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Kate Reading

Kate Reading

  • A young midwife travels west to the New Mexico Territory to care for women in need and faces dangers more harrowing than the ones she’s fleeing in this epic tale of survival, redemption, and love from Sara Donati, the international bestselling author of the Wilderness series.

    1857. In a bid to outrun her past, Carrie Ballentyne accepts a nursing position with a doctor in the New Mexico Territory. She knows the journey from New York to Santa Fe will not be easy, but she relishes the adventure. However, nothing could have prepared her for the wilderness she encounters. Its vastness and power are awe-inspiring, stunning in both beauty and brutality. To endure, she must learn to rely on her fellow travelers—and one enigmatic man in particular. As the small, tight-knit group tackles challenge after challenge, she feels her heart opening to this rugged land—and the people willing to risk so much for one another.

    The trip west is only the beginning of Carrie’s challenges, though. In Santa Fe, she compassionately and respectfully helps women bring new life into the world, making her beloved among new mothers. Soon, however, she realizes that her employer and his wife are keeping secrets from her, and she must ferret out the truth to protect their young daughter. But to save the little girl she’s come to cherish, Carrie will have to confront the demons in her own past—a feat that will take all of her bravery and the help of the man she’s come to love and depend on above all others.

    With its vivid descriptions of the breathtaking western landscape and its irresistible characters, The Sweet Blue Distance is the unforgettable story of one woman’s courage to heal herself, her family, and the women entrusted to her care.

  • Dorothy Martin and her husband, retired Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, have just visited Buckingham Palace, where Alan was awarded the George Cross, when they and a friend, retired Chief Inspector Jonathan Quinn, stumble across the body of a young girl hidden in St James’s Park. Wondering what led to the unfortunate girl’s demise, Dorothy can’t help but get involved in the case when Jonathan calls the next day and admits he knew who the victim was …

  • After returning from Wonderland, Celia and Tyrus journey to the Looking-Glass World to reclaim their mirror images and stop a war between two powerful queens.

    When the Bandersnatch steals one of Lewis Carroll’s lost diaries, Celia and Tyrus try to get it back, only to tumble through a magic mirror into the Looking-Glass World, a place where everything—themselves included—is divided in two. Celia’s logic and Tyrus’s imagination now belong to their mirror images, Lia and Ty.

    Left without their greatest problem-solving skills, Celia and Tyrus must rely on each other as they play a massive game of chess to try to catch their mirror images. Along the way, they engage in a rhyming battle with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, seek advice from Humpty and Dumpty, and learn how to believe in the impossible from the White Queen, who remembers the future as if it were the past.

    As the final battle draws near, Celia and Tyrus form an uneasy alliance with Lia and Ty to find the legendary vorpal sword—the only weapon powerful enough to stop the war. If they fail, not only will two kingdoms be destroyed, but Celia and Tyrus might never regain their stolen talents and could be trapped in the Looking-Glass World forever.

  • Lily is a photojournalist in search of the “animal people” who supposedly haunt the city’s darkest slums. Hank is a slumdweller who knows the bad streets all too well. One night, in a brutal incident, their two lives collide—uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in the secret drama of the city’s oldest inhabitants.

    For the animal people walk among us. Native Americans call them the First People, but they have never left, and they claim the city for their own.

    Not only have Hank and Lily stumbled onto a secret, they’ve stumbled into a war. And in this battle for the city’s soul, nothing is quite as it appears.

  • Marj Charlier’s The Rebel Nun is based on the true story of Clotild, the daughter of a sixth-century king and his concubine, who leads a rebellion of nuns against the rising misogyny and patriarchy of the medieval church.

    At that time, women are afforded few choices in life: prostitution, motherhood, or the cloister. Only the latter offers them any kind of independence. By the end of the sixth century, even this is eroding as the church begins to eject women from the clergy and declares them too unclean to touch sacramental objects or even their priest-husbands.

