Thorndike Press large print reviewers' choice

"One wet Friday evening, Professor Andrew Martin of Cambridge University solves the world's greatest mathematical riddle. Then he disappears. When he is found walking naked along the motorway, Professor Martin seems different. Besides the lack of clothes, he now finds normal life pointless. His loving wife and teenage son seem repulsive to him. In fact, he hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton. And he's a dog."--Back cover. "It's hardest to belong when you're closest to home ... One wet Friday evening, Professor Andrew Martin of Cambridge University solves the world's greatest mathematical riddle. Then he disappears. When he is found walking naked along the motorway, Professor Martin seems different. Besides the lack of clothes, he now finds normal life pointless. His loving wife and teenage son seem repulsive to him. In fact, he hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton. And he's a dog. Can a bit of Debussy and Emily Dickinson keep him from murder? Can the species which invented cheap white wine and peanut butter sandwiches be all that bad? And what is the warm feeling he gets when he looks into his wife's eyes?"--Publisher's description.

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Winner of the 2008 Man-Booker Prize for The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga now offers a blinding, brilliant, and brave mosaic of Indian life as it is lived in a place called Kittur, between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Kittur is an extraordinary crossroads of the brightest minds and the poorest morals, the up-and-coming and the downtrodden, and the poets and prophets of an India that modern literature has rarely addressed.

The Refugees is a collection of stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family. Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.

Missing her former life after moving to rural Southern Thailand, Jimm Juree catches the eye of a successful European writer against a backdrop of a serial murder case, an imminent major storm and her ex-cop grandfather's disapproval.

Doc Sportello is bewildered when an ex-girlfriend returns to recruit him in a plot to kidnap a wealthy construction executive. Soon, Sportello finds himself in the midst of a thrilling conspiracy with an undercover cop and a group of dentists who are swindling the IRS.

John Turner, deputy sheriff of a small town near Memphis, confronts trouble in the persons of the sheriff's long-lost son, who arrives in what appears to be a stolen car, and old friend Eldon Brown, who is a suspect in a murder he does not know if he committed.

Roddy Doyle's first ever collection of stories.For the past few years Roddy Doyle has been writing stories for Metro Eireann, a newspaper started by, and aimed at, immigrants to Ireland. Each of the stories took a new slant on the immigrant experience, something of increasing relevance and importance in today's Ireland.The stories range from 'Guess Who's Coming to the Dinner', where a father who prides himself on his open-mindedness when his daughters talk about sex, is forced to confront his feelings when one of them brings home a black fella, to a terrifying ghost story, 'The Pram', in which a Polish nanny grows impatient with her charge's older sisters and decides - in a phrase she has learnt - to 'scare them shitless'.Most of the stories are very funny - in '57% Irish' Ray Brady tries to devise a test of Irishness by measuring reactions to Robbie Keane's goal against Germany in the 2002 World Cup, Riverdance and 'Danny Boy' - others deeply moving. And best of all, in the title story itself,Jimmy Rabbitte, the man who formed The Commitments, decides it's time to find a new band, and this time no White Irish need apply. Multicultural to a fault, The Deportees specialise not in soul music this time, but the songs of Woody Guthrie.

Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan. Desperate to save him from Pastor Bob and the Drakes, Lucy allows herself to be hijacked by Ian. The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and upsetting family history thrown in their path. But is it just Ian who is running away? Who is the man who seems to be on their tail? And should Lucy be trying to save a boy from his own parents?

"Alma DeGeer Dunahew, the mother of three young boys, works as the maid for a prominent citizen and his family in West Table, Missouri. Her husband is mostly absent, and, in 1929, her scandalous, beloved younger sister is one of the 42 killed in an explosion at the local dance hall. Who is to blame? Mobsters from St. Louis? The embittered local gypsies? The preacher who railed against the loose morals of the waltzing couples? Or could it have been a colossal accident? Alma thinks she knows the answer--and that its roots lie in a dangerous love affair. Her dogged pursuit of justice makes her an outcast and causes a long-standing rift with her own son. By telling her story to her grandson, she finally gains some solace--and peace for her sister. He is advised to "Tell it. Go on and tell it"--tell the story of his family's struggles, suspicions, secrets, and triumphs."-- Dust jacket flap.

