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After a loss, a year in the country: four seasons to transform a garden and a self. 'In the city the notion of the hours of the day, of the passage of time, is lost. In the countryside that is impossible,' our narrator tells us. In this remote house and garden, time is almost palpable; it goes b...

Life after crime from the International Booker-shortlisted author of Elena Knows Fifteen years after killing her husband’s lover, Inés is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and they’ve started a business – FFF, or Females, Fumigation, ...

A junkie looking for one last fix in a town full of ghosts . This is a ghost story. A junkie has gone to El Zapotal to die – to rent a room in this crumbling backwater, melt into one last fix, and not come back. For someone so ready to no longer be alive, though, he can’t stop clinging to the pa...

The ancient biographer and essayist Plutarch thought deeply about the leadership qualities of the eminent Greeks and Romans he profiled in his famous—and massive—Lives , including politicians and generals such as Pericles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony. Luckily for us, Pluta...

In the tempestuous closing decades of the sixteenth century, the Empire of Japan writhes in chaos as the shogunate crumbles and rival warlords battle for supremacy. Warrior monks in their armed citadels block the road to the capital; castles are destroyed, villages plundered, fields put to the to...

What the Roman poet Horace can teach us about how to live a life of contentment What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65–8 BCE) has been cherished by readers for more than two thousand years not only for his wit, style, and reflect...

Winner of the Epigram Books Fiction Prize ‘Slick, sharp . . . a joy to read’ Tash Aw Jasmine Leong is the heiress apparent to Phoenix, her family’s billion-ringgit company known especially for its pork snacks. When her grandmother, the great Madame Leong, unexpectedly passes away, Jasmine discov...

The second-century Greek physician Galen—the most famous doctor in antiquity after Hippocrates—is a central figure in Western medicine. A talented doctor, surgeon, writer, philosopher, teacher, pharmacologist, and inventor, Galen attended the court of Marcus Aurelius, living through outbreaks of ...

A New York Times Notable Book Young, inexperienced and fleeing a terrible personal loss, Rosie travels to France to become an au pair to the Tivot family. Nicole, the cool, distant and beautifully polished mother of the three children she cares for is impossible to connect with - there is someth...

How can we apply the teachings of the greatest ancient philosopher to modern life? Socrates is the most famous ancient philosopher and the father of the entire Western philosophical tradition. He spent his life teaching practical philosophy to ordinary people in the streets of Athens, yet his wo...