Abrams: 1969 books

In a small incense shop in modern Tokyo, amid the manic consumerism of cartoon-colored Shibuya youth culture, incense is still made in the ancient way—slowly ground by hand and matured over time. Above the shop, a young woman sits behind a painted screen, listening to men unburden themselves about...

An “entertaining and thought provoking” WWII-era novel of love, war, and sports, told with “a superb sense of character and period” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).   At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, American swimmer Sydney Stringfellow finds herself falling in love with Horst Gerhardt, a...

On March 11, 1185, in the old Anglican city of York, the Jews of the city were brutally massacred by their townsmen. As legend has it, God blessed the only survivor of this medieval pogrom, Rabbi Yom Tov Levy, as one of the Lamed-Vov, the thirty-six Just Men of Jewish tradition, a blessing which extended...

Filled with intrigue, surprises, and the author’s original illustrations, this novel skillfully weaves history with a personal story full of heartache and family tensions that will entice and enthrall readers.   When Talibah and her younger brother, Adom, accompany their father to...

Watch the Netflix original series based on the books starting September 4, 2016!   It’s frogs versus scorpions in this new series by professional football player Trevor Pryce. For years, the frogs of the Amphibilands have lived in safety—protected by an elite group of poisonous frogs named...

Kiki, the son of a twice-ex-president, has inherited his father's thirst for power and the presidency. But to become president of Tinieblas takes a Machiavellian intelligence, for one must outwit not only political foes but the strong American interests. An insightful, furious, and funny depiction...

  Renowned literary great Eva Ibbotson delivers a final novel in her classic, much-loved style. A previously unpublished work from this favorite author, The Abominables follows a family of yetis who are forced, by tourism, to leave their home in the Himalayas and make their way across Europe...

On the train, his fellow passengers are impressed with how polite and grown-up Emil is, and the man in the bowler hat offers him some chocolate—but Emil keeps checking his coat pocket, where he’s pinned the money that he is taking to his grandmother. Soon, though, Emil finds himself getting sleepy...

Mark Helprin’s powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find...

Just a teenager, Joseph becomes determined to protect his community from the killer, but he is powerless in preventing more murders-and no one is ever caught. Ten years later one of his neighbors is found hanging from a rope, surrounded by belongings of the dead girls; the killings cease, and the...

Jimmy Burns is an expatriate American living in Mexico who has an uncommonly astute eye for the absurd little details that comprise your average American. For a time, Jimmy spent his days unearthing pre-Colombian artifacts. Now he makes a living doing small trucking jobs and helping out with the occasional...

In this vividly fashioned debut, Rachel Halliburton draws from the sordid details of a genuine scandal that deceived the British Royal Academy to deliver a stirring tale on the elusive goal of achieving artistic renown.It is 1797 and in Georgian London, nothing is certain anymore: the future of the...

Daniel McEvoy has a problem. Well, really, he has several, but for this Irish ex-pat bouncer at a seedy, small-time casino the fact that his girlfriend was just murdered in the parking lot is uppermost in his mind. That is until lots of people around him start dying, and not of natural causes. Suddenly...

At the Iremonger family offices in the aptly named borough of Foulsham, London's great repository of filth, Grandfather Umbitt Iremonger has found a way to make objects assume the shapes of people, and how to turn people into objects. Clod, whom he sees as a threat, has been turned into a gold coin...