The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Beatrice and Virgil is a captivating tale that intertwines the lives of a donkey named Beatrice and a monkey named Virgil. It also follows the extraordinary journey of a man named Henry.

The story begins with a mysterious parcel and ends in a place that will make you rethink one of the most significant events of the twentieth century. Once you finish reading, it is impossible to forget.

Fate takes many forms, and for Henry, it arrives in the shape of a letter from an elderly taxidermist. This letter poses a puzzle he cannot resist. As Henry delves deeper into the world of this strange and calculating man, he becomes increasingly involved with the lives of Beatrice and Virgil, embarking on an epic journey with them.

With the spirit and originality that made Life of Pi so beloved, this brilliant novel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey. Along the way, Martel poses profound questions about life, art, truth, and deception.