Explosive, street-savvy, and authentic, acclaimed columnist Denis Hamill's novels are drawn in the ink that can only flow from the pen of a native New Yorker...and a superbly talented writer. Now, blending sinuous prose with a "relentless energy" (Lawrence Block), Hamill etches a novel set in a...  more

Explosive, street-savvy, and authentic, acclaimed columnist Denis Hamill's novels are drawn in the ink that can only flow from the pen of a native New Yorker...and a superbly talented writer. Now, blending sinuous prose with a "relentless energy" (Lawrence Block), Hamill etches a novel set in a mercenary New York -- where friends become enemies, cops are corrupted, and some must die, all for the sake of 3 Quarters Bobby Emmet was a desperate man, an honest New York City cop, framed for the murder of his fiancée, and given one last chance to save himself -- by an unlikely benefactor. Bobby didn't murder his fiancée, Dorothea Dubrow, and then cremate the body -- but he has an idea who is responsible. His murder trial interrupted his investigation of a police medical pension scam -- and revealed how little he really knew about Dorothea. Now suddenly free, he is imprisoned in a web of corruption, lies, and the kind of secrets people kill for. As the struggle to find the truth -- and Dorothea -- intensifies, Bobby begins to suspect that those around him are not as loyal as they appear. His liberty and very life depend on whether or not he can discover how high -- and how near -- the conspiracy goes before the trap closes on him. At once lyrical and riveting, Three Quarters crackles in its electric setting, reverberating with Hamill's intimate knowledge of and intense passion for New York City.

Nick Hornby's cult fiction debut, the New York Times Notable High Fidelity, was a national bestseller in the United States, and a #1 bestseller in England. Hornby was greeted with standing ovations from The New Yorker (Hornby has established himself as a maestro of the male confessional) to Time...  more

Nick Hornby's cult fiction debut, the New York Times Notable High Fidelity, was a national bestseller in the United States, and a #1 bestseller in England. Hornby was greeted with standing ovations from The New Yorker (Hornby has established himself as a maestro of the male confessional) to Time (Hornby demonstrates his enviable talent for lucid, laconic writing) to The New York Times Book Review (Hornby captures the loneliness and childishness of adult life with such precision and wit that you'll find yourself nodding and smiling) to GQ (funny, compulsive, and contemporary). About a Boy stars a guy called Will, who doesn't really want any children. He wonders why it bothers people that he lives so happily alone in his fashionable, Lego-free flat, with massive speakers, and an expensive cream-colored rug that no kid has ever thrown up on. Then Will meets Angie. He has never been out with a mom before. And it has to be said that Angie's long blond hair and big blue eyes, are not irrelevant to his sudden reassessment of his attitude toward children. She is truly beautiful. And truly beautiful women do not, traditionally, go out with him. Then it dawns on Will that maybe Angie goes out with him because of the children. Maybe children democratized beautiful, single women

"It is too bad marriage doesn't come with attachments like a vacuum cleaner. You can't do anything with ours. Ours just sits there and blows hot air," says Virginia, the 19-year-old narrator of An Actual Life. Having gotten pregnant in the late 1950s after a single night of not...  more

"It is too bad marriage doesn't come with attachments like a vacuum cleaner. You can't do anything with ours. Ours just sits there and blows hot air," says Virginia, the 19-year-old narrator of An Actual Life. Having gotten pregnant in the late 1950s after a single night of not so blissful sex, she is now mired in a joyless marriage. Her young husband Buddy works, goes to school, and ignores her, preferring to spend free time with his high school girlfriend Irene, whose marriage to Buddy's best friend Chick seems just as much of a sham. In the meantime, Virginia plays with their daughter Madeline, repeats every superstition she's ever heard--passing on the stairs is bad luck, a dropped knife heralds a man's arrival--and obsessively charts Buddy's comings and goings. Quirky humor makes the reader laugh and wince, while adept characterization and flowing prose add up to a wonderful, featherweight novel.

When Cristina García's first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, was published in 1992, The New York Times called the author "a magical new writer...completely original." The book was nominated for a National Book Award, and reviewers everywhere praised it for the richness of its...  more

When Cristina García's first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, was published in 1992, The New York Times called the author "a magical new writer...completely original." The book was nominated for a National Book Award, and reviewers everywhere praised it for the richness of its prose, the vivid drama of the narrative, and the dazzling illumination it brought to bear on the intricacies of family life in general and the Cuban American family in particular. Now, with The Agüero Sisters, García gives us her widely anticipated new novel. Large, vibrant, resonant with image and emotion, it tells a mesmerizing story about the power of family myth to mask, transform, and, finally, reveal the truth. It is the story of Reina and Constancia Agüero, Cuban sisters who have been estranged for thirty years. Reina, forty-eight years old, living in Cuba in the early 1990s, was once a devoted daughter of la revolución; Constancia, an eager to assimilate naturalized American, smuggled herself off the island in 1962. Reina is tall, darkly beautiful, unmarried, and magnetically sexual, a master electrician who is known as Compañera Amazona among her countless male suitors, and who basks in the admiration she receives in her trade and in her bed. Constancia is petite, perfectly put together, pale skinned, an inspirationally successful yet modest cosmetics saleswoman, long resigned to her passionless marriage. Reina believes in only what she can grasp with her five senses; Constancia believes in miracles that "arrive every day from the succulent edge of disaster." Reina lives surrounded by their father's belongings, the tangible remains of her childhood; Constancia has inherited only a startling resemblance to their mother -- the mysterious Blanca -- which she wears like an unwanted mask. The sisters' stories are braided with the voice from the past of their father, Ignacio, a renowned naturalist whose chronicling of Cuba's dying species mirrored his own sad inability to prevent familial tragedy. It is in the memories of their parents -- dead many years but still powerfully present -- that the sisters' lives have remained inextricably bound. Tireless scientists, Ignacio and Blanca understood the perfect truth of the language of nature, but never learned to speak it in their own tongue. What they left their daughters -- the picture of a dark and uncertain history sifted with half-truths and pure lies -- is the burden and the gift the two women struggle with as they move unknowingly toward reunion. And during that movement, as their stories unfurl and intertwine with those of their children, their lovers and husbands, their parents, we see the expression and effect of the passions, humor, and desires that both define their differences and shape their fierce attachment to each other and to their discordant past. The Agüero Sisters is clear confirmation of Cristina García's standing in the front ranks of new American fiction. 

In the dead of night, a man climbs the tower of St. Anthony's Church, driven by a compulsive urge to silence the bells. In a deserted alley, a random victim is consumed by a torrent of flames. And in the light of day, a man named Walt Stebbins receives a glass jar containing the preserved body...  more

In the dead of night, a man climbs the tower of St. Anthony's Church, driven by a compulsive urge to silence the bells. In a deserted alley, a random victim is consumed by a torrent of flames. And in the light of day, a man named Walt Stebbins receives a glass jar containing the preserved body of a bluebird. As Walt unravels the mystery of the bird in a jar, he will learn that the battle between good and evil is raging every day, where you would least expect it.

