NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A stunning novel that tells the powerful story of Ora, an Israli mother, and her extraordinary love for her son, Ofer, in a haunting meditation on war and family. “One of the few novels that feel as though they have made a difference to the world.” —The New York Times Book Review Just before his release from service in the Israeli army, Ora’s son Ofer is sent back to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, so that no bad news can reach her, Ora sets out on an epic hike in the Galilee. She is joined by an unlikely companion—Avram, a former friend and lover with a troubled past—and as they sleep out in the hills, Ora begins to conjure her son. Ofer’s story, as told by Ora, becomes a surprising balm both for her and for Avram.

Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is about to celebrate her son Ofer's release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. Instead of waiting at home for the 'notifiers' who could arrive at any moment to tell her of her son's fate, she sets off for a hike in Galilee, leaving no forwarding address. If a mother is not there to receive the news, a son cannot die, can he? Recently estranged from her husband, Ora drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, the man who in fact turns out to be her son's biological father. As they sleep out in the hills, ford rivers and cross valleys, Ora recounts, step by step and word by word, the story of her son's birth, life and possible death, in one mother's magical, passionate and heartbreaking attempt to keep her son safe from harm.

Recounts the anguished tale of a Portuguese medic haunted by memories of war, who, like the Ancient Mariner, will tell his tale to anyone who listens. In the tradition of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, Lobo Antunes weaves words into an exhilarating tapestry, imbuing his prose with the grace and resonance of poetry. The narrator, freshly returned to Lisbon after his hellish tour of duty in Angola, confesses the traumas of his memory to a nameless lover. Their evening unfolds like a fever dream, as Lobo Antunes leaps deftly back and forth from descriptions of postdictatorship Portugal to the bizarre and brutal world of life on the front line. The result is both tragic and absurd, and belongs among the great war novels of the modern age.

A Little Piece Of Ground will help young readers understand more about one of the worst conflicts afflicting our world today. Written by Elizabeth Laird, one of Great Britain’s best-known young adult authors, A Little Piece Of Ground explores the human cost of the occupation of Palestinian lands through the eyes of a young boy. Twelve-year-old Karim Aboudi and his family are trapped in their Ramallah home by a strict curfew. In response to a Palestinian suicide bombing, the Israeli military subjects the West Bank town to a virtual siege. Meanwhile, Karim, trapped at home with his teenage brother and fearful parents, longs to play football with his friends. When the curfew ends, he and his friend discover an unused patch of ground that’s the perfect site for a football pitch. Nearby, an old car hidden intact under bulldozed building makes a brilliant den. But in this city there’s constant danger, even for schoolboys. And when Israeli soldiers find Karim outside during the next curfew, it seems impossible that he will survive. This powerful book fills a substantial gap in existing young adult literature on the Middle East. With 23,000 copies already sold in the United Kingdom and Canada, this book is sure to find a wide audience among young adult readers in the United States.

“Powerful . . . The vivid descriptions of the Sardinian landscape are a fitting complement to the heroine’s conflicted heart” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). As this compelling novel opens, a young unnamed woman reflects on the life of her bewitching, eccentric, and fiercely emotional grandmother, whose abiding search for love spans much of the twentieth century. In 1943, as American bombs fall on the city of Cagliari, she is thirty and considered an old maid, still living at home with her parents. But when the bombing ceases, and despite her protests, her father forces her to marry the first man to propose, an older widower she doesn’t love. After suffering several miscarriages, she is sent for treatment at a spa on the mainland, where she falls in love with an injured Italian army veteran. Back home, she gives birth to a son. She never reveals the affair to her husband—but decades later, she returns to the mainland and travels to her former lover’s hometown of Milan. Dressed in her finest coat and shoes, she wanders the streets in search of the elusive veteran . . . Set against a backdrop of rugged mountains and Italian villages lost in time, this international bestselling novel is a multigenerational family saga about love, lust, and country. “Agus’s descriptions of the everyday are as beautiful and haunting as her portrayal of life’s most dramatic episodes. Add an unexpected ending and the result is a graceful, powerful book.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

What is a homeland and when does it become a national territory? Why have so many people been willing to die for such places throughout the twentieth century? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Following the acclaimed and controversial The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand examines the mysterious sacred land that has become the site of the longest-running national struggle of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Invention of the Land of Israel deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account dissects the concept of “historical right” and tracks the creation of the modern concept of the “Land of Israel” by nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This invention, he argues, not only facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

Alex and Conner Bailey's world is about to change. When the twins' grandmother gives them a treasured fairy-tale book, they have no idea they're about to enter a land beyond all imagining: the Land of Stories, where fairy tales are real. But as Alex and Conner soon discover, the stories they know so well haven't ended in this magical land - Goldilocks is now a wanted fugitive, Red Riding Hood has her own kingdom, and Queen Cinderella is about to become a mother! The twins know they must get back home somehow. But with the legendary Evil Queen hot on their trail, will they ever find the way? The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell brings readers on a thrilling quest filled with magic spells, laugh-out-loud humour and page-turning adventure.