Yara Zgheib

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

A Novel

"Hadi and Sama are a young Syrian couple in the throes of new love, building a life in the country that brought them together ... Now they giddily await the birth of their son, a boy whose native language would be freedom and belonging. When Sama is five months pregnant, Hadi's father dies in Amman the night before the embassy interview that would finally reunite Hadi with his parents and deliver them from a country in crisis. Hadi flies back to the Middle East for the funeral, promising he'll be gone only a few days. On the day his flight is due to arrive in Boston, Sama decides to surprise him at the airport, eager to scoop him up and bring him back home. She waits, and waits. There are protests at Logan airport, and Hadi never shows up. What Sama doesn't yet know is that Hadi has been stopped at the border"--

No Land to Light On

026f0f6e-d2d1-40b6-8b75-ed866e7d5a51-1

Asale Angel-Ajani

California

"From page one, A Country You Can Leave is a riveting, exasperating, and deeply heartbreaking tale of mother-daughter strife and resilience." --Xochitl Gonzalez, author of Olga Dies Dreaming

A stunning debut novel following the turbulent relationship of a Black, biracial teen and her ferocious Russian mother, struggling to survive in the California desert.

When sixteen-year-old Lara and her fiery mother, Yevgenia, find themselves homeless again, the misnamed Oasis Mobile Estates is all they can afford. In this new community, where residents are down on their luck but rich in humor and escape plans, Lara navigates what it means to be the Black, biracial daughter of a Russian mother and begins to wonder what a life beyond Yevgenia's orbit--insistence on reading only the right kind of books (Russian), having the right kind of relationships (casual, with lots of sex)--might look like.

Lara knows that something else lies beneath her mother's fierce, independent spirit, but Yevgenia doesn't believe in sharing, least of all with her daughter. When a brutal attack exposes the cracks in their relationship, Lara and Yevgenia are forced to confront the family legacy of violence and the strain of inherited trauma on the bonds of their love.

A Country You Can Leave is a dazzling, sharp-witted story, suffused with yearning, as Lara and Yevgenia attempt to forge their own identities and thrive in a hostile land. Compelling and empathetic, wry and intimate, Asale Angel-Ajani's unforgettable debut novel examines the beauty and dangers of womanhood in multiracial America.

A Country You Can Leave

83fcc700-9a62-46af-84cd-557a98d9771b-1

#hardcover #fiction #adult #contemporary #italy #literaryfiction #travel 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Texas

"New Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, a journalist, travel to Italy with their friends from Maine--Finn, his wife Taylor, and their daughter Snow. 'From the beginning,' says Taylor, 'it was a conspiracy for Lizzie and Finn to be together.' Told Rashomon-style in alternating points of view, the characters expose and stumble upon lies and infidelities past and present"

Siracusa

861f9d9b-dcec-4bd2-9afd-0d582a405c42-1

Nevada

"The Hummingbird is a remarkable accomplishment, a true gift to the world." --Michael Cunningham "Long considered one of Italy's leading writers, Sandro Veronesi has re-written the family saga. Ardent, gripping, and inventive to the core, it has already been hailed a classic."--Jhumpa Lahiri The Hummingbird is a masterly novel, a brilliantly conceived mosaic of love and tragedy.--Ian McEwan The #1 international sensation from a master of European literature--winner of Italy's Premio Strega--a saga of a Florentine family from the 1960s to the present that brilliantly captures the power of history and the multi-faceted experience of life itself as it explores how we contend with uncontrollable forces that both buffet and buoy us. Marco Carrera is "the hummingbird," a man with an almost supernatural ability to remain still amid the chaos of an ever-changing world. Though his life is rife with emotional challenges--suffering the death of his sister and the absence of his brother; caring for his elderly parents; raising his granddaughter when her mother, Marco's own child, is no longer capable; loving an enigmatic woman--Marco carries on with a noble stoicism that belies an intensity for living. As the years pass and the arc of his life bends, Marco finds himself filled with joy for the future as the baton passes from him to the next generation. A beautiful and compelling journey through time told in myriad narrative styles, The Hummingbird is a story of suffering, happiness, loss, love, and hope--of a man who embodies the quiet heroism that defines daily life for countless ordinary folk. A thrilling novel about the need to look to the future with hope and live with intensity to the very end, Sandro Veronesi's masterpiece--eminently readable, rich in insight, and filled with interesting twists and revelations--is a portrait of human existence, the vicissitudes and vagaries that propel and ultimately define us Translated from the Italian by Elena Pala A great novel, vibrating with life and death, happiness and pain, nostalgia and hope for the future. --Vanity Fair

The Hummingbird

db866a07-70e3-4b12-9508-bb845be6fb41-1

Minnesota

New Jersey

A major new novel from the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author--a freshly observed, funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one family's foibles, from the 1950s up to our pandemic present. The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation. Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close--yet how unknowable--every family is to itself.

