Books published by publisher Amazon Crossing

A harsh winter is coming. With it, a dark and pitiless magic…Lukas wants only two things: to rebuild his castle home in time to make it through the coming winter and to reconnect with the sister who was stolen from him in a plot against his family.But then an astrologer appears with foreboding news: his old adversary, Inquisitor Waldemar von Schönborn, has stolen three royal artifacts, which are required to coronate a new German emperor. With these valuable objects—the sword, the crown, and the scepter—he could blackmail the empire. The treasures are currently hidden in three different places in the old imperial city of Prague.To protect his homeland and help him find the artifacts, Lukas will need his three best friends—all members of the elite fighting group known as the Black Musketeers. He’ll also need his feisty little sister, Elsa, whose magical gifts may be the key to stopping the inquisitor’s latest scheme.They head for Prague immediately, but the adventure that awaits them there will put their courage and their friendship to the ultimate test.

“The Gray House is enigmatic and fantastical, comic and postmodern…Rowling meets Rushdie via Tartt…Nothing short of life-changing.” —The GuardianThe Gray House is an astounding tale of how what others understand as liabilities can be leveraged into strengths.Bound to wheelchairs and dependent on prosthetic limbs, the physically disabled students living in the House are overlooked by the Outsides. Not that it matters to anyone living in the House, a hulking old structure that its residents know is alive. From the corridors and crawl spaces to the classrooms and dorms, the House is full of tribes, tinctures, scared teachers, and laws—all seen and understood through a prismatic array of teenagers’ eyes.But student deaths and mounting pressure from the Outsides put the time-defying order of the House in danger. As the tribe leaders struggle to maintain power, they defer to the awesome power of the House, attempting to make it through days and nights that pass in ways that clocks and watches cannot record.A Read Russia Prize Finalist.

In this thrilling adventure by bestselling author Oliver Pötzsch, thirteen-year-old Lukas has been trained as a swordsman by his father, a nobleman who was once a famed Musketeer. When the threat of war and accusations of witchcraft spread across the land, Lukas’s life is forever changed. He flees his home and vows to find his missing sister.Surviving as an outcast, Lukas encounters thieves and mercenaries, a strange astrologer, and a master swordsman. He also meets three other fencers—Giovanni, Paulus, and Jerome. Each brings a special talent to their team that leads them to the Black Musketeers, the best fighters in the army. But living with the black-armored Musketeers is nothing like they imagined. In his quest to find his sister, Lukas learns of a legendary book that holds powerful magic. As he fights to keep the Book of the Night out of the hands of his greatest enemy, Lukas discovers the secrets of his own family and what it really means to be a Musketeer.

When Spiky loses his spikes, he must learn to share his softer side.Spiky lives in the dark of the forest, where he spends his days being very, very bad, bullying the other forest creatures and sharpening the spikes on his body. Those spikes are handy for keeping everybody at a distance, and that’s just how Spiky likes it! But then one day the unthinkable happens: Spiky starts losing his spikes! Soon he is left looking as soft and as pink as a soft, pink marshmallow. What will Spiky do, now that he can no longer scare away the other forest creatures? Will he have to (gulp!) make friends? It’s a good thing Bernardo the bunny comes along to show him how it’s done.First published in Italy, this charming story of friendship will have children giggling until the very end.

1981. Ronald Reagan and François Mitterrand are sworn in as presidents of the Unites States and France, respectively. The tension due to Mitterrand’s French Communist support, however, is immediately defused when he gives Reagan the Farewell Dossier, a file he would later call “one of the greatest spy cases of the twentieth century.” Vladimir Ippolitovitch Vetrov, a promising technical student, joins the KGB to work as a spy. Following a couple of murky incidents, however, Vetrov is removed from the field and placed at a desk as an analyst. Soon, burdened by a troubled marriage and frustrated at a flailing career, Vetrov turns to alcohol. Desperate and needing redemption, he offers his services to the DST. Thus Agent Farewell is born. He uses his post within the KGB to steal and photocopy files of the USSR’s plans for the West—all under Brezhnev’s nose. Probing further into Vetrov’s psychological profile than ever before, Kostin and Raynaud provide groundbreaking insight into the man whose life helped hasten the fall of the Communist Soviet Regime.

“[A] funny, serious, clever novel.” —The New York TimesFrom award-winning Dutch author Martin Michael Driessen comes a fearlessly funny tragedy about an improbable friendship, unstable dreams, missed opportunities, and epic coincidence.In a quiet coastal town in Yugoslavia, two men seeking more than the Communist regime can offer find their lives deceitfully entwined.Andrej is a postman in complete denial of his existence. He yearns for respect and fame but commits petty crimes for reasons he doesn’t fully comprehend. Josip is an increasingly irrelevant cable car operator and unfaithfully married. Life was so much simpler when neither one knew the other’s secrets. Now that they do—discovered quite by accident—each man has resorted to blackmailing the other. As their anonymous misdeeds escalate, a farce of mutual dependency begins. So does the unlikeliest of friendships when Andrej and Josip finally meet face-to-face.In a tale set against the impending wars, Martin Michael Driessen ingeniously explores the foibles of two painfully ordinary men boldly staking their claims on life.

