Netherlands

The Tree and the Vine

“This courageous early work of lesbian fiction (1951) tells the gripping story of two women torn between desires and taboos in the years leading up to the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. 

When Bea meets Erica at the home of a mutual friend, this chance encounter sets the stage for the story of two women torn between desire and taboo.

Erica, a reckless young journalist, pursues passionate but abusive affairs with different women. Bea, a reserved secretary, grows increasingly obsessed with Erica, yet denial and shame keep her from recognizing her attraction. Only Bea’s discovery that Erica is half-Jewish and a member of the Dutch resistance—and thus in danger—brings her closer to accepting her own feelings.

First published in 1954 in the Netherlands, Dola de Jong’s The Tree and the Vine was a groundbreaking work in its time for its frank and sensitive depiction of the love between two women, now available in a new translation.”

“A jewel hidden in plain sight.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“This compelling novel allows us entry into a world in which the word lesbian is unspeakable and to be a Jew is unspeakably dangerous.” —Evelyn Torton Beck, editor of Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology

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Phaedra

“Wake the living Galleons at your peril…

The Elder Race once ruled the entire Alastor cluster. Fierce predators, they tore suns from the sky, leaving the worlds of their enemies to freeze in the dark. Now only the Galleons are left: living ships that sail the world river which girds Phaedra: Alastor 824.

After the death of his father, Gunnar arrives on that ancient world, trying to find a new home. Having two girlfriends sounds like a good start, but Lavoine is the deeply tricky daughter of the last Voodoo queen, and Semele a fierce huntress who has sworn never to kiss a boy until she Walks with the Galleons. And now Lavoine is trying to wake up the Galleons and bring back the Elders.

On the Paladins of Vance label, Spatterlight publishes original works by authors who have given their own imagination free rein in the many wonderful worlds of the Grandmaster of fantasy & sci-fi, Jack Vance. Tais Teng is a Dutch fantasy and science fiction writer, illustrator, and sculptor who has won the Paul Harland Award—the Dutch Hugo Award—four times.”

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In Lucia's Eyes

“Japin has done his historical homework . . . A mesmerizing look into a Europe of long ago.” - Condé Nast Traveler

“Enthralling…packed with the color of 18th-century life . A complex examination of thwarted love…a marvelous reversal of hunter and prey, with a soupcon of Dangerous Liaisons. What makes In Lucia’s Eyes so fascinating is its melding of disparate veins: It’s a painful story that arrives at profound insights about the nature of love, but it’s spiked with bodice-ripper suspense and humor; it’s an intensely private testimony of one woman’s peculiar survival, but it’s laced with a fascinating survey of 18th-century intellectual history. Brace yourself with all the skepticism you want, you’ll still be seduced.” - Washington Post Book World

“Lucia works as a servant girl in Italy and is engaged to be married. But after the pox disfigures her face, she flees in shame without telling her lover.

Years later, as a renowned Amsterdam courtesan who never goes out without her veil, Lucia is at the theater when she recognizes her long-lost fiancé, Giacomo Casanova; and she cannot resist the opportunity to encounter him again.

Based on a woman who appeared briefly in Casanova’s legendary diaries, Lucia emerges as a brilliant woman who becomes every bit his match. In Lucia’s Eyes is an elegant and moving story of love denied and transformed.”

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HEX

“This is totally, brilliantly original.” -Stephen King

“Hidden tensions and human weakness trigger a witch-hunt that boils over into persecution, scapegoating, and a shocking denouement. A powerfully spooky piece of writing.” - Financial Times

“A great read for fans of The Blair Witch Project or The Crucible. “ ―Booklist

“[O]ne of the most original, clever, and terrifying books to be published in the 21st century”. - NY Journal of Books

“A Hugo and World Fantasy award nominated talent to watch

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay 'til death. Whoever settles, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

This chilling novel heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice in mainstream horror and dark fantasy.”