French Braid

8cdb33f2-becf-4af1-9d65-174b84352deb-1

Delia Cai

New Hampshire

"A sensitive, sharp-eyed, slyly funny novel of venturing back into the foreign country that is your past--and discovering that you can never really shake the places and people that shaped you."--Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts
 
A young woman's past and present collide when she brings her white fiancé home to meet her Chinese immigrant parents in this vibrant debut from an exciting new voice in fiction.

Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she's become, from those she left behind.

But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Audrey's relationship with her parents has been soured by years of her mother's astronomical expectations and slights. The friends she's shirked for bigger dreams have stayed behind and started families. And then there's Kyle, the easygoing stoner and her unrequited crush from high school that she finds herself drawn to again. Ben might be a perfect fit for New Audrey, but Kyle was always the only one who truly understood her growing up, and being around him again after all these years has Old Audrey bubbling up to the surface.

Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey's proximity to her family and to Kyle forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself. But is that life really the one she wants?

Central Places

2c8b5008-9fce-4f17-9cf7-388f0d586196-1

Keith Donohue

Inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem that tempts a child from home to the waters and the wild,The Stolen Childis a modern fairy tale narrated by the child Henry Day and his double. On a summer night, Henry Day runs away from home and hides in a hollow tree. There he is taken by the changelings—an unaging tribe of wild children who live in darkness and in secret. They spirit him away, name him Aniday, and make him one of their own. Stuck forever as a child, Aniday grows in spirit, struggling to remember the life and family he left behind. He also seeks to understand and fit in this shadow land, as modern life encroaches upon both myth and nature. In his place, the changelings leave a double, a boy who steals Henry’s life in the world. This new Henry Day must adjust to a modern culture while hiding his true identity from the Day family. But he can’t hide his extraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the true Henry never displayed), and his dazzling performances prompt his father to suspect that the son he has raised is an imposter. As he ages the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a German piano teacher and his prodigy. Of a time when he, too, had been a stolen child. Both Henry and Aniday obsessively search for who they once were before they changed places in the world. The Stolen Childis a classic tale of leaving childhood and the search for identity. With just the right mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue has created a bedtime story for adults and a literary fable of remarkable depth and strange delights.

The Stolen Child

1d7040ce-f948-45c6-bb21-e62158dced96-1

Kate Atkinson

The stunning companion to Kate Atkinson's #1 bestseller Life After Life, "one of the best novels I've read this century" (Gillian Flynn). "He had been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future." Kate Atkinson's dazzling Life After Life explored the possibility of infinite chances and the power of choices, following Ursula Todd as she lived through the turbulent events of the last century over and over again. A GOD IN RUINS tells the dramatic story of the 20th Century through Ursula's beloved younger brother Teddy--would-be poet, heroic pilot, husband, father, and grandfather-as he navigates the perils and progress of a rapidly changing world. After all that Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge is living in a future he never expected to have. An ingenious and moving exploration of one ordinary man's path through extraordinary times, A GOD IN RUINS proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age.

A God in Ruins

535275b3-e068-4e05-87fe-d6c7800ca139-1

Kai Harris

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Tennessee

Named A Most Aniticipated Book of 2022 by *Marie Claire* Buzzfeed* Essence* Bookbub and more! In the vein of Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones and Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, a coming-of-age novel told by almost-eleven-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB), as she and her sister try to make sense of their new life with their estranged grandfather in the wake of their father's death and their mother's disappearance. An ode to Black girlhood and adolescence as seen through KB's eyes, What the Fireflies Knew follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down. Her father has been labeled a fiend. Her mother's smile no longer reaches her eyes. Her sister, once her best friend, now feels like a stranger. Her grandfather is grumpy and silent. The white kids who live across the street are friendly, but only sometimes. And they're all keeping secrets. As KB vacillates between resentment, abandonment, and loneliness, she is forced to carve out a different identity for herself and find her own voice. A dazzling and moving novel about family, identity, and race, What the Fireflies Knew poignantly reveals that heartbreaking but necessary component of growing up--the realization that loved ones can be flawed and that the perfect family we all dream of looks different up close.

