The Fall of the King

“The Fall of the King recaptures for us with an astonishing vividness the feeling of the period. What lures you to the end is the power of its descriptions; what makes it distinguished at rare moments is the richness of its poetry.” - The NY Times

“Taking place during the first half of the sixteenth century, The Fall of the King tells the story of dreamy, slacking student Mikkel Thøgersen and the entanglements that ultimately bring him into service as a mercenary under King Christian II of Denmark. Moving from the Danish countryside to Stockholm during the execution of Swedish nobility and finally to the imprisonment of Mikkel and Christian, the narrative is a lyrical encapsulation of ‘the fall’—the fall of country, history, individuals, and nature.

Twice voted as the most important Danish novel of the twentieth century, The Fall of the King is both an epic depiction of real events and a complex psychological novel. Half pure narration, half prose poem, its scenes of brute realism mixed with rhapsodical passages make it a work of artistic genius.”

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The Little Book of Hygge

NY Times Bestseller

“Embrace Hygge (pronounced hoo-ga) and become happier with this definitive guide to the Danish philosophy of comfort, togetherness, and well-being.

Why are Danes the happiest people in the world? The answer, says Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, is Hygge. Loosely translated, Hygge is a sense of comfort, togetherness, and well-being. ‘Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience,’ Wiking explains. ‘It is about being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe.’

Hygge is the sensation you get when you’re cuddled up on a sofa, in cozy socks under a soft throw, during a storm. It’s that feeling when you’re sharing comfort food and easy conversation with loved ones at a candlelit table. It is the warmth of morning light shining just right on a crisp blue-sky day.

The Little Book of Hygge introduces you to this cornerstone of Danish life, and offers advice and ideas on incorporating it into your own life, such as:

  • Get comfy. Take a break.

  • Be here now. Turn off the phones.

  • Turn down the lights. Bring out the candles.

  • Build relationships. Spend time with your tribe.

  • Give yourself a break from the demands of healthy living. Cake is most definitely Hygge.

  • Live life today, like there is no coffee tomorrow.

From picking the right lighting to organizing a Hygge get-together to dressing hygge, Wiking shows you how to experience more joy and contentment the Danish way.”

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The Boy in the Suitcase

“Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help—even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy, too. In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.”

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We, the Drowned

“An international hit, this bold seafaring epic spans 100 years in the lives of the men and women from a small town on an island off the Danish coast.

Carsten Jensen’s debut novel has taken the world by storm. Already hailed in Europe as an instant classic, We, the Drowned is the story of the port town of Marstal, whose inhabitants have sailed the world’s oceans aboard freight ships for centuries. Spanning over a hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War, and from the barren rocks of Newfoundland to the lush plantations of Samoa, from the roughest bars in Tasmania, to the frozen coasts of northern Russia, We, the Drowned spins a magnificent tale of love, war, and adventure, a tale of the men who go to sea and the women they leave behind.

Ships are wrecked at sea and blown up during wars, they are places of terror and violence, yet they continue to lure each generation of Marstal men away. Strong, resilient, women raise families alone and sometimes take history into their own hands. There are cannibals here, shrunken heads, prophetic dreams, forbidden passions, cowards, heroes, devastating tragedies, and miraculous survivals—everything that a town like Marstal has actually experienced, and that makes We, the Drowned an unforgettable novel, destined to take its place among the greatest seafaring literature.”

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The Midnight Witness

Voted Denmark's most popular novelist for the fourth time, Sara Blaedel is also a recipient of the Golden Laurel, Denmark's most prestigious literary award.

“Rookie homicide detective Louise Rick makes her debut in this thrilling #1 international bestseller that launched 3-million-copy bestselling writer Sara Blaedel's incredible career.

A young woman is found strangled in a park, and a male journalist has been killed in the backyard of the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen.

Detective Louise Rick is put on the case of the young girl, but very soon becomes entangled in solving the other homicide too when it turns out her best friend, journalist Camilla Lind, knew the murdered man. Louise tries to keep her friend from getting too involved, but Camilla's never been one to miss out on an interesting story. And this time, Camilla may have gone too far.

Emotionally riveting and filled with unexpected twists, The Midnight Witness is a tour-de-force from international phenomenon Sara Blaedel.”

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Snow Country

“Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country is widely considered to be the writer’s masterpiece: a powerful tale of wasted love set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan.

At an isolated mountain hot spring, with snow blanketing every surface, Shimamura, a wealthy dilettante meets Komako, a lowly geisha. She gives herself to him fully and without remorse, despite knowing that their passion cannot last and that the affair can have only one outcome. In chronicling the course of this doomed romance, Kawabata has created a story for the ages—a stunning novel dense in implication and exalting in its sadness.”