Forged of the exquisite gem, the Amber Room is one of the greatest treasures ever made by man - and the subject of one of history's most intriguing mysteries. German troops invading the Soviet Union seized the Room in 1941. When the Allies bombed, the Room was hidden, and it has never been seen...  more

Forged of the exquisite gem, the Amber Room is one of the greatest treasures ever made by man - and the subject of one of history's most intriguing mysteries. German troops invading the Soviet Union seized the Room in 1941. When the Allies bombed, the Room was hidden, and it has never been seen since. But now, the hunt has begun once more. Atlanta judge Rachel Cutler loves her job and her kids, and remains civil to her ex-husband, Paul. But everything changes when her father dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind clues to a secret about something called the Amber Room. Desperate for the truth, Rachel takes off for Germany with Paul close behind. Before long, they're in over their heads. Locked into a treacherous game with professional killers, Rachel and Paul find themselves on a collision course with the forces of greed, power, and history itself.

A thrilling epic about an ancient clash reignited in our time-between a secret society and heaven's darkest creatures.  

New cow... Ray makes the move. Jane feels the rush. Ray says the L-word. Jane breaks her lease. Then suddenly, inexplicably, he dumps her. Just. Like. That. ...old cow. Now black is the only color in Jane's closet and Kleenex is clinging to her nose. Why did it happen? How could it have...  more

New cow... Ray makes the move. Jane feels the rush. Ray says the L-word. Jane breaks her lease. Then suddenly, inexplicably, he dumps her. Just. Like. That. ...old cow. Now black is the only color in Jane's closet and Kleenex is clinging to her nose. Why did it happen? How could it have happened? Moo. Jane is going to get an answer. Not from Ray. Not from her best friends, David and Joan. But from an astounding new discovery of her own: The Old-Cow-New-Cow theory. Forced to move into the apartment of a womanizing alpha male named Eddie, Jane is seeing the world of men and women in a brilliant new light. And when she takes her Old-Cow-New-Cow theory public, it will change her career and her whole life. Unless, of course, she's got it all wrong....

The suspense is tight as a steel coil. Burke Devore has been in the paper business for twenty-five years, provides well for his family, and plays by the rules. Now the victim of corporate downsizing, Devores life begins to disintegrate. From his attempt to find a job to the growing rift between...  more

The suspense is tight as a steel coil. Burke Devore has been in the paper business for twenty-five years, provides well for his family, and plays by the rules. Now the victim of corporate downsizing, Devores life begins to disintegrate. From his attempt to find a job to the growing rift between him and his loved ones, he knows that time is running out. With the pressure on, Devore sets off on a path of obsession and outrage brought on by desperation. He must have a job, even if the only way to get it is to eliminate the competition . . .

When a somewhat introverted and self-serving bachelor artist finds a stray kitten at his doorstep, he decides to take her in to see if he can, indeed, sustain a lasting and loving relationship with another living creature. His on-again, off-again romance with a sexy but shallow girlfriend has...  more

When a somewhat introverted and self-serving bachelor artist finds a stray kitten at his doorstep, he decides to take her in to see if he can, indeed, sustain a lasting and loving relationship with another living creature. His on-again, off-again romance with a sexy but shallow girlfriend has left him emotionally cynical, and in no time the cat becomes the central focus of his life. Through her, the man rediscovers the meaning of loyalty and affection. Out one evening at his neighborhood bar, the man strikes up conversation with a woman. She's not his usual type a little older (closer to his age, in fact) and on the heavy side but after several minutes they are caught up in a kind of exciting conversation he never experienced with his old girlfriend. As their relationship unfolds and blossoms in new and rewarding ways, the man wavers between the sincerity and depth of the woman versus the frivolous and surface sexuality of his girlfriend, and it is his trusty cat who illuminates the right path. The Bachelor's Cat is charming, emotional and rife with life's important lessons.

A laugh-out-loud look at the most underrated supporting role in today’s maxed-out wedding world, featuring “bad bridesmaids” who’ve had enough taffeta to last a lifetimeI just can’t have any negative energy around my wedding.” This is what Siri Agrell’s...  more

A laugh-out-loud look at the most underrated supporting role in today’s maxed-out wedding world, featuring “bad bridesmaids” who’ve had enough taffeta to last a lifetimeI just can’t have any negative energy around my wedding.” This is what Siri Agrell’s best friend told her just before kicking her out of the wedding that Agrell had spent many months—and dollars—preparing for. Her offense? It’s not that she slept with the groom, or even the best man. She didn’t get drunk at the shower. She didn’t buy the cheapest casserole dish on the registry.But she did question the role of today’s much-maligned bridesmaid in an article she wrote for a national newspaper. Despite the bags of fan mail the piece generated, the bride was not amused. Agrell was booted from the bridal party in favor of a similarly sized cousin—and no, she did not get reimbursed for the $100 gold shoes she’d already bought to match the bridesmaid dress.Now she’s putting all that experience and fan mail to good use: like no other book on the market, Bad Bridesmaid is a hilarious tale of weddings gone wild, full of anecdotes and advice from women worldwide, and the perfect gift to get former, current, and future bridesmaids ready for action (or therapy). It’s time to give the bridesmaid back her voice, her independence, and the natural waistline that has long been hidden under layers of responsibility and badly constructed tulle!

The bestselling author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha presents a one-volume edition of his celebrated trio of novels. Doyle's comic novels, The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, depict the daily life and times of the Rabbitte family in working-class Dublin.

A stunning follow-up to her bestselling debut, Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh returns with Baker Towers, a compelling story of love and loss in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the years after World War II Bakerton is a company town built on coal, a town of church festivals and ethnic...  more

A stunning follow-up to her bestselling debut, Mrs. Kimble, Jennifer Haigh returns with Baker Towers, a compelling story of love and loss in a western Pennsylvania mining town in the years after World War II Bakerton is a company town built on coal, a town of church festivals and ethnic neighborhoods, hunters' breakfasts and firemen's parades. Its children are raised in company houses -- three rooms upstairs, three rooms downstairs. Its ball club leads the coal company league. The twelve Baker mines offer good union jobs, and the looming black piles of mine dirt don't bother anyone. Called Baker Towers, they are local landmarks, clear evidence that the mines are booming. Baker Towers mean good wages and meat on the table, two weeks' paid vacation and presents under the Christmas tree. The mines were not named for Bakerton; Bakerton was named for the mines. This is an important distinction. It explains the order of things. Born and raised on Bakerton's Polish Hill, the five Novak children come of age during wartime, a thrilling era when the world seems on the verge of changing forever. The oldest, Georgie, serves on a minesweeper in the South Pacific and glimpses life beyond Bakerton, a promising future he is determined to secure at all costs. His sister Dorothy, a fragile beauty, takes a job in Washington, D.C., and finds she is unprepared for city life. Brilliant Joyce longs to devote herself to something of consequence but instead becomes the family's keystone, bitterly aware of the opportunities she might have had elsewhere. Sandy sails through life on looks and charm, and Lucy, the volatile baby, devours the family's attention and develops a bottomless appetite for love. Baker Towers is a family saga and a love story, a hymn to a time and place long gone, to America's industrial past and the men and women we now call the Greatest Generation. This is a feat of imagination from an extraordinary new voice in American fiction, a writer of enormous power and skill.

Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired...  more

Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places. Available for the first time in mass-market, this edition of Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling novel, The Bean Trees, will be in stores everywhere in September. With two different but equally handsome covers, this book is a fine addition to your Kingsolver library.

After more than half a century of marriage, Dorothy and George are embarking on their first journey abroad together. Three decades younger, Jan and Annemieke are taking the last in their tumultuous union. At first the luxury of a Caribbean resort is no match for the habits of domestic life. Then...  more

After more than half a century of marriage, Dorothy and George are embarking on their first journey abroad together. Three decades younger, Jan and Annemieke are taking the last in their tumultuous union. At first the luxury of a Caribbean resort is no match for the habits of domestic life. Then the couples’ paths cross, and a series of surprises ensues—a disappearance and an assault, most dramatically, but also a teapot tempest of passions, slights, misunder­standings, and small awakenings that punctuate a week in which each pair struggles to come to terms with what’s been keeping them apart. Becoming Strangers is a different kind of love story—bitter­sweet, bitingly funny, and ultimately redeeming.

Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but distant lawyer-mom, Miriam....  more

Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but distant lawyer-mom, Miriam. But when Eliza sweeps her school and district spelling bees in quick succession, Saul takes it as a sign that she is destined for greatness. In this altered reality, Saul inducts her into his hallowed study and lavishes upon her the attention previously reserved for Aaron, who in his displacement embarks upon a lone quest for spiritual fulfillment. When Miriam's secret life triggers a familial explosion, it is Eliza who must order the chaos. Myla Goldberg's keen eye for detail brings Eliza's journey to three-dimensional life. As she rises from classroom obscurity to the blinding lights and outsized expectations of the National Bee, Eliza's small pains and large joys are finely wrought and deeply felt. Not merely a coming-of-age story, Goldberg's first novel delicately examines the unraveling fabric of one family. The outcome of this tale is as startling and unconventional as her prose, which wields its metaphors sharply and rings with maturity. The work of a lyrical and gifted storyteller, Bee Season marks the arrival of an extraordinarily talented new writer.

"As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me ..." Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your...  more

"As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I’m still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me ..." Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love -- all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story. Welcome to Christine's life.

Lying in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay are the bodies of a middle-aged couple. Celice and Joseph, in their mid-50s and married for more than 30 years, are returning to the seacoast where they met as students. Instead, they are battered to death by a thief with a chunk of granite. Their corpses...  more

Lying in the sand dunes of Baritone Bay are the bodies of a middle-aged couple. Celice and Joseph, in their mid-50s and married for more than 30 years, are returning to the seacoast where they met as students. Instead, they are battered to death by a thief with a chunk of granite. Their corpses lie undiscovered and rotting for a week, prey to sand crabs, flies, and gulls. Yet there remains something touching about the scene, with Joseph's hand curving lightly around his wife's leg, "quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet." "Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell?just look at them?that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period of grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but they were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh on flesh; dead, but not departed yet." From that moment forward, Being Dead becomes less about murder and more about death. Alternating chapters move back in time from the murder in hourly and two-hourly increments. As the narrative moves backward, we see Celice and Joseph make the small decisions about their day that will lead them inexorably towards their own deaths. In other chapters the narrative moves forward. Celice and Joseph are on vacation and nobody misses them until they do not return. Thus, it is six days before their bodies are found. Crace describes in minute detail their gradual return to the land with the help of crabs, birds, and the numerous insects that attack the body and gently and not so gently prepare it for the dust-to-dust phase of death.

With the forensic acumen of   Patricia Cornwell and the atmosphere of Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect series, Birdman -- already an international sensation prior to publication -- introduces a troubled homicide detective battling the demons of his past while facing the psychopath...  more

With the forensic acumen of   Patricia Cornwell and the atmosphere of Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect series, Birdman -- already an international sensation prior to publication -- introduces a troubled homicide detective battling the demons of his past while facing the psychopath of the century. In the chilling opening to Birdman, the bodies of five women are found, ritualistically mutilated and dumped on wasteland in Greenwich, England. When post-mortem examinations reveal a single, horrific signature linking the victims -- a tiny bird sewn into each chest - the police realize they are on the trail of a serial killer with a terrifying mind. Detective Inspector Jack Caffery, young,driven, unshockable, finds himself facing both hostilities within the force and his own memory of a lethal failure, as he struggles to unravel the most macabre murders he's ever seen. Now, as he employs every weapon science can offer, he knows he has little time before the sadistic killer strikes again. But he has so little evidence. All he has are five mutilated corpses and five dead little birds.

Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel–loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the...  more

Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel–loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.

Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, this exquisite book confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence from which the author creates a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and love. A passionate coming-of-age story of an...  more

Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, this exquisite book confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence from which the author creates a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and love. A passionate coming-of-age story of an uneducated small-town girl with far more romance in her soul than she can ever hope to express in her life. "I learned slowly, that if you don't look at the world with perfect vision, you're bound to get yourself cooked." Having come within an inch of her life, Ruth Dahl is determined to take a good look at it -- to figure out whether, in fact, she's to blame for the mess. Pegged the loser in a small-town family that doesn't have much going for it in the first place, Ruth grows up in the shadow of her brilliant brother, trying to hold her own in a world of poverty and hard edges. Matt's brain is his ticket out of Honey Creek. Ruth, without options, cleaves instead to her tough, half-crazy mother, May, and eventually to Ruby, the sweet but slightly deranged young man she loves, marries, and supports. When the precarious household erupts in violence, Ruth is the only one who can piece their story together -- and she gets at the truth in a manner at once ferocious, hilarious, and heartbreaking. In this powerful, incandescent novel, Jane Hamilton has worked a miracle: she has given voice to a young woman you have passed on the street a thousand times. Perhaps you have never noticed her, but the next time you see her, you will know who she is.