Cyrla's neighbors have begun to whisper. Her cousin, Anneke, is pregnant and has passed the rigorous exams for admission to the Lebensborn, a maternity home for girls carrying German babies. But Anneke's soldier has disappeared, and Lebensborn babies are only ever released to their father's custody-- or taken away. A note is left under the mat. Someone knows that Cyrla, sent from Poland years before for safekeeping with her Dutch relatives, is Jewish. The Nazis are imposing more and more restrictions; she won't be safe there for long. And then in the space of an afternoon, life falls apart. Cyrla must choose between certain discovery in her cousin's home and taking Anneke's place in the Lebensborn--Cyrla and Anneke are nearly identical. If she takes refuge in the enemy's lair, can Cyrla fool the doctors, nurses, guards, and other mothers-to-be? Can she escape before they discover she is not who she claims? Mining a lost piece of history, Sara Young takes us deep into the lives of women living in the worst of times. Part love story and part elegy for the terrible choices we must often make to survive, MY ENEMY'S CRADLE keens for what we lose in war and sings for the hope we sometimes find.

A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow.

When Erik Davidsen and his sister, Inga, find a disturbing note from an unknown woman among their dead father's papers, they believe he may be implicated in a mysterious death. The Sorrows of an American tells the story of the Davidsen family as brother and sister uncover its secrets and unbandage its wounds in the year following their father's funeral. A multi-layered novel that probes the mysteries of the heart and mind, "The sorrows of an American" is breathtaking in its range, richly thought-provoking and profoundly affecting a novel that resonates long beyond the last page.

In this new volume, comprising twelve new stories and seven pieces selected from Nebraska, the subjects of Ron Hansen's scrutiny range from Oscar Wilde to murder to dementia to romance, and display him at his storytelling best. Readers will thrill to Hansen's masterful attention to the smallest and most telling details, even as he plunges straight into the deepest recesses of desire, love, fury, and loss.

August Brill ha sufrido un accidente de coche y se está recuperando en casa de su hija, en Vermont. No puede dormir, e inventa historias en la oscuridad. En una de ellas, es Owen Brick, un joven mago que despierta en el fondo de un foso. No sabe dónde está pero oye el ruido de una batalla. Entonces aparece el sargento Serge, que le ayuda a salir, y Brick descubre que América está inmersa en una oscura guerra civil. Los atentados del once de septiembre no han tenido lugar, y tampoco la guerra de Irak. Los Estados Unidos combaten desde hace tiempo, pero contra ellos mismos. Unos cuantos estados han declarado la independencia. Brick se entera de que su misión es asesinar a un tal Blake, o Block, o Black, un hombre que no puede dormir, y que inventa en la noche esa guerra que no acabará nunca si él no muere. Aunque no se llama Blake ni Block ni Black, sino August Brill, y puede contarnos una feroz y veraz fábula de nuestros días. «Prepárense a robarle tiempo al sueño para devorársela en una sola noche. Así es Auster, queridos» (Manuel Rodríguez Rivero); «Una espléndida historia de fantasías posibles, mundos paralelos y juegos con la Historia» (Javier Aparicio Maydeu, El País).

Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents. Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony's Orphanage for boys. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world.But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. But is Benjamin really who he says he is? Journeying through a New England of whaling towns and meadowed farmlands, Ren is introduced to a vibrant world of hardscrabble adventure filled with outrageous scam artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves. If he stays, Ren becomes one of them. If he goes, he's lost once again. As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well.From the Hardcover edition.

In Thomas McGuane's Big Sky country, with its mesmeric powers, the ties of family make uncomfortable binds: A devoted son is horrified to discover his mother's antics before she slipped into dementia, and a father's outdoor skills are no match for an ominous change in the weather. Complications arise equally in the absence of blood ties when lifelong friends on a fishing trip finally confront their deep dislike for each other, or a gifted traveling cattle breeder succombs to the lure of a stranger's offer of easy money.

Lyrical and captivating, Kwei Quartey's debut novel brings to life the majesty and charm of Ghana--from the capital city of Accra to a small community where long-buried secrets are about to rise to the surface.In a shady grove outside the small town of Ketanu, a young woman--a promising med student--has been found dead under suspicious circumstances. Eager to close the case, the local police have arrested a poor, enamored teenage boy and charged him with murder. Needless to say, they are less than thrilled when an outside force arrives from the big city to lead an inquiry into the baffling case.Detective Inspector Darko Dawson, fluent in Ketanu's indigenous language, is the right man for the job, but he hates the idea of leaving his loving wife and young son, a plucky kid with a defective heart. Pressured by his cantankerous boss, Dawson agrees to travel to Ketanu, sort through the evidence, and tie up the loose ends as quickly and as efficiently as possible. But for Dawson, this sleepy corner of Ghana is rife with emotional land mines: an estranged relationship with the family he left behind twenty-five years earlier and the painful memory of his own mother's sudden, inexplicable disappearance. Dawson is armed with remarkable insight and a healthy dose of skepticism, but these gifts, sometimes overshadowed by his mercurial temper, may not be enough to solve this haunting mystery. In Ketanu, he finds that his cosmopolitan sensibilities clash with age-old customs, including a disturbing practice in which teenage girls are offered by their families to fetish priests as trokosi, or Wives of the Gods.This is a compelling and unique mystery, enriched by an exotic setting and a vivid cast. And Inspector Darko Dawson--dedicated family man, rebel in the office, and ace in the field--is one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years.From the Hardcover edition.

