Deschutes Public Library

The sprawling, swampy, cacophonous city of Lagos, Nigeria provides the backdrop to the story of Elvis hoping to make his way out of the ghetto.

Sibylla's life of anonymity as a homeless woman in Stockholm is shattered when a businessman dies after she spends the night with him, forcing her to turn to her privileged past for help.

Brokenhearted, still mourning the loss of her husband, Heidi travels with her son Abbott and her niece Charlotte to spend the summer repairing their family home in a small village in the south of France. There, thousands of miles from home, Charlotte makes a shocking confession, and Heidi learns the truth about her mother's "lost summer."

Set in modern-day Kabul, this big-hearted novel told through the eyes of a 11-year-old boy is infused with crackling wit capturing the hope and humanity of the Afghan people and the foreigners who live among them.

River levels are high in Portland when a woman walking her dog comes across the skeleton of a young black man, murdered over fifty years ago. Journalist, Susan Ward investigates. Meanwhile, Detective Archie Sheridan and his team have turned their attention to child-killer Ryan Motley, trained by the notorious Gretchen Lowell. The task force must pursue a series of mysterious clues from Gretchen, one of which leads to a Vanport flood survivor, who happens to be the grandfather of a murdered child. Then, when another child is found murdered, Archie's investigation takes on a new urgency.

Chaos prevails when the bubonic plague strikes the Algerian coastal city of Oran. A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.

Miranda and Adam, high school sweethearts now in their late fifties, arrive by chance at the same time in Rome, where they once spent a summer deeply in love, blissfully living together. At an awkward reunion, the two, who parted in an atmosphere of passionate betrayal in the 1960s and haven't seen each other since, are surprised to discover that they may still have something to talk about; they decide that, for these few weeks, they will take daily walks together. As they experience Rome, the pleasures of eye and palate, and the daily drama of the streets, they review their lives (married to others, and with grown children) and gradually explore not just what matters to them now, but what happened to them long ago. Miranda and Adam are masterfully portrayed characters, intent on understanding who they are in relation to who they were. Theirs is a rich and wise story of forgiveness and reckoning.

After losing his job and the respect of his family, Russian avant-garde artist Anatoly Sukhanov confronts his past in a series of dreams that reveals the sacrifices he has made to gain material wealth in twentieth-century Moscow.

The quiet Bangkok family life of American travel-writer Poke Rafferty, wife Rose, and daughter Miaow is threatened when a man from Rose's past forces Poke to uncover the whole truth about his wife's former life in a red-light district.

Psychologist Madeleine LeBlanc has spent her whole career trying to determine the cause of her father's schizophrenia. When her brother, Marc, takes his own life, she embarks on a shocking journey into her family's history fraught with dark secrets, conjured demons and a powerful relative who puts Madeleine's own life and property in peril.

Members of Boston's criminal underground are turning up dead. When Scott Finn learns that one of his clients, Devon Malley, was part of a $300 million artwork heist, he's quickly drawn into the crossfire, and into the renewed hunt for the missing artwork--a hunt that may cost Finn and his colleagues their lives.

Hired by Father Vincent Tyrrell to find Patrick Hutton, a jockey missing for 10 years, Ed Loy quickly finds himself investigating not one but two grisly murders. This dark mystery set in Dublin highlights the tensions between the old and new Ireland.

In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient comes this gripping tale set in war-torn Hong Kong. Rich with intrigue, romance, and betrayal, this wonderfully written, utterly captivating novel dazzles.

"Set in Mexico on the eve of WWII, the story tells of a man in extremis, an alcoholic consul bursting with regret, longing, resentment and remorse, whose climactic moment rapidly approaches..."---Editorial review from www.amazon.com

A hypnotic novel in which an American student's quest to find the greatest living tango singer leads him deep into the labyrinth of Argentina's past. Readers are treated to a captivating tour of the gutters and glories of Buenos Aires.

Volume I of the masterful Cairo Trilogy introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.

Effectively a prequel to McCarry's series of outstanding novels featuring master spy Paul Christopher, this exciting tale spans two periods in Berlin — 1939 during World War II and the Cold War of the 1950s.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of the revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominant doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture die. And Dawit, Hailu's youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement -- a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.

The story of an American food writer in Bejing. When recently widowed Maggie McElroy is called to China to settle a claim against her late husband's estate, she is blindsided by the discovery that he may have led a double life. Since work is all that will keep her sane, her magazine editor assigns her to profile Sam, a half-Chinese American who is the last in a line of gifted chefs tracing back to the imperial palace. As she watches Sam gear up for China's Olympic culinary competition by planning the banquet of a lifetime, she begins to see past the cuisine's artistry to glimpse its coherent expression of Chinese civilization. It is here, amid lessons of tradition, obligation, and human connection that she finds the secret ingredient that may yet heal her heart.

This stirring, lyrical tale of a Jewish family living in Tehran during the last years of the Shah offers readers unique insight into the inner workings of Iranian society in the decade before the Islamic Revolution.

A young forensic anthropologist is sent by an international human rights group to her homeland, Sri Lanka, a country steeped in tradition, to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island.

This classic murder mystery set in eleventh-century Kyoto follows Detective Akitada Sugawara who becomes embroiled in a complex investigation that involves members of his own family.

On his third day in Death Valley, Rick Fallon comes upon a deserted Toyota Camry, and soon thereafter, the almost-dead body of Casey Dunbar. Having rescued her, Fallon soon learns what had driven her to give up on life--and, his own life on hold, he resolves to unravel the twisted and dangerous strands of hers, a quest that leads him to the glitter-dome of Las Vegas.

A young journalist journeys deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, determined to discover the truth about a Pultizer-winning war correspondent.

Through four generations of women, Shafak tells a mischievously witty and daringly dramatic story that is at once a study in compassion, a shrewd novel of ideas, a love song to Istanbul, and a sensuous and whirling satire.

A novel told partly in flashbacks about a girl's search for the Australian she met in Malaya during World War II. "A harrowing, exciting, and in the end very satisfying war romance. A Town Like Alice tells of a young woman who miraculously survived a Japanese "death march" in World War II, and of an Australian soldier, also a prisoner of war, who offered to help her--even at the cost of his life.

An intimate portrait of the beloved poet Elizabeth Bishop and her relationship with her lover, the aristocratic Lota de Macedo Soares, set against the backdrop of sensuous 1950s Rio de Janiero.

In the aftermath of the murder of an anonymous victim, assistant superintendent David Bengu begins his career in Botswana, where his convivial passions and determined methods earn him a local nickname that likens him to a hippopotamus.

Syjuco portrays the history, politics, and arts of his native Philippines in the story of two Filipino authors. When one is murdered, his protégé seeks answers and the whereabouts of a missing manuscript written to expose corruption.

Searching for the truth about his father, Gabriel Santoro discovers the experiences of German immigrants in Colombia during World War II. In this take, morality is ambiguous and as treacherous as the early-1990s Bogotá backdrop.