Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries—and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos. This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the Twilight series—with an extra serving of historical realism.

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In a hospital bed, small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium. Before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a travelling gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier.

Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware he's been hired more for his blood than his investigative skills. Still, he's surprised by the intense hostility he encounters from the Jankos, who have been touched by tragedy—they're either cursed or hiding a terrible secret. Ray can't help but suspect that this mystery in their past is connected to Rose's disappearance.

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There is no problem that a library card can't solve.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from—one another, their small hometown, and themselves—might offer more than they ever expected.

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Now in paperback, the highly anticipated novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

Late one night, as she paces the hallways of her family's rambling lakeside house, she discovers, locked in a window seat, a collection of objects that first appear to be useless curiosities, but soon reveal a deeper and more complex family past.

As Lucy discovers and explores the traces of her lineage—from an heirloom tapestry and dusty political tracts to a web of allusions depicted in stained-glass windows throughout upstate New York—the family story she has always known is shattered, Lucy's quest for the truth reconfigures her family's history, links her to a unique slice of the suffragette movement, and yields dramatic insights that embolden her to live freely.

With surprises at every turn, brimming with vibrant detail, The Lake of Dreams is an arresting saga in which every element emerges as a carefully place piece of the puzzle that's sure to enthrall the millions of readers who loved The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

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Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries—and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos. This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the Twilight series—with an extra serving of historical realism.

View this novel on Goodreads.

In a hospital bed, small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium. Before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a travelling gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier.

Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware he's been hired more for his blood than his investigative skills. Still, he's surprised by the intense hostility he encounters from the Jankos, who have been touched by tragedy—they're either cursed or hiding a terrible secret. Ray can't help but suspect that this mystery in their past is connected to Rose's disappearance.

View this novel on Goodreads.

Simply browse our current Exclusive Reads below, then fill out the form to to indicate what books you'd like the chance to win.

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—Jackie Lester, blogger at The Novel Nation

In the epic storytelling tradition of Amy Tan and Jiang Rong comes Gold Mountain Blues, a rich saga chronicling the lives of five generations of a Chinese family.

In 1879, 16-year-old Fong Tak-Fat boards a ship to Canada determined to make a life for himself and support his family back home. He will blast rocks for the Pacific Railway, launder linens for his countrymen, and save every penny he makes to reunite his family—because his heart remains in China. Spanning from the 1860s to the present day, Gold Mountain Blues relates the struggles and sacrifices of the labourers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway and who laid the groundwork for the evolution of the modern Chinese-Canadian identity. A novel about family, hope and sacrifice, Gold Mountain Blues is a marvellous saga from a remarkable new Canadian voice.

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On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war-game champion, Udo Berger, returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals—the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado—and to the darker side of life in a resort town.

Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño's papers after his death, The Third Reich is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own—and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces The Savage Detectives and 2666.

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At a crossroads in her life, Lucy Jarrett returns home from Japan, only to find herself haunted by her father's unresolved death a decade ago. As Lucy discovers and explores the traces of her lineage, the family story she has always known is shattered, Lucy's quest for the truth reconfigures her family's history, links her to a unique slice of the suffragette movement, and yields dramatic insights that embolden her to live freely.

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Part epic adventure, part romance and part true-crime thriller, Coppermine is a dramatic, compelling, character-driven story set in 1917 in the extremes of Canada's far north and the boom town of Edmonton.

The story begins when two Catholic priests disappear in the remote Arctic region known as the Coppermine. North-West Mounted Police officer Jack Creed and Angituk McAndrew, a young Copper Inuit interpreter, are sent on a year-long odyssey to investigate the fate of the lost missionaries. On the banks of the Coppermine River, a few miles from the Arctic Ocean, they discover their mutilated remains.

Two Inuit hunters are tracked and apprehended, and the four begin the arduous journey to Edmonton for the trial. The crowded, energetic city is a strange new world for the Inuit, and through their impressions as told to the press they become celebrities, while inside the courtroom the bizarre story of the killing of the priests unfolds.

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When his son dies of tuberculosis, and he insists on performing the funeral rites of his mother's people, George provokes the fury of the missionaries and the Indian Agents, and sets in motion a chain of events that forces him to defend what is most important to him; not only with blade and rifle in the remote fastness of the northern British Colombia coast, but also with his wits and precarious dignity in a Vancouver courtroom.

