"In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. I was ten years old.

Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations—those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square.

At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship, Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story.

Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming’s father, the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli, were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China’s political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences.

With maturity and sophistication, humor and beauty, Thien has crafted a novel that is at once intimate and grandly political, rooted in the details of life inside China yet transcendent in its universality.

The Young Lions is one of the great World War II novels, capturing the experiences of three very different soldiers. This New York Times–bestselling masterpiece stands alongside Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s From Here to Eternity as a powerful American novel tackling the Second World War.

Ambitious in its scope and robust in its prose, Irwin Shaw’s work is deeply humanistic, presenting the reality of war through the eyes of ordinary soldiers on both sides. The story follows the individual dramas—and ultimately intertwined destinies—of Christian Diestl, a Nazi sergeant; Noah Ackerman, a Jewish American infantryman; and Michael Whitacre, an idealistic urbanite from the New York theatrical world.

Diestl first appears as a dashing ski instructor in Austria, proclaiming his loyalty to Nazi ideals. As the war progresses, Diestl’s character erodes as he descends into savagery. Ackerman endures domestic anti-Semitism and beatings in boot camp before proving himself in the European theater. Eventually, as part of the liberating army, he confronts the unimaginable horrors of the death camps.

Whitacre, trading cocktail parties for Molotov cocktails, confronts the barbarism of war. In fighting simply to survive, he discovers his own capacity for heroism.

Shaw’s sweeping narrative is vivid, exciting, and brutally realistic, while poignant in its portrayal of the moral devastation and institutional insanity of war. Penned by a master storyteller, The Young Lions stands the test of time as a classic novel of war and the human experience.

A creature that is hated and feared by mankind has fallen in love.

Morte redefines devotion in a timeline spanning many millennia, and landscapes that baffle the senses. At the bedside of a comatose girl, who suffers from terminal burns, Morte spins stories of past lives lived and lost, and tales of love's eternal pursuit for completion.

The Mabinogion is a collection of 11 prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. These tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions. While some details may hark back to older Iron Age traditions, each tale is the product of a developed medieval Welsh narrative tradition, both oral and written.

Lady Charlotte Guest, in the mid-19th century, was the first to publish English translations of the collection, popularizing the name "Mabinogion". The stories appear in either or both of two medieval Welsh manuscripts: the White Book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch), written around 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest), written between 1382 and 1410. Texts or fragments of some tales have been preserved in earlier 13th-century and later manuscripts.

Scholars agree that the tales are older than the existing manuscripts, but there is debate over just how much older. The different texts originated at different times. Debate has focused on the dating of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi. Sir Ifor Williams offered a date prior to 1100, based on linguistic and historical arguments, while later, Saunders Lewis set forth arguments for a date between 1170 and 1190. Th Charles-Edwards, in a paper published in 1970, discussed both viewpoints and noted that the language of the stories fits the 11th century. More recently, Patrick Sims-Williams argued for a plausible range of about 1060 to 1200, which is the current scholarly consensus.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, few nations are as tumultuous as Congo, the vast land at the heart of Africa. Rich in essential modern resources, it is also rife with gruesome conflicts. How did the former, relatively calm Belgian colony transform so drastically since its independence in 1960?

David Van Reybrouck provides a stunning narrative of Congo's history, spanning from before the arrival of explorer Stanley to the recent influence of China and the economic crisis. From 1885 to 1908, the land was ruled by King Leopold II, who amassed a fortune from rubber exploitation. Belgian colonization from 1908 to 1960 brought industrialization and infrastructure but was marked by paternalism.

The unexpected shift from colony to independent state around 1960 is a breathtaking tale filled with idealism and intrigue. The new nation plunged into a wild and chaotic adventure, culminating in one of the deadliest conflicts since World War II after thirty-two years of Mobutu's dictatorship.

Van Reybrouck draws from rare archival materials, groundbreaking research, and hundreds of interviews with Congolese people. His eyewitnesses range from centenarians to child soldiers, rebel leaders to smugglers, ministers to cassava sellers. Their stories are woven into this grand history.