    Craving the legitimacy thwarted by her bastard status, Clotild seeks to become the next abbess of the female Monastery of the Holy Cross, the most famous of the women’s cloisters of the early Middle Ages. When the bishop of Poitiers blocks her appointment and seeks to control the nunnery himself, Clotild masterminds an escape, leading a group of nuns on a dangerous pilgrimage to beg her royal relatives to intercede on their behalf. But the bishop refuses to back down, and a bloody battle ensues. Will Clotild and her sisters succeed with their quest, or will they face excommunication, possibly even death?

    In the only historical novel written about the incident, The Rebel Nun is a richly imagined story about a truly remarkable heroine.

  • With shades of Amy Bloom’s Away, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, and Shirley Hazzard’s classic The Bay of Noon, Carol Windley’s breakout is a timeless tale of friendship, romance, betrayal, and survival set in a Europe torn apart by world war.

    The acclaimed author of Home Schooling returns with Midnight Train to Prague, a timeless tale of friendship, romance, betrayal, and survival that spans the turbulent decades of the twentieth century, through two world wars and between countries and continents.

    In 1927, as Natalia Faber travels from Berlin to Prague with her mother, their train is delayed in Saxon Switzerland. In the brief time the train is idle, Natalia learns the truth about her father—who she believed died during her infancy—and meets a remarkable woman named Dr. Magdalena Schaeffer, whose family will become a significant part of her future. Shaken by these events, Natalia arrives at a spa on the shore of Lake Hevíz in Hungary. Here, she meets Count Miklós Andorján, a journalist and adventurer. The following year, they will marry.

    Years later, Germany has invaded Russia. When Miklós fails to return from the eastern front, Natalia goes to Prague to wait for him. With a pack of tarot cards, she sets up shop as a fortune teller, and she meets Anna Schaeffer, the daughter of the woman she met decades earlier on that stalled train. The Nazis accuse Natalia of spying, and she is sent to a concentration camp. Though they are separated, her friendship with Anna grows as they fight to survive and to be reunited with their families.

  • An unforgettable tale of what we owe to those we love and those we have left behind.

    In 1927, as Natalia Faber travels from Berlin to Prague with her mother, their train is delayed in Saxon Switzerland. In the brief time the train is idle, Natalia learns the truth about her father and meets a remarkable woman named Dr. Magdalena Schaefferová, whose family will become a significant part of her future.

    Shaken by these events, Natalia arrives at a spa on the shore of Lake Hêvíz in Hungary. Here she meets the journalist and writer Miklós Count Andorján. In time, they will marry, and Natalia will devote herself to life on a rural estate in Hungary.

    When war breaks out in Europe, Natalia loses contact with Miklós. She believes they are to meet in Prague, a city under Nazi occupation. She sets up shop as a fortune teller with a pack of Tarot cards. In this guise, she meets Magdalena Schaefferová’s young daughter, Anna. Accused by the Nazis of spying, Natalia is sent to a concentration camp. In April 1945, Natalia and Anna are reunited, and with courage and determination, find the strength to begin again in a changed world.

  • Something monstrous has been found in the magic world of Wonderland and it wants to get out.

    Lewis Carroll created a curious and fantastical world in his classic book Alice in Wonderland, but he secretly recorded the true story of his actual travels to Wonderland in four journals which have been lost to the world … until now.

    Celia and Tyrus discover the legendary Lost Diaries of Wonderland and fall into a portal that pulls them into the same fantasy world as the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter. However, Wonderland has vastly changed. A darkness has settled over the land, and some creatures and characters that Tyrus remembers from the book have been transformed into angry monsters.

    Celia and Tyrus make their way through this unpredictable and dangerous land, helped by familiar friends including the Cheshire Cat and a new character, Sylvan, a young rabbit. Together, they desperately work to solve puzzles and riddles, looking for a way out of Wonderland. But the danger increases when the Queen of Hearts begins hunting them. Believing the two young visitors hold the key to opening multiple portals to multiple worlds, she will stop at nothing to capture them.