When his sister tricks him into taking her guru on a trip to their childhood home, Otto Ringling, a confirmed skeptic, is not amused. Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he'd planned. But in an effort to westernize his passenger—and amuse himself—he decides to show the monk some "American fun" along the way. From a chocolate factory in Hershey to a bowling alley in South Bend, from a Cubs game at Wrigley field to his family farm near Bismarck, Otto is given the remarkable opportunity to see his world—and more important, his life—through someone else's eyes. Gradually, skepticism yields to amazement as he realizes that his companion might just be the real thing.In Roland Merullo's masterful hands, Otto tells his story with all the wonder, bemusement, and wry humor of a man who unwittingly finds what he's missing in the most unexpected place.

A highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman's legendary quest in a shocking, future America.

Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.

A collection of interwoven tales explores themes of family, sacrifice, war, and the redemptive power of art.

Discovering a murdered teen while stranded by a gale on the remote Lake of the Woods, detective Cork O'Connor and his daughter, Jenny, also discover a mysterious baby boy whose life is threatened by powerful adversaries.

"In the predominantly Mormon city of Draper, Utah, some seemingly perfect families have deadly secrets. Inspired by an actual crime and written by a practicing Mormon, The Bishop's Wife is both a fascinating look at the lives of modern Mormons as well as a grim and cunningly twisted mystery. Linda Wallheim is the mother of five grown boys and the wife of a Mormon bishop. As bishop, Kurt Wallheim is the ward's designated spiritual father, and that makes Linda the ward's unofficial mother, and her days are filled with comfort visits, community service, and informal counseling. But Linda is increasingly troubled by the church's patriarchal structure and secrecy, especially as a disturbing situation takes shape in the ward. One cold winter morning, a neighbor, Jared Helm, appears on the Wallheims' doorstep with his 5-year-old daughter, claiming that his wife, Carrie, disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind everything she owns. The circumstances surrounding Carrie's disappearance become more suspicious the more Linda learns about them, and she becomes convinced that Jared has murdered his wife and painted himself as an abandoned husband. Kurt asks Linda not to get involved in the unfolding family saga, but she has become obsessed with Carrie's fate, and with the well-being of her vulnerable young daughter. She cannot let the matter rest until she finds out the truth. Is she wrong to go against her husband, the bishop, when her inner convictions are so strong?"--

From an acclaimed novelist, an emotionally complex and riveting story of suspicion, innocence, and regretWhen a mail bomb explodes in the campus office next door, Lee, an Asian American math professor at a second-tier university in the Midwest, comes under suspicion. The authorities believe he may be the infamous "brain bomber," an elusive terrorist whose primary targets are prominent scientists and mathematicians.In the midst of campus tumult and grief over the star computer scientist who was killed by the bomb, Lee receives a disturbing letter from a figure in his past. Certain he is being targeted for revenge, he begins confronting key events in his life. Misunderstood by the people around him, Lee is not conscious that his behavior has begun to heighten suspicion in the minds of his colleagues, students, and neighbors, leading the FBI to designate him "a person of interest" and pushing his life and reputation to the verge of ruin.Intricately plotted and engrossing, A Person of Interest asks how far one man can run from his past, and explores the impact of scrutiny and suspicion in an age of terror. With its propulsive drive and vividly realized characters, Susan Choi's latest novel is as thrilling as it is lyrical, and confirms her place as one of the most important young novelists chronicling the American experience.