During the first two months of 1917, Russia was still a Romanov monarchy. Eight months later, the Bolsheviks stood at the helm. They were little known to anybody when the year began, and their leaders were still under indictment for state treason when they came to power. You will not find another such sharp turn in history, especially if you remember that it involves a nation of 150 million people. It is clear that the events of 1917, whatever you think of them, deserve study.

Regarded by many as among the most powerful works of history ever written, this book offers an unparalleled account of one of the most pivotal and hotly debated events in world history. This book reveals, from the perspective of one of its central actors, the Russian Revolution’s profoundly democratic, emancipatory character.

Originally published in three parts, Trotsky’s masterpiece is collected here in a single volume. It serves as the most vital and inspiring record of the Russian Revolution to date.

In Trotsky, all passions were aroused, but his thought remained calm and his vision clear. His involvement in the struggle, far from blurring his sight, sharpens it. The History is his crowning work, both in scale and power, and as the fullest expression of his ideas on revolution. As an account of a revolution, given by one of its chief actors, it stands unique in world literature.

India After Gandhi is a magisterial account of the pains, the struggles, the humiliations, and the glories of the world's largest and least likely democracy. Ramachandra Guha offers a breathtaking chronicle of the brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation and the extraordinary factors that have held it together.

This intricately researched and elegantly written epic history is populated with larger-than-life characters, making it the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities. Guha provides fresh insights into the lives and public careers of India's long-serving prime ministers and other significant figures, painting vivid sketches of major "provincial" leaders and lesser-known yet important Indians—peasants, tribals, women, workers, and musicians.

Moving between history and biography, this story of modern India is both a riveting chronicle and a definitive history of a country that has defied numerous prophets of doom.

This is the story of Maximilian Ophuls, America’s counterterrorism chief, one of the makers of the modern world. His Kashmiri Muslim driver and subsequent killer is a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown. Max’s illegitimate daughter, India, and a woman who links them, whose revelation finally explains them all, are central to this narrative.

It is an epic tale that moves from California to Kashmir, France, and England, and back to California again. Along the way, there are tales of princesses lured from their homes by demons, legends of kings forced to defend their kingdoms against evil. And there is always love, gained and lost, uncommonly beautiful and mortally dangerous.

Augustus is a brilliant and beautifully written novel in the tradition of Robert Graves, presenting a sweeping narrative that vividly brings to life a compelling cast of historical figures through their letters, dispatches, and memoirs.

A mere eighteen years of age when his uncle, Julius Caesar, is murdered, Octavius Caesar prematurely inherits the rule of the Roman Republic. Surrounded by men jockeying for power—Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony—young Octavius must work against the powerful Roman political machinations to claim his destiny as the first Roman emperor.

Sprung from meticulous research and the pen of a true poet, Augustus tells the story of one man's dream to liberate a corrupt Rome from the fancy of the capriciously crooked and the wildly wealthy.

Set internationally and spanning three decades, Daniel Martin is, among other things, an exploration of what it is to be English. Daniel is a screenwriter working in Hollywood, who finds himself dissatisfied with his career and with the person he has become.

In a richly evoked narrative, Daniel travels home to reconcile with a dying friend, and also to visit his own forgotten past in an attempt to discover himself. Summoned home to England to visit an ailing friend, Daniel Martin finds himself back in the company of people who once knew him well, forced to confront his buried past, and propelled toward a journey of self-discovery through which he ultimately creates for himself a more satisfying existence.

A brilliantly imagined novel infused with a profound understanding of human nature, Daniel Martin is John Fowles at the height of his literary powers.

The Last 100 Days is a dramatic countdown of the final months of World War II in Europe, bringing to life the waning power and the ultimate submission of the Third Reich.

To reconstruct the tumultuous hundred days between Yalta and the fall of Berlin, John Toland traveled more than 100,000 miles in twenty-one countries and interviewed more than six hundred people—from Hitler’s personal chauffeur to Generals von Manteuffel, Wenck, and Heinrici; from underground leaders to diplomats; from top Allied field commanders to brave young GIs.

Toland adeptly weaves together these interviews using research from thousands of primary sources. Since its first publication, The Last 100 Days has been regarded as one of the greatest historical narratives of the twentieth century, revealing after-action reports, staff journals, and top-secret messages and personal documents previously unavailable to historians.

