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A highly intelligent, empathetic account of a family haunted by dark secrets. Simultaneously a psychological study, a focus for feminism, a novel of intrigue, it has the unique and laudable ability to win the reader¿s sympathy for the most unsavoury of characters.

Christian Lehmann brings his experience as a musicologist, singer and academic to this fascinating journey through the origins of music and its role in human development, culture and society.

A young Tokyoite doctor accepts a post on a remote island south of Okinawa. When a highly contagious fatal disease breaks out, he has to choose between saving himself or saving others.A hormone-ridden teenage youth left alone with his young stepmother following his fathers death is consumed with jealousy as her affections turn to another man.A journalist in search of answers travels from the metropolis to a bleak shore on the Japan Sea and eventually the furthest extreme of ice-bound Hokkaido, as he investigates the suicide of a young man.In a backstreet of the metropolis, a wily old detective follows his hunches to nail the murderer of a young prostitute.A conflict arises between two detectives investigating the shocking suicide of a 6-year-old child, the son of a young actress famed for her immoral behavior. Can it really be suicide, or is it murder?In this early collection of five short stories, Kyotaro Nishimura explores the criminal mind and what makes people do the unthinkable.

The sound of a trumpet across a Japanese mountain valley leads a young man to befriend a mysterious stranger. During repeated visits to the cave where the stranger has set up home, the young man learns about his life in the region. The stranger's hilarious, bawdy and touching narratives captivate the young man, but he begins to doubt their veracity. Can they really be true?'Tales from a Mountain Cave' is a translation of Hisashi Inoue's highly popular 'Shinshaku Tono Monogatari' (新釈遠野物語), set in the Kamaishi area of Iwate Prefecture, Northeast Japan. Kamaishi was devastated by the tsunami of March 2011, and royalties on sales of this book will be donated to post-tsunami community support projects.

It is the period just before the First World War. The multilingual, multifaith and multicultural Ottoman Empire is facing ruin and annihilation. Sehsuvar Sami is a young man from the city of Salonika whose dream is to move to Paris with his lover Ester and become a writer. However, the uprisings that begin in July 1908 in the Balkans are set to change his destiny, just as they will change the destiny of the entire country. A bit part in an assassination eventually turns him into one of the uprising's most feared hitmen. Caught between his love of literature and the dark world of politics and struggling to find the strength to resist the pull of history, Sehsuvar ends up becoming a key figure in the new government's intelligence network. His aim now is not to write novels that will draw people into a world of decency and beauty but to carry out his duties as a servant of the nation and defend his country, even if that means committing murder, mass murder. The reasoning is simple: in order to create a strong and independent country, one must be ready to commit atrocities. Taking place in Istanbul, Salonika, Paris and Macedonia between 1908 and 1926, 'Farewell, My Beautiful Homeland' is the story of lives that have been turned upside down by rebellion, revolution and war. It is the story of the Greek declaration of independence, of the Jews of Salonika being forced into exile, of the Bulgarians fighting for their independence and of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the struggle to create a new nation out of its crumbling ruins. It is also the story of one man's search for his true calling amidst the chaos of a turbulent historical era, the story of a man caught between his love for his country and his love for his woman. 'Farewell, My Beautiful Homeland' is a story of unfulfilled dreams and the call of history. And underpinning it all is one fundamental question, one fundamental struggle: which takes precedence - the state or the people?

In November 2007, Romain Lannuzel Erasmus, student at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, mysteriously disappeared without a trace. This case remains unsolved, when the novel begins with another mysterious disappearance of Costantinu Iliescu, a Romanian student. His girlfriend and two of his Erasmus colleagues sound the alarm and move heaven and earth to find him, but both police and university officials believe that Iliescu has left voluntarily and refuse to get involved. However, they will soon have to change their minds as the events that occur after the disappearance of the Romanian student reveal that something terrible, dark and macabre is happening at the college. A team of policemen, including Deputy Inspector Manuela Vazquez, open an in-depth investigation and the potential suspects multiply. In the minds of teachers, police officers and students, the thick shadow of what appears to be a meticulous and bloodthirsty murderer looms. Carme Riera endorses the best elements of the thriller genre to create a state of tension and suspense that is maintained until the last page. The prose is evocative, almost cinematic and knows how to combine brilliantly intrigue, irony and social criticism.