Masterful, unforgettable, and utterly gripping, The Cannibal Spirit broods with nostalgia for a passing world and pounds with relentless tension. Based on the life of the real historical figure George Hunt, this astonishing evocation of the fog-wrapped forests of the northwest coast, and the heedless bustle of the arrival of modernity in the midst of an older, beleaguered way of life, tells the story of the grappling of two civilizations in the life of one man.

View this novel on Goodreads.

In 1879, 16-year-old Fong Tak-Fat boards a ship to Canada determined to make a life for himself and support his family back home. He will blast rocks for the Pacific Railway, launder linens for his countrymen, and save every penny he makes to reunite his family—because his heart remains in China.

Spanning from the 1860s to the present day, Gold Mountain Blues relates the struggles and sacrifices of the labourers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway and who laid the groundwork for the evolution of the modern Chinese-Canadian identity. A novel about family, hope and sacrifice, Gold Mountain Blues is a marvellous saga from a remarkable new Canadian voice.

Find this novel on Goodreads.

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Longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. From the author of The Secret Scripture comes a magnificent new novel that is the story of the twentieth century in America.

What makes a marriage? Does marriage mean the end of fairy-tale romance? It might if your husband is the writer Mr. Fox, who does devilish things to the heroines of his stories. His wife, Daphne, is unable to change his ways, but when his imaginary muse—the gorgeously offbeat Mary Foxe—conjures herself one sunny afternoon and confronts him about his dark denouements, things take an unexpected turn.

Mary challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising, and their romances put our villainous writer through his paces, exploring every facet of love. Full of delicious period detail, this is a love story like no other, and it reaches a new pitch when Daphne becomes suspicious that her husband is having an affair.

Mr. Fox is a magical book, endlessly inventive, as witty and charming as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another.

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Half Inuit and half outsider, Edie Kiglatuk is the best guide in her corner of the Arctic. But as a woman, she gets only grudging respect from the elders who ruled her isolated community on Ellesmere Island. When a man is shot and killed while out on an "authentic" Arctic adventure under her watch, the murder attracts the attention of police sergeant Derek Palliser.

As Edie sets out to discover what those tourists were really after, she is shocked by the suicide of someone very close to her. Though these events are seemingly unrelated, Edie's Inuit hunter sensibility tells her otherwise. With or without Derek's help, she is determined to find the key to this connection—a search that takes her beyond her small village, and into the far reaches of the tundra.

White Heat is a stunning debut novel set in an utterly foreign culture amid an unforgiving landscape of ice and rock, of spirit ancestors and never-rotting bones. A suspense-filled adventure story that will captivate fans of Henning Mankell's bestselling mysteries, this book marks the start of an exciting new series.

What makes a marriage? Does marriage mean the end of fairy-tale romance? It might if your husband is the writer Mr. Fox, who does devilish things to the heroines of his stories. His wife, Daphne, is unable to change his ways, but when his imaginary muse—the gorgeously offbeat Mary Foxe—conjures herself one sunny afternoon and confronts him about his dark denouements, things take an unexpected turn.

Mary challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising, and their romances put our villainous writer through his paces, exploring every facet of love. Full of delicious period detail, this is a love story like no other, and it reaches a new pitch when Daphne becomes suspicious that her husband is having an affair.

Mr. Fox is a magical book, endlessly inventive, as witty and charming as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another.

Simply browse our current Exclusive Reads below, then fill out the form to to indicate what books you'd like the chance to win.

Don't forget to sign up for the Penguin Book Club newsletter. You'll be notified monthly about new Exclusive Reads, as well as exclusive content and contests.

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A teenage summer submerged in Perry Mason paperbacks was what propelled D.J. (Dorothy) into a life-long love of suspense fiction.

Counting Daphne du Maurier, Rawi Hage, Emily Bronte, and Jean le Carré as her great literary loves, D.J. longed to write her own novel. Inspired by Mesopotamian myths, she decided to write a historical thriller that tied ancient history to the looting of artifacts in the Middle East. And so The Witch of Babylon was born!

D.J. is currently working on book two in the Babylon Trilogy. Though she's based in Toronto, where she enjoys attending films, museums, and live music (especially rock/blues guitar!), she also enjoys the sunsets and wild beauty of Lake Huron's shores in the summer.

