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  Mary Emma and Company

  Ralph Moody

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  Ralph “Little Britches” Moody at age thirteen moves with his mother, Mary Emma, and five siblings “back East” to begin a new life. They survive their first bleak winter in Massachusetts through the help of close relatives and caring friends. Money and prospects are few, but not faith and resourcefulness. Despite their efforts they face run-ins with local authorities, hardships including broken furnaces and plumbing, and difficulty keeping a small family business alive so they can have food to eat. Triumphing over the challenges the Moody home is filled with a warm family life.

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  The Atom Station

  Halldór Laxness

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  From the Nobel Prize–winning author of Independent People: A biting satire of post-WWII Iceland caught between superpowers at the dawn of the Nuclear Age. When the Americans make an offer to buy Icelandic land to build an atomic war base, a storm of protest is provoked throughout the country, and it is here that Laxness finds the catalyst for his story. Told by a country girl from the north, the novel follows her experiences upon taking up employment as a maid in the house of her Member of Parliament. She finds herself in a world very different to that of her upbringing and, marvelling at the customs and behaviour of the people around her, she emerges as the one obstinate reality in a world of fantasy. Her observations and experiences expose the intellectual society of the south as rootless and shallow and in stark contrast to the ancient culture of the solid and less fanciful north. The colourful, yet at times dark, cast of characters she meets personifies the southern fantasy world. In this black comedy Laxness has painted a masterpiece of social commentary as relevant today as when it was first written in 1948.

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  Moving the Palace

  Charif Majdalani

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  “A Middle Eastern heart-of-darkness tale that flows like a dream . . . Crackling with razor-sharp humor” (The New York Times).   At the dawn of the twentieth century, a young Lebanese explorer leaves the Levant for the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. The protagonist soon takes charge of this hoard of architectural fragments, ferrying the dismantled landmark through Sudan, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula, attempting to return to his native Beirut with this moveable real estate. Along the way, he will encounter skeptic sheikhs, suspicious tribal leaders, bountiful feasts, pilgrims bound for Mecca, and T. E. Lawrence in a tent—in this “utterly charming” novel that was a recipient of the Académie Française’s François Mauriac Prize (Library Journal).   “Renders the complex social landscape of the Middle East and North Africa with subtlety and finesse . . . Yet one doesn’t need to care about the region’s history, or its present-day contexts, to enjoy Moving the Palace.” —The Wall Street Journal

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  Third Girl - A Hercule Poirot...

  Agatha Christie

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  In this breathtaking Agatha Christie mystery, the Third Girl sharing a London flat with two others announces to Hercule Poirot that she's a murderer and then disappears. The masterful investigator must figure out whether the missing girl is a criminal, a victim, or merely insane. 
  Three young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient secretary. The second is an artist. The third interrupts Hercule Poirot's breakfast confessing that she is a murderer—and then promptly disappears. 
  Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumors surrounding the mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty, innocent, or insane.…

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  Death Comes as the End

  Agatha Christie

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  In Death Comes As the End, Dame Agatha Christie transports us back to ancient Egypt 2000 B.C. where a priest's daughter, investigating a suspicious death, uncovers an asp's nest of jealousy, betrayal, and serial murder. 
  It is Egypt in 2000 BC, where death gives meaning to life. At the foot of a cliff lies the broken, twisted body of Nofret, concubine to a ka-priest. Young, beautiful, and venomous, most agree that it was fate-she deserved to die like a snake! 
  But at her father's house on the banks of the Nile, the priest's daughter Renisenb believes that the woman's death is suspicious. Increasingly, she becomes convinced that the source of evil lurks within their household-and watches helplessly as the family's passions explode in murder. . . .

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  A Resumed Identity

  Ambrose Bierce

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  Bierce takes us into the strange and ghostly afterlife experience of a displaced soldier. Can such things be?

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