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The Frost on His Shoulders

The Frost on His Shoulders
  • Author(s): Lorenzo Mediano
  • Location(s): The Pyrenees (Catalonia)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1930s

The 1930s, and an ageing, badly paid school teacher lives in a small, isolated village at the foot of the Pyrenees. One day he and the rest of the inhabitants stumble upon a short newspaper article about their own...

The Funeral Cryer

The Funeral Cryer
  • Author(s): Wenyan Lu
  • Location(s): China
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Contemporary

An Yu’s Braised Pork meets Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in this unforgettable, tragi-comic tale of one woman’s mid-life re-awakening in contemporary rural China. The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because...

The Gangster We Are All Looking For

The Gangster We Are All Looking For
  • Author(s): Lê Thi Diem Thúy (Le Thi Diem Thuy)
  • Location(s): San Diego
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1970s

In 1978, six Vietnamese refugees were pulled from the sea just off California. In San Diego, a little girl’s matter-of-fact innocence masks the ghostly traumas that still haunt her: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland: the memory of a...

The Garden Next Door

The Garden Next Door
  • Author(s): Jose Donoso
  • Location(s): Madrid
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): 1990s

Julio, a writer from Chile and his wife are suffering a bit of a marital crisis. They are offered the chance to stay in a luxurious apartment in Madrid one Summer. Julio begins to fantasize about a beautiful woman...

The Garden of Burning Sand

The Garden of Burning Sand
  • Author(s): Corban Addison
  • Location(s): Lusaka, Zambia (Northern Rhodesia)
  • Genre(s): Fiction
  • Era(s): Modern

On a dark night in Lusaka, Zambia, an adolescent girl is brutally assaulted. In shock, she cannot speak. Her identity is a mystery. Where did she come from? Was the attack a random street crime or a premeditated act?...

The Garden of Evening Mists

The Garden of Evening Mists
  • Author(s): Tan Twan Eng
  • Location(s): Cameron Highlands
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): Late 1940s,

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. It’s Malaya, 1949. After studying law at Cambrige and time spent helping to prosecute Japanese war criminals, Yun Ling Teoh, herself the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks...

The General in his Labyrinth

The General in his Labyrinth
  • Author(s): Gabriel García Márquez
  • Location(s): Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): Early 1800s

This is the story of the last days of Simon Bolivar who was the liberator of South America (or more acurately Gran Colombia, which comprised present day Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador). He has driven out the Spanish and is...

The Geneva Decision

The Geneva Decision
  • Author(s): Seeley James
  • Location(s): Geneva, Munich, Zurich
  • Genre(s): Thriller
  • Era(s): Modern

Pia Sabel plays to win. Until a few weeks ago, she was an international soccer star. But now she’s taken the helm of her billionaire father’s private security company, and she’s playing against a whole new set of opponents...

The Geograophy of Bliss

The Geograophy of Bliss
  • Author(s): Eric Weiner
  • Location(s): World
  • Genre(s): Travelogue
  • Era(s): Modern

What makes a nation happy? Is one country’s sense of happiness the same as another’s? In the last two decades, psychologists and economists have learned a lot about who’s happy and who isn’t. The Dutch are, the Romanians aren’t,...

The Ghost Bride

The Ghost Bride
  • Author(s): Yangsze Choo
  • Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)
  • Genre(s): Fiction, Historical
  • Era(s): 1890s

Seventeen-year-old Li Lan lives in 1890s Malaya with her quietly-ruined father, who returns one evening with a proposition – the fabulously wealthy Lim family want Li Lan to marry their son. The only problem is, he’s dead. After a...

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