Near the west coast of Singapore lies the leafy enclave of Sabre Green – a haven of wealth and luxury in one of the richest countries in the world. But beneath the glamour lies the insidious truth of the country’s maid culture, where a woman’s life is cheap.

Here are the voices of the unheard – of maid and employer, of village girl and city dweller. Follow...

As India hurtles towards Partition, in Lahore's ancient inside city, Amrau Dar is not thinking about politics. She is waiting for a prediction about her son, Awais, to come true. Awais discovers not a secret garden but a secret city and his beloved sister, Maryam, discovers the world of maths. Fearing that the prediction has gone wrong, Amrau takes a series...

'The most credible dystopian novel I have ever read' Sunday Times

Barry James is detained in a quarantine facility in the blistering heat of the Great Karoo. Here he exists in two worlds: the unforgiving reality of his incarceration and the lyrical landscapes of his dreams. He has cut all ties with his previous life, his health is failing, and he has given...

My Travels in Ding Yi is an epic novel told from the perspective of a spirit who inhabits an array of beings in different places and times. From Adam in the Garden of Eden, to a fish, to the novel’s protagonist, Ding Yi, an average Chinese boy in the second half of the 20th century. It’s in Ding Yi that Shi explores coming of age during the Cultural...

Color coded love stories and revealing female anatomies lead to the murder of world renowned sculptor, Bruce Jones.

In life, the artist loved women, almost as much as women loved him. Adored for his art and colorful personality, Bruce is mourned by the world at large. The tale is launched with the multifaceted perspectives of four ex-wives, the current...

A word, a single word defines a moment for Anne. She needs to find a new one when her spouse, Frank, leaves her at the age of forty-seven, coming out of the closet literally in a closet. She finds herself back in her hometown of Skvallerby, Connecticut among her high school friends which she had left in her past. An inheritance from a frenemy leaves her...

A witty and acerbic novel for our times about corporate greed, the hubris of bankers, contradictions of the clean energy economy and their unintended consequences on everyday people. Finance, environmentalism, rare-earth mining and human frailties collide in a complex of flawed motives. We follow Peter Mount, the self-made Chief Executive of a London-based...

In the tumultuous aftermath of the First World War the Wilson brothers head in opposite directions: Richard, interned in Austria throughout the conflict, returns to England; Edward, a junior officer, is dispatched from Italy to Vienna as part of the British Army’s relief mission.

For Edward, it will be a return to the city and to love. But it will not be...

You’ve seen me on the street. You’ve walked past my house, and pointed, and wondered. The cat lady. All on my own, with only my five cats to keep me company. Did no-one ever tell you that you can’t judge a book by its cover?

Everyone in town knows Nancy Jones. She loves her cats. She loves her tumbledown house by the sea. She loves her job in the local...

A mesmerising fable with a difference, set in Japan over 1000 years ago

For readers of Alessandro Baricco's Silk, Patrick Süskind's Perfume and Takashi Hiraide's The Guest Cat.

The village of Shimae is thrown into turmoil when master carp-catcher Katsuro suddenly drowns in the murky waters of the Kusagawa river. Who now will carry the precious cargo of carp...

Johnny’s having a bad day. The worst, actually. A sales rep for a food-service company, he’s at the top of his game and usually enjoys his job. But today, he just lost out on his company’s prestigious sales award (the bad news delivered by his smug, egomaniacal boss), he’s trying to rebound from losing two key accounts, his customers won’t pay, and to top...

Four-Part Serialized Historical Novel His Majesty’s Theatre Set in Victorian British Society

This wonderful four-part serialized historical novel is perfect for Downton Abbey enthusiasts. Filled with the history of the British theatre and allusions to Shakespeare, His Majesty’s Theatre is set in Victorian England circa 1887 through 1904. The characters...

In this neo-western novel, M.S. Holm returns to northern Mexico to tell the story of modern-day highwaymen and the travelers they target.

Haleigh and Josh always had the wrong kind of love, but they believed there was a reason they were in each other’s lives. For twelve years, their misguided pursuits tangled as they built their marriage on the expectations of what a happy couple is supposed to look like, despite the brokenness inside. Only once they unravel can the truth be set free.

When...

Sam, a University of Toronto History student, receives a letter informing him that he has inherited some property in Bulgaria, the country of his parents.

Somewhat reluctantly, he decides to go there accompanied by his best friend Ben, a charming young man with a flair for languages and adventure. In the country of his parents Sam comes face to face with a...

A house of blue-collar ghosts, inspired in part by the Winchester “Mystery” House. It’s a monstrous maze of a mansion, built by a grief-ridden heiress. A tour guide, about to retire, has given his spiel for so many years that he’s gone blind. On this last tour, he’s slammed with second sight. He sees the ghosts he’s always felt were there: the bedeviled...

