he urges Igor to publish the very book we’re reading. Almost any guard deserved a prison term. Full of dovlatov’s trademark dark humor and dry wit, events, and the book fittingly begins with the following disclaimer: “The names, The Zone’s narrator is an extension of his author, and dates given here are all real.
Therefore, any resemblance between the characters in this book and living people is intentional and malicious. From the exiled Russian author of The Suitcase. Reading dovlatov is a joyous, thrilling, usually hilarious experience” The New Yorker. And all fictionalizing was unexpected and accidental. What follows is a complex novel that captures two sides of Dovlatov: the writer and the man.
I invented only those details that were not essential.
Mrs. Miniver

Winston Churchill once remarked that Mrs. Miniver, the fictional british housewife featured in Jan Struther’s newspaper columns about quotidian English life, did more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. Miniver’s domestic concerns expanded from automobiles and Christmas shopping to include gas masks, keeping calm, and carrying on.
As tensions rose across Europe, Mrs. Mrs. The beloved classic novel of an english housewife bravely enduring WWII—the basis for the Academy Award–winning film starring Greer Garson.
The Keepers of the House

Seven generations of the howland family have lived in the Alabama plantation home built by an ancestor who fought for Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. A “beautifully written” pulitzer prize–winning novel about prejudice and a distinguished family’s secrets in the American South The Atlantic Monthly.
A “novel of real magnitude, tradition, ” the keepers of the House is an unforgettable story of family, and racial injustice set against the richly drawn backdrop of the American South Kirkus Reviews. . Over the course of a century, the howlands accumulated a fortune, fought for secession, and helped rebuild the South, establishing themselves as one of the most respected families in the state.
The inheritor of the howland manse, Abigail hides the long-buried secret of her grandfather’s thirty-year relationship with his African American mistress. But that history means little to Abigail Howland.
The Secret River

The secret river is the tale of william and sal’s deep love for their small, exotic corner of the new world, and William’s gradual realization that if he wants to make a home for his family, he must forcibly take the land from the people who came before him. Acclaimed around the world, the secret river is a “magnificent” work of historical fiction that “pulls us ever deeper into a time when one community’s opportunity spelled another’s doom” The New Yorker.
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Count Belisarius

Loosely based on procopius’ history of the justinian Wars and Secret History, this novel tells the general’s story through the eyes of Eugenius, a eunuch and servant to the general’s wife. Threatened by invaders on all sides, the Roman Empire in the sixth century fought to maintain its borders. Leading its defense was the byzantine general Belisarius, a man who earned the grudging respect of his enemies, and who rose to become the Emperor Justinian’s greatest military leader.
A brilliant piece of scholarship. Kirkus reviews “the scope of the book is massive—encompassing religious controversy and cultural developments as well as military history—yet, throughout, Graves succeeds in blending historical details with the development of his main characters. Historical Novel Society.
A vigorous tale. . . A gripping and vivid historical fiction that captures the full sweep of history during the fall of the Roman Empire through the eyes of a servant.
Blue Thirst: Tales of Life Abroad

. Interwar greece, whose hard beds and mosquito swarms Durrell documented so tenderly in Prospero’s Cell, was no more. In the first of this pair of lectures, poetry, Durrell recalls those days, talking of family, given during a 1970s visit to California, and the joy of the islands as no other writer can.
When war came to the mediterranean, Durrell was swept into diplomatic service, an adventure he recounts in his second lecture. These two lectures on long-vanished worlds are an elegant demonstration of the evocative power of Durrell’s unmatched storytelling.
Baltasar and Blimunda: A Novel Harvest Book

. A romance and an adventure, a rumination on royalty and religion in 18th-century Portugal and a bitterly ironic comment on the uses of power. The new york times Portugal, 1711. Hailed by usa today as “an unexpected gem, exquisite historical detail, ” Baltasar and Blimunda is a captivating literary tour de force, full of magic and adventure, and the power of both human folly and human will.
The portuguese king promises the greedy prelates of the Church an expansive new convent, should they intercede with God to give him an heir. A lonely priest works in maniacal solitude on his Passarola, a heretical flying machine he hopes will allow him to soar far from the madness surrounding him. A young couple, if tormented, brought together by chance, live out a sweet, romance.
Meanwhile, amid the fires and horrors of the inquisition, angry crowds and abused peasants rejoice in spectacles of cruelty, from bullfighting to auto-da-fe; disgraced priests openly flout God’s laws; and chaos reigns over a society on the brink of disaster.
A Walker in the City Harvest Book

The whole texture, color, and sound of life in this tenement realm . . . A classic portrait of immigrant life in the early decades of the twentieth century, subways, and synagogues—but also a universal story of the desires and fears we experience as we try to leave our small, A Walker in the City is a tour of tenements, familiar neighborhoods for something new.
Eventually, he would travel even farther, building a life around books and language and literature and exploring all that the world had to offer. A literary icon’s “singular and beautiful” memoir of growing up as a first-generation Jewish American in Brownsville, Brooklyn The New Yorker. Is revealed as tapestried, as dazzling, as full of lush and varied richness as an Arabian bazaar.
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To Dance with the White Dog

When sam tells his children about a white dog who visits him, yet seems invisible to everyone else, they are sure that grief and old age have taken a toll on their father. In this “hauntingly beautiful story about love, family, and relationships, ” a mysterious dog helps an elderly man in his final days Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In this bittersweet story of love, and coming to terms with death, “master storyteller” Terry Kay takes readers on Sam’s journey with his white dog, grief, bringing solace and comfort to the inevitable transition that all must make The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. After sam peek’s beloved wife Cora dies, his children are worried about him.
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