Books in translation...

The silence of the sea / Yrsa Sigurðardóttir ; translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
A luxury yacht arrives in Reykjavik harbour with nobody on board. What has happened to the crew, and to the family who were on board when it left Lisbon?

Thora Gudmundsdottir is hired by the young father's parents to investigate, and is soon drawn deeper into the mystery. What should she make of the rumours saying that the vessel was cursed, especially given that when she boards the yacht she thinks she sees one of the missing twins? Where is Karitas, the glamorous young wife of the yacht's former owner? And whose is the body that has washed up further along the shore?

The most chilling novel yet from Yrsa Sigurdardottír, an international bestseller at the height of her powers.


The rainbow troops / Andrea Hirata ; translated from the Indonesian by Angie Kilbane
Ikal is a student at Muhammadiyah Elementary, on the Indonesian island of Belitong, where graduating from sixth grade is considered a major achievement. His school is under constant threat of closure. In fact, Ikal and his friends - a group called The Rainbow Troops - face threats from every angle: pessimistic, corrupt government officials; greedy corporations hardly distinguishable from the colonialism they've replaced; deepening poverty and crumbling infrastructure; and their own faltering self-confidence. But in the form of two extraordinary teachers, they also have hope, and Ikal's education is an uplifting one, in and out of the classroom.

You will cheer for Ikal and his friends as they defy the town's powerful tin miners. Meet his first love - a hand with half-moon fingernails that passes him the chalk his teacher sent him to buy. You will roar in support of Lintang, the class's barefoot maths genius, as he bests the rich company children in an academic challenge.


The yellow eyes of crocodiles / Katherine Pancol ; translated from the French by William Rodarmor and Helen Dickinson

This novel is the story of a lie. But it is also a story of laughter and tears, of life itself.
When her chronically unemployed husband runs off to start a crocodile farm in Kenya with his mistress, Josephine Cortes is left in an unhappy state of affairs. The mother of two is forced to make ends meet on her meagre salary as a medieval history scholar.
Meanwhile, Josephine's charismatic sister Iris seems to have it all - a wealthy husband, gorgeous looks, and a tres chic Paris address-but secretly she dreams of bringing meaning back into her life.
And then a dinner party changes the sisters' destinies.
Iris is seated next to a famous book publisher to whom she spins a tale of the 12th century romance she's writing. When Iris charms him into offering her a lucrative deal for her book, she offers her sister a deal of her own: Josephine will write the novel and pocket all the proceeds, but the book will be published under Iris's name.

Mona / Dan Sehlberg ; translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles
Eric Söderqvist, professor of computer science at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has invented Mind Surf, a thought-control system that allows people with disabilities to browse the web. Meanwhile, Lebanese Samir Mustaf, a former MIT professor whose daughter Mona was killed by an Israeli cluster bomb five years earlier, has just finished creating the most sophisticated computer virus the world has ever seen, for the purpose of launching a devastating cyber attack against Israel's financial system. When Eric's wife, Hanna, falls into a coma — struck by an aggressive and previously unknown virus, after having tested her husband's invention — the doctors are at a loss. Although everyone around him thinks he's gone mad, Eric becomes convinced that his wife has been infected by a powerful computer virus known as Mona, and that the only way he can save her life is by tracking down its creator. What follows is a compelling and high-octane pursuit. Conceptually breathtaking and emotionally powerful, Mona is a story about the good — and the evil — that people are prepared to do in order to save or avenge the ones they love.

Diary of the fall / Michel Laub ; translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

'I often dreamed about the moment of the fall, a silence that lasted a second, possibly two, a room full of sixty people and no one making a sound, as if everyone were waiting for my classmate to cry out ... but he lay on the ground with his eyes closed' A schoolboy prank goes horribly wrong, and a thirteen-year-old boy is left injured. Years later, one of the classmates relives the episode as he tries to come to terms with his demons. Diary of the Fall is the story of three generations: a man examining the mistakes of his past, and his struggle for forgiveness; a father with Alzheimer's, for whom recording every memory has become an obsession; and a grandfather who survived Auschwitz, filling notebook after notebook with the false memories of someone desperate to forget. Beautiful and brave, Michel Laub's novel asks the most basic u and yet most complex u questions about history and identity, exploring what stories we choose to tell about ourselves and how we become the people we are.


