Manon Gropius (1916-1935) was the daughter of Alma Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler, and the architect Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, and the stepdaughter of the writer Franz Werfel. In Manon's World, James Reidel explores the life and...

It All Tastes of Farewell is a frank account of one woman's life and loves in 1960s East Germany. As a writer, Brigitte Reimann could not help but tell a compelling story, and that is born out here in her diaries, which are gripping as any novel. She...

The world's most powerful man, Qianlong, emperor of China, invites the famous eighteenth-century clockmaker Alister Cox to his court in Beijing. There, in the heart of the Forbidden City, the Englishman and his assistants are to build machines that m...

In "The Atlas of an Anxious Man", Christoph Ransmayr offers a mesmerizing travel diary – a sprawling tale of earthly wonders seen by a wandering eye. This is an exquisite, lyrically told travel story. Translated by Simon Pare, this unique account fol...

In "Winter Stories", Norwegian author Ingrid H. Rishoi gives us three contemporary tales about personal resilience in the face of adversity. We meet a teenager on the run from social services with her younger half-sister and half-brother in tow; a yo...

Gustave Roud, perhaps the most beloved poet of Swiss Romandy, is widely considered the founder of modern francophone Swiss literature, along with Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz. Roud lived at his grandfather's farm in Carrouge, Canton Vaud, for his entire l...

"I enjoyed success too early, married the wrong man, and hung out with the wrong people; too many men have liked me, and I've liked too many men". Frank and refreshing, Brigitte Reimann's collected diaries provide a candid account of life in social...

Almost twenty years after the fall of the wall, the Kreuzberg district of Berlin has become unbearably trendy and deeply unappealing to Alina and Wolf. They move to Muggelsee, at the city's bucolic border, where the differences between East and West...

In a publishing world that is all too full of realist novels written in undistinguished prose, discernible only by their covers, "The Flying Mountain" stands out – if for no other reason than that it consists entirely of blank verse. And that form is...

When Keith Stapperpfennig and his family give their grandfather the trip of a lifetime – an all expenses paid holiday to any destination in the world – the eccentric old man arbitrarily chooses China, and he asks Keith to accompany him. But when Keit...