Alki Zei’s novel "The Wildcat Behind Glass" is a timely portrayal of childhoods interrupted under fascism. First published in 1963, this is the story of an affluent Greek family in 1936, when a dictator took control of the country.... Read More

Toxic sisterhood leads to Viking-inspired ritual murder in Johana Gustawsson’s gothic-infused Scandinavian novel "Yule Island". Karl, a police inspector, arrives at a crime scene where a girl has been found dead with her body covered... Read More

Bright contrasting colors and funky patterns enliven this whimsical picture book that teaches the lesson “less is more.” A man sets out to build a house; he instructs the builder to add room after room until he has 100 rooms. He has... Read More

In Tatsuhiko Shibusawa’s allegorical novel Takaoka’s Travels, there are questions about whether a lifelong dream to reach the Buddha’s place of origin is worth it. Takaoka had a close relationship with his father’s consort,... Read More

This tongue-in-cheek picture book celebrates the creation—and the conclusions—of stories. The unnamed narrator describes their childhood desire to be an endfixer, “someone who fixes the ends of stories” because some endings are... Read More

A grandmother and her granddaughter are entombed in a house whose walls hunger for murderous vengeance in Layla Martínez’s horror novel "Woodworm". The women are trapped in their small town due to the curse of the elder’s father.... Read More

Set in the Netherlands, Jaap Robben’s novel "Afterlight" is about an elderly woman’s work to discover what happened to her child. In the book’s present, Frieda is in her eighties. After her husband, Louis, dies, she is deemed too... Read More

The freedom to live life on its own terms is at stake in Omar Youssef Souleimane’s novel "The Last Syrian", about the Arab Spring in Syria. When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in desperation over the situation in his native... Read More