In this vibrant new historical novel, the acclaimed
author of The Plum Tree and What She Left Behind
explores one young woman’s determination to put
an end to child labor in a Pennsylvania mining
town…
As a child, Emma Malloy left isolated Coal River,
Pennsylvania, vowing never to return. Now,
orphaned and penniless at nineteen, she accepts a
train ticket from her aunt and uncle and travels back to the rough-hewn
community. Treated like a servant by her relatives,
Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and
doesn’t remember to drink it. She goes to the shops
and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is
unrecognizable—or her daughter, Helen, seems a
total stranger.
But there’s one thing Maud is sure of: her friend
Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells
her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going
on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it.
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
2015 PEN/Hemingway Award, Finalist
A fiercely assured debut novel about four second-generation
Chinese sisters, one of whom happens
to be a boy.
At birth, Peter Huang is given the Chinese name
Juan Chaun, “powerful king.” To his parents, newly
settled in small-town Ontario, he is the exalted
only son in a sea of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his immigrant
father’s dreams of Western masculinity.
Malaya, 1951. Yun Ling Teoh, the scarred lone
survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks
solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of
Cameron Highlands. There she discovers Yugiri,
the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner
and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former
gardener of the emperor of Japan. Despite her
hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage
Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her
sister, who died in the camp. Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun
Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon comes.”
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Drunken Botanist comes an enthralling novel based on the forgotten true story of one of the nation’s first female crime fighters.
Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters from city to country fifteen years ago. When a powerful, ruthless factory owner runs down their buggy, a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks,
Set during the harrowing, final moments of World War II, Polish resistance fighter Jakób Kowalski is planting a bomb on the tracks intending to destroy a German troop transport, but six-year-old Gretl Schmidt’s unscheduled train bound for Auschwitz reaches the bomb first. Gretl is the only survivor.
Though spared from the concentration camp, the orphaned German Jew finds herself now lost in a hostile country. When Jakób discovers her, guilt and compassion prompt him to hide and protect Gretl in his home concealed from his Catholic family. For years, the young man and little girl form a bond over the secrets they must hide from the world.
