Night Watch

“Night Watch is an epic of extraordinary power.” —Quentin Tarantino

“Brace yourself for [an adult version of] Harry Potter in Gorky Park. . . . The novel contains some captivating scenes and all kinds of marvelous, inventive detail.” —The Washington Post Book World

“An international bestseller [as] potent as a shot of vodka. . . . [A] compelling urban fantasy.” —Publishers Weekly

They are the ‘Others,’ an ancient race of supernatural beings—magicians, shape-shifters, vampires, and healers—who live among us. Human born, they must choose a side to swear allegiance to—the Dark or the Light—when they come of age.

For a millennium, these opponents have coexisted in an uneasy peace, enforced by defenders like the Night Watch, forces of the Light who guard against the Dark. But prophecy decrees that one supreme ‘Other’ will arise to spark a cataclysmic war.

Anton Gorodetsky, an untested mid-level Light magician with the Night Watch, discovers a cursed young woman—an Other of tremendous potential unallied with either side—who can shift the balance of power. With the battle lines between Light and Dark drawn, the magician must move carefully, for one wrong step could mean the beginning of annihilation.

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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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A Winter’s Promise

Dubbed the “Harry Potter of France”

A National Indie Bestseller

“Dabos’s darkly enchanting debut, a French bestseller, employs vibrant characters, inventive worldbuilding, and a sophisticated plot that will dazzle readers.” - Publishers Weekly 

Lose yourself in the fantastic world of the arks and in the company of unforgettable characters in this French runaway hit.

Plain-spoken, headstrong Ophelia cares little about appearances. Her ability to read the past of objects is unmatched in all of Anima and she possesses the ability to travel through mirrors, a skill passed down to her from previous generations. Her idyllic life is disrupted, however, when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, a taciturn and influential member of a distant clan. An unforgettable heroine in a rich and bountiful universe filled with intrigue and suspense, Ophelia must leave all she knows behind and follow her fiancé to Citaceleste, the capital of a cold, icy ark known as the Pole, where danger lurks around every corner and nobody can be trusted. There, in the presence of her inscrutable future husband, Ophelia slowly realizes that she is a pawn in a political game that will have far-reaching ramifications not only for her but for her entire world.

Adult readers who gravitated toward the intricate world-building of Harry Potter or reveled in the dark trickeries of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass will find themselves ensnared by the enchantments of A Winter's Promise.

2018 Amazon Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book

One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best YA Books of 2018

Publishers Weekly's Best YA Book of the Year

Longlisted for Irish prize Great Reads Award

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

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The End of Eddy

An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy.

“Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again . . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.” Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different—”girlish,” intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.

Already translated into twenty languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result—a critical and popular triumph—has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.

“Haunting . . . devastating.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Èdouard Louis speaks of violence, both social and familiar, with tremendous force and feeling. Revelatory, queerly tough, as intellectual as it is impolite, The End of Eddy is a book to shake you up.” —Justin Torres, author of We the Animals

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

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The Ethics of Ambiguity

“From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex comes a radical argument for ethical responsibility and freedom.

In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities. De Beauvoir outlines a series of ‘ways of being’ (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it. 

The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.”

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

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The Lost Domain (aka The Lost Estate & Le Grand Meaulnes)

“The arrival of Augustin Meaulnes at a small provincial secondary school sets in train a series of events that will have a profound effect on his life, and that of his new friend François Seurel. It is Seurel who recalls the impact of le grand Meaulnes, disruptive and charismatic, on his schoolmates, and the encounter that is to haunt them both.

Lost, and alone, Meaulnes stumbles upon an isolated house, mysterious revels, and a beautiful girl. When he returns to Seurel, it is with the fixed determination to find the house again, and the girl with whom he has fallen in love. But the dreamlike days in the lost domain are evanescent, and Meaulnes is torn between his love and competing claims of loyalty and friendship.

Alain-Fournier's lyrical novel captures the painful transition from adolescence to adulthood without sentimentality, and with heart-wrenching yearning. Romantic and fantastical, it is the story's ultimate truthfulness about human experience that has captivated readers for a hundred years. In her introduction to this centenary edition, Hermione Lee considers the qualities that have established its reputation.”

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

Note: This translation by Frank Davison is the one we recommend. Also, please be aware that the paperback version is available via a separate Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3bfngDs.