    It’s up to Celia and Tyrus to save Wonderland and the real world. It’s a race against time before they are trapped in Wonderland forever.

  • “Work is love made visible.” - Khalil Gibran

    Filled with wisdom, written in simple, poetic language, The Prophet is a book for all ages, which remains amazingly relevant to our times. This audiobook, narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, contains two full versions of The Prophet: Part One, with music by Stefan Frankenberger. Part Two, with our voices only.

    After living in the city of Orphalese for 12 years, a prophet is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a seeress and the people of the city, who ask him for his insights into life.

    The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

    The Prophet is a book of prose poetry written by Khalil Gibran. Originally published in 1923, it is now in the public domain. The Prophet has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history, and it has never been out of print.

  • From the internationally bestselling author of The Gilded Hour comes Sara Donati’s enthralling epic about two trailblazing female doctors in nineteenth-century New York.

    Obstetrician Dr. Sophie Savard returns home to the achingly familiar rhythms of Manhattan in the early spring of 1884 to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. With the help of Dr. Anna Savard, her dearest friend, cousin, and fellow physician she plans to continue her work aiding the disadvantaged women society would rather forget.

    As Sophie sets out to construct a new life for herself, Anna’s husband, Detective Sergeant Jack Mezzanotte calls on them both to consult on two new cases: the wife of a prominent banker has disappeared into thin air, and the corpse of a young woman is found with baffling wounds that suggest a killer is on the loose. In New York it seems that the advancement of women has brought out the worst in some men. Unable to ignore the plight of New York’s less fortunate, these intrepid cousins draw on all resources to protect their patients.

  • A collection of treasured stories by the unchallenged master of American fiction

    Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow has deservedly been celebrated as one of America’s greatest writers. For more than sixty years he stretched our minds, our imaginations, and our hearts with his exhilarating perceptions of life. Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as “What Kind of Day Did You Have?” “Leaving the Yellow House,” and a previously uncollected piece, “By the St. Lawrence.” With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new readers.

  • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Witch’s Daughter comes the story of Gretel, all grown up and investigating a series of mysterious disappearances off the coast of Bavaria.

    Gretel―yes, that Gretel―is now all grown up and working as a private investigator in eighteenth-century Bavaria. Her professional interest is piqued when she begins to hear whispers of of mysterious goings-on off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein: sailors are disappearing, and there are rumors of mermaids and sea creatures and all manner of slippery, sea-based happenings.

    Ordinarily, Gretel’s interest in sea life does not extend beyond that which is edible and already on the plate before her. However, funds are low, and the captain of the ship Arabella makes a tempting offer of good pay and a free cruise in return for her detective services. With a splendid new wig packed, Hans as her bodyguard on the journey north, and the promise of two weeks of fine dining and erudite company while sailing around the picturesque Frisian Islands, what could possibly go wrong?

  • Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology, and folklore.

    Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape—and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.

  • Multilayered, subtle, insightful short stories from the inimitable Booker Prize–winning author

    Nobody has written so powerfully of the relationship between and within India and the Western middle classes than Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In this selection of stories, chosen by her surviving family, her ability to tenderly and humorously view the situations faced by three (sometimes interacting) cultures―European, post-Independence Indian, and American―is never more acute.

    In “A Course of English Studies,” a young woman arrives at Oxford from India and struggles to adapt, not only to the sad, stoic object of her infatuation but also to a country that seems so resistant to passion and color. In the wrenching “Expiation,” the blind, unconditional love of a cloth-shop owner for his wastrel younger brother exposes the tragic beauty and foolishness of human compassion and faith. The wry and triumphant “Pagans” brings us middle-aged sisters Brigitte and Frankie in Los Angeles, who discover a youthful sexuality in the company of the languid and handsome young Indian, Shoki. This collection also includes Jhabvala’s last story, “The Judge’s Will,” which appeared in the New Yorker in 2013 after her death.