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

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The Enceladus Mission

In the year 2031, a robot probe detects traces of biological activity on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. This sensational discovery shows that there is indeed evidence of extraterrestrial life. Fifteen years later, a hurriedly built spacecraft sets out on the long journey to the ringed planet and its moon.

The international crew is not just facing a difficult 27 months—if the spacecraft manages to make it to Enceladus without incident, it must use a drill ship to penetrate the kilometer-thick sheet of ice that entombs the moon. If life does indeed exist on Enceladus, it could only be at the bottom of the salty, ice covered ocean, which formed billions of years ago.

However, shortly after takeoff disaster strikes the mission, and the chances of the crew making it to Enceladus, let alone back home, look grim.

From internationally best-selling hard science fiction author, Brandon Q. Morris comes a new novel for hard science fiction enthusiasts. As a physicist and space specialist, Morris describes the journey of the international expedition through the hostile vacuum of space, using the latest scientific findings and technology trends as his inspiration. This isn’t a What If book, this is a When Will book.

“A space odyssey that’s worth taking.” —Kirkus

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Amatka

“A Locus Award Finalist

One of the Guardian’s Best Sci Fi and Fantasy Books of 2017

A surreal debut novel set in a world shaped by language in the tradition of Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Vanja, an information assistant, is sent from her home city of Essre to the austere, wintry colony of Amatka with an assignment to collect intelligence for the government. Immediately, she feels that something strange is going on: people act oddly in Amatka, and citizens are monitored for signs of subversion.

Intending to stay just a short while, Vanja falls in love with her housemate, Nina, and prolongs her visit. But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony, and a cover-up by its administration, she embarks on an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk.

In Karin Tidbeck’s world, everyone is suspect, no one is safe, and nothing—not even language, nor the very fabric of reality—can be taken for granted. Amatka is a beguiling and wholly original novel about freedom, love, and artistic creation by a captivating new voice.”

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Ice Trilogy

One of those books that you’ll either love or hate.

“In 1908, deep in Siberia, it fell to earth. THEIR ICE. A young man on a scientific expedition found it. It spoke to his heart, and his heart named him Bro. Bro felt the Ice. Bro knew its purpose. To bring together the 23,000 blond, blue-eyed Brothers and Sisters of the Light who were scattered on earth. To wake their sleeping hearts. To return to the Light. To destroy this world. And secretly, throughout the twentieth century and up to our own day, the Children of the Light have pursued their beloved goal.

Pulp fiction, science fiction, New Ageism, pornography, video-game mayhem, old-time Communist propaganda, and rampant commercial hype all collide, splinter, and splatter in Vladimir Sorokin’s virtuosic Ice Trilogy, a crazed joyride through modern times with the promise of a truly spectacular crash at the end. And the reader, as eager for the redemptive fix of a good story as the Children are for the Primordial Light, has no choice except to go along, caught up in a brilliant illusion from which only illusion escapes intact.”

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The Ice Beneath Her

“Acclaimed Swedish author Camilla Grebe makes her solo American debut with a psychological thriller as cunning in its twists as it is captivating in its storytelling—for fans of the celebrated crime fiction of Camilla Läckberg, Jo Nesbø, Ruth Ware, and Fiona Barton.

Winter’s chill has descended on Stockholm as police arrive at the scene of a shocking murder. An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban home—a brutal crime made all the more disturbing by its uncanny resemblance to an unsolved killing ten years earlier. But this time there’s a suspect: the charismatic and controversial chain-store CEO Jesper Orre, who owns the home but is nowhere to be found.

To homicide detectives Peter Lindgren and Manfred Olsson, nothing about the suave, high-profile businessman—including a playboy reputation and rumors of financial misdeeds—suggests he conceals the dark heart and twisted mind of a cold-blooded killer. In search of a motive, Lindgren and Olsson turn to the brilliant criminal profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön. Once a valued police asset, now marooned in unhappy retirement and a crumbling marriage, she’s eager to exercise her keen skills again—and offer the detectives a window into the secret soul of Jesper Orre.

But they’re not the only ones searching. Two months before, Emma Bohman, a young clerk at Orre’s company, chanced to meet the charming chief executive, and romance swiftly bloomed. Almost as quickly as the passionate affair ignited, it was over when Orre inexplicably disappeared. One staggering misfortune after another followed, leaving Emma certain that her runaway lover was to blame and transforming her confusion and heartbreak into anger.