In this pulse-pounding debut novel, two women are pulled into the darkness of a terrifying plot that could threaten both their lives.No one has forgotten the unsolved kidnapping of four-year-old Nicolás Acosta. It galvanized Madrid, shaking it to its core.Two years later, another young child—similar in age and appearance to Nicolás—disappears from the same suburban shopping mall, drawing Chief Inspector Ana Arén back into the case she could never close. This is her chance at redemption.As fears of a serial kidnapper threaten to consume the city once again, Ana’s friend, reporter Inés Grau, jumps at the chance to cover it. But the pressure on Ana is greater than ever as she straddles an ethical line.How much information is she willing to leak to Inés to solve the case? How much is she willing to accept from a brilliant computer hacker she trusts with her life? The investigation becomes even more personal for Ana when Inés’s own son disappears. As the truth slowly begins to surface, Ana finds herself on shifting ground, facing a shocking reality that may drag her under…

An Amazon Charts Most Read and Most Sold book.The harrowing true story of one man’s life in—and subsequent escape from—North Korea, one of the world’s most brutal totalitarian regimes.Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.In this memoir translated from the original Japanese, Ishikawa candidly recounts his tumultuous upbringing and the brutal thirty-six years he spent living under a crushing totalitarian regime, as well as the challenges he faced repatriating to Japan after barely escaping North Korea with his life. A River in Darkness is not only a shocking portrait of life inside the country but a testament to the dignity—and indomitable nature—of the human spirit.

A touching story of war, family, innocence, and memory from one of the top Bengali writers of all time. For the first time translated into English.Bangladesh, 1971: the war of independence from Pakistan has torn through peaceful villages and turned life upside down. In the midst of war, one young girl holds on as she discovers the world’s unpredictability. During her father’s prolonged absence, she reminisces about the essence of her abbu, an esteemed professor, loving community leader, and now unexpected warrior.She is moved by his quiet determination to preserve Bengali language and culture in a struggle for autonomy. In his diaries, her abbu describes the painful decisions he must make because of the threat of war, from embracing the brutality of taking up arms to the struggle of moving his family from the embattled city of Dhaka.Amid the tragedy is the unbroken bond between a father and daughter, which makes this powerful and historically faithful portrait of a family surviving the worst in the fight for independence all the more stirring.

A Freeman Award Winner for Young Adult LiteratureFor two teens, falling in love is going to make a world of difference in this beautifully translated, bold, and endearing novel about love, loss, and the pain of racial discrimination.As a Korean student in a Japanese high school, Sugihara has had to defend himself against all kinds of bullies. But nothing could have prepared him for the heartache he feels when he falls hopelessly in love with a Japanese girl named Sakurai. Immersed in their shared love for classical music and foreign movies, the two gradually grow closer and closer.One night, after being hit by personal tragedy, Sugihara reveals to Sakurai that he is not Japanese—as his name might indicate.Torn between a chance at self-discovery that he’s ready to seize and the prejudices of others that he can’t control, Sugihara must decide who he wants to be and where he wants to go next. Will Sakurai be able to confront her own bias and accompany him on his journey?

Welcome to Knight Kyle’s world!Beyond the great forest and towering Dragon Mountain lies Fairyland, a land of elves and trolls, dragons and giants, magicians and fairies. And in one corner, Fairyland East, lives Knight Kyle.Kyle’s great-grandfather once possessed a silver lance that, according to legend, gave its owner invincible power. The lance is now missing, and Kyle is always looking for it, but so are his worst enemies: the robber Rasputin and the evil magician Balduin.Luckily, Kyle has the help of his friends, including Lady Constance (who is as brave as a dragon), Dragobert (who really is a dragon), Elf Aurin (whose harp playing, unfortunately, puts Kyle to sleep), and Prince Nepomuk (who protects his friends and his wardrobe at all times).Almost every day they find themselves in a new amazing adventure…This enchanting story by bestselling author Oliver Pötzsch is beautifully illustrated by Sibylle Hammer. Illustrations can be viewed on certain Fire tablets and the free Kindle app for iOS and Android.

On the surface, the life of young scientist Mei Yin seems perfect. She runs her own research institute in China, she’s getting married, and she founded an orphanage that helps hundreds of girls. But Mei Yin has a dark secret—three vials of “Satan’s gift,” a deadly smallpox virus left over from Russian scientific research conducted during the Cold War. She’s determined to find a vaccine, even if that means endangering those she holds dear.Zia Baj, a terrorist educated in the West, has also obtained Satan’s gift. But he’s not looking for a cure—instead, he plans to exact revenge and start a war. So he unleashes the virus in an American classroom. At the same time, thousands of miles away, the children of Mei Yin’s orphanage fall ill. Soon authorities realize that this is no ordinary outbreak: it’s the start of an epidemic. How are the two cases linked? And can a worldwide pandemic be stopped?From award-winning Chinese author Wang Jinkang comes a terrifying look at the future of war.