    The profound inner experience of both men and women is at the center of Jhabvala’s writing: she rivals Jane Austen with her impeccable powers of observation. With an introduction by her friend, the writer Anita Desai, At the End of the Century celebrates a writer’s astonishing lifetime gift for language and leaves us with no doubt of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s unique place in modern literature.

  • OLIVIA LAING’S WIDELY ACCLAIMED ACCOUNT OF WHY SOME OF THE BEST LITERATURE HAS BEEN CREATED BY WRITERS IN THE GRIP OF ALCOHOLISM

    In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America’s finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.

    All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast. Often, they did their drinking together: Hemingway and Fitzgerald ricocheting through the cafes of Paris in the 1920s; Carver and Cheever speeding to the liquor store in Iowa in the icy winter of 1973.

    Olivia Laing grew up in an alcoholic family herself. One spring, wanting to make sense of this ferocious, entangling disease, she took a journey across America that plunged her into the heart of these overlapping lives. As she travels from Cheever’s New York to Williams’ New Orleans, and from Hemingway’s Key West to Carver’s Port Angeles, she pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery. Beautiful, captivating, and original, The Trip to Echo Spring strips away the myth of the alcoholic writer to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.

  • The Club is a blistering, timely, and gripping novel set at Cambridge University, centering around an all-male dining club for the most privileged and wealthy young men at Cambridge and following an outsider who exposes the dark secrets of this group, the Pitt Club.

    As a boy, Hans Stichler enjoys a fable-like childhood among the rolling hills and forests of North Germany, living an idyll that seems uninterruptable. A visit from Hans’ ailing English aunt Alex, who comes to stay for an entire summer, has a profound effect on the young Hans, all the more so when she invites him to come to university at Cambridge, where she teaches art history. Alex will ensure his application to St. John’s College is accepted, but in return he must help her investigate an elite university club of young aristocrats and wealthy social climbers, the Pitt Club. The club has existed at Cambridge for centuries, its long legacy of tradition and privilege largely unquestioned. As Hans makes his best efforts to prove club material and infiltrate its ranks, including testing his mettle in the boxing ring, he is drawn into a world of extravagance, debauchery, and macho solidarity. And when he falls in love with fellow student Charlotte, he sees a potential new life of upper-class sophistication opening up to him. But there are secrets in the club’s history, as well as in its present―and Hans soon finds himself in the inner sanctum of what proves to be an increasingly dangerous institution, forced to grapple with the notion that sometimes one must do wrong to do right.

  • A collection of eighteen crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

  • Should white wine be chilled? Can you drink reds with fish?

    Find out in Wine: A No-Snob Guide, the perfect pairing for the budding wine enthusiast.

    Forget intimidating wine speak. You’ll get a no-nonsense crash course that serves easy-to-understand vocabulary. From vineyard production to selecting stemware, prepare for a wine adventure.

    Uncork wine myths. Journey the globe, touring the wine regions of California to Europe to South America and discover your personal palate along the way.

    Light, fun, never dry, this go-to guide helps you confidently explore the wine world.

    This entertaining wine guide offers

    • the history and origin of wine,
    • types of grapes and wine categories,
    • tasting and food pairing tips, and
    • buying and storing basics.

    Whether you’re looking to learn the basics, impress your boss, or redeem yourself after referring to sommelier as an African country, Wine: A No-Snob Guide will have you swirling and sipping like a pro.

  • Charlotte Holmes, Lady Sherlock, returns in the Victorian-set mystery series from the USA Today bestselling author of A Conspiracy in Belgravia and A Study in Scarlet Women, an NPR Best Book of 2016.

    Under the cover of “Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective,” Charlotte Holmes puts her extraordinary powers of deduction to good use. Aided by the capable Mrs. Watson, Charlotte draws those in need to her and makes it her business to know what other people don’t.

    Moriarty’s shadow looms large. First, Charlotte’s half brother disappears. Then, Lady Ingram, the estranged wife of Charlotte’s close friend Lord Ingram, turns up dead on his estate. And all signs point to Lord Ingram as the murderer.

