Feb. 25-March 3: Unlikely Healers, Chinese Planes And An Orphan's Revelation

Fiction and nonfiction releases from Peter Cameron, Mohammed Hanif, Kathryn Harrison, James Fallows and Stephen Dau.

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by Peter Cameron

In the spring of 1950, Coral Glynn arrives at an isolated mansion in the English countryside to nurse the elderly Edith Hart. There, Coral meets Hart House's odd inhabitants: Mrs. Prence, the perpetually disgruntled housekeeper; and Major Clement Hart, her charge's war-ravaged son. When a child's game goes violently awry in the nearby woods, a great shadow descends upon its residents.

by Mohammed Hanif

The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments need a miracle, and Alice Bhatti may be just what they're looking for. She's the daughter of a part-time healer in the French Colony, Karachi's infamous Christian slum, and it seems she has, unhappily, inherited his part-time gift. With a bit of begrudging but inspired improvisation, Alice begins to bring succor to patients in the overflowing hospital.

by Kathryn Harrison

St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin's body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his 18-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin's healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to her son, the headstrong prince, Alyosha, who suffers from hemophilia. Soon after Masha arrives at the palace, the Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha find solace in each other's company.

by James Fallows

In 2011, China announced its 12th Five-Year Plan, which included the commitment to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars to jump-start its aerospace industry. In China Airborne, James Fallows documents the extraordinary scale of China's project, making clear how it stands to catalyze the nation's hypergrowth and hyperurbanization, revolutionizing China in ways analogous to the building of America's transcontinental railroad in the 19th century.

by Stephen Dau

Jonas, a Muslim teenager, is 15 when his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in an unnamed country. With the help of an international relief organization, he is sent to America, where he struggles to assimilate. When he meets the mother of the U.S. soldier who saved his life, a shocking and painful secret from the past gradually surfaces.