The sumptuous TopkapA Palace in eighteenth century Istanbul is a place of breathtaking splendour where human foibles, love, lust and above all greed reign supreme in the lives of a sultan, a painter, a grand vizier and some of the world's most beautiful women. [NP] Imperial favour has raised a graceful blossom to the symbol of a time that history would later name the Tulip Era. Sultan Ahmed III reigns over a still vast empire as his close companion and Chief Imperial Painter Levni creates exquisite works of art. But real power lies with his trusted Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha. In the background, the radiant denizens of the imperial harem fight for supremacy in their cloistered universe. [NP] How will history record Sultan Ahmed III? Hedonist, aesthete or reformer? What will happen to his descendants? [NP] Levni barely remembers his own Christian family before he was selected as a child tribute and raised into high office by the mighty Ottoman Empire. But who is he really? [NP] Will the Grand Vizier's quest for ultimate power yield results? [NP] How does an imperial wife justify her own wickedness? [NP] And conversely, what makes another so loyal for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer? [NP] For whose shadow will the tulip gardens long when their world comes crashing down? [NP] 'Unto the Tulip Gardens: My Shadow' is a novel founded on historical fact woven by the silken yarn of imagination.

Volkan is the vice director of an important financial company. He achieved success young, and has spent his life indulging in the worldly pleasures money can buy. But for all the fun money and success can bring, he has started to feel like something is missing from his life. On his way home from a business trip to Europe, Volkan realizes he has picked up the wrong suitcase-one full of women's clothing and priceless antiques. Enter Melike Eda, the owner of the suitcase-a jewellery maker, antiques expert, and an antiquities smuggler. She and Volkan hit it off, but will they be able to fill the empty spaces in each other's lives? Volkan also meets Eylem, a poet and blogger, who inspires him to make changes in his life. She has run away to the big city to escape her past, but things aren't so easy for her as she struggles to make enough money and take care of her dependent sister. 'Saffron Yellow' follows the stories of these three people as they make their way through life, trying to find meaning and love.

What if a conservative girl falls in love with a secular young woman? The novel discloses the codes of cultural differentiation in 21st century Turkey as it focuses on the details of the two young women's lives, their families, and their emotional and sexual lives. Esin is an attractive, happily married Turkish woman with a modern, Western-oriented outlook and a successful career hosting business meetings in Istanbul. She would normally have nothing in common with Kubra, a conservative religious girl she met at college in the States. Kubra wears the Islamist headscarf and lives with her parents. As Esin and Kbra form an intimate friendship, the chapters of the novel open out onto each woman's emotional and sexual experience in turn. The cultural divisions of contemporary Turkey are dramatized through their personal lives and the dynamics within their families. Each woman's curiosity about the other's mysterious world gradually takes on a boldly erotic character. At first interested in the external trappings of each other's lives, they embark on a journey of spiritual and sensual discovery whereby each woman comes to know 'The Other.'

A powerful love story set in the class-conscious Tsarist Russia of the early 19th century. It embraces every level of that society - serf, provincial, aristocrat - in verse which is by turns beautiful, witty, wickedly perceptive and always readable. It traces the lives of two young people from childhood to maturity. Yevgeny, the fashionably disillusioned young man who knows everything about love except the most important thing; Tatiana, whose only experience of love comes from romantic novels but who knows how to love till the end. This is essential reading for anyone with a love of Russian literature, because this is where it all began. There is little pre-history to that golden age of 19th century novels. Lomonosov, a fisherman's son turned scholar, took church Slavonic, peasant Russian, mixed in a few 'Loan translations' and gave a French-speaking aristocracy a literary language; Pushkin was the first truly great poet to use it; Eugene Onegin is his greatest work.