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Planet of the Apes

“If you've seen the cheesy Planet of the Apes movies, you may be shocked to learn the first movie was adapted from an intelligent, ironic, & literate novel. You'll be less surprised when you learn the original novel Planet of the Apes was written by Pierre Boulle, author of The Bridge over the River Kwai.

Boulle called on his own experiences as a prisoner of war in South-east Asia during the Second World War, using the relationship between man and apes as a metaphor for the treatment handed out to prisoners by brutish Japanese guards. The subtext is strongly anti-slavery, anti-racist and anti-war.” - Observer

“In the not-too-distant future, three astronauts land on what appears to be a planet just like Earth, with lush forests, a temperate climate, and breathable air. But while it appears to be a paradise, nothing is what it seems.

They soon discover the terrifying truth: On this world, humans are savage beasts, and apes rule as their civilized masters. In a novel of nonstop action and breathless intrigue, one man struggles to unlock the secret of a terrifying civilization, all the while wondering: Will he become the savior of the human race, or the final witness to its damnation? In a shocking climax, Boulle delivers the answer in a masterpiece of adventure, satire, and suspense.”

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

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The President's Hat

“An enchanting, irresistible story which flows quickly and effortlessly from one vivid character to the next, capturing their essence in a minimum of words and with a vitality that never ceases to surprise and delight.” - Lancashire Evening Post

“A charming fable about the power of a hat that takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through French life during the Mitterrand years. Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him. After the presidential party has gone, Daniel discovers that Mitterrand's black felt hat has been left behind. After a few moments' soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the hat as a souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It's a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow … different.”

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

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Death is Hard Work

“A finalist for the National Book Awards in translated literature & shortlisted for the Saif Shobash Banipal prize

Abdel Latif, an old man, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. Before he dies, he tells his youngest son Bolbol that his final wish is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya in the Aleppo region. Though Abdel Latif was not the ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, he decides to persuade his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and their father's body to Anabiya—only a two-hour drive from Damascus.

But the country is a warzone, with the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies, whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings' decision to set aside their differences and honour their father's request quickly escalates from a dutiful commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest. Syria is no longer any place for heroes, and the trials that confront the family along their journey—while they are captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed—will prove to have enormous consequences for them all.

A mixture of brutal, front-line reportage and surreal humor evocative of Beckett and Kafka, Death is Hard Work is an unforgettable journey into a contemporary heart of darkness.”

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

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Cinnamon

“Late at night, Hanan sees a ray of light under her husband’s bedroom door. She opens the door to her old husband in bed with her beloved maid Alia. Blinded by rage, Hanan throws Alia out in the middle of the night. She watches Alia walk away, hoping she will turn back, and bitterly regrets having pushed her lover away.

Alia, who hasn’t turned 20 yet, has been Hanan’s maid for over eight years. She hasn’t heard from her family since her father brought her to the villa, in exchange for some money. Leaving home, she thought, would help her mother, brothers and sisters out. They all lived in a single room in the ghetto under the tyranny of her brutal father.

Life is not worth much in the ghetto, especially that of little girls. This is how Alia grew up to be so fierce. She was eight years old, and would carry a knife. But even that didn’t prevent her from being raped by the garbage collection leader. At least she got her revenge. She scratched his face with her knife, and didn’t let herself die of shame, like her old paralyzed sister, who had been repeatedly raped by their neighbor in that same tin room she couldn’t leave.

Alia walks away from the villa, with nowhere to go. She didn’t love Hanan, but felt safe in the golden cage. Being Hanan’s lover was an easy game she played in exchange of a little comfort. She heads towards the ghetto, fearing her father, recalling the misery she thought she had left behind, holding her little knife tight as she feels unsafe again.

As Hanan watches her leave, she remembers her own despair of a different kind. That of a lonely wealthy woman, married to a quiet, disgusting cousin against her will. Hanan’s life may be smooth, but it’s desperately empty. The two women’s encounter was unlikely anywhere else except in the villa, where Alia was the maid during the day, and a lover at night. Two tormented women who brought comfort to each other, and yet still engaged in a relationship of power and control over each other.”

