Winter Literary

Winner of the 2007 Audie Award for Literary Fiction and Finalist for Multi-Voiced Performance Instant #1 New York Times bestseller “Readers will feel the magnetic pull of this paean to words, books and the magical power of story.”—People “Eerie and fascinating.”—USA TODAY Sometimes...

Gordon O'Caha, a 700-year-old druid sorcerer, fell in battle centuries ago. When he recovered, he found he wasn't as he'd once been: purely magik. He was much, much more. Now he shares his body with darkness, a demon gifted to him by the blood drinkers he'd been attacked by.

In the isolated hills of Montana, an aging college professor clashes with trespassing hunters and reckons with his mortality. The basis for the feature film God’s Country starring Thandiwe Newton and directed by Julian Higgins. A short story from one of the country’s most-acclaimed and...

Welcome to Mattagash, Maine, a town where everyone's personal lives are as entwined as their family trees. On the day of the first snowfall, the residents brace themselves for the long winter ahead. Mere survival will be hard; dealing with each other is another story. As winter settles in, various Mattagashians careen from conundrum to conundrum, trying to save dying small businesses, caring for crabby loved ones, and cruising through town, stirring up gossip any way they can get it.

Every day, Cole Roberts reminds himself that life wasn’t always this bleak. He was once passionately in love with Erin. Sam used to be an artistic and lively kid. That was before Brenna disappeared. Every day it gets worse. Erin drinks wine out of the bottle and spends her days with a tormented expression, searching the web for signs of their daughter. Sam hides in his room and rarely speaks. And Cole works himself to a stupor for a paycheck a fraction of the size of his old salary. Until one day, a phone call changes everything.

While the title novella of Dubus' Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection's opening story strikes a much darker tone.

Diese Worte geistern wie ein aufziehender Sturm durch meinen Kopf. Sie stellen das infrage, was wir für die Zukunft als unumstößlich gehalten haben, und erschüttern alles, worauf wir nach wie vor hinarbeiten – genau wie die Stabilität des gesamten Königreichs. Sie kommen an unsere Academy, um nach dem Leben zu suchen, das ihnen genommen wurde. Aber wir können nicht zulassen, dass sie es sich zurückholen. Es steht so viel auf dem Spiel. Wir können nicht riskieren, dass zwei naive Prinzessinnen alles zerstören, wofür wir so hart gekämpft haben.

Ulli is a young woman, half English and half German, squatting in a dismal, empty Berlin apartment one year after the war has ended. She's scraping together a living as an interpreter between Berlin-based GIs and the wide-eyed local girls eager to meet them. One night Ulli meets two American soldiers: Leo, handsome and ambitious and desperate to escape his small-town upbringing, and intellectual, asthmatic Isaac, whose refugee parents had fled Russia and then Paris for New York. Winter Kept Us Warm follows Ulli, Leo, and Isaac through the next six decades of their lives - from Berlin to postwar Manhattan, 1960s Los Angeles, and Morocco.

Ralph, Marnie and Oliver once knew each other as childhood friends. Now they meet again in Ralph's secluded cottage to share the precious days that Ralph has left.

Thirty-four-year-old Angie Dugan struggles with many things - anxiety, her career as a social worker in a retirement home, and her difficult family. Her biggest struggle, though, is finding love. When she meets Matt, she's swept away by his attention. As issues from his past come up, she wonders if she can trust him. Should she break it off, or give him another chance? In the end, all she can do is listen to her heart, and evaluate what she wants most.

As the dark specter of the Nazis settles over Germany, two wealthy and educated brothers are suddenly thrust into the rising tide of war. Karl, a former soldier and successful businessman, dutifully answers the call to defend his country, while contemplative academic Gerhard is coerced into informing for the Gestapo. Soon the brothers are serving in the SS, and as Hitler's hateful agenda brings about unspeakable atrocities, they find themselves with innocent blood on their hands.

An experienced Iditarod racer, Gary Paulsen brings his love of the sport to readers on a personal level in this intimate essay about the life of a litter of pups born to pull sleds across the snowy frontier - and the marvel he experiences as he watches them grow and learn.

In 1911, a young John Shaw from South Carolina had his first taste of flying. In 1926, two years after the plane crash death of his best friend, he attempted a solo flight record in a refitted 1923 Curtiss Jenny. Then, with half the journey completed, his plane was caught in a storm, went down, and for 17 years he was listed as missing, presumed dead. The Longest Winter is a work of fiction, the tale of one man's life. His story is one of despair and courage, tragedy and triumph.

On a farm in Jutland, Fredrik Gregersen struggles to keep his children fed, supplementing his income by smuggling refugees through Denmark into Sweden. Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, Polina, a young Polish Jew, has been forced into prostitution by the Nazis. When Fredrik steals an heirloom necklace from a helpless Jewish family, his fate becomes intertwined with Polina's, entrapping them both in a complex web that takes decades to unravel.

Classical guitarist Satoshi Makino has toured the world and is at the height of his career when he first lays eyes on journalist Yoko Komine. Their bond forms instantly. Upon their first meeting, after Makino’s concert in Tokyo, they begin a conversation that will go on for years, with long spells of silence broken by powerful moments of connection. She’s drawn by Makino’s tender music and his sensitivity, and he is intrigued by Yoko’s refinement and intellect. But neither knows enough about love to see it blooming nor has the confidence to make the first move.

Decades after her divorce, a lady returns to the village of her tumultuous marriage. A railway carriage hosts a charged schoolboy encounter. A murder raises fears of blackmail. A woman waits anxiously in a café before eloping to Paris. Another steals a friend's kitchen knife. In these bittersweet tales, the author of Lolly Willowes reveals her mastery of the short story, celebrated by the New Yorker for decades. Sylvia Townsend Warner is a tragicomic chronicler of the heart's entanglements.

Get the first three books in the Year of Discovery series in one box set: January, February, and March. Over 350 pages of tragedy, tribulation, and triumph in one volume. Twelve women connected by the death of another, realizing what they most want from life, and reaching for it - this is the year of discovery, the year of new beginnings. This compilation includes the titles: January, February, and March.

There is a middle world between life and death, and Tess must navigate it to save her brother in this heart-wrenching story infused with the fractured and fantastical realms of Finnish mysticism. Axel and Tess are bewildered when a stranger shows up in their backyard accompanied by a giant brown bear, but before they can investigate the bizarre encounter, something more harrowing happens: their father is killed in a freak car accident.

Abandoned by his father after his mother drowns in a frozen Minnesota lake, fifteen-year-old Wes Ballot is stranded with coldhearted grandparents and holed up in his mother’s old bedroom, surrounded by her remnants and memories. As the wait for his father stretches unforgivably into months, a local girl, whose own mother died a brutal death, captures his heart and imagination, giving Wes fresh air to breathe in the suffocating small town.

Five years ago Susannah Harper's son, Joel, went missing without trace. Bereft of her son and then of her husband, Susannah has rebuilt her life around helping others. But then, on the last night of Hull Fair, a fortune-teller makes an eerie prediction. She tells her that this Christmas Eve, Joel will finally come back to her. As her carefully constructed life begins to unravel, Susannah is forced to confront the buried truths of her family's past.