"A riveting fiction debut--a love story, told in gorgeous prose, and set on an extraordinary stage: Haiti, on the eve of the 2010 earthquake. When we first meet Zwazo Delalun--Zo--as a young orphan in a fishing village in Haiti, he already possesses every trademark of a hero: he's handsome, strong, independent, honest, courageous, and determined to make a life for himself, on his own terms. As he grows up, Zo comes to possess something else, too--an...

"After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen--Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. As internal political strife and a clash of cultures...