    With Scotland Yard closing in, Charlotte goes under disguise to seek out the truth. But uncovering the truth could mean getting too close to Lord Ingram—and a number of malevolent forces.

  • The true story of a love affair between two extraordinary women becomes a literary tour de force in this novel that recreates the surrealist movement in Paris and the horrors of the two world wars with a singular incandescence and intimacy

    In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As “sisters” they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail.

    Having reinvented themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, they move in the most glamorous social circles, meeting everyone from Hemingway and Dalí to André Breton, and produce provocative photographs that still seem avant-garde today. In the 1930s, with the rise of anti-Semitism and threat of fascism, they leave Paris for Jersey, and it is on this idyllic island that they confront their destiny, creating a campaign of propaganda against Hitler’s occupying forces that will put their lives in jeopardy.

    Brilliantly imagined, profoundly thought-provoking, and ultimately heartbreaking, Never Anyone but You infuses life into a forgotten history as only great literature can.

  • Why did Hitler choose not to invade England when he had the chance?

    Europe, 1940. It’s late summer, and Belgium has been overrun by the German army. Posing as a friar, a British operative talks his way into the monastery at Villers-devant-Orval just before Nazi art thieves plan to sweep through the area and whisk everything of value back to Berlin. But the ersatz man of the cloth is no thief. Instead, that night he adds an old leather Bible to the monastery’s library and then escapes.

    London, 2017. A construction worker operating a backhoe makes a grisly discovery―a skeletal arm bone with a rusty handcuff attached to the wrist. Was this the site, as a BBC newsreader speculates, of “a long-forgotten prison, uncharted on any map?” One viewer knows better: it’s all that remains of a courier who died in a V-2 rocket attack. The woman who will put these two disparate events together―and understand the looming tragedy she must hurry to prevent―is Russian historian and former Soviet chess champion Larissa Mendelova Klimt, “Lara the Bookworm,” to her friends. She’s also experiencing some woeful marital troubles.

    In the course of this riveting thriller, Lara will learn the significance of six musty Dictaphone cylinders recorded after D-day by Noël Coward―actor, playwright, and secretly, a British agent reporting directly to Winston Churchill. She will understand precisely why that leather Bible, scooped up by the Nazis and deposited on the desk of Adolf Hitler days before he planned to attack Britain, played such a pivotal role in turning his guns to the East. And she will discover the new secret pact negotiated by the nefarious Russian president and his newly elected American counterpart―maverick and dealmaker―and the evil it portends.

    Oh, and she’ll reconcile with her husband.

  • One of our most gifted writers of fiction returns with a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them.

    Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn’t perfect; yet she sees him through a three-month stint at Riker’s Island, their bond growing tighter. Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a youth that took her to Turkey and other far-off places—and loves—around the world, admires her niece’s spirit but worries that motherhood to four-year-old Oliver might complicate a difficult situation. Little does she know that Boyd is pulling Reyna into a smuggling scheme across state lines, violating his probation. When Reyna takes a step back, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them.

    A novel that examines conviction, connection, repayment, and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki’s beloved Turkish rugs, as colorful as the tattoos decorating Reyna’s body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us.

  • Appointed to conquer the “crime capital of the world,” the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light.

    The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests. As he exposes their unholy work, he soon learns that no one is safe from black magic―not even the Sun King. In a world where a royal glance can turn success into disgrace, the distance between the quietly backstabbing world of the king’s court and the criminal underground proves disturbingly short. Nobles settle scores by employing witches to craft poisons and by hiring priests to perform dark rituals in Paris’ most illustrious churches and cathedrals.

    As La Reynie continues his investigations, he is haunted by a single question: Could Louis’ mistresses be involved in such nefarious plots? The pragmatic and principled La Reynie must decide just how far he will go to protect his king.