The morning Bill Becker awakes to find the butterfly tattoo, its wings poised for flight upon his chest, he is aroused and terrified by the itch of new possibilities—and addictions, including Lucy, the tattooed dancer who leads him on a quest for self-understanding. Both Lucy and Bill wrap themselves in new skins of ink, wrought by the same artist, a...

“I have it on very good authority that a muse must have their heart broken six times before they can die.”

So opens The Dodo Knight, a magical novella about Alice Liddell, the muse for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Before the book was published, a rift opened between Carroll and the Liddell family. The rift has been dubbed the “Liddell Riddle,” and...

Our modern day sleuth operates in the roughest part of south Chicago. He and Vera, his "squeeze"are confronted by local mob factions.

Later, they are drawn into assisting two young girls whose mother has been kidnapped by white slave traders. He is invited by the local mob boss on a fishing trip out onto lake Michigan. (cement boots included?)

He later...

The Chandaria family—emigrants from the Indian-enclave of Nairobi—have managed to flourish in America. Premchand, the father, is a doctor who has worked doggedly to grow his practice and give his family security; his wife, Urmila, runs a business importing artisanal Kenyan crafts; and their son, Sunil, after quitting the pre-med track, has gotten accepted...

It’s the year 1675. Eighteen-year-old Lukas Pietersen is about to consume the ceremonial substance, known as Moon Flower.

The potent seeds from this nighttime blooming plant, as prepared and administered by a shaman, will cause Lukas to lose his memory and begin his quest to become a warrior of the Pequawket tribe.

This epic tale follows Lukas, a young boy...

First published in the 1980s and 90s, Waki Yamato’s renowned adaptation of Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th-century literary masterpiece is still gorgeous to behold and is considered one of the greatest novel-to-manga adaptations of all time.

Prince Genji falls in love with his stepmother, and so begins a forbidden love that will make him suffer his whole life...

Get an inside look at Algonquin’s outstanding forthcoming fiction with the Spring 2019 Algonquin Reader. Discover the inspiration behind each book through an original essay by the author. Then enjoy a short preview of each novel. 

IN THIS ISSUE:

Louis Bayard, author of Courting Mr. Lincoln, discusses how even though 9,100 books have been written about our...

The Alexanders have farmed the land in Turtle Valley for generations, and their family and its history is tied to this mountainous region of Virginia in ways few others can claim. When Gulf War veteran Aiken Alexander brings home a young and pregnant South Korean bride, he hopes at long last to claim his own place in that complicated history--coming out...

When a contemporary writer turns her imagination loose inside the images of an iconic artist of the past, the result is storytelling magic at its best. Here are nine tales that bring to vivid life the early decades of the 20th century as witnessed by one of America's most well-known painters. Thomas Hart Benton sketched fiddlers and farm wives, preachers...

It is 2026, and whip-smart sixteen-year-old Ella is used to playing her beloved grandfather’s wise fiddle, Lenore, to escape her parents’ constant disagreements about her Dad’s burgeoning pot business. Now that they are finally getting a divorce, she is forced to attend a wilderness boarding school so extreme she has to chop her own wood for hot water. Will...

Tess and Orla have been best friends throughout most of their adult lives. So when life gave them lemons and their loved ones let them down, they pooled their resources and bought a dressmakers shop on the corner of Penny Lane. And they’ve been doing just fine ever since.

But one day, while studying her tired eyes and shapeless figure in the mirror...

A heartbreaking verse novel about love and death, grief and beauty, and the very individual ways we make sense of it all.

Lottie, the daughter of German migrants, develops a fascination for death after losing her mother at a young age. When Lottie begins collecting dead animals, her aunt tries to redirect her energies into more 'feminine' activities. But her...

A novel of Shanghai’s lower classes from the Man Booker International Prize-nominated author

Nainai has lived in Shanghai for many years, and the time has come to find a wife for her adopted grandson. But when the bride she has chosen arrives from the countryside, it soon becomes clear that the orphaned girl has ideas of her own. Her name is Fu Ping, and the...

In Katy’s opinion, weddings should follow some basic rules:

1) No-one should ever have sex. Of course. The married couple has the rest of their lives for that, and the guests should be too busy partying.

2) If you are heavily pregnant (as Katy is) you should obviously not be invited to three weddings in the space of one summer. Your husband’s...

Mairtin O Cadhain s irresistible and infamous novel "The Dirty Dust" is consistently ranked as the most important prose work in modern Irish, yet no translation for English-language readers has ever before been published. Alan Titley s vigorous new translation, full of the brio and guts of O Cadhain s original, at last brings the pleasures of this great...

'Exhilarating ... an exquisite, painful book.' Lara Feigel, Guardian

A brave, timely, searingly beautiful novel set in contemporary Pakistan, from the author of Maps for Lost Lovers

When shots ring out on the Grand Trunk Road, Nargis's life begins to crumble around her. Her husband, Massud - a fellow architect - is caught in the crossfire and dies before she...