Now, pursuing the same mysterious man for different reasons, Emma and the police are destined to cross paths in a chilling dance of obsession, vengeance, madness, and love gone hellishly wrong.”

“Impressive . . . a tour de force that lifts its author to the front rank among the increasingly crowded field of Nordic noir.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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Ice

Winner of the Finlandia Prize & nominated for the Nordic Criti Prize

The epic of island life that has gripped Finland…

It is the summer of 1946. A novice Lutheran priest, his wife, and baby daughter arrive at a windswept island off the coast of Finland, where they are welcomed by its frugal, self-sufficient community of fisher folk turned reluctant farmers.

In this deeply atmospheric and quietly epic tale, Lundberg uses a wealth of everyday detail to draw us irresistibly into a life and mindset far removed from our own—stoic and devout yet touched with humour and a propensity for song. With each season, the young family’s love of the island and its disparate and scattered inhabitants deepens, and when the winter brings ice new and precarious links appear. Told in spare, simple prose that mirrors the islanders’ unadorned style, this is a story as immersive as it is heartrending.

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Redemption in Indigo

“Utterly delightful! The impish love child of Amos Tutuola [famed for his African folk tales] & Gabriel García Márquez [known as one of the best writers of the 20th century].” —Nalo Hopkinson

Bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail, Redemption in Indigo is a clever, contemporary fairy tale that introduces readers to a dynamic new voice in Caribbean literature. Lord's world of spider tricksters and indigo immortals, inspired in part by a Senegalese folk tale [incorporating the Afro-Barbadian culture], will feel instantly familiar—but Paama's adventures are fresh, surprising, and utterly original.

Paama's husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents' home in the village of Makendha, now he's disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones—powerful spirits called the djombi—who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.

Karen Lord's debut novel, which won the prestigious Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados, the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the Mythopoetic Award, is an intricately woven tale of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit.

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

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The Best of All Possible Worlds

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Buzzfeed

“Reads like smooth jazz comfort food, deceptively familiar & easy going down, but subtly subversive.” - LA Review

“A fascinating & thoughtful novel that examines adaptation, social change, & human relationships. I’ve not read anything quite like it, which makes it that rare beast: a true original.” - Kate Elliott

“A rewarding, touching and often funny exploration of the forms and functions of human culture.”- SFX

”A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life, but doing so may mean changing their culture forever. Working together to save this vanishing race, a man and a woman from two clashing societies will uncover ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. And as their mission hangs in the balance, the unlikely team—one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive—just may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all.”

“The Best of All Possible Worlds poses an interesting question: What parts of you do you fight to preserve when everything you know suddenly changes?” - Assoc. Press

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

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In the Castle of My Skin

“Written through the eyes of a young boy, Lamming portrays the social, racial, political and urban struggles with which Barbados continues to grapple even with some thirty-three years of political independence from Britain.

‘They won't know you, the you that's hidden somewhere in the castle of your skin.’

Nine-year-old G. leads a life of quiet mischief, crab catching, teasing preachers and playing among the pumpkin vines. His sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados is overseen by the English landlord who lives on the hill, just as their 'Little England' is watched over by the Mother Country. Yet gradually, G. finds himself awakening to the violence and injustice that lurk beneath the apparent order of things. As the world he knows begins to crumble, revealing the bruising secret at its heart, he is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision.

Lyrical and unsettling, George Lamming's autobiographical coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence amid the collapse of colonial rule.”

“Rich and riotous.” - The Times

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

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It So Happen

Written in Caribbean-English (a localized non-standard form of English specific to each country of the Commonwealth Caribbean), this book with its stories of a village in Barbados is truly a Bajan classic.

“It So Happen focuses on the Barbadian/Caribbean village and the characters found there. Callender's fictional village is full of eccentrics who he exposes in a series of moral fables.

Saga Boy and Jasper prepare for a grand stick-fight. Big Joe will do anything for the girl he loves. All the men are determined to defeat Marie in the rum drinking competition, and Pa John, the Obeah Man is foiled by his own wicket spell.

This is a must read for every local and visitor alike. Students of language and culture will find in it a wealth of material.”

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Natural Rebels

Although we are learning a lot from historians about the lives of slaves in the United States, we still know little about slavery in the Caribbean. Hilary Beckles's book on the social, economic, and labor history of slave women in Barbados, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-19th century, is a major addition to this literature.