What the Fireflies Knew

13d132c9-9fe4-414f-a72d-801b9ca46cb7-1

Jeannette Walls

Abandoned by their artist mother at the age of 12, Bean and her older sister, Liz, are sent to live in the decaying antebellum mansion of their widowed uncle, where they learn the truth about their parents and take odd jobs to earn extra money before an increasingly withdrawn Liz has a life-shattering experience. 500,000 first printing.

The Silver Star

c451157d-60b3-46fa-a7da-b1caed38f5ee-1

Naima Coster

Perfect condition except for my name on the first page.

When a county initiative in the Piedmont of North Carolina forces the students at a mostly black public school on the east side to move across town to a nearly all-white high school on the west, the community rises in outrage. For two students, quiet and aloof Gee and headstrong Noelle, these divisions will extend far beyond their schooling. As their paths collide and overlap over the course of thirty years, their two seemingly disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that shape the trajectory of their lives. On one side of the school integration debate is Jade, Gee's steely, single, black mother, grieving for her murdered partner, and determined for her son to have the best chance at a better life. On the other, is Noelle's enterprising mother, Lacey May, who refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. The choices these mothers make will resound for years to come. And twenty years later, when Lacey's daughters return home to visit her in hospital, they're forced to confront the ways their parents' decisions continue to affect the life they live and the people they love. WHAT'S MINE AND YOURS is a sweeping, rich tapestry of familial bond and identity, and a sharp, poignant look at the ways race affects even the closest of relationships. This is not just one love story, but many: It's the all-consuming volatile passion of young lovers and the quieter comfort of steady companionship; it's the often tenuous but unbreakable bond between siblings; and it's the unconditional love that runs between parent and child and encompasses adoration, contempt and forgiveness. With gorgeous prose, Naima Coster explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.

What's Mine and Yours

644211a3-9732-4d3e-b44a-b18594baed15-1

Jess Walter

Maryland

"Orphans Gig and Rye Dolan don't have a penny to their names. The brothers work grueling, odd jobs each day just to secure a meal, and spend nights sleeping wherever they can with other day laborers. Twenty-three-year-old Gig is a passionate union man, fighting for fair pay and calling out the corrupt employers who exploit the working class. Eager to emulate his older brother, Rye follows suit, though he can't quite muster Gig's passion for the cause. But when Rye's turn on the soap box catches the eye of well-known activist and suffragette Elizabeth Gurley, he is swept into the world of labor activism-and dirty business. With his brother's life on the line, Rye must evade the barbaric police force, maneuver his way out of the clutches of a wealthy businessman-and figure out for himself what he truly stands for. The Cold Millions is a stunning portrait of class division and familial bonds. In this masterful historical take on the enduring saga of America's economic divide, Jess Walter delivers nothing less than another "literary miracle" (NPR)"--

The Cold Millions

b5801b84-99d3-4e59-a25c-e361686c95a0-1

Anne Tyler

Louisiana

David Levithan

Jennifer Niven

"Ezra Ahern wakes up one day to find his older sister, Bea, gone. No note, no sign, nothing but an email address hidden somewhere only he would find it. Ezra never expected to be left behind with their abusive stepfather and their neglectful mother, how is he supposed to navigate life without Bea? Bea Ahern already knew sh eneeded to get as far away from home as possible. But a message in her inbox changes everything, and she finds herself alone in a new city, without Ez, without a real plan, chasing someone who might not even want to be found. As things unravel at home for Ezra, Bea must confront secrets that will forever change the way they feel about their family. Although they may not be together in the present, they must help each other navigate the past in order to make their way to a better, safer future"--Dust jacket.

Take Me with You When You Go

3bff79c1-b9bf-4a65-abd8-77f73866cfbd

Ye Chun

Connecticut

A harrowing and redemptive immigrant story for readers of Pachinko, Straw Dogs of the Universe follows a Chinese railroad worker and his young daughter—sold into servitude—in 19th century California as they search for family, fulfillment, and belonging in a violent new land “Heaven and earth aren’t humane. To them the ten thousand things Are straw dogs.” A sweeping historical novel of the American West from the little-seen perspective of those who helped to build it, Straw Dogs of the Universe traces the story of one Chinese father and his young daughter, desperate to find him against all odds. After her village is devastated by famine, ten-year-old Sixiang is sold to a human trafficker for a bag of rice and six silver coins. Her mother is reluctant to let her go, but the promise of a better life for her beloved daughter ultimately sways her. Arriving in America with the profits from her sale and a single photograph of Guifeng, her absent father, Sixiang journeys across an unfamiliar American landscape in the hopes of reuniting her family. As she makes her way through an unforgiving new world, her father, a railroad worker in California, finds his attempts to build a life for himself both upended and defined by along-lost love and the seemingly inescapable violence of the American West. A generational saga ranging from the villages of China to the establishment of the transcontinental railroad and the anti-Chinese movement in California, Straw Dogs of the Universe considers the tenacity of family ties and the courage it takes to survive in acountry that rejects you, even as it relies upon your labor.

