THE BOOK THIEF - SECOND HAND

Paul Fisher sees the world from behind glasses so thick he looks like a bug-eyed alien. But he’s not so blind that he can’t see there are some very unusual things about his family’s new home in Tangerine County, Florida. Where else does a sinkhole swallow the local school, fire burn underground for years, and lightning strike at the same time every day?

The chaos is compounded by constant harassment from his football-star brother, and adjusting to life in Tangerine isn’t easy for Paul—until he joins the soccer team at his middle school. With the help of his new teammates, Paul begins to discover what lies beneath the surface of his strange new hometown. And he also gains the courage to face up to some secrets his family has been keeping from him for far too long. In Tangerine, it seems, anything is possible.

Argen­tine author Marce­lo Bir­ma­jer uses his recur­ring char­ac­ter, Javier Mosan, to present a com­pli­cat­ed polit­i­cal tale with roots in his country’s trou­bled past. Mosan, a jour­nal­ist who does his best to avoid writ­ing sto­ries, spends a great deal of time indulging in sex­u­al fan­ta­sy. When his edi­tor asks him to inter­view Elias Traúm, an Argen­tinean who now lives in Israel, he thinks that it is just anoth­er rou­tine assign­ment. Traúm and two dead friends were known as the  “three mus­ke­teers” when they fought in the left-wing Per­o­nist guer­ril­la group, the Mon­toneros. Javier goes to the air­port to meet Traúm and ends up get­ting a severe beat­ing. Traúm is kid­napped. He is lat­er dumped by the side of the road and, Javier, relieved to learn that they both sur­vived, finds him­self drawn to the account of Traúm’s past despite orders from his edi­tor to drop the sto­ry. Read­ers who enjoyed Nathan Englander’s The Min­istry of Spe­cial Cas­es will find this com­pelling, too. It pro­vides insight into the world of Argentina’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty as well as a top-notch con­spir­a­cy plot.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession comes this richly imaginative story collection that transports the reader to a world where opposites--passion and loneliness, betrayal and loyalty, fire and ice--clash and converge.

A beautiful ice maiden risks her life when she falls in love with a desert prince, whose passionate touches scorch her delicate skin. A woman flees the scene of her husband's heart attack, leaving her entire past behind her. Striving to master colour and line, a painter discovers the resolution to his artistic problems when a beautiful and magical water snake appears in his pool. And a wealthy Englishwoman gradually loses her identity while wandering through a shopping mall. Elegantly crafted and suffused with boundless wisdom, these bewitching tales are a testament to a writer at the height of her powers.

In search of love, absolution, or forgiveness, Charles Boatman leaves the Fraser Valley of British Columbia and returns mysteriously to Vietnam, the country where he fought twenty-nine years earlier as a young, reluctant soldier. But his new encounters seem irreconcilable with his memories.

When he disappears, his daughter Ada, and her brother, Jon, travel to Vietnam, to the streets of Danang and beyond, to search for him. Their quest takes them into the heart of a country that is at once incomprehensible, impassive, and beautiful. Chasing her father’s shadow for weeks, following slim leads, Ada feels increasingly hopeless. Yet while Jon slips into the urban nightlife to avoid what he most fears, Ada finds herself growing closer to her missing father — and strong enough to forgive him and bear the heartbreaking truth of his long-kept secret.

Bergen’s marvellously drawn characters include Lieutenant Dat, the police officer who tries to seduce Ada by withholding information; the boy Yen, an orphan, who follows Ada and claims to be her guide; Jack Gouds, an American expatriate and self-styled missionary; his strong-willed and unhappy wife, Elaine, whose desperate encounters with Charles in the days before his disappearance will always haunt her; and Hoang Vu, the artist and philosopher who will teach Ada about the complexity of love and betrayal. We also come to learn about the reclusive author Dang Tho, whose famous wartime novel pulls at Charles in ways he can’t explain.

Moving between father and daughter, the present and the past, The Time in Between is a luminous, unforgettable novel about one family, two cultures, and a profound emotional journey in search of elusive answers.