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

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The Crossing

International winner of the PEN Pinter Prize

“An eloquent, gripping and harrowing account of the country’s decline into barbarism by an incredibly brave Syrian.” - Irish Times

“Samar Yazbek's searing new book about her Syrian homeland is a testament to the indomitable spirit of her countrymen in their struggle against the Assad regime. . . shocking, searing, and beautiful.” - Daily Beast

“Journalist Samar Yazbek was forced into exile by Assad's regime. When the uprising in Syria turned to bloodshed, she was determined to take action and secretly returned several times. The Crossing is her rare, powerful and courageous testament to what she found inside the borders of her homeland.

From the first peaceful protests for democracy to the arrival of ISIS, she bears witness to those struggling to survive, to the humanity that can flower amidst annihilation, and why so many are now desperate to flee.”

“One of the first political classics of the 21st century.” - Observer

“Extraordinarily powerful, poignant, and affecting. I was greatly moved.” - Michael Palin

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

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The Pianist from Syria (aka The Pianist of Yarmouk)

“‘Ahmad has created a moving and visceral account of conflict, hope and the power of music' - Observer

The inspirational true story of one young man's struggle to find peace during war, and the power of music to bring hope to a desperate nation.

One morning in war-torn Damascus, a starving man drags a piano into a rubbled street. Everything he once knew has been destroyed by war.

Amidst ruin and despair, he begins to play. He plays of love and hope, he plays for his family and his fellow Syrians. He plays even though he could be killed for doing so.

As word of his defiance spreads around the world, he becomes a beacon of hope and even resistance. Yet he fears for his wife and children—the more he plays, the more he and his family are endangered until, finally, he must make a terrible choice . . .

Aeham Ahmad's spellbinding and uplifting true story tells of the triumph of love and hope, the incredible bonds of family, and the healing power of music in even the very darkest of places.

'In amongst the wreckage scenes of hope. An amazing man - Ahmad played the piano just to spread love' Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2

'The music of Aeham Ahmad became a symbol of resistance' Today, BBC Radio 4”

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

Note: If you’re looking for the paperback in Amazon US, it appears as if it is available under a different link & a slightly different title so if you want the paperback version or are having an issue seeing the paperback version that’s available now, use this link: https://amzn.to/2vpZfKk.

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Syrian Folktales

“This delightful book relates folktales from the fourteen muhafazah (i.e., governorates or provinces) of Syria. Each folktale is located on a regional map and is accompanied by a local, related recipe that’s easy to follow.“ Also woven into the book are folk sayings, Syrian history, songs, riddles, and hadith (i.e., the words and teachings from the Prophet Muhammad which serve as the second primary source of Islamic teachings). The author also includes a glossary of Syrian terms for reference.

Thoughtfully written, Syrian Folktales is a culturally-relevant and unique counterpoint to all the negativity heard about Syria presenting a view of the country that isn't political or war torn. This slim volume provides a rich look into Syrian culture and is a wonderful read for all ages.

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

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Syria Speaks

“An English Pen Award winner, this anthology forms a rich, creatively diverse motif sublimely representative of a country and its people awash in strife and insurgency.” - Kirkus

“In Syria, culture has become a critical line of defence against tyranny. Syria Speaks is a celebration of a people determined to reclaim their dignity, freedom and self-expression. It showcases the work of over fifty artists and writers who are challenging the culture of violence in Syria.

Their literature, poems and songs, cartoons, political posters and photographs document and interpret the momentous changes that have shifted the frame of reality so drastically in Syria. Moving and inspiring, Syria Speaks is testament to the courage, creativity and imagination of the Syrian people.

“Syria Speaks is a remarkable achievement and a remarkable book—a wise, courageous, imaginative and beautiful response to all that is ugly in human behaviour. This extraordinary anthology gives a voice to those we may have forgotten, or whom we may classify as simply passive and silent victims. The people shown living, dreaming and speaking here are far more than victims and only silent if we refuse to hear them.'“ - A.L. Kennedy

“An extraordinary collection, revealing a dynamic and exciting culture in painful transition—a culture where artists are really making a difference ... You need to read this book.” - Brian Eno

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

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Blindness

“This is a shattering work by a literary master.” - Boston Globe

“A stunningly powerful novel of humanity's will to survive against all odds during an epidemic by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

 A city is hit by an epidemic of ‘white blindness’ which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of our worst appetites and weaknesses—and humanity's ultimately exhilarating spirit.”

“This is a an important book, one that is unafraid to face all of the horror of the century.” - Washington Post

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