"Moving from the wide world to the snugness of home and back out again, Village by the Sea tells the story of longing for the comforts of home"--

Winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award:A young girl learns some hard truths about human nature in this thought-provoking, beautifully crafted novel. Tomorrow, Emma’s uncle is coming to take her to his house on Long Island while her father undergoes surgery and her mother stays with him in hospital. For two whole weeks, Emma will be stuck with her father’s half-sister: the strange, bossy Aunt Bea. Luckily, Emma makes a friend at the beach, Bertie, and the two girls begin building a village made entirely of shells. There’s the mayor’s house, constructed of sand dollars and with a roof of pinecones, and the main street with white bubble shells. Every day the girls add to their village by the sea. Then, just before Emma is to return home, something awful happens. In this thoughtful novel, Newbery Medal and Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Paula Fox offers an unflinching and candid depiction of forgiveness and unconditional love.

Beautiful Delray Beach lies on Florida's Atlantic coast, nestled between a sea grape-filled beach to the east and rich farmland to the west. Throughout its prosperous history, this "Village by the Sea," as it is often called, has maintained its mystical, quaint charm. The numerous stories of Delray Beach, kept alive through many of the town's elders, are rich depictions of the American experience. The importance of the past continues to reveal itself in the stories and images of the courageous pioneers who came from Michigan, the Bahamas, and nearby Southern states in the late 1800s. Early pioneers were attracted to Delray Beach for many of the same reasons that bring people there today. The history of Delray Beach is intrinsically linked to the community support of and appreciation for agriculture, art, and architecture. The area is known for fertile soil, diverse crops, and the large colony of artists that call their bungalows and cottages along the Delray beaches home. Thousands of visitors annually flock to attend the numerous festivals held in the city's historic downtown streets. In both 1993 and 2001, Delray Beach received the prestigious "All America City" award from the National Civic League.

Winner, Discover Great New Writers Award. Winner, Minnesota Book Award for Fiction. "Profound.... a quietly stunning work that leaves soft tracks in the heart."--The Washington Post BookWorld "Merits placement beside some of the mesmerizing new literature with its roots in Latin America."--The New York Times Book Review

From the phenomenally bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time comes Mark Haddon’s first collection of poems. That Mark Haddon’s first book after The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a book of poetry may surprise his many fans; that it is also one of such virtuosity and range will not. The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea reveals a poet of great versatility and formal talent. All the gifts so admired in Haddon’s prose are in strong evidence here – the humanity, the dark humour, and the uncanny ventriloquism – but Haddon is also a writer of considerable seriousness, lyric power, and surreal invention. This book will consolidate his reputation as one of the most imaginative writers in contemporary literature.

The true story of seventeen months in the life of a Vietnamese village where a handful of American Marines and Vietnamese militia lived and died together attempting to defend it. In Black Hawk Down, the fight went on for a day. In We Were Soldiers Once & Young, the fighting lasted three days. In The Village, one Marine squad fought for 495 days—half of them died. Few American battles have been so extended, savage and personal. A handful of Americans volunteered to live among six thousand Vietnamese, training farmers to defend their village. Such “Combined Action Platoons” (CAPs) are now a lost footnote about how the war could have been fought; only the villagers remain to bear witness. This is the story of fifteen resolute young Americans matched against two hundred Viet Cong; how a CAP lived, fought and died. And why the villagers remember them to this day.

During the Cold War a 13-year-old American boy, Brad Lattimer, moves with his family to a fishing village in Northern Italy. It is no ordinary village. But Brad is welcomed like a long-lost cousin. His teacher is a gentle hunchback with a lisp who is more than he seems to be; and there are witches in the olive groves who will poison your cat, but not for the reasons you imagine. In those same groves there is a village so small it shouldn't be a village, its red doorways too short for normal men to pass through easily; and at night, on its narrow cobble street, creatures that should not exist walk while a single baby cries forever. On the sands of the next cove sits a pale girl who somehow knows the poetry of the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and wants you to drown with her, just as Percy drowned near this village over a century ago. This is the village where Brad, too, will start to dream strange dreams and write his first stories; where, he will fall sick because the village's magic has a hold on him: It wants him to become something other than a boy--something that can never leave it--something it can have as its own forever. "The Village Sang to the Sea: A Memoir of Magic is a uniquely haunting book. It's a beauty in the fullest meaning of the word. --Peter S. Beagle, World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement winner and author of The Last Unicorn The Village Sang to the Sea is that rarity: a book that delicately and perfectly captures the magic we all know underlies the world. You will not forget this book. Not ever." --Nancy Kress, Hugo and Nebula awards winner "The Village Sang to the Sea: A Memoir of Magic is just what its sub-title promises: magic. It s evocative, authentic, beautiful and completely compelling. --James P. Blaylock, World Fantasy Award winner "Bruce McAllister's gorgeous new novel is magical realism at its very best. I loved it. --Terri Windling, Bram Stoker Award winner and co-editor of the The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series "In our early years we all believe and trust in endless possibilities. Most of us soon leave this realm, though some of us return from time to time. If we call it merely 'imagination, ' we don't reach the truly magical. The Village Sang to the Sea: A Memoir of Magic got me there. It's a delight." --Ron Arias, National Book Award nominee and author of The Road to Tamazunchale

A young American in Mexico discovers his family’s past—and a present-day danger—in this “elegant, exquisite” novel of suspense (Elle). Eric is a newly minted historian just out of graduate school, plagued by self-doubt over both his past choices and his future options. With no clear direction, he follows his lover, Em, when she travels to the Yucatan for her scientific research, but ends up alone in this foreign place. And so he pursues his own private quest, tracing his family’s history to a Mexican ghost town, where, a hundred years earlier, young Cornish miners—among them Eric’s grandparents—toiled to the death. Now, in place of the Cornish workers, the native Huichol Indians suffer the cruelty of the mines. When he inquires into their lives, Eric provokes the ire of their self-appointed savior, Dona Vera. Known as the “Queen of the Sierra,” Dona Vera is the widow of a mining baron who has dedicated her fortune to preserving the Huichol culture. But her formidable presence belies a dubious past. The zigzag paths of these characters converge on the Day of the Dead, bringing together past and present in a moment of powerful epiphany. Haunting and atmospheric, with splashes of exuberant color and darker violence, The Zigzag Way is “a beautifully rendered combination of history, folklore, and modern fiction” (Entertainment Weekly), from a Booker Prize finalist. “Long before Jhumpa Lahiri . . . long before Monica Ali . . . another novelist was offering us exquisitely detailed portraits of bodies in transit [and] classes in the art of sly and sensuous fiction . . . Anita Desai was a global, migrant writer before such a thing was fashionable.” —Time “Almost unbearably suspenseful.” —The Boston Globe “A hypnotic journey.” —San Jose Mercury News

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.