Straw Dogs of the Universe

fb7e88de-c1d6-4458-a769-8111f78cc583-1

"First published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Circus, August 2020"--Title page verso.

Here Is the Beehive

a2793468-863e-4da0-8736-67e0eb833ca5-1

#hardcover #fiction #literaryfiction #womensfiction

Oversized Hardcover (4 to 6 lbs)

A "thoughtful, bruising, poignant, and poetic" (Ian Rankin) debut in which a woman's search for her missing sister leads her into the world of contemporary sex work.

Rona Leonard was only twenty-years-old when she walked out of her sister Fiona's flat and disappeared.

Six years later--worn down by a tedious job, childcare, and an aching absence in her life--Fiona's mundane existence is blown apart by the revelation that Rona had been working as a prostitute before she vanished. Driven to discover the truth, Fiona embarks on an obsessive quest to investigate the sex industry that claimed her sister. However, as she is drawn into this complex world, Fiona finds herself seduced by the power it offers women in a society determined to see them only as victims.

In bold, unflinching prose, Fishnet offers a clear-eyed look at the lives of sex workers, questioning our perception of contemporary femininity and challenging assumptions about power, vulnerability, and choice.

Fishnet

35ddfbbf-ec41-4e1f-bb1e-58494cad6549-1

John Boyne

A seductive, unputdownable psychodrama following one brilliant, ruthless man who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of success Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn't have is talent - but he's not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don't need to be his own. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful - but desperately lonely - older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice's first novel. Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall... Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.

A Ladder to the Sky

6c5ea041-ad2a-401d-b7a1-7fccdf634d3c-1

Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco (2017, Hardcover)

Brand new and unread.

Item pictured is the actual item listed and what the buyer will receive. See photos for details.

Ships with USPS Media Mail. Orders processed within one business day. 

Publisher	‎Riverhead Books; Translation edition (July 4, 2017)
Language	‎English
Hardcover	‎240 pages
ISBN-10	‎159463436X
ISBN-13	‎978-1594634369
Item Weight	‎11.4 ounces
Dimensions	‎5.38 x 0.86 x 8.25 inches
 #hardcover #abuse #bestseller #dystopian #fiction #literaryfiction #literature #sexualassault 

Georgia

"A harrowing, humane, and very beautiful book." --Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You 

A searing dystopian vision of a young boy's flight through an unnamed, savaged country, searching for sanctuary and redemption--a debut novel from one of Europe's bestselling literary stars.
     
A young boy has fled his home. He's pursued by dangerous forces. What lies before him is an infinite, arid plain, one he must cross in order to escape those from whom he's fleeing. One night on the road, he meets an old goatherd, a man who lives simply but righteously, and from that moment on, their paths intertwine.

Out in the Open tells the story of this journey through a drought-stricken country ruled by violence. A world where names and dates don't matter, where morals have drained away with the water. In this landscape the boy--not yet a lost cause--has the chance to choose hope and bravery, or to live forever mired in the cycle of violence in which he was raised. Carrasco has masterfully created a high stakes world, a dystopian tale of life and death, right and wrong, terror and salvation.

Out in the Open

0298b611-d4dd-4b2d-ba0f-1aa11492c1c7-1

Michigan

From an award-winning young author, a novel following a feisty heroine's quest to reclaim her past through the power of literature--even as she navigates the murkier mysteries of love. Zebra is the last in a line of anarchists, atheists, and autodidacts. When war came, her family didn't fight; they took refuge in books. Now alone and in exile, Zebra leaves New York for Barcelona, retracing the journey she and her father made from Iran to the United States years ago. Books are Zebra's only companions--until she meets Ludo. Their connection is magnetic; their time together fraught. Zebra overwhelms him with her complex literary theories, her concern with death, and her obsession with history. He thinks she's unhinged; she thinks he's pedantic. Neither are wrong; neither can let the other go. They push and pull their way across the Mediterranean, wondering with each turn if their love, or lust, can free Zebra from her past. An adventure tale, a love story, and a paean to the power of language and literature starring a heroine as quirky as Don Quixote, as introspective as Virginia Woolf, as whip-smart as Miranda July, and as spirited as Frances Ha, Call Me Zebra will establish Van der Vliet Oloomi as an author "on the verge of developing a whole new literature movement" (Bustle).

