CT Barton is a young child living in the isolated Red River Valley of Texas. Born in a small log cabin, his limited reality is filled with living off the land, sharecropping, and no friends outside of his humble mother and father. At the age of five, with his mind filled with dreams about the unknown world around him, CT finally ventures into nearby Dennison, Texas, with his father, only to have his world shattered by the bigotry and cruelty of the residents. Shunned as "white trash," CT vows to become more than just a sharecropper's son. He pursues an education as a way out of the river bottom, yet faces steep challenges every step of the way. And as the Great Depression and then World War II all but overwhelm his dreams, he pushes forward with an unwavering determination to see his visions become a reality. For fans of John Steinbeck, Beyond the River Bend is a fictional story based on the life of author Phillip C. Holland's father, detailing the pain and struggle he endured in a bygone era while pursuing the desires of his heart.

After the war, I thought all that was left was ashes, hollow ruins . . . Today, I know that’s not true. Where man remains, a seed, too, survives, a dream to inseminate time. Published in the aftermath of Mozambique’s bloody civil war, Mia Couto’s third collection seeks out the places violence could not reach, the places where, the author writes, “every man is the same: pretending he’s here, dreaming of going away, and plotting his return.” Shifting masterfully between forms—creation tale to meditation, playful comedy to magical twist—these stories grapple with questions of what’s been lost and what can be reclaimed, what future exists for a country that broke the yoke of colonialism only to descend into internecine war, what is Mozambican and what is Mozambique. Following fishermen and fortune-tellers, widows and drunks, and one errant hippopotamus, this new translation of stories by the Man Booker-listed author of Confession of the Lioness rediscovers possibility and what it means to be reborn. style="text-align: left;">Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize style="text-align: left;">Winner of the Neustadt Prize for Literature, 2014 style="text-align: left;">Winner of the Camões Prize for Literature, 2013 A Vanity Fair Must-Read Book From Around The World for Winter 2019 A Financial Times Summer Book of 2019