"On a late November afternoon, Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from his native Zanzibar. With him he has a small bag in which lies his most precious possession--a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father. Now he is an asylum seeker from paradise, silence his only protection. Meanwhile, Latif Mahmud, a distinguished young professor, lives quietly alone in his London flat. When...

Natasha Doroshenko, a Ukrainian woman who has been arrested for murdering her Danish fiance, escapes police custody. Meanwhile, someone tries to abduct Natasha's eight-year-old daughter from a Red Cross center. Nurse Nina Borg has been following Natasha's case for several years and just can't see the young mother as a vicious killer. But in her effort to protect Natasha's daughter and find the truth, Nina realizes there is much she doesn't know about...

A former interpreter in Iraq who lost his wife and child in an assassination attempt discovers a dead body on the beach in Virginia and believes it is connected to his past. One early morning on a Norfolk beach in Virginia, a dead body is discovered by a man taking his daily swim--Arman Bajalan, formerly an interpreter in Iraq. After narrowly surviving an assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, Arman has been given lonely sanctuary in...

"Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian): "homemade language. no country to stay in. three countries I experienced. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language." As she searches...

"The Waiting is the fictional story of Gwija, told by her novelist daughter Jina. When Gwija was 17 years old, after hearing that the Japanese were seizing unmarried girls, her family married her in a hurry to a man she didn't know. Japan fell, Korea gained its independence, and the couple started a family. But peace didn't come. The young family of four fled south. On the road, while breastfeeding and changing her daughter, Gwija was separated from...

Nicolas von Bingen and Alex von Hemmerle, titled members of the German aristocracy, have been best friends since childhood. Both widowers, they are raising their children--Nick's two lively boys and Alex's adored teenage daughter--in peace and luxury on the vast Bavarian estates that have belonged to their families for generations. While Nick indulges in more glamorous pursuits, Alex devotes himself to breeding the renowned white Lipizzaner horses...

"When Silvia and her mother finally land in a place called Island City, after being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, they end up living and working at The Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower where Silvia's aunt, Ena, has been serving as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about the family's past. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to...

"On the day Juliet Lansdown reports to work for the first time at Bethnal Green Library, it isn't the bustling hub she's been expecting. But in the face of German attacks, she's determined to make it a place where all of their neighbors feel safe and welcome. Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library too, though she's only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front lines and unexpected...