After the failed revolutions of 1848, Galicia has been brought under the rule of the Habsburg Empire, and the Zemka family find themselves embroiled in the struggle for Polish independence. This is a history of Eastern Europe told in miniature through the tumultuous saga of one family as they try to reclaim their estate in the decades of violence and political confusion that follow.

In this extraordinary novel, Diane Meur calls upon an unusual narrator: the ancestral house itself—the House of Shadows of the title—which, from behind its unmoving façade, watches the comings and goings of generations of inhabitants. The house is everywhere in the story, hearing and observing everything; it encompasses all the shadows of a past that it knows better than do its occupants. But it envies the mobility of those who reside there, and though the years pass, nothing changes for the house. Like the house, the Zemka women—mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces—are condemned to a certain immobility. At home, they wait for love, passion, and stories of the calamitous events on the horizon. On the threshold of the twentieth century, only one young woman manages to escape from beneath the weight of her family's house and the historical conflagrations to come.
Diane Meur, a Belgian-born writer and translator, has lived in Paris for the past twenty years. She has written several novels and short stories.

In Paris, Montreal, Seville, Berlin and towns large and small, Diane Meur has dreamt—and she has remembered her dreams. In this small volume the author shares her dreams of the years 2008‒10, a time of global upheaval that happened to coincide with upheavals in her own life. As she writes in the preface, "They are not my life, they are not my writing, they are just the dreams I had, remembered, and noted down: all of them, and every part of them, without censure or omission."

Some dreams are humorous: peeling a scorpion like a shrimp and finding it isn't half bad; some are poignant: a tiny doll-like baby encountered in a train; and, as in many dreams, there is much anxiety: old boyfriends encountered again; children in distress; unusual, threatening spaces and people. Though dreamt by the author, Meur's dreams share a common human intimacy—in them we recognize our own innermost thoughts, concerns, desires, and fears. Accompanied by the otherworldly illustrations of collage artist Sunandini Banerjee, Meur's dreams come alive, inspiring our own reveries and becoming part of our nocturnal imaginings.

It is 1936, and Albert B. is one of the first French citizens to join the Fascist party. During the war, he becomes a collaborator. It's only a matter of time before he dons a German uniform himself.

Taking place in the limbo between the moment of Albert's initial "fall" and his inevitable capture, following the Allied invasion of Mainau, The Laurels of Lake Constance is the story not only of Albert himself, but of his daughter, who must endure the paradox of loving a man whose beliefs and allegiances are nothing short of catastrophic. Beautifully translated by novelist Harry Mathews, The Laurels of Lake Constance is a profoundly moving story about both war and childhood, and their intersection in one household, conjured in all its details, be they beautiful or shameful: a resigned mother playing music, a father absent, an era frozen in a tragic fresco where novelistic detail mixes with history.

Marie Chaix was born in Lyons and raised in Paris, and is the author of nine books. The Summer of the Elder Tree, a memoir and meditation on the theme of separation, and her first book in more than a decade, was published in Paris in 2005, and will appear from Dalkey Archive Press in 2013.

It is the mid-1960s in a small seaside town in Croatia. Two children, Luka and Dora, meet on their first day of kindergarten. Luka faints the first time he sees Dora and she wakes him with a kiss. The two become inseparable. Over the next few years, they wander the shores of their town, lying on their special rock by the sea as Luka paints—until Dora's parents move to Paris. Bereft, Luka becomes a solitary young man, prey to the needs of his family, but a promising painter. In Paris, Dora blossoms and becomes a successful actress.

When Luka comes to Paris for a show of his paintings, a chance encounter brings them together. Now adults, they fall back in love, and their feelings are given resonance by a shared adoration of Pablo Neruda. Timing and fate, however, seem determined to keep them apart. Like The Solitude of Prime Numbers and One Day, Nataša Dragnić's Every Day, Every Hour is a haunting tale of star-crossed love that will utterly entrance readers with the rhythmic beauty of its language and ineffable air of expectation and heartache.

The librarian walks the streets of her beloved Paris. An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau.

Through Epistolophilia, Julija Šukys follows the letters and journals—the "life-writing"—of this woman, Ona Šimaitė (1894‒1970). A treasurer of words, Šimaitė carefully collected, preserved, and archived the written record of her life, including thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings. Journeying through these words, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem's honored "Righteous Among the Nations") and yet so little known. The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them—and us—to life.

Julija Šukys is the author of Silence Is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (Nebraska, 2007). She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Drowned, set in the idyllic countryside during a short-lived Swedish summer, gets under one's skin from the first page, creating an atmosphere of foreboding in which even the perfume of freshly picked vegetables roasting in the kitchen becomes ominous. On the surface, the story couldn't be simpler. A single young woman visits her older sister, who is married to a writer as charismatic as he is violent. As the young woman falls under her brother-in-law's spell, the plot unfolds in a series of precisely rendered turns. Meanwhile the reader, anticipating the worst, hopes against hope that disaster can be averted.

More than a mere thriller, this debut novel delves deep into the feminine soul and at the same time exposes the continuing oppression of women in Sweden's supposedly enlightened society. Mixing hothouse sensuality with ice-cold fear on every page, Drowned heralds the emergence of a major new talent on the international scene.

An elderly caretaker at a large outdoor exhibition, called Art in Nature, finds that a couple have lingered on to bicker about the value of a picture; he has a surprising suggestion that will resolve both their row and his own ambivalence about the art market. A draughtsman's obsession with drawing locomotives provides a dark twist to a love story. A cartoonist takes over the work of a colleague who has suffered a nervous breakdown only to discover that his own sanity is in danger. In these witty, sharp, often disquieting stories, Tove Jansson reveals the fault-lines in our relationship with art, both as artists and as consumers. Obsession, ambition, and the discouragement of critics are all brought into focus in these wise and cautionary tales.

The writer and artist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is best known as the creator of the Moomin stories, which have been published in thirty-five languages. However, from 1968, she turned her attention to writing for adults. Her bestseller, The Summer Book, is a modern Scandinavian classic. Art in Nature was published six years later.