Learn more about D.J. at BabylonTrilogy.ca.

Here’s what Canadian book bloggers think about D.J. McIntosh's new novel:

Just a Lil Lost June 13
The Literary Word June 14
A Bookworm's World June 15
My Ever Expanding Library June 16
Serendipitous Readings June 17
Let's Book It June 20 & June 21
Evie Bookish June 22
Lost for Words June 23
Snowdrop Dreams of Books June 24

Laure Beausejour has grown up in a dormitory in Paris surrounded by prostitutes, the insane, and other forgotten women. She dreams with her best friend, Madeleine, of using her needlework skills to become a seamstress and one day marry a nobleman.

But in 1669, Laure is sent across the Atlantic to New France with Madeleine as Filles du roi. The girls know little of the place they are being sent to, except for stories of ferocious winters and Indians who eat the hearts of French priests. To be banished to Canada is a punishment worse than death.

From the moment she arrives in Ville-Marie (Montreal) Laure is expected to marry and produce children with a brutish French soldier who himself can barely survive the harsh conditions of his forest cabin. But through her clandestine relationship with Deskaheh, an allied Iroquois, Laure finds a sense of the possibilities in this New World.

“a fully imagined but deeply grounded novel”
—John Barber, The Globe and Mail

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New in paperback. Told in the irresistibly wilful and intimate voice of Miss July, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house.

Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness her strange death leaves behind. Until Mona.

When Nuri first sees Mona, the rest of the world vanishes. But it is Nuri's father with whom Mona falls in love and whom she will eventually marry. Their happiness consumes Nuri to the point at which he longs to get his father out of the way. However, Nuri will soon regret what he wished for. As the world he shares with his stepmother is shattered by events beyond their control, they both begin to realize how little they really knew about the man they loved.

In a delicately wrought and beautifully tender voice, Hisham Matar's extraordinary new novel asks, when a loved one disappears how does his or her absence shape the lives of those who are left?

Jennifer’s Story “ ... the book is wonderfully written and kept me captivated to the end.”
Just a Lil’ Lost
Bibliomama2 “... so affectingly permeated with loss and yearning”
In the Next Room
Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea “The storyline flows effortlessly, it's light but still full of substance...”
To come: a review from The Literary Word

Hisham Matar will be in Toronto for Luminato this June! Matar will be involved in the following events: Arabic Poetry and RBC Presents: The New Yorker at Luminato.

Available in paperback on June 7. Daniel has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Sophia (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together—and he remembers it all. For all the times that he and Sophia have been connected throughout history, they have also been torn painfully, fatally, apart.

But just when Sophia (now "Lucy" in the present) finally awakens to the secret of their shared past, the mysterious force that has always separated them reappears. Ultimately, they must come to understand what stands in the way of their love if they are ever to spend a lifetime together.

Simply browse our current Exclusive Reads below, then fill out the form to to indicate what books you'd like the chance to win.

Don't forget to sign up for the Penguin Book Club newsletter. You'll be notified monthly about new Exclusive Reads, as well as exclusive content and contests.

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Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. A deeply moving novel, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play Lysistrata—the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war—a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. Or, at least, over the women.

One by one throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don't really understand. As the women worry over their loss of passion, and the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and above all, confused, both sides are forced to look at their shared history, and at their sexual selves in a new light. 

As she did to such acclaim with the New York Times bestseller The Ten-Year Nap, Wolitzer tackles an issue that has deep ramifications for women's lives, in a way that makes it funny, riveting, and totally fresh—allowing us to see our own lives through her insightful lens.

The Uncoupling Blog Tour:

Read these five fantastic takes on this provocative subject:
Orange Hero Mama
A Bookworm's World
Jacob's Beloved
In the Next Room
The Literary Word

Meg Wolitzer will be in Toronto on May 4 for a reading at Harbourfront! Learn more, and buy tickets, here.

The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her "Marguerite."

Resourceful and mischievous, July soon becomes indispensable to her mistress. Together they live through the bloody Baptist War and the violent and chaotic end of slavery.

It is the arrival of a young English overseer, Robert Goodwin, that will dramatically change life in the great house for both July and her mistress. Prompted and provoked by her son's persistent questioning, July's heartache and resilience are gradually revealed in this extraordinarily powerful story of slavery, revolution, freedom, and love.

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