**“Raffish and spirited . . . a nonconformist cri de coeur . . . Usually, comparisons to Bourdain are fatuous. This time it’s accurate . . . It’s been a long time since I’ve read so good and rowdy a memoir about blue-collar work.” — Dwight Garner, The New York TimesAN INDIE BESTSELLERA Montreal garbageman's sharp and funny memoir/exposé, in which he attempts to convince people to "stop imagining that your garbage magically disappears" . . .**This f...

Berlin in the early 1990s, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall: this is the place to be. Berlin-Mitte, the central district of the city, with its wastelands and decaying houses, has become the centre of a new movement. Artists, musicians, squatters, club owners, DJs and ravers are reclaiming the old city centre and bringing it back to life. This interregnum between two systems – the collapse of the old East Germany, the gentrification of the new Berlin – lasts only a few years. West Be...

CORRUPT BIG BUSINESS, ECONOMY IN MELTDOWN, THE THRILLER THAT WARNED US ALL'Marc Elsberg is nothing if not prescient' GUARDIANIt’s the near future: the world economy is in freefall. Mass unemployment and hunger rage as banks, corporations and countries go bankrupt. But one group are doing just fine: the super-rich.Nobel prize-winning economist Herbert Thompson drives to an emergency summit in Berlin, to deliver his ground-br...

Now in paperback, the touching, timely story of an Iraqi refugee in Germany.In our era of mass migration, much of it driven by war and its aftermath, A Slap in the Face could not be more timely. It tells the story of Karim, an Iraqi refugee living in Germany whose right to asylum has been revoked in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s defeat. But Hussein wasn’t the only reason Karim left, and as Abbas Khider unfolds his story, we learn both the secret struggles h...

In The Atlas of an Anxious Man, Christoph Ransmayr offers a mesmerizing travel diary—a sprawling tale of earthly wonders seen by a wandering eye. This is an exquisite, lyrically told travel story.Translated by Simon Pare, this unique account follows Ransmayr across the globe: from the shadow of Java’s volcanoes to the rapids of the Mekong and Danube Rivers, from the drift ice of the Arctic Circle to Himalayan passes, and on to the disenchanted islands of the South Pacific....

The familiar and heartwarming story of Christmas is one of hope, encapsulated by the birth of the infant Jesus. It is also a story that unites Christianity and Islam—two faiths that have often been at odds with each other. The accounts of the Nativity given by the Evangelists Luke and Matthew find their parallels in Surahs 3 and 19 of the Qur’an, which take up the Annunciation to Mary, the Incarnation from the Holy Spirit, and the Nativity.Christmas and the Qur’an is a sen...

On a beautifully restored barge on the Seine, Jean Perdu runs a bookshop; or rather a 'literary apothecary', for this bookseller possesses a rare gift for sensing which books will soothe the troubled souls of his customers.The only person he is unable to cure, it seems, is himself. He has nursed a broken heart ever since the night, twenty-one years ago, when the love of his life fled Paris, leaving behind a handwritten letter that he has never dared read. His memories and his love ...

'Hans Castorp filled his lungs with the pure mountain air--this fresh, light atmosphere that was so easy to inhale and held no scent of moisture, no content, no memories...' Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924) is a social comedy with tragic overtones, providing a portrait of Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century. The novel recounts how an apparently simple North German engineer, Hans Castorp, comes to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Davos, Switzerl...

A gripping, real-life thriller following the authors’ attempt to uncover the truth about one of the world’s most wanted men.Karl Lee, alias Li Fangwei, plays a key role in the secret struggle between the world powers, bypassing Western sanctions to supply dictators with the weapons they need to wipe out their neighbouring countries — or even to trigger a third world war.For almost two decades, intelligence agencies have been hunting for Karl Lee. The FBI ha...

Read the heartwarming new novel from the international million-copy bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop‘Exquisitely written, as always, she draws you in from the first page and immerses you in the lives of her delightful characters. You won’t want to put it down’ Patricia Scanlan----Nothing says love like a book . . .In a little town in the south of France, a young orphan, Marie...

On a dansing night, a woman and a bear fall in love. Life is sweet, life is soft, until the bear vanishes.A French love story written by reknown author Vincent Bourgeau and translated by Simon Pare.

The world's most powerful man, Qiánlóng, emperor of China, invites the famous eighteenth-century clockmaker Alister Cox to his court in Beijing. There, in the heart of the Forbidden City, the Englishman and his assistants are to build machines that mark the passing of time as a child or a condemned man might experience it and that capture the many shades of happiness, suffering, love, and loss that come with that passing. Mystified by the rituals of a rigidly hierarchical society dominated...