INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEARLONGLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZEOctavio Notre-Dame comes from a long line of bakers. At the establishment known throughout the eighth district as the cake-slice, he produces baguettes and brioches with timeless perfection. But like generations of Notre-Dame men before him, Octavio has never mastered the art of reading. His only knowledge of the worl...

Ambrose Zephyr and his wife Zappora Ashkenazi (“Zipper”) have achieved a happy and balanced life together. The two live contentedly in a narrow London terrace full of books.That contentment is thrown into turmoil on Ambrose’s fiftieth birthday, when they receive the news that he has contracted a mysterious illness that will most certainly lead to his death within the month. In panicked delirium, from beneath their bed Ambrose withdraws an oxblood suitcase containing the ephemera of...

THE END OF THE ALPHABET is a tender, intimate story of an ordinary life defined by an extraordinary love.Ambrose Zephyr is a contented man. He shares a book-laden Victorian house with his loving wife, Zipper. He owns two suits, one of which he was married in. He is a courageous eater, save brussels sprouts. His knowledge of wine is vague and best defined as Napa, good; Australian, better; French, better still. Kir royale is his drink of occasion. For an Englishman he makes a poor cu...

Winner of Canada's 2012 Governor General's Award for FictionIn this provocative and starkly beautiful historical novel, a Quaker family moves from Pennsylvania to the Virginia frontier, where slaves are the only available workers and where the family’s values and beliefs are sorely tested.In 1798, Daniel Dickinson, recently widowed and shunned by his fellow Quakers when he marries his young servant girl to help with his five small children, moves his shaken...

A riveting novel about a family at the center of a murder on mid-century Martha's Vineyard.Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha's Vineyard in a glorious old family estate known as Tiger House. In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their 'real lives': Helena is off to Hollywood and a ne...

**INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement, an “effortlessly seductive” novel (The New York Times) that masterfully entwines espionage and desire in an unforgettable story of intrigue, betrayal and love.One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times**Cambridge student Serena Frome's beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recru...

A superbly crafted, highly suspenseful, and deeply affecting debut novel about one man’s loyalty to his country, his family and his heritagePercival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English academy in 1960s Saigon, and he is well accustomed to bribing a forever-changing list of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of his school. Fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, he is quick to spot the business opportunities rife in a divided...

An extraordinary new voice in contemporary woman's fiction, Courtney Miller Santo makes her magnificent debut with The Roots of the Olive Tree, a novel that will delight fans of Sarah Blake's The Postmistress, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, and the works of Kristin Hannah.Set in a house on an olive grove in northern California, The Roots of the Olive Tree is a beautiful, touching story that brings to life five generations of women—incl...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Room comes a moving set of historical stories spanning centuries and continents.The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, i...

“Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.” — Richard RussoThe acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 . . . and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch ...

Why Men Lie is about Effie, the fascinating sister of the troubled priest at the heart of The Bishop's Man. Effie has had her fair share of lovers and husbands, including the Gillis cousins from Cape Breton, who have been a source of as much guilt as joy. She first married John, then ran away to Toronto with the charismatic Sextus, who is still in her life despite her having divorced him years ago. But she's more or less given up on being swept away by love, until, in a c...

A magical debut novel from Rita Leganski, The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow is the tale of a mute boy whose gift of wondrous hearing reveals family secrets and forgotten voodoo lore, and exposes a murder that threatens the souls of those who love him.Bonaventure Arrow didn’t make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. But he was listening, placing sound inside quiet and gaining his bearings. By the time he turns five, he can hear flowers grow, a t...