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June 1994. Twenty-year-old Daniele wakes up in a hospital room surrounded by strangers. Slowly, memories of the previous night return to him: a spiral of anxiety and anger, an explosion of violence so intense that it almost inflicted irreparable damage to him and his family. To his horror, he learns that he’s been sentenced to a week of mandatory treatment in a psychiatric ward • Writing with lucid realism and stunning emotional force and drawing from the author's own personal experience of mental illness, Mencarelli chronicles seven days in the hospital as he struggles to find a way out of the darkness. Daniele finds unexpected companions in his fellow patients—men who, like him, have felt the full brunt of life’s pain. Together they will realise the hidden strength and value of their common fragility and the boundless empathy they feel towards others

This heartwarming story is about two unlikely friends who give each other the courage to do what they never thought possible. Through their trials and tribulations, they realize that they can always rely on each other to be there • Our story opens with Billie and Franck trapped in a gorge in the Cevennes Mountains. As Franck lies unconscious, Billie appeals to a star for protection by telling stories from their lives. Billie vividly recollects how her friendship with Franck changed her life and struggles with the idea that–thanks to her mistake–she might lose him forever • They met a decade prior when they were assigned as acting partners in class. For the first time, Billie felt someone respected her and Franck didn’t feel so alone. The blossoming of their friendship was comforting for both pitted against the harsh realities they faced

Moscow to Paris in a sidecar: an epic, crazy 2,500 mile road trip following Napoleon’s retreat • October 1812, Napoleon enters Moscow. The Russians have set fire to the city, soon it will be reduced to a pile of ash. The Emperor equivocates, decides to turn back. This is the beginning of the retreat from Russia, a page of history that has become legendary for its degree of suffering and horror, but also for the heroic acts that took place • Two hundred years later, Sylvain Tesson, accompanied by four friends (two Russians and two French), decides to follow the route of the retreat. Perched on two Soviet Ural sidecar motorcycles, they will rejoin Paris from Moscow, guided only by the spectres of the two hundred thousand soldiers who died through cold, starvation, and in battle

A hauntingly beautiful novel about an unforgettable new heroine, and a story of undying love • Nives has recently lost her husband of fifty years. She didn’t cry when she found him dead in the pig pen, she didn’t cry at the funeral, but now loneliness has set in. When she decides to bring her favourite chicken inside for company, she is surprised to discover that the chicken’s company is a more than adequate replacement for her dead husband • But one day, Giacomina goes stiff in front of the tv. Unable to rouse the paralysed chicken, Nives has no choice but to call the town veterinarian, Loriano Bottai, an old acquaintance of hers. What follows is a phone call that seems to last a lifetime, a phone call that becomes a novel. Their conversation veers from the chicken to the past—to the life they once shared, the secrets they never had the courage to reveal, wounds that never healed

Whoever the lambdas might be, and wherever they really come from, they’re already here among us • Outwardly alien arrivals from a distant sea, the lambdas are genetically human. They slip quietly into low- to middle-income jobs and appear to want nothing more than to be left alone. For Cara Gray, they are first a haunting presence in her otherwise ordinary childhood, then the inscrutable target of her police surveillance work • When a bomb goes off at a school, a nebulous group of lambda extremists claims responsibility for the attack—but how could a vulnerable community of tiny aquatic humans, barely visible in society and seemingly indifferent to their own exploitation, be capable of something so horrific? • In Cara’s world a toothbrush can be legally alive, a quantum computer has the power to decide who dies, and a government employee made of slime mould protein needs help to relieve his neuroses

The Gospel according to Amelie • Jesus is perhaps the most universally known figure in the Western world, yet he remains one of the most obscure. In her reinterpretation of the story of the Passion and crucifixion, Nothomb gives voice to a transgressive Messiah, the son of God portrayed as deeply human. Not so much because of his broken chastity vows, rather because of his inability to forgive himself for the pointless and sadistic mise-en-scene that is the Passion • It all starts with the farcical trial at the court of Pontius Pilate. When the witnesses for the prosecution stand up one by one, they turn out to be, paradoxically, the very ones who were healed by Jesus’ miracles, from the disgruntled beggar no longer able to solicit alms, to the man who, freed from satanic possession, now finds his life fatally boring

Ever since he was murdered, life has not been the same for Andrew Stilman. On the morning of July 9, 2012, New York Times investigative reporter Andrew Stilman is jogging along the Hudson River when he feels a sudden, sharp pain in his lower back. He collapses in a pool of blood. When he regains consciousness, it’s May 7, 2012—exactly two months earlier. Andrew now has sixty days to find out who wants him dead and why. This may be his only chance. From New York City to Buenos Aires, Andrew embarks on a gripping race against time. Expertly plotted and cleverly told, this thrilling page-turner by France’s most popular contemporary novelist builds up to a mind-blowing denouement

A family story about the unbreakable connection between the living and the dead • Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land and its people. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning • The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself

How did Danny die? • On a summer’s day in 1955, the drowned body of young Danny Masters is discovered by three of his teenage friends: Alexander, heir to the country estate that neighbours the village, and siblings Lennie and Tom, whose father is land agent to the Richmond family • Lennie is in love with volatile Alexander, but is he also in love or merely playing with her? Alexander’s mother has been a widow for less than a year, yet her husband’s brother seems always to be by her side. In the weeks that follow the tragic drowning, the river begins to give up its secrets. As the circumstances surrounding Danny’s death emerge, relationships and bonds develop, and other stories gradually come to the surface, threatening to destroy an entire way of life

New York in the 1900s. A young girl, fascinated by rare books, defies the odds and climbs all the ranks. She becomes the director of the fabulous library of the magnate J. P. Morgan and the darling of the international aristocracy, under the false name of Belle da Costa Greene. Belle Greene to close friends • But the flamboyant collector who turns heads and reigns over the world of bibliophiles hides a terrible secret for the violently racist America of her time. Although she looks white, she is actually African American and, moreover, the daughter of a famous black activist who sees her desire to hide her origins as a betrayal. It is this drama of a being torn between history and a woman’s choice to belong to the society which oppresses her people that Alexandra Lapierre recounts

An elderly academic is accosted by a homeless woman on his way home from the cinema. She tells him her name is Laura. So begins a nightmarish journey for Gerald, who is forced to confront the mystery of his own past and to ask himself if he has lived a good life – or even a decent one • In the course of this very funny, sometimes disturbing and often moving novel, suppressed memories return to haunt him, including the question of the role he played in a family tragedy. Above all he has to assess the harm he may have done in a long-forgotten love affair • Those close to him suddenly appear unfathomable as he begins to question if he truly knows those closest to him and even himself • The problem with exploring the past, Gerald begins to see, is that there are an infinite number of ways to travel through it

A sweeping story about obsession, mysticism, art, and earthly desire • At the centre of this story, is the Cathedral. Its design and construction in the 12th and 13th centuries in the fictional town of Hagenburg unites a vast array of unforgettable characters whose fortunes are inseparable from the shifting political factions and economic interests vying for supremacy. From the bishop to his treasurer to local merchants and lowly stonecutters, everyone, even the town’s Jewish denizens, is implicated and affected by the slow rise of Hagenburg’s Cathedral, which in no way enforces morality or charity • Around this narrative core, Ben Hopkins has constructed his own monumental edifice, a choral novel that is rich with the vicissitudes of mercantilism, politics, religion, and human enterprise