    From secret courtrooms to torture chambers, City of Light, City of Poison is a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder. Based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie’s compulsive note taking, as well as on letters and diaries, Tucker’s riveting narrative makes the fascinating, real-life characters breathe on the page.

  • Set in the early 1900s, the novel follows young Lucia Rutkowska who, thanks to the influence of her beloved grandmother, escapes the Warsaw ghetto to work as a kitchen maid in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the bustling city of Paris. Too talented for her lowly position, Lucia is thrown out on the street. Her only recourse is to take a job working for a married couple—two disorganized, rather poor scientists so distracted by their work that their house and young child are often neglected. Lucia soon bonds with her eccentric employers, watching as their work with radioactive materials grows increasing noticed by the world, then rising to fame as the great Marie and Pierre Curie.

    Soon all of Paris is alight with the news of an impending visit from Eusapia Palladino, the world’s most famous medium. It is through her now famous employers that Lucia attends Eusapia’s gatherings and eventually falls under the medium’s spell, leaving the Curie household to travel with Palladino to Italy. Ultimately, Lucia is placed directly in the crosshairs of faith versus science. What is more real, the glowing substances of the Curie laboratory or the glowing visions that surround the medium during her séance?

  • A brand-new anthology of stories inspired by the Arthur Conan Doyle canon

    In this follow-up to the acclaimed In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, expert Sherlockians Laurie King and Leslie Klinger put forth the question: What happens when great writers/creators who are not known as Sherlock Holmes devotees admit to being inspired by Conan Doyle stories? While some are highly regarded mystery writers, others are best known for their work in the fields of fantasy or science fiction. All of these talented authors, however, share a great admiration for Arthur Conan Doyle and his greatest creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

    To the editors’ great delight, these stories go in many directions. Some explore the spirit of Holmes himself; others tell of detectives inspired by Holmes’ adventures or methods. A young boy becomes a detective; a young woman sharpens her investigative skills; an aging actress and a housemaid each find that they have unexpected talents. Other characters from the Holmes stories are explored, and even non-Holmesian tales by Conan Doyle are echoed. The variations are endless!

    Although not a formal collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories, some entries do fit that mold while others were inspired by the Conan Doyle canon. The results are breathtaking, for fans of Holmes and Watson as well as listeners new to Doyle’s writing.

  • In 1524, in what is now Germany, hundreds of thousands of peasants revolt against the harsh treatment by their aristocratic overlords. Agnes, the daughter of one of these overlords, is not a typical sixteenth-century girl. She refuses to wear dresses and spends more time with her pet falcon than she does in trying to attract potential suitors. In fact, there is only one man who interests her: Mathis, a childhood friend, whom she can never marry because of his lowly birth. But the situation changes dramatically when a rogue knight attacks Agnes, Mathis shoots the knight to save her life, and the two are forced to go on the run together, into the midst of the raging peasants’ war.

    Over the next two years, as Agnes and Mathis travel the countryside, are each captured by and escape from various factions of the war, participate in massive battles, and make new friends both noble and peasant, they also, of course, fall in love. Meanwhile, Agnes’ falcon finds a mysterious ring, and Agnes begins having strange dreams that lead the two lovers to revelations about their place in the world and in the emerging German states.

    With The Castle of Kings, Oliver Pötzsch has written a historical epic that calls to mind Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth and Bernard Cornwell’s Agincourt.

  • Reimagining the Sutton Hoo dig, the greatest Anglo-Saxon archaeological discovery on British soil, John Preston brilliantly dramatizes three months of intense activity on a small estate when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure.

    In the long hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, a widowed farmer, has had her hunch proved correct that the strange mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As an archaeological dig proceeds against a background of mounting national anxiety, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find, and the discovery leads to a host of jealousies and tensions.

    Elegantly crafted with great tenderness and a poignant attention to detail, The Dig is more than a novel about archaeology. At its very core, this is a novel about the traces of life we all leave behind.

  • This captivating historical thriller brings back Marian Sutro, ex–special operations agent, and traces her romantic and political exploits in post–World War II London, where the Cold War is about to reshape old loyalties.

