"'We should have known the end was near.' So begins Imbolo Mbue's exquisite and devastating novel 'How Beautiful We Were.' Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by a large and powerful American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean up and financial reparations to...

"Village Life in China - A Study in Sociology" is one of the author's fascinating written accounts of his experiences living and travelling China during the late 19th century, this particular volume focusing on the subject of rural life in the country. He wrote this book while living among the local population in small agricultural villages, noting down his observations and compiling them into this insightful glimpse of 19th-century rural China. Arthur...

"In 2019, Maggie visits a remote island in Scotland's Outer Hebrides to prove that a man was murdered there twenty-five years before. Maggie's motives are as dark as they are surprising. But she isn't prepared for the dangerous secrets and lies that are hiding at the heart of Kilmeray's isolated community. Or within herself. Robert Reid moved his family to Kilmeray in the early 1990s, driven both by hope and a terrible secret that he kept hidden for...

"From Graham Norton, the BAFTA-award-winning Irish television host and author of the "sparkling and impish" (Daily Mail) memoirs The Life and Loves of a He Devil and So Me, comes a charming debut novel set in an idyllic Irish village where a bumbling investigator has to sort through decades of gossip and secrets to solve a mysterious crime. The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama but when human remains are discovered on an old farm,...

Rosie Hopkin's comfortable life gets a bit more interesting when her mother sends her out to the country to care for her ailing great aunt Lilian, who owns an old-fashioned sweetshop. But as Rosie gets Lillian back on her feet, breathes new life into the candy shop, and gets to know the mysterious and solitary Stephen, she starts to think that settling for what's comfortable might not be so great after all.

"Kate Hibbert is all too eager to lend a hand to her neighbors. Although she has been a resident of the sleepy village of Lochdubh for only a year, in that time Kate has alienated one too many of its residents with her interfering--and not entirely well--intentioned-ways. When Kate's neighbor sees her lugging a heavy suitcase to the bus stop, he hopes that the prying woman is gone for good. But two weeks later, Kate's cousin arrives in town with the...

One of the undisputed masterpieces of the cinema, no single viewing of Earth will ever reveal all of its poetic brilliance. An old farmer dies, his grandson has a new vision to bring prosperity to his poor Ukraine village.

"When local spinster Gloria Hathaway is brutally strangled, it seems that Lois [Meade] is in the unique position to find out invaluable information about the murder ... Danger lurks close by as Lois becomes embroiled in the deeply hidden passions and emotions smouldering beneath the facade of idyllic village life."--Front flap of jacket.

"The borders of Lychford are crumbling. Other realities threaten to seep into the otherwise quiet village, and the resident wise woman is struggling to remain wise. The local magic shop owner and the local priest are having troubles of their own. And a mysterious stranger is on hand to offer a solution to everyone's problems. No cost, no strings (she says). But as everyone knows, free wishes from strangers rarely come without a price..."--Amazon.com....

"Appearing for the first time in English, this masterful novel by one of the foremost figures of postwar German literature is an indelible portrait of Nazism slowly overtaking and poisoning a small town. Semi-autobiographical, it is also a remarkably vivid account of a childhood fraught with troubles, yet full of remembered love and touched by miracle. In a provincial town on Lake Constance, Johann basks in the affection of the colorful staff and...