KDL Recommends

Presents a novel based on the 1918 Bolshevik revolutionary murder of Czar Nicholas II and the rest of the Russian royal family as told from the perspective of the event’s only surviving witness, a young kitchen boy. (Russia)

Interrogated by the provisional government of revolutionary Russia on the details of her father’s death, Maria, the daughter of Rasputin, remembers her father’s powerful influence over the throne, her struggles over the discovery of his true nature, and the numerous threats to his life. (Russia)

A collection of short stories set in the Alentejo province of Portugal features characters linked by a vivid sense of place and time, including Teresa, who yearns to see the world, and Vasco, a cafe owner who is losing business to a new Internet cafe. (Portugal)

Carrying into her adult years a sense of fatalism instilled during her hardscrabble birth, Nazneen finds herself married off to a man twice her age and moved to London, where she wonders if she has a say in her own destiny. (London and Bangladesh)

The story of a young woman’s quest for love and fortune during the California Gold Rush in San Francisco. (Chile)

A fictional account of the young lives of Mirabal sisters Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa, otherwise known in the Dominican Republic as Las Mariposas, describes their suffering and martyrdom in the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship. (Dominican Republic)

Takes readers into the life and mind of Grace Marks, one of the most notorious women of the 1840s, who is serving a life sentence for murders she claims she cannot remember. (Canada)

Having fled to West Africa in the late 1970s for her work as a political radical, Hannah Musgrave befriends notorious former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who years later leads a rebellion that threatens Hannah’s family. (West Africa)

Haunted by a series of family tragedies, thirty-four-year-old Annie Rush embarks on a search for her long-lost brother, traveling from Minnesota to Mexico on a quest that tests her marriage and forces her to reevaluate her life. (Mexico)

Accused of shooting her partner, Aimee Leduc must also contend with the fact that someone is impersonating her, a taxman is investigating her firm, and two murders may have a connection to the youth Aimee sent to prison. (France)

In a sharply satirical novel that attacks Western materialism, a widowed secondary school teacher finds herself living with a “halo” she cannot shake off, but instead of pursuing the spiritual life, she uses it to become fabulously wealthy. (Hungary)

Years after a falling-out ends their friendships, Alexandra, Kay, Jessica, and Maria, having pursued diverse careers and lives at different places throughout the world, confront unfinished business during a class reunion. (France)

Young Anna Frith, a vicar’s maid, is faced with the loss of her family, the disintegration of her local community, and a passionate, illicit love as she and her village confront the horrors of the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England. (England)

Ned Kelly, the legendary nineteenth-century Australian folk-hero, describes how he, his brother, and two friends led authorities on a twenty-month manhunt, marked by widespread populist support, before his capture and execution. (Australia)

During her family’s annual car trip from Chicago to Mexico City, Lala Reyes listens to stories about her family, including her grandmother, the descendant of a renowned dynasty of shawl makers, whose magnificent striped shawl has come into Lala’s possession. (Mexico)

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, two boys are sent to the country for reeducation, where their lives take an unexpected turn when they meet the beautiful daughter of a local tailor and stumble upon a forbidden stash of Western literature. (China)

Inheriting a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of calligraphy-covered paper following the death of her friend and colleague Michiko, Barbara Jefferson, an American teaching at a Tokyo university, hires an enigmatic translator to unravel the mysteries of Michiko’s life and the hidden world of the hibakusha, Horishima survivors. (Japan)

During the finals days of the Ottoman Empire, the young men of the village are instructed to battle the invading forces during the Great War and destroy the peace. (Turkey)

The idyllic world of the Greek island of Cephallonia is forever changed by the inexorable changes of World War II, as the inhabitants struggle to cope with the Axis invasion and occupation. (Greece)

An epic tale-within-a-tale based on the history of Ireland finds a traditional wandering Storyteller revealing his life experiences while forging a poignant new relationship in the home of an eight-year-old boy. (Ireland)

In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai. (India and Nepal)

Born to poverty in eighteenth-century London, Mary Saunders’ love of fine clothes and a dream of a better life take her from the world of prostitution to life as a household seamstress in Monmouth to a search for true freedom. (England)

Turning fifteen in Renaissance Florence, Alessandra Cecchi becomes intoxicated with the works of a young painter whom her father has brought to the city to decorate the family’s Florentine palazzo. (Italy)

The daily chronicle of a 30-something single English woman who is convinced her life would be perfect if she could lose weight, stop smoking and develop “Inner Poise.” (England)

The reluctant personal physician to Idi Amin, Scottish civil servant Nicholas Garrigan, is drawn despite himself to the charismatic but brutal dictator, until a plot against Amin awakens him to the unspeakable horror and cruelty of the regime. (Uganda)

