Showing titles in World Literature

It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing their best to live normal lives, even as the shadow of war grows closer. The talk around the family Seder table is of new babies and budding romance, not of the increasing hardships threatening Jews in their hometown of Radom, Poland. But soon the horrors overtaking Europe will become inescapable, and the Kurcs will be flung to the far corners of the world, each desperately trying to navigate his or her own path to safety.

Sir Hugo Drax is a multimillionaire tycoon and war hero, revered by the British public for his new Moonraker missile defense system. But there’s more to this enigmatic millionaire than he lets on. When M suspects Drax of cheating at cards, he is baffled that the patriot would risk his reputation and his rocket program on a game, so he assigns Bond to infiltrate Drax’s circle.

Like most gentiles in Nazi-occupied Paris, architect Lucien Bernard has little empathy for the Jews. So when a wealthy industrialist offers him a large sum of money to devise secret hiding places for Jews, Lucien struggles with the choice of risking his life for a cause he doesn't really believe in. Ultimately he can't resist the challenge and begins designing expertly concealed hiding spaces - behind a painting, within a column, or inside a drainpipe - detecting possibilities invisible to the average eye. But when one of his clever hiding spaces fails and the immense suffering of Jews becomes incredibly personal, he can no longer deny reality.

Constantinople, 1921. Each day Nur gazes across the waters of the Bosphorus to her childhood home, a grand white house, nestled on the opposite bank. Memories float on the breeze - the fragrance of the fig trees, the saffron sunsets of languid summer evenings. But now those days are dead. The house has been transformed into an army hospital, it is a prize of war in the hands of the British. And as Nur weaves through the streets carrying the embroideries that have become her livelihood, Constantinople swarms with Allied soldiers - a reminder of how far she and her city have fallen.

DECEMBER 1944 In New Guinea, a young Australian nurse, Lotte Wyld, chances upon her first love, Virgil Nicholson, a soldier in the Allies' hard-fought jungle campaign. At Los Alamos in the United States, idealistic physicists Miriam Carver and Fred Johnson join Robert Oppenheimer and a team of brilliant scientists in a collective dream to build a weapon that will stop all war, while Kitty Oppenheimer wrestles with restrictions on her freedom. And on the sacred island of Miyajima in Japan, Hiroko Narushima is doing her best to protect her family.

Cities are tough when you've grown up as a country kid. They're even tougher after nine years inside. Tom Blackburn is fresh out of jail and not sure where his future lies. He knows what he wants. But he's pretty sure she doesn't want him. Tom's left his old life and his old name behind. But his options aren't great. He knows sleeping on the streets is the quickest way back to a cell. And then, his luck turns around. A chance encounter leads to a job and somewhere to stay. A place in the dead centre of Melbourne. Eden, his new boss calls it.

This volume offers a complete translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, the third of the four great collections in the Sutta Pitaka of the Pāli Canon. The Saṃyutta Nikāya consists of 56 chapters, each governed by a unifying theme that binds together the Buddha's suttas or discourses.

This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. When her husband discovers her deception, he exacts a terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in China.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late 20s, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born - a history whose epicentre is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class and masculinity.

Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing over six feet tall on its hind legs. A skinny little man no more than five foot three, Katagiri was overwhelmed by the frog's imposing bulk. ‘Call me “Frog,”’ said the frog in a clear, strong voice. Katagiri stood rooted in the doorway, unable to speak. ‘Don't be afraid. I'm not here to hurt you. Just come and close the door. Please.’ Briefcase in his right hand, grocery bag with fresh vegetables and canned salmon cradled in his left arm, Katagiri didn't dare move.

Brought to you by Penguin. This new audio edition of Ian McEwan’s beloved modern classic is narrated by Olivier Award winner and Emmy nominee Harriet Walter, who starred as Emily Tallis in the Academy Award-winning film adaptation of Atonement. Her recent credits range from The Crown to...

In this sequel to the phenomenal worldwide bestseller The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair, Joël Dicker delivers the last word in slow-burn police procedurals. Clue by clue, witness by witness, question by question, his characters solve an unguessable puzzle that could only have been set by the master of the plot twist.

Robbery Under Arms, together with Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life, is considered to be one of the seminal Australian novels of the nineteenth century. It is a barnstorming yarn, delivered in the first person by one Dick Marston, a vigorous and basically honourable young man, who is lured into crime due to unfavourable circumstances.

The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios, an encounter with a talking monkey and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The listener decides.

As the First World War shatters families, destroys friendships and kills lovers, a young Palestinian dreamer sets out to find himself. Midhat Kamal picks his way across a fractured world, from the shifting politics of the Middle East to the dinner tables of Montpelier and a newly tumultuous Paris. He discovers that everything is fragile: love turns to loss, friends become enemies and everyone is looking for a place to belong.

Adopting the methodology of the music charts, The Classic Hundred Poems presents the "top 100" poems of all time. The selections are illuminated by the informative notes of editor William Harmon and read by an ensemble of contemporary poets including Alfred Corn and Rita Dove.

Welcome to the Village of Ballybucklebo. Come and say hello to Dr. O'Reilly's odd-as-two-left feet patients, his housekeeper, Mrs. "Kinky" Kinkaid, and O'Reilly's pets, Arthur Guinness, the beer-swilling black Lab and Lady MacBeth, the demonically possessed white cat. And of course, to young Dr...

Caleb Cheeshateaumauk was the first native American to graduate from Harvard College back in 1665. Caleb's Crossing gives voice to his little known story. Caleb, a Wampanoag from the island of Martha's Vineyard, seven miles off the coast of Massachusetts, comes of age just as the first generation of Indians come into contact with English settlers, who have fled there, desperate to escape the brutal and doctrinaire Puritanism of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

The word most commonly used to describe Muriel Spark is ‘puzzling’. Spark was a puzzle, and so too are her books. She dealt in word games, tricks, and ciphers; her life was composed of weird accidents, strange coincidences and spooky events. Evelyn Waugh thought she was a saint, Bernard Levin said she was a witch, and she described herself as ‘Muriel the Marvel with her X-ray eyes’. Following the clues, riddles, and instructions Spark planted for posterity in her biographies, fiction, autobiography and archives, Frances Wilson aims to crack her code.

London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before, when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe — and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war. Following the trail of clues to Paris, Louise seeks help from her former boss Ian, with whom she shares a romantic history.