The year is 1970, and the youth of Europe are in the chaotic, ecstatic throes of the sexual revolution. Though blindly dedicated to the cause, its nubile foot soldiers have yet to realize this disturbing truth: that between the death of one social order and the birth of another, there exists a state of terrifying purgatory--or, as Alexander Herzen put it, a pregnant widow.Keith Nearing is stuck in an exquisite limbo. Twenty years old and on vacation from college, Keith and an assortment of his peers are spending the long, hot summer in a castle in Italy. The tragicomedy of manners that ensues will have an indelible effect on all its participants, and we witness, too, how it shapes Keith's subsequent love life for decades to come. Bitingly funny, full of wit and pathos, The Pregnant Widow is a trenchant portrait of young lives being carried away on a sea of change.From the Hardcover edition.

"There was a time when they lived in the village of Beit Daras, and the sun was hot and the earth was rich. There were ruins dating back to the Crusades; now their homes, too, are ruins, and they are refugees in the small strip of Gaza. And yet, when young Khaled dies, and moves on to the afterlife, it is back in Beit Daras that he finds himself. And from here he may slip through history, watching the continuing the story of his matriarchal family. He sees his grandmother, Nazmiyeh, once the prettiest, baddest girl in the town, the eternal ringleader. The other girls felt she hung the sky. He sees his mother, Alwan, who loves quietly and strongly, and who sustains the family through her embroidery work, stitching the stars and moon in place. He sees the great-aunts and cousins, and his sunny little sister, Rhet Shel. Finally, there is the branch of the family that moves to Kuwait, and then to America, where Nur, his mother's cousin, begins to lose herself. She will return to Mediterranean shores to find her past, and rediscover the ties of kinship that transcend distance and even death. Born of the violent, troubling history which continues to rage forth and claim its dead, The Blue Between Sky and Water is very much a novel of survival, and of the vivid, powerful women whose world they manage, with each day, to enlarge and to enliven"--Publisher.

After falling in love with an underage girl and stirring the wrath of her older sister, New York native Miles Heller flees to Brooklyn and shacks up with a group of artists squatting in the borough's Sunset Park neighborhood.

In 1938, Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves Austria for England with his family to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland. When he disappears under mysterious circumstances, the family is relocated to a small town in Ohio. There Joseph Skizzen grows up, becomes a decent amateur piano player, and creates a fantasy self: a professor whose goal is to establish the Inhumanity Museum.

From the author of The Song of Names (winner of the 2002 Whitbread First Novel Award), a powerful new novel that explores the reverberations of love and hate in the story of one man's unlikely survival.In an unnamed country at the end of a world war, Paul Miller escapes from a labor camp, collapsing after running only a few hundred feet. He is taken in by a young woman named Alice, and by the time she has nursed him back to health, the war has ended. With no one to return to and learning to love the woman who saved him, Paul decides to stay where he is. Over time he marries Alice, has a family, helps to rebuild the village, and, eventually, becomes its mayor.But Paul is inescapably haunted by his life before the war, by his time in the camp, and by the fact that the people who are now his friends ignored for years the labor camp in their midst. When the camp's commander returns to the village, Paul is at last faced with the moral dilemma that will force him to choose between vengeance and forgiveness. The Game of Opposites tells a universal tale of good and evil with extraordinary humanity and poignancy. It is a stunning evocation of the capability for both within all of us.From the Hardcover edition.

Mark Spitz and his squad of three "sweepers" move through Zone One of lower Manhattan, a walled-off enclave scheduled for resettlement in the aftermath of a zombie plague. The great masses of the undead have been violently dispatched by a Marine detachment. It falls to Spitz and his fellows to take care of the handful that remain, as well as a second-tier of the infected known as "stragglers": zombies who have bypassed the cannibalistic urges of their more lethal fellows in favor of a hollow-eyed, eerily nostalgic repetition of some mundane act.

"I have been sleuthing my mother's symptoms for as long as I can remember. If I see myself as an unwilling detective with a desire for justice, is her illness an unsolved crime? If so, who is the villain and who is the victim?" Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints, but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and her mother travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant -- their very last chance -- in the hope that he might cure her unpredictable limb paralysis. But Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine, and as the treatment progresses, Sofia's mother's illness becomes increasingly baffling. Sophia's role as detective -- tracking her mother's symptoms in an attempt to find the secret motivation for her pain -- deepens as she discovers her own desires in this transient desert community.