In this auspicious literary crime debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post-WWII Eastern European city.It's August, 1948, three years after the Russians "liberated" this small nation from German Occupation. But the Red Army still patrols the capital's...  more

In this auspicious literary crime debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post-WWII Eastern European city.It's August, 1948, three years after the Russians "liberated" this small nation from German Occupation. But the Red Army still patrols the capital's rubble-strewn streets, and the ideals of the Revolution are but memories. Twenty-two-year-old Detective Emil Brod, an eager young man who spent the war working on a fishing boat in Finland, finally gets his chance to serve his country, investigating murder for the People's Militia. The victim in Emil's first case is a state songwriter, but the evidence seems to point toward a political motive. He would like to investigate further, but even in his naivete, he realizes that the police academy never prepared him for this peculiar post-war environment, in which his colleagues are suspicious or silent, where lawlessness and corruption are the rules of the city, and in which he's still expected to investigate a murder. He is truly on his own in this new, dangerous world. The Bridge of Sighs launches a unique series of crime novels featuring a dynamic cast of characters in an ever-evolving landscape, the politically volatile terrain of Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century.

Meet eight-year-old Kate and her sisters as they take to a life on the road when their divorced mother falls in love with someone new. This strange freedom introduces the girls to a way of life that is vastly different from the one they knew with their geologist father. But, far from him, adult...  more

Meet eight-year-old Kate and her sisters as they take to a life on the road when their divorced mother falls in love with someone new. This strange freedom introduces the girls to a way of life that is vastly different from the one they knew with their geologist father. But, far from him, adult distraction and carelessness finally threaten to explode and ruin Kate's life.

National best seller and Today show Book Club selection, Broken for You is the story of two women in self-imposed exile whose lives are transformed when their paths intersect. Stephanie Kallos's debut novel is a work of infinite charm, wit and heart. It is also a glorious homage to the...  more

National best seller and Today show Book Club selection, Broken for You is the story of two women in self-imposed exile whose lives are transformed when their paths intersect. Stephanie Kallos's debut novel is a work of infinite charm, wit and heart. It is also a glorious homage to the beauty of broken things. When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company. Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come west to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent many years building up protective armor against the outside world. As their tentative friendship evolves, the armor begins to fall away and Margaret opens her house to the younger woman. This launches a series of unanticipated events, leading Margaret to discover a way to redeem her cursed past, and Wanda to learn the true purpose of her cross-country journey. Both funny and heartbreaking, Broken for You is a testament to the saving graces of surrogate families and shows how far the tiniest repair jobs can go in righting the world's wrongs.

In the final days of World War II, Dieter Kallick, one of 200 German prisoners of war pressed into service at a Maine logging village, escaped into the woods. His body would later be found washed up on the shore of Moosehead Lake. Decades later, Wolfgang Kallick arrives in this same rural...  more

In the final days of World War II, Dieter Kallick, one of 200 German prisoners of war pressed into service at a Maine logging village, escaped into the woods. His body would later be found washed up on the shore of Moosehead Lake. Decades later, Wolfgang Kallick arrives in this same rural town, hoping to unravel the mystery of his brother's death. His questions trigger disturbing, long-dormant memories in Libby, a flinty Yankee store owner, and she is drawn inexorably into the drama when she realizes that her own family is involved in the case. Then Libby's own brother is killed. Suspecting that the two deaths, though nearly a half-century apart, are somehow linked, she undertakes her own investigation, not realizing that behind the sullen silence of her close-knit town lies a festering secret darker than she ever imagined.

Struggling with the psychological effects of his repressed childhood memories, a young man devises a technique of traveling back in time to inhabit his childhood body. As he attempts to mend the broken lives of those closest to him, he finds that every trip into the past brings chaotic results...  more

Struggling with the psychological effects of his repressed childhood memories, a young man devises a technique of traveling back in time to inhabit his childhood body. As he attempts to mend the broken lives of those closest to him, he finds that every trip into the past brings chaotic results into the present, leading him to travel back again and again and causing irreparable damage.

A triumphant new novel from award-winner Kate Atkinson: a breathtaking story of families divided, love lost and found, and the mysteries of fate. Includes reading group guide with author interview and discussion questions. Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls,...  more

A triumphant new novel from award-winner Kate Atkinson: a breathtaking story of families divided, love lost and found, and the mysteries of fate. Includes reading group guide with author interview and discussion questions. Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. Thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance among the clutter of their childhood home... Case Two: Theo delights in his daughter Laura's wit, effortless beauty, and selfless love. But her first day as an associate in his law firm is also the day when Theo's world turns upside down... Case Three: Michelle looks around one day and finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making. A very needy baby and a very demanding husband make her every waking moment a reminder that somewhere, somehow, she'd made a grave mistake and would spend the rest of her life paying for it -- until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape. As Private Detective Jackson Brodie investigates all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge. Inextricably caught up in his clients' grief, joy, and desire, Jackson finds their unshakable need for resolution very much like his own. Kate Atkinson's celebrated talent makes for a novel that positively sparkles with surprise, comedy, tragedy, and constant, page-turning delight.

From the bestselling author of Slaves of New York comes a hilarious, clear-eyed, satiric novel about the sad plight of a misguided woman on the make in Manhattan. Thirty-two-year-old Florence Collins is an "aging filly-about-town"--still beautiful enough to be (sometimes) invited to the best...  more

From the bestselling author of Slaves of New York comes a hilarious, clear-eyed, satiric novel about the sad plight of a misguided woman on the make in Manhattan. Thirty-two-year-old Florence Collins is an "aging filly-about-town"--still beautiful enough to be (sometimes) invited to the best parties and the right restaurants, but unmarried and rapidly going broke. In her world, marriage to a wealthy man is all that can save her, although Florence's hard-hearted search for security and status takes her on an inevitable downward spiral. New York "society novels" at the turn of the nineteenth century gave us a piercing look at the world and rituals of the city's wealthy; Janowitz here casts that tradition in a fresh light, giving us a tirn-of-the-century society novel that demonstrates how little seems to have changed. In a sly and unforgettable portrait of New York's haute monde, Janowitz brilliantly evokes a young woman's struggle for love and survival in the city that is as unforgiving today as it was a hundred years ago.

"FAST-PACED . . . PIERCY BREATHES LIFE INTO THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO SHAPED THE REVOLUTION."--San Francisco Examiner & ChronicleIn her most splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French...  more

"FAST-PACED . . . PIERCY BREATHES LIFE INTO THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FIGURES WHO SHAPED THE REVOLUTION."--San Francisco Examiner & ChronicleIn her most splendid, thought-provoking novel yet, Marge Piercy brings to vibrant life three women who play prominent roles in the tumultuous, bloody French Revolution--as well as their more famous male counterparts. Defiantly independent Claire Lacombe tests her theory: if men can make things happen, perhaps women can too. . . . Manon Philipon finds she has a talent for politics--albeit as the ghostwriter of her husband's speeches. . . . And Pauline Léon knows one thing for certain: the women must apply the pressure or their male colleagues will let them starve. While illuminating the lives of Robespierre, Danton, and Condorcet, Piercy also opens to us the minds and hearts of women who change their world, live their ideals--and are prepared to die for them."MASTERFUL . . . PIERCY BRINGS THE BLOOD AND GUTS, THE IDEAS AND PASSIONS, OF THE REVOLUTION TO LIFE."--The Women's Review of Books"PIERCY'S STORYTELLING POWERS CAPTURE THE TURBULENCE AND EXCITEMENT OF [THIS] LIBERATING ERA."--The Boston Herald