1919, the second volume of John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy, continues his vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America, lauded on publication of the first volume not only for its scope, but also for its groundbreaking style.

Employing a host of experimental devices that would inspire a whole new generation of writers to follow, Dos Passos captures the many textures, flavors, and background noises of modern life with a cinematic touch and unparalleled nerve.

1919 opens to find America and the world at war, and Dos Passos's characters, many of whom we met in the first volume, are thrown into the snarl. We follow the daughter of a Chicago minister, a wide-eyed Texas girl, a young poet, a radical Jew, and we glimpse Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Unknown Soldier.

In Means of Ascent, Book Two of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro brings alive Lyndon Johnson in his wilderness years. Here, Johnson’s almost mythic personality—part genius, part behemoth, at once hotly emotional and icily calculating—is seen at its most nakedly ambitious.

This multifaceted book carries the President-to-be from the aftermath of his devastating defeat in his 1941 campaign for the Senate—the despair it engendered in him, and the grueling test of his spirit that followed as political doors slammed shut—through his service in World War II (and his artful embellishment of his record) to the foundation of his fortune (and the actual facts behind the myth he created about it).

The culminating drama—the explosive heart of the book—is Caro’s illumination, based on extraordinarily detailed investigation, of one of the great political mysteries of the century. Having immersed himself in Johnson’s life and world, Caro is able to reveal the true story of the fiercely contested 1948 senatorial election, for years shrouded in rumor, which Johnson was not believed capable of winning, which he “had to” win or face certain political death, and which he did win—by 87 votes, the “87 votes that changed history.”

Telling that epic story “in riveting and eye-opening detail,” Caro returns to the American consciousness a magnificent lost hero. He focuses closely not only on Johnson, whom we see harnessing every last particle of his strategic brilliance and energy, but on Johnson’s “unbeatable” opponent, the beloved former Texas Governor Coke Stevenson, who embodied in his own life the myth of the cowboy knight and was himself a legend for his unfaltering integrity.

Ultimately, as the political duel between the two men quickens—carrying with it all the confrontational and moral drama of the perfect Western—Caro makes us witness to a momentous turning point in American politics: the tragic last stand of the old politics versus the new—the politics of issue versus the politics of image, mass manipulation, money and electronic dazzle.

Dreadnought is a riveting chronicle of the personal and national rivalries that led to the twentieth century's first great arms race. Authored by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert K. Massie, this book is a richly textured and gripping narrative that brings to life a host of historical figures.

Experience the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz, the young and ambitious Winston Churchill, and the ruthless Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, among others. Their stories, along with the story of the era, filled with misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfold like a Greek tragedy.

Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most compelling, capturing the essence of extraordinary lives and the complexities of a transformative era.

Set in the vast, windswept Central Asian steppes and the infinite reaches of galactic space, this powerful novel offers a vivid view of the culture and values of the Soviet Union's Central Asian peoples.

The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1 begins one of the most remarkable works of history ever fashioned. This first volume of Shelby Foote's classic narrative of the Civil War opens with Jefferson Davis’s farewell to the United Senate and ends on the bloody battlefields of Antietam and Perryville, as the full, horrible scope of America’s great war becomes clear.

All the great battles are here, of course, from Bull Run through Shiloh, the Seven Days Battles, and Antietam, but so are the smaller ones: Ball's Bluff, Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Island Ten, New Orleans, and Monitor versus Merrimac. The story is told entirely from the point of view of the people involved in it. One learns not only what was happening on all fronts but also how the author discovered it during his years of exhaustive research.

Exhaustively researched and masterfully written, Foote’s epic account of the Civil War unfolds like a classic novel. Includes maps throughout.

This first volume in Shelby Foote's comprehensive history is a must-read for anyone interested in one of the bloodiest wars in America's history.

With his U.S.A. trilogy, comprising The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money, John Dos Passos is said by many to have written the great American novel. While Fitzgerald and Hemingway were cultivating what Edmund Wilson once called their "own little corners," John Dos Passos was taking on the world.

