Margaret Jull Costa

"On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, understandably, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, funeral directors, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration - flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home - families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance...

An illustrated fable on dreaming the impossible. The hero is a man who asks a king for a boat to search for an unknown island. How can you search for something unknown? Well, it turns out you can, provided you are willing to follow your dreams, and what is more your dreams may come true. By the author of The Stone Raft.

"A woman around her thirties begins to question the routine and predictability of her days. In everybody's eyes, she has a perfect life: a solid and stable marriage, a loving husband, sweet and well-behaved children and a job as a journalist she can't complain about. However, she can no longer bear the necessary effort to fake happiness when all she feels in life is an enormous apathy. All that changes when she encounters an ex-boyfriend from her...

At the Cannes Film Festival, a successful, driven entrepreneur goes to the darkest lengths to reclaim a lost love. Captured in all their crassness are producers, actors, aspiring starlets, supermodels, and notorious fashionistas, whose lives and actions hold sway over millions.

"A previously unpublished novel by a literary master, Skylight tells the intertwined stories of the residents of a faded apartment building in 1940s Lisbon. Silvestre and Mariana, a happily married elderly couple, take in a young nomad, Abel, and soon discover their many differences. Adriana loves Beethoven more than any man, but her budding sexuality brings new feelings to the surface. Carmen left Galicia to marry humble Emilio, but hates Lisbon...

"The enchanting tale of an elephant, his keeper, and their journey through sixteenth-century Europe, based on a true story." (from the back cover).

With beautifully crafted language and imagery (conveyed here in Costa's translation), the late Nobel Prize winner Saramago (19222010) writes of his formative years in Lisbon and offers a bittersweet tribute to Azinhaga, the small Portuguese town where he was born and spent summers with his grandparents.--"Library Journal."

Traces the life of Athena, an abandoned daughter of a Transylvania gypsy, in a tale told from the viewpoints of such characters as her adoptive journalist mother, a teacher of calligraphy, and an actress.

Informed that his clay pots and jugs are no longer needed, elderly potter Cipriano applies his craft to the making of ceramic dolls, but his family's subsequent successes are compromised by a terrible discovery.