Moshe Sakal’s "The Diamond Setter" is a spellbinding saga of love and family secrets. Characters’ stories overlap, all connected by a famous blue diamond: Sabakh. A handsome young man, Fareed, smuggles a piece of Sabakh across the... Read More

"Have Fun in Burma" follows Adela, just out of high school, through her summer of self-discovery. No pizza binges and thoughtless beachside flings for this heroine, though. Rosalie Metro’s earnest young lead is up for more of a... Read More

"The Night of the Flood" uses an original and intriguing premise as a playground for seasoned crime writers to spin sordid but captivating tales. A group of strong activist women protesting the first execution of a woman in Pennsylvania... Read More

In the wake of the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, those who fought on both sides of the war—and foreigners who came to help but who were inspired to stay—seek some form of redemption, each in their own way. Four broken individuals... Read More

"Black Sugar" opens as pirate Henry Morgan dies clutching his gold, his ship sinking under a Caribbean forest. In this moment of vivid magical realism, Miguel Bonnefoy sets the stakes for his novel—sunken treasure in the islands and... Read More

Masatsugu Ono’s "Lion Cross Point" is an atmospheric, melancholy tale about memory and absence. Ten-year-old Takeru arrives at his mother’s childhood village by the sea. Under the care of a relative, Mitsuko, he settles into a... Read More

In Michelle de Kretser’s "The Life to Come", lives intersect, entwine, or separate within distinct yet unified passages. The general nexus being Australia, backdrops shift from Sydney to Paris or Sri Lanka, from the present to the... Read More

Julie Bird is distracted from a blonde stranger gesticulating from the shore when a whale appears, headed for the beach. Soon, it becomes clear that the big blue wants to beach itself, and Julie pictures “herself on her knees at the... Read More