Memory Wall (HarperCollins Publishers)

Anthony Doerr's brilliant new collection of stories is about memory: the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, and the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others. Now includes 'The Deep', which was awarded the 2011 Sunday Times Short Story Award. In the luminous title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In 'The River Nemunas', a teenaged orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. And in 'Afterworld,' a woman who escaped the Holocaust is haunted żeby visions of her childhood friends in Germany, yet finds solace in the tender ministrations of her grandson. The stories in Memory Wall show us how we figure the world, and show Anthony Doerr to be a master of the form.