The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where "things happen." He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki--bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.

    He is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for begetting brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as undermajordomo, he soon discovers the place harbours many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle's master, Baron Von Aux. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder.Undermajordomo Minor is an ink-black comedy of manners, an adventure, and a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behaviour, but above all it is a love story. And Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.

    If you were thinking about quietly entering your twilight years, think again. Boxing matches, ex cons, Olympic hopefuls, cannibalistic fish, and experimental chefs are just a few of the things waiting for you inside. So come in and have a look around. You just might run into the resident celebrity, Holy Moses, the most extraordinary canine on earth.

    Richard, the oldest, always keeps safe; Abba always has hope; Lucy is never lost and Kent can beat anyone in a fight. As for Angie, she always forgives, instantly. But over the years these so-called blessings ended up ruining their lives. Now Annie is dying and she has one last task for Angie: gather her far-flung brothers and sisters and assemble them in her grandmother's hospital room so that at the moment of her death, she can lift these blessings-turned-curses. And Angie has just two weeks to do it. What follows is a quest like no other, tearing up highways and racing through airports, from a sketchy Winnipeg nursing home to the small island kingdom of Upliffta, from the family's crumbling ancestral Toronto mansion to a motel called Love. And there is also the search for the answer to the greatest family mystery of all: what really happened to their father, whose maroon Maserati was fished out of a lake so many years ago?

    Lacy starts on a journey to find to find the man that could change her life. As Lacy gets closer to finding the man, circumstances force her to do something that she will regret for the rest of her life. This explosive coming-of-age story set in the late 1970s is full of twists and turns, forgiveness and courage.

    It’s not logical. It’s not possible.The Ceiling Man has picked up other watchers in his travels, but they all dismissed him as a nightmare. The girl is different. She knows he’s real.Teenage Abby is an innocent. The stranger only she sees and hears introduces her to evil. When Carole falls under the stranger’s sway, Abby must solve the puzzle of The Ceiling Man and save them both.

    From the award-winning author of The Golden Mean.Saskia and Jenny are twins who are alike only in appearance. Saskia is a hard-working grad student whose interests are solely academic, while Jenny, an interior designer, is glamourous, thrill-seeking, capricious and narcissistic. Still, when Jenny is severely injured in an accident, Saskia puts her life on hold to be with her sister.Sara and Mattie are sisters with a difficult relationship. Mattie, the younger sister, is affectionate, curious and intellectually disabled. As soon as Sara is able, she leaves home, in pursuit of a life of the mind and the body: she loves nothing more than fine wines, sensual perfumes, and expensive clothing. But when their mother dies, Sara inherits the duty of caring for her sister. Arriving at the house one day, she finds out that Mattie has married Robert, her wealthy mother's handyman. Though Mattie seems happy, Sara cannot let this go, forcing the annulment of the marriage and the banishment of Robert. With him out of the picture, though, she has no choice but to become her sister's keeper, sacrificing her own happiness and Mattie's too. When Robert turns up again, another tragedy happens. The waves from these events eventually engulf Sara and Saskia, sisters in mourning, in a quest for revenge.Consent is a startling, moving, thought-provoking novel on the complexities of familial duty and on how love can become entangled with guilt, resentment and regret.

    A young priest on the other side of the screen is shaken by what he learns. A former college athlete with an MBA from a prestigious university, Father Joe Russo is not your typical man of God. Nine years earlier, his own life took a tragic turn and he gave everything up, committing his life to the church. Now his peaceful existence is being tested, and he finds himself questioning the God he serves, the vows he made, and someone he left behind.In this gripping thriller, a priest and an FBI agent work to uncover secrets and expose hidden crimes, but when it seems they have it all figured out, everything they think they know will be questioned.

    No longer able to linger over her beloved books or gaze at the paintings that move her spirit, she fills the void with music and memories of her family—a past that suddenly becomes all too present when her late father's journals are found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck.With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service, Elizabeth goes through the diaries, a journey through time that brings the two women closer together. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own—to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse seventy years before.As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed. While the discovery of Morgan's connection sheds light onto her own family mysteries, the faded pages of the journals hold more questions than answers for Elizabeth, and threaten the very core of who she is.

    When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō's job is to do exactly that--until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitarō fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter's life.Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, Stephanie Scott exquisitely renders the affair and its intricate repercussions. As Rina's daughter, Sumiko, fills in the gaps of her mother's story and her own memory, Scott probes the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.

    They search for a stable end game that balances the after-effects of climate change and dwindling natural resources against the needs of a ten-billion-plus population. Rudolph “Rudy” Dersch is the newly minted CEO of the world’s largest, multi-trillion-dollar corporate conglomerate. But the job comes with an unexpected twist - an invitation to join the Consortium, a small, secretive group of global select who effectively decide what’s best for the rest of humanity. How does Rudy’s struggle to reconcile business and family impact the world’s future? And who, if anyone, can break the Consortium’s iron grip on the status quo? ˃˃˃ Dark Matter, Asteroids and Mysterious Visions The answer may lie with Dr. Jonas Hanssen, a renegade physicist, who is close to unraveling one of the universe’s greatest mysteries and with a headstrong art curator, Monique, driven to find the meaning behind her increasingly compelling visions. From a life-changing moment in a crowded Singapore marketplace to the business end of an assassin’s gun, they face a power beyond any the world has ever seen. To survive, they’ll have to decipher the truth about dark matter - before the Consortium can achieve its ruinous end game.

    In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home.Motherhood is a courageous, keenly felt, and starkly original novel that will surely spark lively conversations about womanhood, parenthood, and about how—and for whom—to live.

    When she learns that the boy in the painting was deaf, like her dead son, she starts to try to communicate with his ghost.Meanwhile, Clayton finds himself entangled in an equally undesirable friendship with a retired fire chief who knows more about the painting than he is prepared to let on.Is The Crying Boy painting cursed, and can numerous house fires be linked to it?Struggling with their unstable marriage, the couple find themselves in further danger as an increasingly disturbing bond develops between Avril and The Crying Boy.In a twist of events Avril's irrational behavior is brought to a dramatic halt when she discovers she is pregnant. With her affections once again restored for Clayton, she decides to dispose of the sinister portrait. But the cast off painting wants revenge and its anger towards Avril's unborn child might just prove immeasurable.

    Building on front-line research in the war against crime in Durban, South Africa, with assistance and guidance from detectives, forensics experts, and victims of crime, the author has explored the precise locations in which scenes are set, and has captured details of background, history, and actual crimes before adapting them for his purposes into fast-paced fiction thrillers. His intention is to create exciting crime stories steeped in authenticity of action, place and time, while exploring current debates on law, justice, crime and moral responsibility. Intrigued by the way the character Mashego evolved in 'Plain Dealing', he decided to trace back in the detective's past to explore the origins of his attitude and approach to police work. 'The Mashego File' traces this earlier phase in the policeman's career.

    Nine years later, she's worked hard at putting the past behind her. She clings to her best friend James, the only person she's been able to trust since the fire. But one day James disappears. Juniper tries to find her friend, but she uncovers more than she bargained for. As tensions grow and friendships are tested, she begins to realise that James wasn't who she thought he was. And worst of all, his disappearance is connected to her somehow, and what happened to her all those years ago... An exciting, page turning thriller you wont want to put down!