A collection of nine stories in which characters encounter talking plants, a pine-tree man, a merry-go-round with flying horses, mystical midnight birds, and a cake-eating tree.

The best-known and most sensational event in Vincent van Gogh’s life is also the least understood. For more than a century, biographers and historians seeking definitive facts about what happened on a December night in Arles have unearthed more questions than answers. Why would an artist at the height of his powers commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious “Rachel” to whom he presented his macabre gift? Did he use a razor or a knife? Was it just a segment—or did Van Gogh really lop off his entire ear? In Van Gogh’s Ear, Bernadette Murphy reveals, for the first time, the true story of this long-misunderstood incident, sweeping away decades of myth and giving us a glimpse of a troubled but brilliant artist at his breaking point. Murphy’s detective work takes her from Europe to the United States and back, from the holdings of major museums to the moldering contents of forgotten archives. She braids together her own thrilling journey of discovery with a narrative of Van Gogh’s life in Arles, the sleepy Provençal town where he created his finest work, and vividly reconstructs the world in which he moved—the madams and prostitutes, café patrons and police inspectors, shepherds and bohemian artists. We encounter Van Gogh’s brother and benefactor Theo, his guest and fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and many local subjects of Van Gogh’s paintings, some of whom Murphy identifies for the first time. Strikingly, Murphy uncovers previously unknown information about “Rachel”—and uses it to propose a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep. As it reopens one of art history’s most famous cold cases, Van Gogh’s Ear becomes a fascinating work of detection. It is also a study of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pushing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged toward madness—and one fateful sweep of the blade that would resonate through the ages.

I want them. I need them. I love them. Beautiful earrings. Glorious earrings. What will a young girl do to get her ears pierced? Will she walk the dog for a year? YES! Will she clean her room every day for a year? YES! Will she be nice to her brother for a year? YES! Well, maybe for six months...

Pregnant Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan probes the disappearance of a chic blonde green-raincoated dog walker she'd been watching from her comfy prison. Tess also takes in the missing woman's abandoned green-slickered Italian greyhound from hell and unravels a complex scam.

This that I now tell is as I saw my mothers do, or did myself, when I was young. My mothers were industrious women, and our family had always good crops; and I will tell now how the women of my father's family cared for their fields, as I saw them, and helped them. --Buffalo Bird Woman

Hoping to avoid eating her peas, Mabel puts them in her ears and discovers that her impaired hearing leads to other problems.

Liza begins to doubt her feelings for Annie after someone finds out about their relationship, and realizes, after starting college, that her denial of love for Annie was a mistake. Reprint.

A shared obsession with a Victorian painter brings together two strangers in Elizabeth Cooke’s extraordinary novel about the timelessness of art and love Catherine Sergeant loses people. First her parents died, leaving her alone in the world. Now her husband, Robert, has just walked out without warning or explanation. Catherine conceals her pain and sticks to life’s comforting routines, reporting for work as usual at the fine-arts auction house she co-owns. Then she meets widowed architect John Brigham. Catherine and John feel an immediate connection. They are both fascinated by the paintings of Richard Dadd, a Victorian artist who murdered his father and was locked away in an insane asylum. Interweaving the present with fleeting snapshots of the past—Dadd in moments of lunacy and lucidity that culminate in the act of creation—The Girl in the Green Glass Mirror takes readers to that exalted place where reality and creativity intersect. Filled with vibrant, unforgettable characters, it is a novel of discovery, reawakened passion, and the ability of art to shape lives and transcend madness, tragedy, and even time itself.

From the author of Norwegian By Night comes a new novel about two men on a misbegotten quest to save the girl they failed to save decades before. 1991. Near Checkpoint Zulu, one hundred miles from the Kuwaiti border, Thomas Benton meets Arwood Hobbes. Benton is a British journalist who reports from war zones, in part to avoid his lacklustre marriage and a daughter he loves but cannot connect with; Hobbes is a midwestern American private who might be an insufferable ignoramus, or might be a brilliant lunatic with a death wish — it’s hard to tell. Operation Desert Storm is over, peace has been declared, but as they argue about whether it makes sense to cross the nearest border in search of an ice cream, they become embroiled in a horrific attack in which a young local girl in a green dress is shot in the back and dies in Hobbes’s arms. The two men walk away into their respective lives. But something has cracked for them both. Twenty-two years later, in another place, in another war, the two men meet again. Benton and relief worker Märta Ström are persuaded by a much-changed Hobbes to embark on what may be a fool’s errand in a last-chance effort to redeem themselves when the girl in green is found alive and in need of salvation. Or is she? Set against the war-torn landscape of a shattered Iraq, The Girl in Green is an adventure story told with all the wit, humanity, and insight of Miller’s acclaimed debut. PRAISE FOR DEREK B. MILLER ‘A suspenseful, character-driven, eerily prescient moral thriller.’ The Saturday Age ‘Miller brilliantly blends offbeat reflection and dark emotion ... A penetrating, poetic, and unexpectedly disarming book about the ageless conflict in the Middle East.’ Kirkus

Renowned picture book creator Jeanette Winter tells the story of a young girl in Afghanistan who attends a secret school for girls. Young Nasreen has not spoken a word to anyone since her parents disappeared. In despair, her grandmother risks everything to enroll Nasreen in a secret school for girls. Will a devoted teacher, a new friend, and the worlds she discovers in books be enough to draw Nasreen out of her shell of sadness? Based on a true story from Afghanistan, this inspiring book will touch readers deeply as it affirms both the life-changing power of education and the healing power of love.