Drawing on contemporary documents and records, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Beckles reveals how slave women were central to the plantation economy of Barbados. They had two kinds of value for sugar planters: they could work just as hard as men, and they could literally reproduce the slave class.

Beckles details the daily lives of slave women in conditions of extreme exploitation. They suffered from harsh conditions, cruel punishments, malnutrition, disease, high mortality, and fear of abandonment when they were too old to work. He described the various categories and responsibilities of slaves, and the roles of children in the slave economy. Beckles looks at family structures and the complexities of interracial unions. He also shows how female slaves regularly resisted slavery, using both violent and nonviolent means. They never accommodated themselves to the system; as natural rebels, they fought in any way they could for survival.

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Westminster's Jewel

“Westminster’s Jewel is a rare exposé on the history and evolution of Barbadian society that will captivate both Barbadians and citizens of the UK unfamiliar with the history of British colonialism in the Caribbean. The book is an interesting mix of narrative and poetry, done in the author’s own elegant—and at times caustic—style.

It presents the Barbados story in an easy, non-academic fashion—from the arrival of the British in 1627 to the present; and offers critical—sometimes biting—commentary on current social norms.

Westminster’s Jewel is one of the few books that combines local history (in easy reading style) with critical commentary and poetry to tell the story of Barbados from the inception to the present. The Barbadian will discover things about his society he hadn’t noticed before; the non-Barbadian will learn about the sordid history of enslavement and colonialism and its legacy on the island.

From a ‘jewel’ in the imperial crown, Barbados, today, is a struggling economy, dependent on tourism and an ever-declining sugar industry. The jewel has lost its sparkle, even as the sun has set on the Empire. The ravages of slavery and colonialism are never far from the eye. But the history of slavery and colonialism has not only left an economic legacy, it has also left a major psychological legacy as well: a people with a woeful lack of self-confidence—who live in the shadows of those who once dominated their lives. Westminster’s Jewel seeks to tell that story—the story of Barbados from settlement by the British in 1627 up to the present.”

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

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Cecilia Valdés or El Angel Hill

“Cecilia Valdés is arguably the most important novel of 19th century Cuba. Originally published in NYC in 1882, Cirilo Villaverde's novel has fascinated readers inside and outside Cuba since the late 19th century. In this new English translation, a vast landscape emerges of the moral, political, and sexual depravity caused by slavery and colonialism. Set in the Havana of the 1830s, the novel introduces us to Cecilia, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta, who is being pursued by the son of a Spanish slave trader, named Leonardo. Unbeknownst to the two, they are the children of the same father. Eventually, Cecilia gives in to Leonardo's advances; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. When Leonardo, who gets bored with Cecilia after a while, agrees to marry a white upper class woman, Cecilia vows revenge. A mulatto friend and suitor of hers kills Leonardo, and Cecilia is thrown into prison as an accessory to the crime.

For the contemporary reader, Helen Lane's masterful translation of Cecilia Valdés opens a new window into the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba and the Caribbean. There are the elite social circles of European and New World Whites, the rich culture of the free people of color, the class to which Cecilia herself belonged, and then the slaves, divided among themselves between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in the New World, and those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the rich people in Havana. Cecilia Valdés thus presents a vast portrait of sexual, social, and racial oppression, and the lived experience of Spanish colonialism in Cuba.”

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The Cuban Comedy

“A love story steeped in political satire, poetry, and the lightest touches of magical realism, Medina has created a bold, funny narrative with an uncanny heroine at its core: Elena of Piedra Negra, Cuba.

Piedra Negra is an isolated village, whose citizens consist mainly of soldiers injured in the revolution who pass the time drinking a firewater so intense, all hallucinate, and most never recover. The firewater distiller's daughter Elena longs to be a poet, and after a chance encounter with Daniel Arcilla, Cuba's most important poet, Elena wins a national poetry prize and leaves Piedra Negra behind for Havana. There, she encounters a population adjusting to a new way of life, post-revolution: there are spies and secret meetings, black marketeers, and censorship.

Full of outlandish humor and insights into an often contradictory and kafkaesque regime, Medina brings 1960s Cuba to life through the eyes of Elena.”

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Waiting for Snow in Havana

“Have mercy on me, Lord, I am Cuban.’ In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Havana—exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by Fidel Castro’s revolution. Winner of the National Book Award, this stunning memoir is a vibrant and evocative look at Latin America from a child’s unforgettable experience.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos’s youth—with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siestas—becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos’s friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother’s dreams by becoming a modern American man—even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.

Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is a eulogy for a native land and a loving testament to the collective spirit of Cubans everywhere.”

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