In a Paris apartment building, the lives of 54-year-old concierge Reneé Michel and extremely bright, suicidal 12-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu.

Private investigator Aimée Leduc's godfather becomes the prime suspect when his girlfriend is strangled in her garden.  To vindicate him, Aimée must identify the real killer. Eleventh in a series set in Paris.

After the Arab militia attacks his village, Valentino Achak Deng flees with other “Lost Boys” of Sudan, taking refuge first in camps, then in America, which poses fresh challenges.

Mariam and Leila, women of different generations in Afghanistan, form a powerful friendship while struggling with the shared burden of marriage to Rasheed, an abusive older man.

Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist with a ruined career, and Lisbeth Salander, a tough, tattooed hacker, investigate a nearly 40-year-old mystery, the disappearance of a young woman with a wealthy but troubled family. First in a trilogy set in Sweden.

When a retired teacher who was helping abused women dies in her apartment, Commissario Guido Brunetti suspects murder. Twentieth in a series set in Venice.

Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi, who run the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, probe the murder of two cows. Twelfth in a series set in Botswana.

In 1799, Jacob de Zoet, a clerk, arrives at an outpost of the Dutch East Indies Company in Japan. His outspokenness about traders' dishonesty soon gets him in trouble, and his romantic hopes fade when the woman he loves, a Japanese midwife, is sold into service at a mysterious nunnery.

As Europe teeters on the brink of World War II, a young Jew, Andras Lévi, travels from Hungary to Paris, where he studies architecture and embarks on a passionate romance with Klara, a Hungarian ballet instructor.

After dying for love, Peony, a young woman of 17th-century China, finds peace as a “hungry ghost” by inhabiting the spirits of her beloved’s wives, helping them to finish a work that she started, a meditation on a Chinese opera.

Twin brothers, born in 1954 of a secret love between an Indian nun and a British surgeon, grow up amid political tumult in Ethiopia, arriving at a shared passion for medicine and, disastrously, for the same woman.

In Australia at the beginning of World War II, an English aristocrat inherits a cattle station. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a stock-man to drive 2,000 cattle across hundreds of miles, only to face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese.

Two women discover their vocations--Julia Child, in Paris in 1949, through cooking lessons, and Julie Powell, in Manhattan in 2002, through cooking all the recipes in Child’s first book and blogging about it.

Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums, is about to win India's version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" when police arrest him on suspicion of cheating. Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells his life story, each episode revealing the answer to one of the show's questions.

In 1970s Afghanistan, a childhood friendship falls apart when Amir betrays Hassan. Years later, after war has ravaged the country and Amir has escaped to America, Amir has a chance to redeem his error.

Upon unearthing a blood-red violin in contemporary Canada, an appraiser uncovers its journey--how it changed hands and the lives of all who touched it, in 17th-century Italy, 18th-century Austria, 19th-century England, and Communist China.

Two American women, one engaged to be married and the other sexually flirtatious, both become romantically involved with a painter while on vacation in Barcelona, only to find they have competition in the form of the painter's ex-wife.

A children's-rights advocate tells how, as a 12-year-old in Sierra Leone, he was recruited by the national army and began a several-year stint as a killer.

Bryson humorously highlights beauties, dangers, and oddities of Australia.

Cooper remembers her childhood in a mansion by the sea in Liberia, her family’s flight after the coup d'état in 1980, and her later reunion with a foster sister left behind.

Gilbert tells how, after suffering a midlife crisis and divorce, she went on a year-long journey to Italy, India, and Indonesia, seeking pleasure, enlightenment, and balance.

Kidder follows Dr. Paul Farmer in his quest to bring medical care to the poor, mainly in Haiti but also in Cuba, Peru, and Russia.

Two actors recount their three-month, 20,000-mile motorbike journey from London to New York, crossing three continents.

Nafisi's memoir focuses on a private seminar in classics that she gave seven women in Iran in the
1990s.

The former Baltimore Sun journalist recounts adventures in various foreign places, including Scotland, where she attended Border-collie training, Kyoto, where she met geishas, and England, where she attended a Jane Austen convention.

Vowell examines Hawaii's history, tracing the impact of missionaries who sought to make the island paradise a version of New England.