Lucy Honeychurch falls in love while on a visit to Florence and must choose between fulfilling her social role or following her heart. (Italy)

The tranquility of a small, idyllic town is shattered when the body of a teenage girl is found, prompting an investigation by Inspector Sejer that reveals the sinister truth behind the town’s quiet facade. (Norway)

Returning to her South African home to attend the death of her violent father, Eva van Rensburg is forced to confront a terrible childhood secret, in a tale set against a backdrop of the region’s troubled history. (South Africa)

When Adam moves into an abandoned house on the dusty edge of town, he is hoping to recover from the loss of his job and his home in the city. But when he meets Canning – a shadowy figure from his childhood – and Canning’s enigmatic and beautiful wife, a sinister new chapter in his life begins. (South Africa)

Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza consummate their passion at the beginning of the 20th century after having waited over 50 years. (Columbia)

Because her mother is dying and her father old, Chiyo, nine, is sold to a wealthy geisha house in Gion where she learns her trade and works it in the 1930s and 1940s. (Japan)

Paul Bannerman, an ecologist living in South Africa, begins to re-examine his life after he is diagnosed with thyroid cancer and begins radiation treatments—an isolating experience that forces him to confront his relationships with family and friends. (South Africa)

Receiving a call from the State Department that her daughter Pearl has been protesting global violence by chaining herself to a flagpole at the American embassy in Dublin and refusing to eat, Maria Meyers heads to Ireland to save her daughter. (Ireland)

The dwarf Oskar Matzerath, who stopped growing physically at three but kept his mental faculties, plays a tin drum with which he stimulates his memory of the 20th century. (Germany)

With fourteen years left on a twenty-year sentence, Washington power broker Joel Blackman receives a surprise pardon from a lame-duck president. He is smuggled out of the country, given a new identity, and tucked away in a small town in Italy. But Blackman has serious enemies from his past and the question is not whether he will be killed, but who will kill him first. (Italy)

Cut from the Cleveland Browns after the worst performance in the history of the NFL, Rick Dockery, desperate to play football, is hired by the Panthers of Parma, Italy, and finds himself confronted by the confusing diversity of Italian culture, language,and romance. (Italy)

Investigating the murder of a woman found in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem, Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon finds the case complicated by tensions between local Jewish and Arab residents. (Israel)

Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor’s dog and uncovers secret information about his mother. (England)

The Irish landscape holds secrets past and present as archaeologist Cormac O’Callaghan and pathologist Nora Gavin encounter a mystery when a decapitated woman is found in the bogs who may be related to a recent mother/child disappearance. (Ireland)

Pathologist Nora Gavin investigates two bodies discovered at the site of an Irish midland industrial site—one ancient, the other recent—and teams up with archaeologist Cormac Maguire, with whom she has fallen in love, for an unexpectedly dangerous case. (Ireland)

An old man, Alessandro Giuliani, leaves a streetcar when a boy without a fare is denied entry and, while walking with the boy, tells him about the wealthy life he led until World War I altered it. (Austria and Italy)

Returning to Havana after years in Europe where he was tormented by people who believed him to be Jewish, Cuban composer Israel Levis remembers his love for singer Rita Valladares, for whom he wrote a song that has become the most famous rumba in the world. (Cuba)

Norway police commissioner Stubo teams up with troubled FBI profiler Johanne Vik for an investigation into the disappearances and murders of several young children. (Norway)

In the final weeks of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II, three different Filipino narrators recount the experiences of a people desperately struggling in the midst of the horrors of war. (Philippines)

Meeting on New Year’s Eve on the roof of Topper’s House, a London destination infamous as a last stop for suicidal people, a talk show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother share stories about their circumstances and decisions. (England)

Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant’s son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan’s monarchy through the atrocities of the present day. (Afghanistan)

Two women born a generation apart witness the destruction of their home and family in war-torn Kabul, losses incurred over the course of thirty years that test the limits of their strength and courage. (Afghanistan)

Left profoundly deaf from scarlet fever, Grania O’Neill grows up protected from the hearing world and learning sign language, but her life changes when she falls in love with Jim Lloyd, a hearing man, on the eve of the Great War. (Canada)

Marie Claire, a young French Jew during World War II, is rescued by two Belgian nuns after her village is bombed and is taken to a convent, where miracles begin to occur, leaving everyone hiding at the convent to wonder if it is Marie Claire who is causing them. (France)

Their lives as a diplomat and lawyer frozen by the ascendancy of the Taliban, Moshen and Zunaira find their situation becoming a nightmare when Zunaira is arrested and condemned to death. (Afghanistan)

