Everything Fern Cullen knows she's learned from her Mammy -- and none of it's conventional. Taught midwifery at an early age, Fern grows up as Mammy's trusted assistant in a small English village and learns through experience that secrets are precious, men can't be trusted, hippies are filthy and people should generally mind their own business. But when one of Mammy's patients allegedly dies from a potion prescribed to induce abortion, the town's...

"Sara Stridsberg returns with a riveting story from a woman at the margins-her murder, her short but full life, and the world that moves on after she is gone"-- Provided by publisher. They say you die three times. The first time for me was when my heart stopped beating beneath his hands by the lake, and the second was when what was left of me was lowered into the ground in front of Ivan and Raksha at Bromma Church. The third time will be the last...

"Two Bedouin men from Egypt's Western Desert seek to escape poverty through different routes. One-the intellectual, terminally self-doubting, and avowedly autobiographical Hamdi-gets no further than southern Libya's fly-blown oasis of Sabha, while his cousin-the dashing, irrepressible Phantom Raider-makes it to the fleshpots of Milan. The backdrop of this darkly comic and unsentimental story of illegal immigration is a brutal Europe and Muammar Gaddafi's...