In the colonial cities and towns of Fatrasta, peace has never been easy. Immigrants fight amongst themselves or turn on the native population, while the governing power of the Kez Army steps in only to enforce the will of apathetic local governors assigned by a distant crown. Young war hero Ben Styke commands a colonial garrison in a sleepy frontier suburb. When the governor’s cruel brother stops for the night, rising continental tensions force Styke to protect the people of his town in a brutal escalation that threatens to destroy everything – and everyone – he has fought for. Occurs twelve years before the events in Sins of Empire

The Fourteenth Knights Templar Mystery As the winter of 1323 descends upon a windswept chapel on the edge of Dartmoor, who could blame young priest, Father Mark, for seeking affection from the local miller’s daughter, Mary? But when Mary’s body, and the unborn child she was carrying, is found dead, Mark is the obvious suspect. Called to investigate, Sir Baldwin de Furnshill and his friend Bailiff Simon Puttock soon begin to have their doubts. Could one of Mary’s many admirers have murdered her in a fit of jealousy? Or might it be someone even closer to home? By the time their search is over, life for Baldwin and Simon, and their families, will never be quiet the same again

The first novel by one of the greatest writers of Latin American literature is a semiautobiographical story reflecting the energy and chaos of early 20th-century Buenos Aires. Feeling the alienation of youth, Silvio Astier's gang tours neighborhoods, inflicting waves of petty crime, stealing from homes and shops until the police are forced to intervene. Drifting then from one career and subsequent crime to another, Silvio's main difficulty is his own intelligence, with which he grapples. Writing in the language of the streets and basing his writings in part on his own experience, with his characters wandering in a modern world, Arlt creates a book that combines realism, humor, and anger with detective story. Although astronomically famous in South America, Roberto Arlt's name is still relatively unknown in Anglophone circles, but the rising wave of appreciation of South American literature is bringing him to the fore

Committed to the now-shuttered Western State Hospital when he was young, fortyish Francis Petrel starts recalling the circumstances of a nurse's grisly murder-just as the killer comes out of hiding

At first it seemed as though only　The Madman Theory could explain the brutal shotgun slaying which lay in wait for the friendly group of back-packing hikers. But Inspector Omar Collins, lean, gloomy-eyed, black-haired, was a painstaking man. The more he pursued it, the less he believed in The Madman Theory

The year is 1881. Meet the Mackenzie family--rich, powerful, dangerous, eccentric. A lady couldn't be seen with them without ruin. Rumors surround them--of tragic violence, of their mistresses, of their dark appetites, of scandals that set England and Scotland abuzz. The youngest brother, Ian, known as the Mad Mackenzie, spent most of his young life in an asylum, and everyone agrees he is decidedly odd. He's also hard and handsome and has a penchant for Ming pottery and beautiful women. Beth Ackerley, widow, has recently come into a fortune. She has decided that she wants no more drama in her life. She was raised in drama--an alcoholic father who drove them into the workhouse, a frail mother she had to nurse until her death, a fussy old lady she became constant companion to. No, she wants to take her money and find peace, to travel, to learn art, to sit back and fondly remember her brief but happy marriage to her late husband. And then Ian Mackenzie decides he wants her

"A generous, patient, wry and intelligent voice…[that] suggests not just a writer who can seduce us through beautiful language and unfailing humor. We also encounter a writer who has the power to shock and frighten us, to astound and anger and unsettle us…In short, his is a voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration." — Neil Gordon, New York Times Book Review Selection, Summer Reading, New York Times Book Review In 1971, nineteen citizens of Excelsior in South Africa's white-ruled Free State were charged with breaking apartheid's Immorality Act, which forbade sex between blacks and whites. Taking this case as raw material for his alchemic imagination, Zakes Mda tells the story of one irrepressible fallen madonna, Niki, and her family, at the heart of the scandal

This is a brilliant and moving debut novel about one woman’s struggle to preserve an artistic heritage from the horrors and destruction of World War II. In this extraordinary first novel by Debra Dean, the siege of Leningrad by German troops in World War Two is echoed by the destructive siege against the mind and memory of an elderly Russian woman. Marina, the woman in question, was a guide at Leningrad ’s famous Hermitage Museum. In the late autumn of 1941, the Luftwaffe roared over and around Leningrad, she and her colleagues were set the task of taking the thousands of priceless paintings, sculptures and objets d’art out of the grand galleries of the former Tsarist Palace and storing them safely against the German bombardment and seemingly inevitable invasion. The German assault threatened to destroy a large part of Europe’s artistic history: if Leningrad fell to the Germans, everything that was not destroyed would be looted and given to the Nazis. Marina, whose own parents had disappeared during Stalin’s 1930s’ purges of intellectuals, clings to her hope of becoming an art historian herself through her job at the Hermitage. The novel shifts between Marina ’s experiences at the Hermitage during the siege of Leningrad and her current existence as a very old lady in America whose mind has begun to fray. The shifts are masterfully done: Debra Dean depicts, with subtle skill, the way Marina’s mind, already ravaged by disease, picks up some incident, object or person at the wedding she’s been brought to, and flips back to the dreadful year-and-a-half in Leningrad which has informed her life ever since. This is an evocative and deeply moving novel about memory itself. Advance Praise for The Madonnas of Leningrad “An unforgettable story of love, survival, and the power of imagination in the most tragic circumstances. Elegant and poetic, the rare kind of book that you want to keep but you have to share.” – Isabel Allende, New York Times bestselling author “The Madonnas of Leningrad is an extraordinary debut, a deeply lovely novel that evokes with uncommon deftness the terrible, heartbreaking beauty that is life in wartime. Like the glorious ghosts of the paintings in the Hermitage that lie at the heart of the story, Dean’s exquisite prose shimmers with a haunting glow, illuminating for us the notion that art itself is perhaps our most necessary nourishment. A superbly graceful novel.” – Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Aloft and Native Speaker