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Murder in Amsterdam

“Fascinating . . . Characteristically vivid and astute.” - The NY Review of Books

”A work of philosophical and narrative tension, strikingly sharp and brooding, frank and openly curious.” - San Francisco Chronicle

”Shrewd, subtly argued.” - The NY Times Book Review

“Ian Buruma's Murder in Amsterdam is a masterpiece of investigative journalism, a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a crime novel and the analytical brilliance for which Buruma is renowned. On a cold November day in Amsterdam in 2004, the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and killed by an Islamic extremist for making a movie that ‘insulted the prophet Mohammed.’ The murder sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native land to investigate the event and its larger meaning as part of the great dilemma of our time.”

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Amsterdam Stories

“No book published in the last 10 years has had a bigger impact on me, one of those books that speaks directly to your gut, a revelation. … [T]here’s something unclassifiable about the way Nescio goes about his stories, as if every sentence is a surprise even to the writer. At the same time, there’s nobody less pretentious and more down-to-earth.”- LitHub’s “26 Books from the Last Decade that More People Should Read”

“His utter simplicity goes hand-in-hand with a great command of humour, irony, matter-of-factness, understatement and sentiment (never sentimentality or self-pity) all of which miraculously balance each other out. ... Nescio is essentially a lyricist, a poet writing in prose.” ­- Dutch Foundation for Literature

“No one has written more feelingly and more beautifully than Nescio about the madness and sadness, courage and vulnerability of youth: its big plans and vague longings, not to mention the binges, crashes, and marathon walks and talks. No one, for that matter, has written with such pristine clarity about the radiating canals of Amsterdam and the cloud-swept landscape of the Netherlands.

Who was Nescio? Nescio—Latin for ‘I don’t know’—was the pen name of J.H.F. Grönloh, the highly successful director of the Holland–Bombay Trading Company and a father of four—someone who knew more than enough about respectable maturity. Only in his spare time and under the cover of a pseudonym, as if commemorating a lost self, did he let himself go, producing over the course of his lifetime a handful of utterly original stories that contain some of the most luminous pages in modern literature.”

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Amsterdam

“A strong sense of irony and a lively prose style make Amsterdam one of the most unusual and engaging 'city books' I have read this year.” - Sunday Times

“Mak's brief is . . . to bring Amsterdam into the modern age. This he does with wit and style. But his real achievement . . . is to make accessible unfussily—and unsentimentally—one of Europe's most astonishing urban success stories.” - Financial Times

“A magnet for trade and travelers from all over the world, stylish, cosmopolitan Amsterdam is a city of dreams and nightmares, of grand civic architecture and legendary beauty, but also of civil wars, bloody religious purges, and the tragedy of Anne Frank.

In this fascinating examination of the city's soul, part history, part travel guide, Geert Mak imaginatively recreates the lives of the early Amsterdammers, and traces Amsterdam's progress from waterlogged settlement to a major financial centre and thriving modern metropolis.”

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Outsider in Amsterdam

“What makes this series so engaging is that the policemen are as quirky and complicated as the criminals.” - The Washington Post

“A superb storyteller.” - Chicago Tribune

”A superlative mystery writer.” - Time

”On a quiet street in downtown Amsterdam, a man is found hanging from the ceiling beam of his bedroom, upstairs from the new religious society he founded: a group that calls itself ‘Hindist’ and supposedly mixes elements of various Eastern traditions. Detective-Adjutant Gripstra and Sergeant de Gier of the Amsterdam police are sent to investigate what looks like a simple suicide, but they are immediately suspicious of the circumstances.

This now-classic novel introduces Janwillem van de Wetering’s lovable Amsterdam cop duo of portly, wise Gripstra and handsome, contemplative de Gier. With its unvarnished depiction of the legacy of Dutch colonialism and the darker facets of Amsterdam’s free drug culture, this excellent procedural asks the question of whether a murder may ever be justly committed.”

”[Van de Wetering] is doing what Simenon might have done if Albert Camus had sublet his skull.”  - John Leonard

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Amsterdam Noir

“Every book in the Noir series serves as an introduction to a place. Besides the crime, the series and its editors have made it a point to address things like economic infrastructure, gentrification, and racial politics...Amsterdam Noir toes that line beautifully, touching on subjects like the impact of tourism, migration, and discrimination of Moroccans. In their introduction, editors Appel and Pachter say they want readers to know that bad things happen in Amsterdam, that the city 'also has its dark side, its shadowy corners.' However, what they ended up with is an anthology about a place where bad things happen not because of the psychogeography of the population, not because of corruption, gang violence, drug problems, or poverty, but because of human emotions—lunacy and jealousy. You could see that as a failure, but maybe it's not. Maybe the crime-free streets of Amsterdam are precisely what they wanted to show. Or maybe, like with most arthouse horror films, the point is that the monsters are not tied to the streets; they are always inside us.” - NPR

“Amsterdam has the amenities and, to a certain extent, the feel of a major world city, but one of its most attractive features is its relatively small size. It's easy to navigate on feet, by bike, and via its excellent public transportation network, especially with the semicircular perimeter of its famous Grachtengordel, or ring of concentric canals.

Like any other metropolis, though, Amsterdam also has its dark side, its shadowy corners—in other words, there is also an Amsterdam noir. No matter how beautiful, vital, and cheery a city might be, pure human emotions such as greed, jealousy, and the thirst for revenge will rear their ugly heads...with all their negative consequences. Amsterdam is a multidimensional city, populated by a wide assortment of social groups, and not all of those groups agree on what constitutes normal social values and mores. This results in a lively mix...and, as you will see, in problems.”

“An appealing compendium, with welcome doses of local color and atmosphere.”
- New York Journal of Books

(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

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The Assault

“A beautiful and powerful work [that] takes its place among the finest European fiction of our time.” - Elizabeth Hardwick

“It is the winter of 1945, the last dark days of World War II in occupied Holland. A Nazi collaborator, infamous for his cruelty, is assassinated as he rides home on his bicycle. The Germans retaliate by burning down the home of an innocent family; only twelve-year-old Anton survives.

Based on actual events, The Assault traces the complex repercussions of this horrific incident on Anton's life. Determined to forget, he opts for a carefully normal existence: a prudent marriage, a successful career, and colorless passivity. But the past keeps breaking through, in relentless memories and in chance encounters with others who were involved in the assassination and its aftermath, until Anton finally learns what really happened that night in 1945—and why.”

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

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The Dinner

“The darkly suspenseful tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives—all over the course of one meal.
 
It’s a summer’s evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.
 
Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act—an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children, and as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

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Sleepless Night

“Compact, haunting, and lovely ... it is unhurried and assured; no word is wasted ... In both its rich and unapologetic descriptions of domesticity and frank attitude toward sex ... the book is a treatise on one individual's womanhood.” - Kirkus Reviews

“The charm of Margriet de Moor's book is due to a combination of sensuality and reflection, as well as a musical language of great beauty that explores the meanderings of the human soul with rare clarity." - Le Figaro

“A woman gets up in the middle of a wintry night and starts baking a cake while her lover sleeps upstairs. When it’s time for her to take the cake out of the oven, we have read a story of romance and death.

The narrator of this novel was widowed years ago and is trying to find new passion. But the memory of her deceased husband and a shameful incident still holds her in its grasp. Why did he do it?

Margriet de Moor, the grande dame of Dutch literature, tells a gripping love story about endings and demise, rage and jealousy, knowledge and ambiguity—and the possibility of new beginnings.”

(A special thank you to book club member, Judy Tanguay for the group read suggestion.)

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The Twin

“When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'.

After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. 'A double bed and a duvet', advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm?

The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies.

Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands. It chronicles a way of life which has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing.”

“Stealthy, seductive story-telling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpected relationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end.“ - Tim Parks

“Sombre, yet uplifiting…a novel of magnificent artistry that seems like simplicity…a tale of suppressed sexual orientation, but so delicately done.” - Michiel Heyns

(A special thank you to book club member, Elke Richelsen for the group read suggestion.)

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