When two nineteenth-century Oxford students--Victor Frankenstein, a serious researcher, and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley--form an unlikely friendship, the result is a tour de force that could only come from one of the world's most accomplished and prolific authors. This haunting and atmospheric novel opens with a heated discussion, as Shelley challenges the conventionally religious Frankenstein to consider his atheistic notions of creation and life. Afterward, these concepts become an obsession for the young scientist. As Victor begins conducting anatomical experiments to reanimate the dead, he at first uses corpses supplied by the coroner. But these specimens prove imperfect for Victor's purposes. Moving his makeshift laboratory to a deserted pottery factory in Limehouse, he makes contact with the Doomsday men--the resurrectionists--whose grisly methods put Frankenstein in great danger as he works feverishly to bring life to the terrifying creature that will bear his name for eternity. Filled with literary lights of the day such as Bysshe Shelley, Godwin, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley herself, and penned in period-perfect prose, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is sure to become a classic of the twenty-first century.From the Hardcover edition.

The story of a Dominican girl, the Anglo woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her. Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York--Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic, and her academic husband, Paul--who wonder what it will mean to "make a difference" in such a contrived situation. The story illuminates their shifting relationship with Velvet over several years, as well as Velvet's encounter with the horses at the stable down the road--especially with an abused, unruly mare called Fugly Girl. With strong supporting characters--Velvet's abusive mother, an eccentric horse trainer, a charismatic older boy who awakens Velvet's nascent passion--The Mare traces Velvet's journey between the vital, violent world of the inner city and the world of the small-town stable.--From book jacket.

Estranged for months from fellow P.I. Bill Smith, Chinese-American private investigator Lydia Chin is brought in by colleague and former mentor Joel Pilarsky to help with a case that crosses continents, cultures, and decades. In Shanghai, excavation has unearthed a cache of European jewelry dating back to World War II, when Shanghai was an open city providing safe haven for thousands of Jewish refugees. The jewelry, identifed as having belonged to one such refugee - Rosalie Gilder - was immediately stolen by a Chinese official who fled to New York City. Hired by a lawyer specializing in the recovery of Holocaust assets, Chin and Pilarsky are to find any and all leads to the missing jewels.However, Lydia soon learns that there is much more to the story than they've been told: The Shanghai Moon, one of the world's most sought after missing jewels, reputed to be worth millions, is believed to have been part of the same stash. Before Lydia can act on this new information, Joel Pilarsky is murdered, Lydia is fired from the case, and Bill Smith finally reappears on the scene. Now Lydia and Bill must unravel the truth about the Shanghai Moon and the events that surrounded its disappearance sixty years ago during the chaos of war and revolution, if they are to stop more killings and uncover the truth of what is going on today.

"Lionel Asbo - a very violent but not very successful young criminal - is going about his morning duties in a London prison when he learns that he has just won GBP139,999,999.50 on the National Lottery. This is not necessarily good news for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Des Pepperdine, who still has reason to fear his uncle's implacable vengeance" -- p of cover.

An instant classic in the Bernie Gunther series, with storytelling that is fresher and more vivid than ever. Berlin, 1934: The Nazis have secured the 1936 Olympiad for the city but are facing foreign resistance. Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, have connived to soft-pedal Nazi anti- Semitism and convince America to participate. Bernie Gunther, now the house detective at an upscale Berlin hotel, is swept into this world of international corruption and dangerous double-dealing, caught between the warring factions of the Nazi apparatus. Havana, 1954: Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power; Castro is in prison; and the American Mafia is quickly gaining a stranglehold on the city's exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, who has been unceremoniously kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced in Cuba with a new life, seemingly one of routine and relative peace. But Bernie discovers that he truly cannot outrun the burden of his past: He soon collides with a vicious killer from his Berlin days, who is mysteriously murdered not long afterward-and an old lover, who may be the murderer. If the Dead Rise Not is everything fans have come to expect from Philip Kerr: twisted intrigue, tight plotting, quick-witted one-liners, a hang-by-your- thumbs ending, and, most significant, a richer, wiser Bernie Gunther.

A short story collection featuring elements of magic realism while touching on the themes of love, knowledge, grief, hope, and jealousy. Teeming with uncanny characters whose lives unfold in worlds at once strikingly human and eerily original, these stories demonstrate the strength and power -- known and unknown -- of the imagination.

Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation, South Dakota. Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger towards the injustices, historical and current, inflicted upon the Lakota people by the federal government leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence. Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys, orphaned at birth, in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys within their ancestry, telling wonderful and terrible tales of how the whole world came to be, and affirming their place in the universe as the result of all who have come before and will come behind. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.

In 1996, more than a hundred people gather at the site of a former death camp. They offer prayer and witness at the crematoria and meditate on the selection platform. They eat and sleep in the Nazi officers' quarters. They are joined by an American academic of Polish descent, there to complete research on the suicide of a survivor. As the days pass, tensions surface among the participants, stripping away any easy pretense to resolution or healing.