Cinderella girl / Carin Gerhardsen- Translated from the Swedish
Three-year-old Hanna wakes up to find she has been abandoned. Her family is gone. The house is locked. She is trapped. Meanwhile, a teenage girl has been found murdered aboard the Cinderella, a cruise ship which sails between Sweden and Finland. Detective Chief Inspector Conny Sjoberg visits the girl's home to deliver the tragic news. But as he investigates, it becomes chillingly clear that the girl's younger sister is in grave danger - unless the police can trap a vicious killer. And all the while, somewhere in Stockholm, a little girl waits to be found and rescued...

And then came Paulette / Barbara Constantine ; translated from the French by Justin Phipps
The feel-good bestseller that put the smiles back on French faces. When his son’s family move away (with one last argument on their lips), widower Ferdinand is left with only a sadistic kitten for company on a farm that was built for a family.
Just as loneliness starts to bite, he discovers his neighbour Marceline has long been shivering beneath a leaky roof. He welcomes her to his farm, temporarily of course, and also provides a home for her dog, and for Cornelius, her gluttonous donkey.
As each begrudgingly adjusts to the other’s quirks, yet more new arrivals appear. It seems that Ferdinand isn’t the only one who was all alone, and the dusty farm becomes a haven for lost souls of every age to share their sorrows and set about rediscovering their joie de vivre.
But amidst the newfound hustle and bustle, one final uninvited guest threatens to upset the apple cart once and for all…

My brilliant friend. Book one, Childhood, adolescence / Elena Ferrante ; translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
My friendship with Lila began the day we decided to go up the dark stairs that led, step after step, flight after flight, to the door of Don Achille's apartment...I waited to see if Lila would have second thoughts and turn back. I knew what she wanted to do; I had hoped that she would forget about it, but in vain. My Brilliant Friend is a ravishing, wonderfully written novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. The two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, sometimes to their own detriment, as each discovers more about who she is and suffers or delights in the throes of their intense friendship. There is a piercing honesty about Ferrante's prose that makes My Brilliant Friend a compulsively readable portrait of two young women, and also the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country.

Frog by Mo Yan; translated from the original Chinese edition by Howard Goldblatt
When famine lifts and the population booms, Gugu becomes the unlikely yet passionate enforcer of China's new family-planning policy. She is unrelenting in her mission, invoking hatred in her wake. In her dramatic fall from deity to demon, she becomes the living incarnation of a reviled social policy violently at odds with deep-rooted cultural values. As China moves towards the millennium, a new breed of entrepreneur emerges with a perverse interpretation of the decades-old law. Tadpole finds himself again caught up in the one-child policy and its unpredictable repercussions on the human price of capital.


Ripper : a novel / Isabel Allende ; translated from the Spanish by Oliver Brock and Frank Wynne
The Jackson women, Indiana and Amanda, have always had each other. Yet, while their bond is strong, mother and daughter are as different as night and day. Indiana, a beautiful holistic healer, is a free-spirited bohemian. Long divorced from Amanda's father, she's reluctant to settle down with either of the men who want her - Alan, the wealthy scion of one of San Francisco's elite families, and Ryan, an enigmatic, scarred former Navy SEAL. Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world. When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda plunges into her own investigation, discovering, before the police do, that the deaths may be connected. But the case becomes all too personal when Indiana suddenly vanishes. Could her mother's disappearance be linked to the serial killer? Now, with her mother's life on the line, the young detective must solve the most complex mystery she's ever faced before it's too late.