Citizens of Ember shall be assigned work at twelve years of age.… LINA MAYFLEET desperately wants to be a messenger. Instead, she draws the dreaded job of Pipeworks laborer, which means she'll be working in damp tunnels deep underground. DOON HARROW draws messenger -- and asks Lina to...  more

Citizens of Ember shall be assigned work at twelve years of age.… LINA MAYFLEET desperately wants to be a messenger. Instead, she draws the dreaded job of Pipeworks laborer, which means she'll be working in damp tunnels deep underground. DOON HARROW draws messenger -- and asks Lina to trade! Doon wants to be underground. That's where the generator is, and Doon has ideas about how to fix it. For as long as anyone can remember, the great lights of Ember have kept the endless darkness at bay. But now the lights are beginning to flicker... When Lina finds part of an ancient message, she's sure it holds a secret that will save the city. She and her friend Doon must decipher the message before the lights go out on Ember forever!

Film's most popular action hero needs a place to heal after surgery that has gone terribly wrong. His fiercely loyal agent finds him just such a place in a luxurious, forgotten mansion high in the Hollywood Hills. But the original owner of the mansion was a beautiful woman devoted to pleasure at...  more

Film's most popular action hero needs a place to heal after surgery that has gone terribly wrong. His fiercely loyal agent finds him just such a place in a luxurious, forgotten mansion high in the Hollywood Hills. But the original owner of the mansion was a beautiful woman devoted to pleasure at any cost, and the terrible legacy of her deed has not yet died. There are ghosts and monsters haunting Coldheart Canyon, where nothing is forbidden.

Against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this involving story tells of an extraordinary young woman's coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming...  more

Against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this involving story tells of an extraordinary young woman's coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming home... In 1935, Judith Dunbar is left behind at a British boarding school when her mother and baby sister go off to join her father in Singapore. At Saint Ursula's, her friendship with Loveday Carey-Lewis sweeps her into the privileged, madcap world of the British aristocracy, teaching her about values, friendship, and wealth. But it will be the drama of war, as it wrenches Judith from those she cares about most, that will teach her about courage...and about love. Teeming with marvelous, memorable characters in a novel that is a true masterpiece, Coming Home is a book to be savored, reread, and cherished forever.

In this extraordinary novel, Karen Maitland delivers a dazzling reinterpretation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - an ingenious alchemy of history, mystery, and powerful human drama. The year is 1348. The Black Plague grips the country. In a world ruled by faith and fear, nine desperate...  more

In this extraordinary novel, Karen Maitland delivers a dazzling reinterpretation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - an ingenious alchemy of history, mystery, and powerful human drama. The year is 1348. The Black Plague grips the country. In a world ruled by faith and fear, nine desperate strangers, brought together by chance, attempt to outrun the certain death that is running inexorably toward them. Each member of this motley company has a story to tell. From Camelot, the relic-seller who will become the group's leader, to Cygnus, the one-armed storyteller ... from the strange, silent child called Narigorm to a painter and his pregnant wife, each has a secret. None is what they seem. And one among them conceals the darkest secret of all - propelling these liars to a destiny they never saw coming. Magical, heart-quickening, and raw, Company of Liars is a work of vaulting imagination from a powerful new voice in historical fiction.

An auspicious debut novel by a young writer who will remind readers of Anne Lamott and Anne Tyler Crime in the Neighborhood centers on a headline event-- the molestation and murder of a twelve-year-old boy in a Washington, D.C., suburb. At the time of the murder, 1973, Marsha was nine years...  more

An auspicious debut novel by a young writer who will remind readers of Anne Lamott and Anne Tyler Crime in the Neighborhood centers on a headline event-- the molestation and murder of a twelve-year-old boy in a Washington, D.C., suburb. At the time of the murder, 1973, Marsha was nine years old and as an adult she still remembers that summer as a time when murder and her own family's upheaval were intertwined. Everyone, it seemed to Marsha at the time, was committing crimes. Her father deserted his family to take up with her mother's younger sister. Her teenage brother and sister were smoking and shoplifting, and her mother was "flirting" with Mr. Green, the new next-door neighbor. Even the president of the United States seemed to be a crook. But it is Marsha's own suspicions about who committed this crime that has the town up in arms and reveals what happens when fear runs wild.

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's...  more

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.

When Rilke, a dissolute and promiscuous auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of seemingly violent photographs, he feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them. What follows is a compulsive journey of discovery, decadence, and deviousness that leads Rilke into a...  more

When Rilke, a dissolute and promiscuous auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of seemingly violent photographs, he feels compelled to unearth more about the deceased owner who coveted them. What follows is a compulsive journey of discovery, decadence, and deviousness that leads Rilke into a dark underworld of transvestite clubs, seedy bars, and porn shops. In this hidden city haunted by a host of vividly drawn characters, Rilke comes face to face with the dark desires and illicit urges that lurk behind even the most respectable facades.

In a nightworld where decomposing corpse-assassins stalk their prey, Marty Strauss, the bodyguard to a famous industrialist, discovers that someone is coming to collect the soul of his employer as payment for an ancient debt.

Wolf's life in the wood might be happy, except for one problem. He can't control his urge to devour children who stumble across his path. His runaway desires have made him an outcast among his peers. He lives an unhappy, solitary life -- until he encounters the Brothers Grimm. Wolf is thrilled...  more

Wolf's life in the wood might be happy, except for one problem. He can't control his urge to devour children who stumble across his path. His runaway desires have made him an outcast among his peers. He lives an unhappy, solitary life -- until he encounters the Brothers Grimm. Wolf is thrilled to realize that in the presence of these scholars, he can speak. The Grimms take Wolf into their camp, fill him with brandy, and poke at the source of his easily apparent unhappiness. When they learn the truth about Wolf's cravings, they propose a cure. Now Wolf must make a decision. Can the satisfaction of a "normal" life outweigh the joys of his perversion? Are his desires truly dreanged, or is he simply giving full expression to his personal nature? Does he have an obligation -- as his occasional companion Devil argues -- to live as a unique individual in the manner to which he was born? Wolf trust his new friends, and agrees to their cure. The brothers construct a complicated and dangerous scenario to discover how Wolf will behave. Is Wolf nothing more than a subject for research? The Grimms no more than conniving reporters?Ultimately, Wolf, Devil, the Brothers Grimm, an outraged Frau, and her endangered babe collide at a pool in the dark wood to settle ancient questions: Can the deepest and most perverse desires ever be overruled? Or more important, should they?