Call Me Zebra

6ef2704d-adc0-44a3-b7ad-b0fe0f24fe84-1

New York

For readers of Zadie Smith and Marlon James, an electrifying literary debut about a young man's fraught decision: escape a dangerous past alone, or stay with the woman he loves, braving the pull of his old life's temptations Sayon Hughes longs to escape the rough-and-tumble Bristol neighborhood of Ends, the tight-knit but sometimes lawless world he was raised in, and make a better life with Shona, the girl he's loved since grade school. With few paths out, he latches on to a job dealing drugs alongside his cousin, the unpredictable but fiercely loyal Cuba. Sayon is on the cusp of making a clean break for good when an altercation with a rival dealer turns deadly, upending his plans. The fatal crime has an unexpected witness, Shona's father, a neighborhood pastor. In a misguided attempt to shelter his daughter, the minister threatens the young man with blackmail. Sayon's loyalties are torn. If Shona learns his secret, he will lose her forever. But if he doesn't escape from Ends now, he may never get another chance. Is it possible to break free of the bookies' tickets, the burnt spoons, and the crooked solutions, and still to keep the love of his life? Crafted with linguistic bravado, Moses McKenzie's dazzling debut ripples with authenticity and originality. In its sheer lyrical power, An Olive Grove in Ends recalls the work of James Baldwin and marks the arrival of an exciting new voice, rendering a vibrant and teeming world we have read too little about.

An Olive Grove in Ends

f144ba3d-3e5d-45f9-a15b-ead92896c23f-1

Chelsea Bieker

Indiana

“Imagine if Annie Proulx wrote something like White Oleander crossed with Geek Love or Cruddy, and then add cults, God, motherhood, girlhood, class, deserts, witches, the divinity of women . . . Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." —T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen–year–old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances. Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother–loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own. “[A] haunting debut . . . This is a harrowing tale, which Bieker smartly writes through the lens of a teenager on the cusp of understanding the often fraught relationship between religion and sexuality . . . It's a timely and disturbing portrait of how easily men can take advantage of vulnerable women—and the consequences sink in more deeply with each page."—Annabel Gutterman, Time “Drawn in brilliant, bizarre detail—baptism in warm soda, wisdom from romance novels—Lacey's twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend. A–.”—Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly

Godshot

6744d7ce-c18c-46d6-aace-8cf61b58ea72-1

Jonas Jonasson's picaresque tale of how one person's actions can have far-reaching--even global--consequences, written with the same light-hearted satirical voice as his bestselling debut novel, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.

On June 14th, 2007, the King and Prime Minister of Sweden went missing from a gala banquet at the Royal Castle. Later it was said that both had fallen ill: the truth is different. The real story starts much earlier, in 1961, with the birth of Nombeko Mayeki in a shack in Soweto. Nombeko was fated to grow up fast and die early in her poverty-stricken township. But Nombeko takes a different path. She finds work as a housecleaner and eventually makes her way up to the position of chief advisor, at the helm of one of the world's most secret projects.

Here is where the story merges with, then diverges from reality. South Africa developed six nuclear missiles in the 1980s, then voluntarily dismantled them in 1994. This is a story about the seventh missile . . . the one that was never supposed to have existed. Nombeko Mayeki knows too much about it, and now she's on the run from both the South African justice and the most terrifying secret service in the world. She ends up in Sweden, which has transformed into a nuclear nation, and the fate of the world now lies in Nombeko's hands. 

Browse by categories

Save this search

Yara Zgheib

No Land to Light On

Asale Angel-Ajani

A Country You Can Leave

Delia Ephron

Siracusa

Sandro Veronesi; Elena Pala (Translator)

The Hummingbird

Yara Zgheib

No Land to Light On

Anne Tyler

French Braid

Delia Cai

Central Places

Keith Donohue

The Stolen Child

Kate Atkinson

A God in Ruins

Kai Harris

What the Fireflies Knew

Jeannette Walls

The Silver Star

Naima Coster

What's Mine and Yours

Jess Walter

The Cold Millions

Anne Tyler

French Braid

David Levithan; Jennifer Niven

Take Me with You When You Go

Ye Chun

Straw Dogs of the Universe

Sarah Crossan

Here Is the Beehive

Kirstin Innes

Fishnet

John Boyne

A Ladder to the Sky

Jesús Carrasco

Out in the Open

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

Call Me Zebra

Moses McKenzie

An Olive Grove in Ends

Chelsea Bieker

Godshot

Jonas Jonasson; Rachel Willson-Broyles

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden