Jagannath

An award-winning story collection by an heir to Borges, Le Guin, and Lovecraft.

A child is born in a tin can. A switchboard operator finds himself in hell. Three corpulent women float somewhere beyond time. Welcome to the weird world of Karin Tidbeck, the visionary Swedish author of literary sci-fi, speculative fiction, and mind-bending fantasy who has captivated readers around the world.

Originally published by the tiny press Cheeky Frawg—the passion project of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer—Jagannath has been celebrated by readers and critics alike, with rave reviews from major outlets and support from lauded peers like China Miéville and even Ursula K. Le Guin herself. These are stories in which fairies haunt quiet towns, and an immortal being discovers the nature of time—stories in which anything is possible.

“I have never read anything like Jagannath. Omnious...funny…and mysteriously tender. These are wonderful stories.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

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

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The Road to Jerusalem

“A brilliant depiction of medieval times, centered in the land that would become Sweden.

Already an international sensation, The Road to Jerusalem by Jan Guillou is the epic story of the Knights Templar. A major bestseller in Europe—with more than two million copies sold in Sweden alone—and the basis for the most lavish and expensive Swedish film ever made (check out the movie with English dialog on Amazon), it is a novel Diana Gabaldon  calls, ‘beautifully constructed…skillfully written and translated.’ Historical fiction lovers, particularly fans of the sweeping, bestselling adventure novels of Bernard Cornwell, will be captivated by this magnificent tale of romance, faith, and battle set against the backdrop of the Crusades.

For power. For passion. For glory.”

“An appealing new twist on the Crusades approaching the Knights Templar and the Holy Wars from the Swedish point of view. “ - Booklist

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

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The Unit

“I liked The Unit very much...I know you will be riveted, as I was.” -Margaret Atwood

A modern day classic and a chilling cautionary tale for fans of The Handmaid's Tale. Named a Best Book of the Month by GQ.

“Echoing work by Marge Piercy and Margaret Atwood, The Unit is as thought-provoking as it is compulsively readable.” -Jessica Crispin, NPR

”Ninni Holmqvist’s uncanny dystopian novel envisions a society in the not-so-distant future, where women over 50 and men over 60 who are unmarried and childless are sent to a retirement community called the Unit. They’re given lavish apartments set amongst beautiful gardens and state-of-the-art facilities; they’re fed elaborate gourmet meals, surrounded by others just like them. It’s an idyllic place, but there’s a catch: the residents—known as dispensables—must donate their organs, one by one, until the final donation. When Dorrit Weger arrives at the Unit, she resigns herself to this fate, seeking only peace in her final days. But she soon falls in love, and this unexpected, improbable happiness throws the future into doubt.”

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

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Maresi

“The novel is at once contemporary and timeless. Its unwavering feminism is resolutely modern, resonating with a range of texts from Ursula Le Guin’s Tales from Earthsea to Disney’s Frozen. At the same time, it feels authentically ancient and mythic.” - The Guardian

”Utterly satisfying and completely different from standard YA fantasy, this Finnish import seems primed to win over American readers.” - Booklist

“Only women and girls are allowed in the Red Abbey, a haven from abuse and oppression. Maresi, a thirteen-year-old novice there, arrived in the hunger winter and now lives a happy life in the Abbey, protected by the Mother and reveling in the vast library in the House of Knowledge, her favorite place. Into this idyllic existence comes Jai, a girl with a dark past. She has escaped her home after witnessing the killing of her beloved sister. Soon the dangers of the outside world follow Jai into the sacred space of the Abbey, and Maresi can no longer hide in books and words, but must become one who acts.”

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Aunty Lee's Delights

“No mere whodunnit—Aunty Lee’s Delights sparkles with insight…Rosie Lee is a terrifically originally heroine.”

This delectable and witty mystery introduces Rosie “Aunty” Lee, feisty widow, amateur sleuth, and proprietor of Singapore's best-loved home-cooking restaurant.

After losing her husband, Rosie Lee could have become one of Singapore's “tai tai,” an idle rich lady. Instead, she is building a culinary empire from her restaurant, Aunty Lee's Delights, where spicy Singaporean meals are graciously served to locals and tourists alike. But when a body is found in one of Singapore's tourist havens and one of her guests fails to show at a dinner party, Aunty Lee knows that the two events are likely connected.

The murder and disappearance throws together Aunty Lee's henpecked stepson, Mark, his social-climbing wife, Selina, a gay couple whose love is still illegal in Singapore, and an elderly Australian tourist couple whose visit may mask a deeper purpose. Investigating the murder are Police Commissioner Raja and Senior Staff Sergeant Salim, who quickly discover that Aunty Lee's sharp nose for intrigue can sniff out clues that elude law enforcers.

Wise, witty, and charming, Aunty Lee's Delights is a spicy mystery about love, friendship, and food in Singapore, where money flows freely and people of many religions and ethnicities coexist peacefully, but where tensions lurk just below the surface, sometimes with deadly consequences.

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

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The Collected Short Stories of Gopal Baratham

“The writer possesses a technically excellent prose style, so smooth that it slips down the reader’s throat like a well-made Singapore Sling.”— The Hindu

“This exciting collection brings together thirty-nine of the late Dr. Gopal Baratham’s characteristic and revered pieces. In his usual blunt, strong and controversial style, Baratham’s socio-political critiques are ‘peopled’ by characters from virtually every background and class—with their frustrated hopes, wild illusions and excesses.

Paired with a stylistic and evolving narrative voice, as seen in dialogue that fluctuates from poetic to quirky, this writer’s ambivalent medium is also his message. Readers are drawn into the depth of his work, and left with a sympathetic, sensitive understanding of events, people, actions and the complexities of relationships

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

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Kappa Quartet

Shortlisted for the Singapore Book Awards (Best Book Cover Design)

Epigram Books Fiction Prize Longlist

”Kevin is a young man without a soul, holidaying in Tokyo; Mr. Five, the enigmatic kappa, is the man he so happens to meet. Little does Kevin know that kappas—the river demons of Japanese folklore—desire nothing more than the souls of other humans.

Set between Singapore and Japan, Kappa Quartet is split into eight discrete sections, tracing the rippling effects of this chance encounter across a host of other characters, connected and bound to one another in ways both strange and serendipitous. Together they ask one another: what does it mean to be in possession of something nobody has seen before?”

After reading this novel, some reviewers have cited a comparison to the author Murakami while others have noted some flashes of suppressed terror more Kafkaesque. Each section narrated by a different character loosely intertwined together is certainly reminiscent of David Mitchell's better work with that same thrill you find in connecting the characters & discovering different facets of the story.

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

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The Last Lesson of Mrs De Souza

“With its deep probing look at the teaching profession, it unveils a rich array of themes and most compellingly, the nature of perhaps the most noble and difficult of vocations.” - Boey Kim Cheng, author of Clear Brightness

“One last time and on her birthday, Rose de Souza is returning to school to give a final lesson to her classroom of secondary school boys before retiring from her long teaching career. What ensues is an unexpected confession in which she recounts the tragic and traumatic story of Amir, a student from her past who overturned the way she saw herself as a teacher, and changed her life forever.

The stunning first novel from award-winning poet Cyril Wong, The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza is a tour de force, an exceptional examination of the power of choice and the unreliability of memory.”

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

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Ponti

With perspectives from three different women & a narrative which jumps across different time periods, this novel experiments with an unusual and original construct to reflect the very fractured nature of relationships across space and time.

“An award-winning fiction debut about the value of friendships in present-day Singapore—a surprising and powerful portrait of Asia that shows the unique blend of modern and traditional cultures coming together.

’I am Miss Frankenstein, I am the bottom of the bell curve.’ So declares Szu, a teenager living in a dark, dank house, at the beginning of this richly atmospheric and endlessly surprising tale of non-belonging and isolation.

Friendless and fatherless, Szu lives in the shadow of her mother Amisa, once a beautiful actress—who gained fame for her portrayal of a ghost—and now a hack medium performing séances with her sister in a rusty house. When Szu meets the privileged, acid-tongued Circe, an unlikely encounter develops into a fraught friendship that will haunt them both for decades to come.

With remarkable emotional acuity, dark comedy, and in vivid prose, Sharlene Teo’s Ponti traces the suffocating tangle the lives of four misfits, women who need each other as much as they need to find their own way. It is an astounding portrayal of the gaping loneliness of adolescence, the surrealness of the modern city, and the strangeness of living with and loving other people.”

(A special thank you to book club member, Patty Gilles Winpenny for the group read suggestion.)

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When There Were Tigers in Singapore

“Japan invades and captures the British colony of Singapore in 1942. All Europeans on the island are being interned. Edward Schirmer, the author’s grandfather, faces a dilemma—he is German, but born as a British subject. In a strange stroke of fortune, he finds himself friends with General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the famed ‘Tiger of Malaya’. Seeing the fate of the other Europeans, Edward reluctantly lets the Japanese assume he is a friendly German national. The secret of his true identity remains between the two men only…but when politics removes the protective Yamashita from the picture, betrayal ensues and Edward finds himself in prison, his family scattered.

Using the personal history from his family’s saga & extensive research to confirm his father’s account, the author then details the true-life account of Edward’s son (the author’s father)—a hellish tale of a six year-old boy’s quest for survival, alone on the streets of a war-torn vanquished nation.

Part autobiography, part microhistory of WWII with some lesser-known details of famous figures from the WWII era, but wholly the story of the fight for survival in and after the harshest of wars.

Where everyone is hungry and racial tension is rife.

Where martial law allows the occupiers to summarily execute at will.”

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

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The Shadow of the Wind

“Gabriel García Márquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges for a sprawling magic show." -The NY Times Book Review

”Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets—an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.”

”Anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling should rush right out to the nearest bookstore and pick up The Shadow of the Wind. Really, you should.” -The Washington Post

"Wonderous... masterful... The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero." -Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)

"One gorgeous read." - Stephen King

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

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Captain Alatriste

“The first action-packed historical adventure in the internationally acclaimed Captain Alatriste series of 6 books all translated into English, featuring a Spanish soldier who lives as a swordsman-for-hire in 17th century Madrid.

Needing gold to pay off his debts, Captain Alatriste and another hired blade are paid to ambush two travelers, stage a robbery, and give the travelers a fright. “No blood,” they are told.

Then a mysterious stranger enters to clarify the job: he increases the pay, and tells Alatriste that, instead, he must murder the two travelers. When the attack unfolds, Alatriste realizes that these aren’t ordinary travelers, and what happens next is only the first in a riveting series of twists and turns, with implications that will reverberate throughout the courts of Europe...”

“Splendidly paced and filled with a breathtaking but not overwhelming sense of the history and spirit of the age, this is entertainment at its best: the characters have weight and depth, the dialogue illuminates the action as it furthers the story and the film-worthy plot is believable throughout.” - Publisher’s Weekly

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

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Cat's Whirld

Winner of the Ignotus Award for Best Novel (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards)

“Cat's Whirld is an intriguing conundrum of a novel that hurtles along at breakneck speed. This is a character-driven sci-fi thriller at it’s finest.

The neutral Convergence Space Station No. 1, known as the Whirld, is the unofficial, but deadly battleground in which several Galactic powers fight to obtain a certain piece of information that could inevitably determine their whole future. But then an all-powerful malevolent AI, for reasons known only to itself, also enters the game…

Cat's Whirld, a book indispensable for understanding the evolution of Spanish science fiction, is an original fusion of thriller, cyberpunk, and space opera, with unforgettable characters, and a frenetic pace and rhythm that never falter; a hybrid novel in which elements from distinct genres make a surprisingly harmonious whole.

Originally published in 1995, it was the first cyberpunk novel in Spanish; a specially remarkable achievement in that it was also the first of Rodolfo Martínez' many novels, and yet was not afraid to tread new ground, and, moreover, to do so with great narrative confidence. Twenty-five years later, the story still retains its power, as fresh and exciting as ever.”

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

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Confessions

“Drawing comparisons with Shadow of the Wind, The Name of the Rose and The Reader, and an instant bestseller in more than 20 languages, Confessions is an astonishing story of one man's life, interwoven with a narrative that stretches across centuries to create an addictive and unforgettable literary symphony.

I confess.

At 60 and with a diagnosis of early Alzheimer's, Adrià Ardèvol re-examines his life before his memory is systematically deleted. He recalls a loveless childhood where the family antique business and his father s study become the centre of his world; where a treasured Storioni violin retains the shadows of a crime committed many years earlier. His mother, a cold, distant and pragmatic woman leaves him to his solitary games, full of unwanted questions. An accident ends the life of his enigmatic father, filling Adrià's world with guilt, secrets and deeply troubling mysteries that take him years to uncover and driving him deep into the past where atrocities are methodically exposed and examined. Gliding effortlessly between centuries, and at the same time providing a powerful narrative that is at once shocking, compelling, mysterious, tragic, humorous and gloriously readable, Confessions reaches a crescendo that is not only unexpected but provides one of the most startling denouements in contemporary literature. Confessions is a consummate masterpiece in any language, with an ending that will not just leave you thinking, but quite possibly change the way you think forever.”

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

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The Happy City

“‘I feel terrible. Although he doesn't say it, I know he had been hoping the whole time that I would explain it all somehow; but I can't explain it, because I don't understand anything.’ These disturbing words, almost a distillation of the entire text, close the novel The Happy City by Elvira Navarro, who featured in Granta’s The Best of Young Spanish-language Novelists issue in 2010.

The stories of Chi-Huei—a Chinese boy whose family has come to Spain in search of a better life—and his friend Sara—a girl strangely fascinated by a homeless man—comprise two separate yet complementary sections, presenting the reader with a detailed account of their life circumstances and the nuances of their perspectives: the genuine, as-yet untamed voices through which the book’s pre-adolescent protagonists negotiate the world around them, their initial astonishment finally turning to frustration as they gaze upon their dehumanized society.

A pre-teen’s first faltering steps towards sexuality, social pressures, the way polarized outlooks on life coexist at the core of the same family, those first experiences of disillusionment as we awaken into the adult world: these are some of the themes that Navarro lays out for her readers in order to reveal, with razor-sharp control, the constant duality that exists between the outward appearance of things and their inner reality.”

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

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A Heart So White

“Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Award, and widely considered Javier Marías's masterpiece, A Heart So White is a breathtaking novel about family secrets that chronicles the relentless power of the past using stream of consciousness writing.

Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy--its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility--hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows and onto the costs of ambivalence.”

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

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Survival Quest

4.5 stars on both Amazon & Goodreads with 5,400+ reviews on Goodreads!

#1 bestseller in audiobooks

The unrelenting #1 LitRPG bestseller in Russia since 2012

”Barliona. A virtual world jam-packed with monsters, battles - and predictably, players. Millions of them come to Barliona, looking forward to the things they can't get in real life: elves and magic, dragons and princesses, and unforgettable combat. The game has become so popular that players now choose to spend months online without returning home. In Barliona, anything goes: you can assault fellow players, level up, become a mythical hero, a wizard or a legendary thief. The only rule that attempted to regulate the game demanded that no player was allowed to feel actual pain.

But there's an exception to every rule. For a certain bunch of players, Barliona has become their personal hell. They are criminals sent to Barliona to serve their time. They aren't in it for the dragons' gold or the abundant loot. All they want is to survive the virtual inferno. They face the ultimate survival quest.”

(If you like audiobooks, we highly recommend the audio version though the book version is fantastic as well.)