Counted as one of the best novels of the twentieth century, U.S.A. is a grand, kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation, buzzing with history and life on every page. The trilogy opens with The 42nd Parallel, where we find a young country at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Slowly, in stories artfully spliced together, the lives and fortunes of five characters unfold. Mac, Janey, Eleanor, Ward, and Charley are caught on the storm track of this parallel and blown New Yorkward. As their lives cross and double back again, the likes of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie make cameo appearances.

In this captivating novel, Tasos Athanasiadis presents a group of young men and women as they enjoy the summer days on a fictional island in the Cyclades. Beneath their apparent bliss and the dazzling Aegean sky, they hear the tormenting voice whispering within them that it's time to make a serious decision about their future.

The author vividly brings to life their psychological reactions to events that surprise their plans for this future, with scenes of sensual intoxication and dramatic uncertainty. This book, translated into German, was met with praise from foreign critics and described as "a masterpiece from Greece," "one of the most important European novels of our time," and "an epic of reconciliation of peoples."

En créant le personnage de Zénon, alchimiste et médecin du XVIe siècle, Marguerite Yourcenar, l'auteure des Mémoires d'Hadrien, ne raconte pas seulement le destin tragique d'un homme extraordinaire. C'est toute une époque qui revit dans son infinie richesse, comme aussi dans son âcre et brutale réalité. Un monde contrasté où s'affrontent le Moyen Age et la Renaissance, et où pointent déjà les temps modernes.

Un monde dont Zénon est issu, mais dont peu à peu cet homme libre se dégage, et qui pour cette raison même finira par le broyer.

The first volume of Shelby Foote's tremendous narrative of the Civil War was greeted enthusiastically by critics and readers alike. In this dramatic second volume, the scope and power, the lively portrayal of exciting personalities, and the memorable re-creation of events have continued unmistakably.

Fredericksburg to Meridian covers many of the greatest and bloodiest battles of history. The authoritative narrative is dominated by the almost continual confrontation of great armies. For the fourth time, the Army of the Potomac (now under the command of Burnside) attempts to take Richmond, resulting in the blood-bath at Fredericksburg. Then Joe Hooker tries again, only to be repulsed at Chancellorsville as Stonewall Jackson turns his flank—a bitter victory for the South, paid for by the death' of Lee's foremost lieutenant.

In the West, during the six-month standoff that followed the shock of Murfreesboro in the central theater, one of the most complex and determined sieges of the war has begun. Here, Grant's seven relentless efforts against Vicksburg show Lincoln that he has at last found his killer-general, the man who can "face the arithmetic."

With Vicksburg finally under siege, Lee again invades the North. The three-day conflict at Gettysburg receives book-length attention in a masterly treatment of a key great battle, not as legend has it, but as it really was, before it became distorted by controversy and overblown by remembered glory.

Then begins the downhill fight—the sudden glare of Chickamauga and the North's great day at Missionary Ridge, followed by the Florida fiasco and Sherman's meticulous destruction of Meridian, which left that section of the South facing the aftermath even before the war was over.

Against this backdrop of smoke and battle, Lincoln and Davis try in their separate ways to hold their people together: Lincoln by letters and statements climaxing in the Gettysburg Address; and Davis by two long roundabout western trips in which he makes personal appeals to crowds along his way.

Fredericksburg to Meridian is full of the life of the times—the elections of 1863, the resignations of Seward and Chase, the Conscription riots, the mounting opposition (on both sides) to the crushing war, and then the inescapable resolution that it must go on. And as before, the whole sweeping story is told entirely through the lives and actions of the people involved, a matchless narrative only one of our finest novelists could sustain so brilliantly.

The quintessential account of the Second World War as seen by Winston Churchill, its greatest leader. As Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1940 to 1945, Winston Churchill was not only the most powerful player in World War II, but also the free world's most eloquent voice of defiance in the face of Nazi tyranny.

Churchill's epic accounts of those times, remarkable for their grand sweep and incisive firsthand observations, are distilled here in a single essential volume. Memoirs of the Second World War is a vital and illuminating work that retains the drama, eyewitness details, and magisterial prose of his classic six-volume history and offers an invaluable view of pivotal events of the twentieth century.