Cribbing from the crime pages of Italian newspapers, Dacia Maraini creates in Darkness a memorable cast of characters for whom la dolce vita is merely a pipe dream. Among them is 12-year-old Viollca, an Albanian immigrant sold into prostitution by her parents, and Tano, a boy who brings charges...  more

Cribbing from the crime pages of Italian newspapers, Dacia Maraini creates in Darkness a memorable cast of characters for whom la dolce vita is merely a pipe dream. Among them is 12-year-old Viollca, an Albanian immigrant sold into prostitution by her parents, and Tano, a boy who brings charges of abuse against his father. Connecting the stories is Adele-Sofia, a tenderhearted police commissioner with nerves of steel. In spare, lyrical prose, Darkness illuminates Rome’s underbelly with courage and compassion. Maraini, winner of Italy's prestigious literary award, the Strega Prize, is one of the most important writers in Italian and feminist literature.

As an American surgeon tries to kill the man who murdered his father and a Geneva medical resident begins a fateful love affair, a group of industrialists prepares for a momentous celebration. In a Paris cafe, American surgeon Paul Osborn looks across the room and spots the man who murdered...  more

As an American surgeon tries to kill the man who murdered his father and a Geneva medical resident begins a fateful love affair, a group of industrialists prepares for a momentous celebration. In a Paris cafe, American surgeon Paul Osborn looks across the room and spots the man who murdered his father thirty years before. In London, a grizzled L.A. homicide cop named McVey joins Scotland Yard to unravel the mystery of a severed head and seven headless corpses. Neither American knows the link between the long-ago killing and the recent murders. But Paul's obsession to catch his father's killer will send him careening across Europe at breakneck speed, his life in the balance, his heart in the hands of a beautiful woman who may be his lover -- or his downfall. Shadowing his every move is the relentless McVey. And haunting them both is a secret organization larger and more embracing than any the world has ever seen, preparing for an apocalypse to begin...

Internationally acclaimed for the virtuosity and power of her fiction, Laura Restrepo has created in Delirium a passionate, lyrical, devastating tale of eros and insanity. Aguilar, an unemployed literature professor who has resorted to selling dog food for a living, returns home from a short...  more

Internationally acclaimed for the virtuosity and power of her fiction, Laura Restrepo has created in Delirium a passionate, lyrical, devastating tale of eros and insanity. Aguilar, an unemployed literature professor who has resorted to selling dog food for a living, returns home from a short trip to discover that his wife, Agustina, has gone mad. He doesn’t know what has happened during his absence, and in his search for answers, he gradually unearths profound and shadowy secrets about her past. On one level, Delirium reads like a detective story, as the reader pieces together information to discover the roots of Agustina’s madness. But it is also a remarkably nuanced novel whose currents run much deeper, delving into the minds of four characters: Aguilar, a husband passionately in love with his wife and determined to rescue her from insanity: Agustina, a beautiful woman from an upper-class Colombian family who is caught in the throes of madness; Midas, a drug-trafficker and money-launderer, who is Agustina’s former lover; and Nicolás, Agustina’s grandfather. Through the mixing of these distinct voices, Laura Restrepo creates a searing portrait of a society battered by war and corruption as well as an intimate look at the daily lives of people struggling to stay sane in an unstable country. Delirium already has been awarded the 2004 Premio Alfaguara, the 2006 Grinzane Cavour Prize in Italy, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France for best translated fiction. It is an ambitious and deeply affecting masterwork by one of Latin America’s most important contemporary voices. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer.

A stunning debut novel that reveals the darker side of coming-of-age in modern-day America A Density Of Souls is the story of four high school friends in present-day New Orleans who are torn apart by envy, passion, and a secret murder. Meredith, Brandon, Greg, and Stephen quickly discover...  more

A stunning debut novel that reveals the darker side of coming-of-age in modern-day America A Density Of Souls is the story of four high school friends in present-day New Orleans who are torn apart by envy, passion, and a secret murder. Meredith, Brandon, Greg, and Stephen quickly discover the fragile boundaries between friendship and betrayal as they enter high school and form new allegiances. Brandon and Greg gain popularity as football jocks and Meredith joins the bulimic in-crowd, while Stephen is treated as an outcast and is the target of homophobia. Then two violent deaths disrupt the core of what they once shared. Five years later the friends are drawn back together and what was held to be a tragic accident is discovered to be murder. Other secrets begin to unravel and the casual cruelties of high school develop into acts of violence that threaten an entire city. A selection of Book of the Month Club, Quality Paperback Book Club, Teen People Book Club, and People Book Club.

"In Derailed by James Siegel, Charles Schine is a New York businessman who meets a sexy woman on a train and ends up in a seedy hotel room with her. While there, he's beaten and she is raped by a man who also robs them. The robber then begins to blackmail Schine so that his wife and family don't...  more

"In Derailed by James Siegel, Charles Schine is a New York businessman who meets a sexy woman on a train and ends up in a seedy hotel room with her. While there, he's beaten and she is raped by a man who also robs them. The robber then begins to blackmail Schine so that his wife and family don't find out about his infidelity with the woman. This drives Schine from his humdrum life into a world of fraud, betrayal, and murder. USA Today says, "Derailed is tautly written and cleverly plotted, with plenty of roller-coaster turns that nicely contrast the blandness of suburban life with the dark underworld that Charles has entered." (from ReviewsOfBooks.com)

In four highly acclaimed novels, Stewart O'Nan has proven himself among the most versatile of young writers, breathing new life into a wide range of literary traditions. A World Away is O'Nan at his most romantic and elegiac. By following the fortunes of the Langer family, whose oldest son,...  more

In four highly acclaimed novels, Stewart O'Nan has proven himself among the most versatile of young writers, breathing new life into a wide range of literary traditions. A World Away is O'Nan at his most romantic and elegiac. By following the fortunes of the Langer family, whose oldest son, Rennie, is missing in action in the Pacific during World War II, O'Nan brilliantly captures the mood of this lost world and the changing fate of a country aware that when the war ends nothing will ever be the same.

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be...  more

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown. But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life -- and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder -- right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage -- and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

In this wildly funny, brilliantly inventive novel, Tim O'Brien has created the ultimate character for our times. Thomas Chippering, a 6'6" professor of linguistics, is a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife, the faithless Lorna Sue, and a craving to...  more

In this wildly funny, brilliantly inventive novel, Tim O'Brien has created the ultimate character for our times. Thomas Chippering, a 6'6" professor of linguistics, is a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife, the faithless Lorna Sue, and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets.But there are complications, including Lorna Sue's brother, Herbie, with whom she has an all-too-close relationship, and the considerable charms of Chippering's new love, the attractive, and of course already married, Mrs. Robert Kooshof, who may at last satisfy Chippering's longing for intimacy.In Tomcat in Love, Tim O'Brien takes on the battle of the sexes with astonishing results. By turns hilarious, outrageous, romantic, and deeply moving, this is one of the most talked about novels in years: a novel for this and every age.