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Beauty in Mourning and Other Stories

“This collection of short stories and novellas are the first of Auezov's works ever to be translated into English. They were written in the 1920s in the author's youth, but have an assurance and maturity that have earned them widespread popularity throughout Kazakhstan and the Soviet Union. Gunshot at the Pass was made into a successful film and An Orphan's Lot, Beauty in Mourning, Savage Grey and Turbulent Times are works, which nearly every Kazakh knows and loves. These works are revered for their seminal influence on Kazakh literature and drama, the fascinating insights they provide on the culture and customs of the steppe but, above all, as truly great, universal stories that have exercised their power over the imaginations of generations of Kazakhs and are now finally available to a worldwide audience.

Mukhtar Auezov (1897-1961) is considered one of Kazakhstan's greatest and most revered writers. On the occasion of his 60th birthday in September 1957, Mukhtar Auezov was awarded the Order of Lenin and granted the title ‘Honoured Academic of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic"‘ In 1959, he was awarded the highly prestigious Lenin Prize for The Path of Abai. After his death in 1961, one of the main streets in Almaty (Kazakhstan's largest metropolis) was named in his honour, and later a whole district of the city. In 1963, his house on M. Tulebaev Street in Almaty was turned into an official museum to honour the writer's work and achievements.”

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Blood & Sweat

“We, the Kazakhs… So little is known about this people and their vast country, the world’s 9th largest, though the Kazakhs have seen much of man’s vast history. From their roots as traders and herdsmen during the Silk Route period to their modern experience with atomic bomb testing and space age triumph, the history of Kazakh culture remains relatively unexplored in the West.

Even less known is author Abdi-Jamil Nurpeisov, venerated sage of Kazakh and Russian literature, though his books have been published in translation worldwide. Nurpeisov exposes Kazakh life to Western readers as Tolstoy did with Russians, and Marquez – Colombians. Nurpeisov’s eye-opening novel unveils the largely unknown history, life and customs of the Kazakhs.

Blood and Sweat is a sweeping tale about the vanishing way of life of Kazakhs in a small rural village. It has been compared to Sholokhov’s epic And Quiet Flows the Don. Through a kaleidoscopic panorama of events, an ethnographic tapestry, and the sophisticated fabric of Kazakhs’ past, Nurpeisov’s novels come to life in an enjoyable and educational reading. The drama of Blood & Sweat takes the reader through the national turmoil of 1900-1922 at which Kazakh state was born and via the personal dramatic development of three people. The human fight against the cruel elements of nature are balanced with the struggle between good and evil of its main protagonists. A murder and its consequence parallels the issues raised by Dostoyevsky.

Blood and Sweat is the only novel that truly describes in soul of the Kazakh people, and the birth of a nation with defined boundaries. This is the first time Nurpeisov’s trilogy has been translated and publishing into the English language, based on the authorized 2010 translation by the renowned Russian writer and translator Yury Kazakov.

Nurpiesov has won numerous awards including the Laureate of the State Prize of the USSR, and given the honorary title ‘People’s Writer of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.’ Nurpeisov is the founding president of PEN International in Kazakhstan.”

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The Great Thinkers of the Kazakh Steppe

“This book is a collection of biographies of great people from Kazakhstan's history. Some were real heroes of their time, some were not understood and were even thought to be traitors. However, their input into the future was very significant and their achievements cannot be diminished. Here, you will find out about the national composers-akyns, poets, and Khans. You will learn about the three judges that established the first legal system in Kazakhstan. Some of the characters might seem mythical, but the stories about them still live among us.

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Yerkebulan Dzhelbuldin was born in 1934 in Kazakhstan. He worked as a teacher in the Soviet Union for all his life and began gathering Kazakh materials for his book after Kazakhstan acquired its independence. Many facts were concealed from the Kazakh people and even Kazakhs did not know about their Khans and philosophers.

This book has never been published before. I translated Yerkebulan’s materials and put them into a book along with the sketches of all the characters. My name is Dana Jeteyeva and I specialize in translations of Kazakh fairy tales and other interesting facts about Kazakhstan. I want people all over the world to learn about my country—even though it is a big country in the middle of the large continent of Eurasia, few people know anything about it.”

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