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The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers—even for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed, leaving them with more questions than answers.

Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Tatinelly’s daughter, Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line. Determined to save what’s left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, the four descendants travel to Ecuador—to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked backed.

Alternating between Orquídea’s past and her descendants’ present, The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina is an enchanting novel about what we knowingly and unknowingly inherit from our ancestors, the ties that bind, and reclaiming your power.

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible.

But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

West From what she could see he had two guns, a hatchet, a knife, his rolled blanket, the big tin chest, various bags and bundles, one of which, she supposed, contained her mother's things. "How far must you go?" "That depends." "On where they are?" "Yes." "So how far? A thousand miles? More than a thousand miles?" "More than a thousand miles, I think so, Bess, yes." Bellman's daughter was twirling a loose thread that hung down from his blanket, which until this morning had lain upon his bed. She looked up at him. "And then the same back." "The same back, yes." She was quiet a moment, and there was a serious, effortful look about her, as if she was trying to imagine a journey of such magnitude. "That's a long way." "Yes, it is." "But worth it if you find them." "I think so, Bess. Yes." He saw her looking at his bundles and his bags and the big tin chest, and wondered if she was thinking about Elsie's things. He hadn't meant her to see him packing them. She was drawing a circle in the muddy ground with the toe of her boot. "So how long will you be gone? A month? More than a month?" Bellman shook his head and took her hand. "Oh, Bess, yes, more than a month. A year at least. Maybe two." Bess nodded. Her eyes smarted. This was much longer than she'd expected, much longer than she'd hoped. "In two years I will be twelve." "Twelve, yes." He lifted her up then and kissed her forehead and told her goodbye, and in another moment he was aloft on his horse in his brown wool coat and his high black hat, and then he was off down the stony track that led away from the house, already heading in a westerly direction. "Look you long and hard, Bess, at the departing figure of your father," said her aunt Julie from the porch in a loud voice like a proclamation. "Regard him, Bess, this person, this fool, my brother, John Cyrus Bellman, for you will not clap eyes upon a greater one. From today I am numbering him among the lost and the mad. Do not expect that you will see him again, and do not wave, it will only encourage him and make him think he deserves your good wishes. Come inside now, child, close the door, and forget him." For a long time Bess stood, ignoring the words of her aunt Julie, watching her father ride away. In her opinion he did not resemble any kind of fool. In her opinion he looked grand and purposeful and brave. In her opinion he looked intelligent and romantic and adventurous. He looked like someone with a mission that made him different from other people, and for as long as he was gone she would hold this picture of him in her mind: up there on his horse with his bags and his bundles and his weapons--up there in his long coat and his stovepipe hat, heading off into the west. She did not ever doubt that she would see him again

Le destin de Tillmann Ostergrimm, quinze ans, bascule un jour de Carnaval : soudain, il s'élève dans les airs... Cet extravagant pouvoir va causer son malheur ; le voilà bientôt kidnappé et contraint de se produire chaque soir dans le cirque de l'ignoble Draken. Avec ses amis Lucia, la plus petite femme du monde, le colosse Mangetout et Dimitri, le calculateur prodige, Tillmann a bien l'intention de s'évader.. Humour, poésie et cirque ambulant... Un texte généreux, peuplé de personnages cocasses et émouvants.

Gros plan sur le petit Harvey, pour qui le printemps est à jamais synonyme de perte. C’est à cette saison en effet que son monde a basculé, quand en rentrant à la maison, un soir, après avoir joué dans les rigoles avec ses amis et son frère Cantin, il a vu son père sortir les pieds devant, son corps inerte emporté par deux brancardiers. Récit tout simple d’une mort et de son impact sur l’imaginaire d’un enfant, Harvey comporte aussi des éléments de fantastique intégrés avec beaucoup de finesse, auxquels contribue le dessin aux dominantes de beige et de prune, tantôt collé au réel, tantôt capable de dire l’émotion pure. Une histoire belle à pleurer, dont La Pastèque a fait un objet d’exception [résumé de l'éditeur]

Parce qu’un viol a fondé leur lignée, les Scorta sont nés dans l’opprobre. A Montepuccio, leur petit village d’Italie du sud, ils vivent pauvrement, et ne mourront pas riches. Mais ils ont fait vœu de se transmettre, de génération en génération, le peu que la vie leur laisserait en héritage. Et en dehors du modeste bureau de tabac familial, créé avec ce qu’ils appellent “l’argent de New York”, leur richesse est aussi immatérielle qu’une expérience, un souvenir, une parcelle de sagesse, une étincelle de joie. Ou encore un secret. Comme celui que la vieille Carmela – dont la voix se noue ici à la chronique objective des événements – confie à son contemporain, l’ancien curé de Montepuccio, par crainte que les mots ne viennent très vite à lui manquer.
Roman solaire, profondément humaniste, le nouveau livre de Laurent Gaudé met en scène, de 1870 à nos jours, l’existence de cette famille des Pouilles à laquelle chaque génération, chaque individualité, tente d’apporter, au gré de son propre destin, la fierté d’être un Scorta, et la révélation du bonheur. [résumé de l'éditeur]

Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues. [editor summary]