Milo Weaver used to be a “tourist” for the CIA -- an undercover agent with no home, no identity -- but he’s since retired from the field to become a middle-level manager at the CIA’s New York headquarters. He’s acquired a wife, a daughter, and a brownstone in...  more

Milo Weaver used to be a “tourist” for the CIA -- an undercover agent with no home, no identity -- but he’s since retired from the field to become a middle-level manager at the CIA’s New York headquarters. He’s acquired a wife, a daughter, and a brownstone in Brooklyn, and he’s tried to leave his old life of secrets and lies behind. However, when the arrest of a long-sought-after assassin sets off an investigation into one of Milo’s oldest colleagues and exposes new layers of intrigue in his old cases, he has no choice but to go back undercover and find out who’s holding the strings once and for all.

The year is 1991. When Jasira's mother finds out what has been going on between her boyfriend and her thirteen-year-old daughter, she has to make a choice -- and chooses to send Jasira off to Houston, Texas, to live with her father. A remote disciplinarian prone to explosive rages,...  more

The year is 1991. When Jasira's mother finds out what has been going on between her boyfriend and her thirteen-year-old daughter, she has to make a choice -- and chooses to send Jasira off to Houston, Texas, to live with her father. A remote disciplinarian prone to explosive rages, Jasira's father is unable to show his daughter the love she craves -- and far less able to handle her feelings about her changing body. Bewildered by extremes of parental scrutiny and neglect, Jasira begins to look elsewhere for affection. Saddam Hussein has invaded Kuwait, and high school has become a lonely place for a "towelhead". When her father meets, and forbids her to see, her boyfriend, it becomes lonelier still. But there is always Mr. Vuoso -- a neighboring army reservist whose son Jasira babysits. Mr. Vuoso, as Jasira discovers, has an extensive collection of Playboy magazines. And he doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with Jasira's body at all. Painfully funny, tender, and sexually charged, Towelhead is that rare thing: a gloriously readable novel unafraid to take risks. The story of a girl failed by her parents and by a conflicted America, Towelhead is an ultimately redemptive and moving work that none of us can afford to ignore.

The "terrible beauty" that is Ireland comes alive in this mighty epic that re-creates that Emerald's Isle's fierce struggle for independence. Trinity is a saga of glories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies, lived by a young Catholic rebel and the beautiful and valiant Protestant girl who defied...  more

The "terrible beauty" that is Ireland comes alive in this mighty epic that re-creates that Emerald's Isle's fierce struggle for independence. Trinity is a saga of glories and defeats, triumphs and tragedies, lived by a young Catholic rebel and the beautiful and valiant Protestant girl who defied her heritage to join him.  Leon Uris has painted a masterful portrait of a beleaguered people divided by religion and wealth--impoverished Catholic peasants pitted against a Protestant aristocracy wielding power over life and death.

From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully...  more

From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he's harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he's keeping all to himself. In A Choice of Accommodations, a husband's attempt to turn an old friend's wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In Only Goodness, a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in Hema and Kaushik, a trio of linked stories -- a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate -- we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn?a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving...  more

It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn?a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center?her mother's office building. Through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Wendy, we gain entrance to the world rarely shown by those who documented the events of that one terrible day: a family's slow and terrible realization that Wendy's mother has died, and their struggle to go on with their lives in the face of such a crushing loss. Absent for years, Wendy's real father shows up without warning. He takes her back with him to California, where she re-invents her life: Wendy now lives more or less on her own in a one-room apartment with a TV set and not much else. Wendy's new circle now includes her father's cactus-grower girlfriend, newly reconnected with the son she gave up for adoption twenty years before; a sad and tender bookstore owner who introduces her to the voice of Anne Frank and to his autistic son; and a homeless skateboarder, on a mission to find his long-lost brother. Over the winter and spring that follow, Wendy moves between the alternately painful and reassuring memories of her mother and the revelations that come with growing to know her real father for the first time. Pulled between her old life in Brooklyn and a new one 3,000 miles away, our heroine is faced with a world where the usual rules no longer apply but eventually discovers a strength and capacity for compassion and survival that she never knew she possessed. At the core of the story is Wendy's deep connection with her little brother, back in New York, who is grieving the loss of their mother without her. This is a story about the ties of siblings, about children who lose their parents, parents who lose their children, and the unexpected ways they sometimes find one another again. Set against the backdrop of global and personal tragedy, and written in a style alternately wry and heartbreaking, The Usual Rules is an unexpectedly hopeful story of healing and forgiveness that will offer readers, young and old alike, a picture of how, out of the rubble, a family rebuilds its life.

In a thriller of astounding menace and power, the acclaimed author of A Season for the Dead returns to the landscape he has made his own –the seething landscape of modern-day Rome– where ancient crimes lie hidden beneath colorful, bustling avenues.  Here a teenage girl has...  more

In a thriller of astounding menace and power, the acclaimed author of A Season for the Dead returns to the landscape he has made his own –the seething landscape of modern-day Rome– where ancient crimes lie hidden beneath colorful, bustling avenues.  Here a teenage girl has disappeared, a detective is exploring a 2000-year-old ritual – and an astonishing mystery is about to unravel in a city of secrets and rage…. The Villa of Mysteries In Rome’s crowded Campo dei Fiori, a woman rushes up to two carabinieri lounging in their sunglasses and uniforms, insisting that her sixteen-year-old daughter has just been abducted. Detective Nic Costa sees the scene unfold and intervenes. Because Costa knows what the two officers don’t: that in the morgue at Rome’s police headquarters, a forensic pathologist is examining the strange, mummified corpse of another girl, whose disappearance and death bear haunting similarities…. Police pathologist Teresa Lupo is Nic’s colleague, friend, and his only equal when it comes to breaking the rules to get results, whatever the cost. Now, after years of living with the dead, Teresa insists that her superiors move quickly to save a life. Poring over the body of the girl in the morgue, she has found too many similarities between the girls, including a unique, leering tattoo. Lupo is sure that the vanished girl is headed for a bizarre ancient Bacchanalia involving virgins and sacrificial murder–a ritual that is only days away. As Nic and Teresa claw at the case from two sides–and as Nic finds himself at once puzzled and beguiled by the missing girl’s seductive mother–a chilling picture is beginning to emerge…of secret relationships and sexual depravity, organized crime and unimaginable corruption. With the clock ticking down on a young girl’s life, Nic and Teresa are about to make the most horrifying discovery of all–in a pit of human darkness, where an age-old malevolence still endures, evil has consumed innocence…and a very modern vengeance has begun. A spellbinding mix of suspense, forensic science, and human drama, The Villa of Mysteries will catch you off guard at every turn–a novel that is at once heartbreaking and impossible to put down. From the Hardcover edition.

