Sense of place

4.5 stars

After her mother's suicide, grief-stricken Leigh Sanders travels to Taiwan to stay with grandparents she's never met, determined to find her mother--who she believes turned into a bird.

"One evening, Ma tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman's body, named Hu Gu Po. She hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterwards, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt leaves red on everything she touches; another aunt arrives with eels in her belly. All the while, Daughter is falling for her...

3.4 stars

"A ... novel about love and forgiveness in 1960s Australia, in which a lonely farmer finds his life turned upside down by the arrival of a vibrant librarian.

"On the cusp of becoming teenagers, Ralph, his sister Shelley, and their friend William, befriend Danielle, an odd girl in their school. She draws an extraordinary horse in a competition created by Ralph's mother. It's the kind of drawing no child -- or adult, for that matter -- should be able to draw. It will haunt Ralph into adulthood, because it represents everything wrong in Danielle's life and everything she wished her life could be. As teenagers...

3.7 stars

Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech...

5 stars

From the award-winning author of "The Shell Collector" and "About Grace" comes an evocative memoir of the timeless beauty of Rome, and the day-to-day wonderment of living, writing, and raising twin boys in a foreign city.

4 stars

"Genevieve, a single mother, flies to Port-au-Prince with her teenage son, Miles. The trip is meant to be an education for Miles--a chance to learn about his family's roots while coming to terms with his father's departure--but it's also an excuse for Genevieve to escape the city, where her life is dominated by her failed marriage and the daily pressures of raising Black children in America. For Genevieve, the journey is also a homecoming of sorts:...

4 stars

The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a routine existence until one day he spies some African refugees staging a hunger strike in Alexanderplatz. Curiosity turns to compassion and an inner transformation, as he visits their shelter, interviews them, and becomes embroiled in their harrowing fates. Go, Went, Gone is a scathing indictment of Western policy toward the European...

"Shanghai, 1930s. Shen Shijun, a young engineer, has fallen in love with his colleague, the beautiful Gu Manzhen. He is determined to resist his family's efforts to match him with his wealthy cousin so that he can marry the woman he truly loves. But dark circumstances--a lustful brother-in-law, a treacherous sister, a family secret--force the two young lovers apart. As Manzhen and Shijun go on their separate paths, they lose track of one another,...

Meet Ramesh Kumar, "examinations consultat," who makes a lucrative living taking tests for the sons of India's elite. He is just a cog in the wheel that keeps the middle classes thriving, until he takes India's national university entrance exam for a lackluster student and inadvertently comes in first. Ramesh sees an opportunity--perhaps even an obligation--to cash in on the newfound celebrity of his client Rudi, who's soon juggling stardom and his...