The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary—Nathan Price, his wife, and his four daughters—begins to unravel after they embark on a 1959 mission to the Belgian Congo, where they find their lives forever transformed over the course of three decades by the political and social upheaval of Africa. (Congo)

After making a mistake that will ruin a chance of a partnership, attorney Samantha Sweeting suffers a breakdown, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere, where she is mistakenly hired as a housekeeper. (England)

When a beautiful married woman walks into Pastor Daniel Vedra’s life and conjures up memories of his first wife, Jitka, he struggles with the chaos the affair creates for his wife, his children, his vocation, and his future. (Czech Republic)

Set in modern-day Morocco, the story of four vastly different Moroccans who illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain chronicles the circumstances that drive them to risk their lives and the rewards that may or may not prove to be worth the danger. (Morocco)

In the rural farm country of northern Ontario, the lives of two families—the farming Pye family, and zoologist Kate Morrison and her three brothers—are brought together and torn apart by misunderstanding, resentment, family love, and tragedy. (Canada)

A breathtaking saga of three clans and their linked destinies in a remote alpine village. (Austria)

When an ancient manuscript that seems to undermine the story of the Resurrection is followed by an archaeological discovery that seems to support it, Dr. Jonathan Weber, a Harvard biblical scholar, is determined to find out whether they are part of an elaborate hoax. (Israel)

A tale based on a real eighteenth-century diary follows the coming of age of Countess Anna Maria Berezowska as she witnesses the rise and fall of the Third of May Constitution in Poland, loses her parents, and falls in love with a democratic reformer. (Poland)

In 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake leaves London for the jungles of Burma, where he has been asked to repair a grand piano belonging to a British army officer who uses the piano and music to help keep the peace among warring local Burmese princes. (Burma/Myanmar)

A beautiful, oddly carved violin becomes the link between two generations of musicians, as they move from Hungary during the devastation of World War I, to Vienna and the approaching Anschluss, to a modern-day auction at Christie’s in London. (Austria)

Working in Gaborone, Botswana, Precious Ramotswe investigates several local mysteries, including a search for a missing boy and the case of the clinic doctor with different personalities for different days of the week. (Botswana)

Meggie, daughter of a Catholic father and a Protestant mother with deep secrets, harbors a love for a Catholic priest. (Australia)

Three children lost their innocence—as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935—and their lives are changed forever. (England)

A successful, happily married neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne is drawn into a confrontation with Baxter, a small-time thug, following a minor motor vehicle accident, an encounter that has savage consequences. (England)

A novel takes readers deep into the heart of apartheid in the early 1970s, focusing on a mixed race family that is trying to survive on the closely regulated line between black and white. (South Africa)

In a remote Siberian town torn apart by civil war and inhabited by a small Christian sect, Anna Petrovna, a beautiful photographer, becomes involved in the fate of Samarin, an escapee from Russia’s northernmost prison camp. (Russia)

A portrait of India featuring four characters. Two are tailors who are forcibly sterilized, one is a student who emigrates, and the fourth is a widowed seamstress who decides to hang on. A tale of cruelty, political thuggery and despair by an Indian from Toronto, author of Such a Long Journey. (India)

Napoleon III asks Henri Lambert to go to Algeria and test his powers with those of an Arab holy man, and when he and his wife go, Henri wonders if they will be preventing war in the future as well as the present. (Algeria and France)

Owning a small portion of the Trinidad earth and a respectable house is the dream and the reality sustaining Mohun Biswas through a life of frustration and despair. (Trinidad)

The author turns her own family history into the story of five women, Polish Jews living in a ghetto outside Warsaw before the cataclysm of World War II. (Poland)

In Cairo, a man meets a married woman with whom he falls in love, but the war keeps them apart and destroys her while he, severely burned, lives to tell their story to a nurse caring for him in an abandoned Tuscan villa. (Italy)

In sixteenth-century Istanbul, a furor erupts when the Sultan hires a group of artists to illuminate a great book in the European style at a time in which all figurative art is considered Islamic heresy, but the situation becomes worse when one of the miniaturists vanishes. (Turkey)

After years of lonely political exile, Turkish poet Ka returns to Istanbul to attend his mother’s funeral and learns about a series of suicides among pious girls forbidden to wear headscarves. (Turkey)

When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxanne Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan. (South America)

Rising to the position of sergeant in the Guardia Civil, young law student Tejada works to impose order in the ruins of Madrid when his best friend is found murdered, and in the wake of unlikely suspects, he finds himself seeking justice. (Spain)

Aspiring to teach English to the children of Hungarian statespeople, Sara Foster leaves America only to find herself working in refugee camp, where she meets a celebrated young composer whom she works to exonerate from an accusation of his brother’s death. (Hungary)

