Ballantine reader's circle

An outsider in eighteenth-century London, Jewish pugilist and hired thug Benjamin Weaver prowls the city's mean streets in the service of England's gentry tracking down debtors and thieves.

Dr. Liam Campbell, desperate to reach his wife Mikaela after an accident that has left her in a lingering coma, contacts her ex-husband, movie star Julian True, and then must deal with the consequences when she wakes up with retrograde amnesia, remembering nothing of the past fifteen years, including her marriage and children with Liam.

"Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman--Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, author of the classic memoir Out of Africa. Brought to Kenya from England as a...

Two families awaiting the arrival of their adopted infant daughters from Korea meet at the airport. The families lives become interwined after the Donaldsons, a young American couple invite the Yazdan's, Maryam, her son and his Iranian American wife to an arrival party, which becomes an annual event. Maryam, who came to this country thirty-five years earlier, feels her values threatened when she is courted by a newly widowed Donaldson. A penetrating...

Virginia Miner, an unmarried tenured professor, is an Anglophile on leave to research a book. Fred Turner, a teacher at the same university, is recently separated, flat broke and miserable in this city where the rain never seems to end. The separate paths of these two lonely and naive innocents abroad lead them to strikingly similar destinations of newfound passion ... and unexpected love.

Abandoned by her mother as a child, Ana is raised by her extended family on the lawless Wai'anae Coast of O'ahu. Against the odds, she becomes a physician. While tending victims of Hurricane 'Iniki on the neighbouring island of Kaua'i, she meets Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker with a violent and tragic past who can confront reality only through his unique prism of lies. Yet he is dedicated to recording the ecological horrors in his motherland and across...

In this exquisite new novel by bestselling writer Elizabeth Berg, a young woman falls in love — and learns how sorrow can lead to an understanding of joy.
Katie, the narrator, has relocated to Missouri with her distant, occasionally abusive father, and she feels very much alone: her much-loved mother is dead; her new school is unaccepting of her; and her only friends fall far short of being ideal companions. When she accidentally falls through...

Ave Maria faces unexpected tests of her faith, conscience, and understanding as her daughter confronts adulthood, her friends in Big Stone Gap deal with major life changes of their own, and her husband sets out to reinvent his life.

Good news! Fannie's back in town--and the town is among the leading characters in her new novel. Along with Neighbor Dorothy, the lady with the smile in her voice, whose daily radio broadcasts keep us delightfully informed on all the local news, we also meet Bobby, her ten-year-old son, destined to live a thousand lives, most of them in his imagination; Norma and Macky Warren and their ninety-eight-year-old Aunt Elner; the oddly sexy and charismatic...

Marrying quickly during World War II after falling in love at first sight, a mismatched couple discovers that their different personalities and approaches to life are taking a toll on their relationship and their family.