Iāve lived in small towns and capital cities and gone to school on four continents, so I love books in which the location is practically a character in the story. When moving, I struggle to put down roots and feel legitimate in my new home. Writing about old homes helps. While living in New England, I wrote my Jana Bibi trilogy, set in India. Now in New York state, Iām setting a new novel in my native New Hampshire. Iāve been a Jill of all Trades: teaching, software, editing, fact-checking, social science research, and, most happily, fiction-writing. Iām also an amateur musician and an avid foreign language buff.
This book made me fall in love with the southern African country of Botswana as well as with Mma Ramotswe, the intrepid lady who starts a company to help people solve their problems. Her advice isnāt conventional, but it works! If a clientās husband has stolen an expensive auto, why not steal it back and return it to the rightful owner? Iām told that Alexander McCall Smith accurately depicts much about Botswana; he also celebrates decency, courage, empathy, and good humor. Happily, there are many more books in the series. Theyāre addictive.
Precious Ramotswe, a cheerful woman of traditional build, is the founder of Botswana's first and only ladies' detective agency. Here is a gentle interpretation of the detective role: solving her cases through her innate wisdom and understanding of human nature, she 'helps people with problems in their lives'. With a tone that is as elegant as that which is unfailingly used by his protagonist, Alexander McCall Smith tenderly unfolds a picture of life in Gaborone with a mastery of comic understatement and an evident sympathy for his subjects and their milieu. In the background of all this is Botswana, aā¦
Grace under pressure! Thatās what the main character, Count Rostov, illustrates all the way through this wonderful book, from the leisurely beginning through the riveting plot to the satisfying surprise ending. Along the way, the history of the Soviet Union unfolds. It makes you wonder. Could you craft a meaningful life in a dingy attic room, while a hostile political regime reigns outside? Could you plot your escape? And could you simultaneously live in the moment, enjoying the pleasures of food, drink, and conversation? The threads of Rostovās past and present intertwineā¦while his future is still open.
The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers, soon to be a major television series
From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, andā¦
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail toā¦
I love Rumer Goddenās novels, but Iām even fonder of her memoirs, especially this one. Writing with her sister, Jon, she describes life in Naryangang (then in British India, now in Bangla Desh) during and shortly after World War 1. The large household, the bazaar, the diversity of people, the bright sun and the monsoon rains, the wealth and the poverty, the danger of rabid dogs, the holidays in hill stationsā¦I grew up in India forty years after Jon and Rumer Godden, but in many ways, their experiences bring back my own childhood.
Wow! I felt intimately connected to the family depicted in this turbulent but big-hearted saga. I rooted for them at every turn, from their humble beginnings in Korea through their struggles as immigrants in Japan. The world changes dramatically from 1910 to 1989, but despite tragedy, they hold tight to their values of loyalty, hard work, independence, and honesty. Inspiring.
* The million-copy bestseller* * National Book Award finalist * * One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 * * Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club *
'This is a captivating book... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA.
Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunjaā¦
Bernardine's Shanghai Salon
by
Susan Blumberg-Kason,
Meet the Jewish salon host in 1930s Shanghai who brought together Chinese and expats around the arts as civil war erupted and World War II loomed on the horizon.
Bernardine Szold Fritz arrived in Shanghai in 1929 to marry her fourth husband. Only thirty-three years old, she found herself inā¦
Harold Fry sets off on the spur of the moment to trek across England, believing he can save a former colleague with terminal cancer. But thatās not all that needs saving. Rachel Joyceās distinctive voice makes me feel as if sheās sitting next to me, telling the story, and from time to time both of us burst out laughing. But this heartwarming novel also made me consider how poignant life is, how we make wrong turns, and how sometimes we feel the urgent need to make up for past mistakes.
'Impossible to put down' TIMES 'Life-affirming delight. A comic pleasure' WOMAN AND HOME 'Profoundly moving' RICHARD MADELEY
OVER 4 MILLION COPIES SOLD. SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOVIE STARRING JIM BROADBENT AND PENELOPE WILTON ____________________
When Harold Fry nips out one morning to post a letter, leaving his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other.
He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking. To save someone else's life.
Scottish-born Janet Laird (Jana to her friends) inherits her grandfatherās house in an Indian hill station and moves in with her loyal housekeeper and savvy parrot. Her own home, at last! But when the town is threatened by a government dam, Jana has to help to attract tourists and put it on the map. She hangs out her fortune-telling shingleāand Jana Bibiās Excellent Fortunes is born. Will the ploy work? Readers all over the world responded to the novelās humor, drama, and Bollywood-style high spirits.
Nine-year-old Chloe Janis is missing. Abby, her mom, is now faced with an impossible decisionārevealing seventeen-year-old secrets she's kept hidden, or losing her daughter forever.
Everything unravels after Abby receives a cryptic message from a man from her past, someone sheād tried to erase from her memory. But now, heāsā¦
Four sisters in hiding. A grand duchess in disguise. Dark family secrets revealed. An alternate future for the Romanovs from Jennifer Laam, author of The Secret Daughter Of The Tsar.
With her parents and brother missing and presumed dead, former Grand Duchess Olga Romanova must keep her younger sistersā¦