A new English-language installment of a series that began with Captain Alatriste and Purity of Blood finds the swordsman-for-hire and his teenage protege rejoining Alatriste’s elite Cartagena regiment during the siege of Breda, an effort that is complicated by the growing power of Luis de Alquezar. (Spain)

Five American expatriates living in Budapest in the early 1990s seek to establish themselves and make their fortunes in a city still haunted by the tragedies of its Communist past. (Hungary)

When Kellyanne Williamson’s imaginary friends Pobby and Dingan disappear, Kellyanne’s brother, Ashmol, enlists the aid of the entire town of Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, to find them. (Australia)

A fictionalized account of the life of the biblical figure Jonathan and his friendship with David also includes a Bible study. (Israel)

In 1969, in Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment. (India)

A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author’s works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written. (Spain)

In September 1943, Claudette Blum and her father flee across the Alps into Italy with other Jews seeking refuge, only to find an open battle ground among the Nazis, Allied forces, resistance fighters, and ordinary Italians struggling to survive. (Italy)

In the 1910s, Ali, a Mohammedan of Baku, marries Nino, a Greek Orthodox Georgian he’s loved since childhood, and they undergo the distress of the Bolshevik uprising. (Azerbaijan)

Senhor Jose is a low-grade clerk in the city’s Central Registry. When one day he comes across the birth certificate of an anonymous young woman, he decides that this cannot have been mere chance, he has to discover more about her. After all, to know a name is not to know the person. (Portugal)

Schoolboy Michael Berg, 15, meets an older woman and they have an affair, which she breaks off and disappears. Seven years later Berg, now a law student attending a trial, sees her in the dock, accused in a crime dating back to World War II and the death camp at Auschwitz. (Germany)

A story of friendship set in nineteenth-century China follows an elderly woman and her companion as they communicate their hopes, dreams, joys, and tragedies through a unique secret language. (China)

A female Norwegian journalist from Norway moves in with a middle-class Afghan family after the fall of the Taliban, and chronicles their tragedies, contradictions, rivalries, and daily frustrations. (Afghanistan)

In a novel about being an outsider in America and what it means to be an American, Vladimir, a young Russian-American immigrant, pursues his dreams of success, wealth, and a girlfriend, as his quest takes him deep into uncharted territory. (Czech Republic)

A novel about the courage of a young Englishwoman in World War II. (Australia)

A high-stakes tale set in Moscow follows the machinations of a group of reactionaries who harbor a nostalgic loyalty to the regime of Joseph Stalin and who plot to create a groundswell for a new dictatorship. (Russia)

In 1667 Hal becomes a man after the Dutch torture and kill his father while on his ship off the coast of Africa, and he carefully works his way overland to claim his father’s treasure and to face the British captain who betrayed them. (Africa)

The children of Tom and Dorian Courtney travel the infamous “Robber’s Road” en route to a claim in southern Africa, encountering along the way the area’s beautiful wilderness, warring tribes, and wild animals. (Africa)

One day in 1951, Ivan Denisovich continues the rituals he has created during eight years’ imprisonment in a Stalinist labor camp in Siberia. (Russia)

Her expectations about living out her life as a Japanese pearl diver shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy, a nineteen-year-old girl is rejected by her family and exiled to a leprosarium on the island of Nagashima. (Japan)

Over the course of one fog-shrouded year, mother and daughter find what they share in their bones through heredity, history, and inexpressible qualities of love. (China)

On an ill-fated art expedition, eleven Americans find themselves deep in the Burmese jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting a leader and the mystical book of wisdom that will protect them from the Myanmar military regime. (Burma/Myanmar)

In the first volume of a series chronicling the birth of the state of Israel, the lives of a diverse array of characters collide and intertwine as the British prepare to withdraw from Jerusalem in 1948. (Israel)

Stephen, 20, leaves Hong Kong for Japan to recuperate from tuberculosis just as the Chinese prepare to invade, and in a small town, he develops strong relationships. (Japan)

Presents a fictional portrait of pioneering artist Emily Carr, whose independence, boldly original artwork, and unconventional approach to life overcame Victorian restrictions to blaze a new path for twentieth-century women artists. (Canada)

Israeli lieutenant Ari Doron falls in love with the wife of a jailed Palestinian militant in the midst of a wave of terrorism that he may have set into motion because of following orders to refuse to allow passage to a young mother and her ailing child. (Israel)

Math prodigy Andrea Aspinalt vanishes from her first assignment for the British secret service, using a Nazi traitor’s identity and memories to create a new life for herself. (Portugal)

Nora, a Holocaust survivor, and her German daughter-in-law arrive in Palestine in 1949 and land in an “absorption camp” where everyone is in training to become a good Israeli. (Hungary and Israel)