    As Allied forces close in on Berlin in spring 1945, a solitary figure emerges from the wreckage that is Germany. It is Marian Sutro, whose existence was last known to her British controllers in autumn 1943 in Paris. One of a handful of surviving agents of the Special Operations Executive, she has withstood arrest, interrogation, incarceration, and the horrors of Ravensbrück concentration camp, but at what cost?

    Returned to an England she barely knows and a postwar world she doesn’t understand, Marian searches for something on which to ground the rest of her life. Family and friends surround her, but she is haunted by her experiences and by the guilt of knowing that her contribution to the war effort helped lead to the monstrosities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the mysterious Major Fawley, the man who hijacked her wartime mission to Paris, emerges from the shadows to draw her into the ambiguities and uncertainties of the Cold War, she sees a way to make amends for the past and at the same time to find the identity that has never been hers.

    A novel of divided loyalties and mixed motives, Tightrope is the complex and enigmatic story of a woman whose search for personal identity and fulfillment leads her to shocking choices.

  • A sterling roster of natural and social scientists in conversation with top-flight journalist Stefan Klein—shedding new light on their work, their lives, and what they still hope to discover

    When acclaimed science writer Stefan Klein asks Nobel Prize–winning chemist Roald Hoffmann what sets scientists apart, Hoffmann says, “First and foremost, curiosity.” In this collection of intimate conversations with nineteen of the world’s best-known scientists (including three Nobel Laureates), Klein lets us listen in as today’s leading minds reveal what they still hope to discover—and how their paradigm-changing work entwines with their lives outside the lab.

    From the sports car that physicist Steven Weinberg says helped him on his quest for “the theory of everything” to the jazz musicians who gave psychologist Alison Gopnik new insight into raising children, these scientists explain how they find inspiration everywhere.

    Hear from renowned scientists including:

    • evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on selfishness,
    • anthropologist Sarah Hrdy on motherhood,
    • primatologist Jane Goodall on animal behavior,
    • neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran on consciousness,
    • geographer Jared Diamond on chance in history, and
    • many other luminaries.

  • One of six sisters, Dortchen Wild lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early nineteenth century. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the handsome but very poor fairy-tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. It is a time of tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all Europe, and Hesse-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm and his brothers quietly rebel by preserving old, half-forgotten tales that had once been told by firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.

    As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what will one day become his and Jacob's famous fairy-tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry, and war, death, and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart. Yet Dortchen is determined to find a way.

    Evocative and richly detailed, Kate Forsyth's The Wild Girl masterfully captures one young woman's enduring faith in love and the power of storytelling.

  • Lady Betty has no interest in the Duke of Collingham. She doesn't care that he's fabulously wealthy, or devastatingly handsome, or impeccably well-dressed. All she sees is an arrogant nobleman with an abrasive personality and an annoyingly persistent streak.

    And the Duke of Collingham is persistent. He can have any woman in the whole of Society—but the one who won't have him is the only one he wants. And he'll stop at nothing to persuade her.

  • A lady of quality would not wager her honor to restore her family's fortunes—or would she?

    Lady Jane Lovelace has conceived the idea of approaching the most notorious man-about-town, Lord Charles Welbourne, with a most unique proposition. When he counters her offer with a condition that he thinks will halt her impudence, much to the surprise of both, she accepts.

    A novel of passion and intrigue, The Westerby Inheritance is a thrilling installment in an emotionally charged romantic saga, all played out against a backdrop of elegant eighteenth-century society.

  • Born in Spain and raised by a struggling single mother, Lisa Lovatt-Smith became an editor at British Vogue at nineteen, the youngest in Cond├® Nast history. She helped launch Spanish Vogue and partied across Europe with celebrities, fashion designers, photographers, and supermodels.

    By her thirties Lisa has her dream career and a glamorous life in Paris, but when her adopted daughter, Sabrina, is expelled from school, Lisa takes her to volunteer in a Ghanaian orphanage in the hope of getting her back on track. What she discovers there changes both their lives for good.

    Appalled by the deplorable conditions she finds, Lisa moves to Ghana permanently and founds OAfrica, dedicating her personal resources to reuniting hundreds of Ghanaian children with their families and spearheading a drive to shut down corrupt orphanages. On this unforgettable journey, Lisa confronts death threats, malaria, arson, and heartbreaking poverty; she also discovers truly inspiring children trapped in limbo by a moneymaking scheme bigger than she ever imagined.

    Who Knows Tomorrow is the engaging, frank, and often surprisingly funny story of one amazing woman who has traveled the globe in search of meaningful connection. Although to Lisa her story will always be about the children, it's also a touching celebration of a woman who is talented, generous, and unfailingly courageous.

  • With "incantatory prose" that "sweeps over the reader like a dream" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Hoffman follows her celebrated bestseller The Probable Future with an evocative work that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years.

    In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family's lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

    These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives. The past both dissipates and remains contained inside the rooms of Blackbird House, where there are terrible secrets, inspired beauty, and, above all else, a spirit of coming home.

    From the writer that Time has said tells "truths powerful enough to break a reader's heart" comes a glorious travelogue through time and fate, through loss and love and survival. Welcome to Blackbird House.

  • They call him many names, but angelic isn't one of them.

    Sebastian Ballister, the notorious Marquess of Dain, is big, bad, and dangerous to know. No respectable woman would have anything to do with the "Bane and Blight of the Ballisters," and he wants nothing to do with respectable women. He's determined to continue doing what he does best—sin and sin again—and all's going swimmingly … until the day a shop door opens and she walks in.

    She's too intelligent to fall for the worst man in the world.

    Jessica Trent is a determined young woman, and she's going to drag her imbecile brother off the road to ruin, no matter what it takes. If saving him—and with him her family and future—means taking on the devil himself, she won't back down. The trouble is that the devil in question is so shockingly irresistible that the person who needs saving most is Jessica herself.

  • Fern wishes she had normal parents and a normal name. Instead, she has eccentric botanist parents who named her after her father’s favorite plant. Fern’s mother, Lily, assures her one day she’ll understand their love of plants, but Fern can’t believe it. She hates plants and could do with less of them in her life.

    Then Lily disappears suddenly while attending to a mysterious and rare silver rose. Fern and her dad are heartbroken but have no idea what could have happened. Then one day, Fern learns that she has a one-of-a-kind talent: she can communicate with plants and so could her mother! Using her newfound skill, she learns that her mother is in terrible danger, and she is the only one who can save her—with a little help from her friends, the plants.

  • Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, this beautifully written character study is an affirmation of the human capacity to grow, change, and forgive.

    The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but shallow young Kitty Fane, who marries for money rather than love. When her husband, a quiet doctor, discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to a remote region of China ravaged by a cholera epidemic. There, stripped of the British society of her youth and overwhelmed by the desolation around her, Kitty’s conscience begins to awaken.

    As she takes up work with children at a convent and experiences some of the burden her husband has taken on, she and her husband begin to rediscover each other in a new light. When her husband is tragically killed, Kitty is forced to return to England to raise her unborn child. Though it is too late for her marriage, she has learned humility, independence, and at last, how to love.

  • Though not as well known as the writers she influenced, Sarah Orne Jewett remains one of the most important American novelists of the late nineteenth century. A Country Doctor, Jewett’s first novel, is a luminous portrayal of rural Maine and a look at the author’s own world. In it, Nan’s struggle to choose between marriage and a career as a doctor, between the confining life of a small town and a self-directed one as a professional, mirrors Jewett’s own conflicts as well as eloquently giving voice to the leading women’s issues of her time.

    Jewett’s perfect details about wildflowers and seaside wharfs, farm women knitting by the fireside and sailors going upriver to meet the moonlight convey a realism that has seldom been surpassed.