Europa Editions A Girl Returned Di Pietrantonio Donatella

It’s the darkest time of night. Adriana, a baby in her arms, hammers on her sister's door. Who is she running from? What uncomfortable truth will she deliver? Like a whirlwind, Adriana breaks into her sister’s life bringing chaos and cataclysmic revelations • Years later, the narrator gets an unexpected, urgent summons back to Pescara. She embarks on a long journey through the night, and through the folds and twists of her memory, from her and her sister’s youth, their loves and losses, their secrets and regrets. Back in Borgo Sud, the town’s fishermen’s quarter, in that impenetrable yet welcoming microcosm, she will discover what really happened, and perhaps make peace with the past • Donatella Di Pietrantonio, expert chronicler of the bonds between mothers and daughters, revisits the places and characters of A Girl Returned with a novel focussed on the ambivalent, ambiguous, wavering but steadfast relationship between sisters

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

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

Ferocity combines the suspense of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, the contemporary realism of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, and the fierce Mediterranean vision displayed in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. At once an intimate family saga and a cinematic portrait of the moral and political corruption of an entire society, Ferocity is an ambitious, gripping work by Italy’s foremost literary novelist • Bari, the 1980s. On a stifling summer’s night, on the outskirts of a southern Italian metropolis, the young socialite Clara Salvemini stumbles naked, dazed, and bloodied down a major highway. Clara is the daughter of real estate mogul Vittorio Salvemini, patriarch of one of the region’s most prominent families. Her death is immediately labeled a suicide

Left alone on the beach to fend for herself, a doll named Celina is having a terrible night. The Mean Beach Attendant of Sunset is trying to steal all her words, the Fire wants to burn her, and the Sea refuses to answer her prayers. Worst of all, she has been abandoned by her mamma, the little girl Mati, who now has a new kitten to play with. Between one misadventure and another, night turns to day, and when the sun rises Celina will see everything a little more clearly • The Beach at Night is a short, moving, and mysterious tale for future and present readers of Ferrante’s beloved novels

Giovanna's pretty face has changed: it's turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Where must she look to find her true reflection and a life she can claim as her own? • Giovanna's search leads her to two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. Adrift, she vacillates between these two cities, falling into one then climbing back to the other • Set in a divided Naples, "The Lying Life of Adults" is a singular portrayal of the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood

A poignant bestselling novel full of French charm and memorable characters • Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of the hilarious and touching confidences of random visitors and her colleagues • Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of a local police chief, Julien Seul, who insists on depositing the ashes of his mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. The grave Julien is looking for, and his mother’s story of clandestine love, is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past • The funny, moving, intimately told story of a woman who believes obstinately in happiness, Fresh Water for Flowers brings out the exceptional and the poetic in the ordinary

A kaleidoscopic, cosmopolitan novel infused with inky noir • Return to the Dark Valley tells the stories of four immigrants united by their need to return to their place of origin and exact vengeance in some form. Manuela Beltran, haunted by a troubled childhood she tries to escape through books and poetry; Tertuliano, an Argentine preacher who claims to be the Pope’s son, ready to resort to extreme methods to create a harmonious society; Ferdinand Palacios, a Colombian priest with a dark paramilitary past now confronted with his guilt; Juana and the consul, central characters in Gamboa’s Night Prayers, who are united in a relationship based equally on hurt and need. And Rimbaud, the precocious, brilliant poet whose life was incessant exploration

From her home in Paris, Lina recalls the story of three women whose lives unfold in the conservative city of Barranquilla in Colombia. Amongst parties at the Country Club and strolls along the promenade in Puerto Colombia, unfurls a story of sensuality supressed by violence; a narrative of oppression in which Dora, Catalina and Beatriz are victims of a patriarchal system living in and among the fragile threads of the fabric of society • In Lina’s obsessive recounting of the past, this masterful novel transforms anecdotes of a life into an absolute view of the world, a profound panorama of Colombian society towards the end of the 50s • Written from personal memories and historical research, this is a novel that is both precise and poetic, a novel that immortalises—from the distant perspective of its narrator—the events that took place in a small seaside town

Leda is devoted to her work as an English teacher and to her two children. When her daughters leave home to be with their father in Canada, Leda anticipates a period of loneliness and longing. Instead, slightly embarrassed by the sensation, she feels liberated, as if her life has become lighter, easier • She decides to take a holiday by the sea, in a small coastal town in southern Italy. But after a few days of calm and quiet, things begin to take a menacing turn. Leda encounters a family whose brash presence proves unsettling, at times even threatening. When a small, apparently meaningless, event occurs, Leda is overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family

Following her mother’s untimely death, Delia sets off on a breathtaking odyssey through the chaotic, suffocating streets of her native Naples in search of the truth about her family • Reality is buried in the fertile soil of memory, and Delia digs deep to reconcile the past with the mysterious events leading up to her mother’s death. Spurred by a series of anonymous phone calls, Delia reconstructs her mother’s final days and with every new discovery must face the possibility that her mother was not at all the person Delia believed her to be. To learn the truth and to untangle the knot of lies, passions and memories that bind mother and daughter, Delia must return to the Naples of her childhood

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