This beautiful and sad first novel, recently adapted for a major motion picture, tells of a band of teenage sleuths who piece together the story of a twenty-year old family tragedy begun by the youngest daughter’s spectacular demise by self-defenstration, which inaugurates “the year...  more

This beautiful and sad first novel, recently adapted for a major motion picture, tells of a band of teenage sleuths who piece together the story of a twenty-year old family tragedy begun by the youngest daughter’s spectacular demise by self-defenstration, which inaugurates “the year of the suicides.”

Friday August 15th, 1997. The night the girls arrived. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. First there are the Donaldsons, decent Brad and homespun, tenacious Bitsy (with her 'more organic than thou' airs, who believes fervently...  more

Friday August 15th, 1997. The night the girls arrived. Two tiny Korean babies are delivered to Baltimore to two families who have no more in common than this. First there are the Donaldsons, decent Brad and homespun, tenacious Bitsy (with her 'more organic than thou' airs, who believes fervently that life can always be improved), two full sets of grandparents and a host of big-boned, confident relatives, taking delivery with characteristic American razzmatazz. Then there are the Yazdans, pretty, nervous Ziba (her family 'only one generation removed from the bazaar') and carefully assimilated Sami, with his elegant, elusive Iranian-born widowed mother Maryam, the grandmother-to-be, receiving their little bundle with wondering discretion. Every year, on the anniversary of 'Arrival Day' their two extended families celebrate together, with more and more elaborately competitive parties, as tiny, delicate Susan, wholesome, stocky Jin-ho and, later, her new little sister Xiu-Mei, take roots, become American. While Maryam, the optimistic pessimist, confident that if things go wrong - as well they may - she will manage as she has before, contrarily preserves her 'outsider' status, as if to prove that, despite her passport, she is only a guest in this bewildering country. Full of achingly hilarious moments (Xiu-Mei's 'pacifier' party is worthy of 'The Simpsons') and toe-curling misunderstandings, Digging to America is a novel with a deceptively small domestic canvas, and subtly large themes - it's about belonging and otherness, about insiders and outsiders, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right, about striving for connection and goodness against all the odds. And the end catches you by the throat, ambushes your emotions when you least expect it, as only Tyler can.

For Ronit Krushka, thirty-two and single, who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Orthodox Judaism is a suffocating culture she fled long ago. When she learns that her estranged father, the preeminent rabbi of the London Orthodox Jewish community in which she was raised, has died, she must...  more

For Ronit Krushka, thirty-two and single, who lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Orthodox Judaism is a suffocating culture she fled long ago. When she learns that her estranged father, the preeminent rabbi of the London Orthodox Jewish community in which she was raised, has died, she must return home for the first time in years. There, amid the traditional ebb and flow of the community, Ronit reminds herself of her dual mission: to mourn and to collect a single heirloom -- her mother's Shabbat candlesticks. But when Ronit reconnects with her complex and beloved cousin Dovid as well as with a forbidden childhood sweetheart, she becomes more than just a stranger in her old home -- she becomes a threat. Set at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, of personal desires and the demands of God, Disobedience is about the importance of moving on and what we lose when we do -- and it is about the tendency toward disobedience that we all possess.

For Kate Klein, a semi-accidental mother of three, suburbia's been full of unpleasant surprises.  Her once-loving husband is hardly ever home.  The supermommies on the playground routinely snub her.  Her days are spent carpooling and enduring endless games of Candy Land, and...  more

For Kate Klein, a semi-accidental mother of three, suburbia's been full of unpleasant surprises.  Her once-loving husband is hardly ever home.  The supermommies on the playground routinely snub her.  Her days are spent carpooling and enduring endless games of Candy Land, and at night, most of her orgasms are of the do-it-yourself variety. When a fellow mother is murdered, Kate finds that the unsolved mystery is one of the most interesting things to happen in Upchurch since her neighbors broke ground for a guesthouse and cracked their septic tank.  Even though Kate's husband and the police chief warn her that crime-fighting's a job best left to professionals, she can't let it go. So Kate launches an unofficial investigation -- from 8:45 to 11:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when her kids are in nursery school -- with the help of her hilarious best friend, carpet heiress Janie Segal, and Evan McKenna, a former flame she thought she'd left behind in New York City. As the search for the killer progresses, Kate is drawn deeper into the murdered woman's double life.  She discovers the secrets and lies behind Upchurch's placid picket-fence facade -- and the choices and compromises all modern women make as they navigate between independence and obligation, small towns and big cities, being a mother and having a life of one's own. Engrossing, suspenseful, and laugh-out-loud funny, GOODNIGHT NOBODY is another unputdownable, timely tale; an insightful mystery with a great heart and a narrator you'll never forget.

Elizabeth has a new job at an unusual library— a lending library of objects, not books. In a secret room in the basement lies the Grimm Collection. That’s where the librarians lock away powerful items straight out of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales: seven-league boots, a table that...  more

Elizabeth has a new job at an unusual library— a lending library of objects, not books. In a secret room in the basement lies the Grimm Collection. That’s where the librarians lock away powerful items straight out of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales: seven-league boots, a table that produces a feast at the blink of an eye, Snow White’s stepmother’s sinister mirror that talks in riddles. When the magical objects start to disappear, Elizabeth embarks on a dangerous quest to catch the thief before she can be accused of the crime—or captured by the thief. Polly Shulman has created a contemporary fantasy with a fascinating setting and premise, starring an ordinary girl whose after-school job is far from ordinary— and leads to a world of excitement, romance and magical intrigue.

In September 1863, Jacob Grimm travels through rural western Germany with his devoted niece, Auguste, who longs to learn at last the truth about her family. They are accompanied by Kummel, their new and enigmatic manservant. As relations between the three reach a crisis point, vivid flashbacks...  more

In September 1863, Jacob Grimm travels through rural western Germany with his devoted niece, Auguste, who longs to learn at last the truth about her family. They are accompanied by Kummel, their new and enigmatic manservant. As relations between the three reach a crisis point, vivid flashbacks tell of Jacob's traumas and heartbreaks. Old now, Jacob resists Auguste's attempts to make him take stock of his life, but memories that are repressed have a tendency to reappear in other places, and in other guises.Throughout Jacob's travels, he is reminded of the folktales he and his brother Wilhelm collected in their Tales for the Young and Old. Most notable is the feverish fairytale of "Sleeping Beauty," which holds a shattered mirror to a life, a country, and a history. The version recounted here is an enchanting tale that goes beyond the marriage of the Prince and Princess, to reveal the surprising truth behind the evil.In his compelling historical novel, Haydn Middleton re-creates the life story of literature's most famous brothers. It is a history that could almost be a fairytale itself, with its fabulous changes of fortune, tests of duty and honor, arrogant princes, lost loves, and twisted family relationships-all unfolding in a world of dark forests and even darker politics.

Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two...  more

Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world. A bestseller for more than thirty years, A Separate Peace is John Knowles's crowning achievement and an undisputed American classic.

The Lifeguard combines Mary Morris's consummate craft as a storyteller with her gift for dramatic travel writing. In the title story, a teenage lifeguard sees his mystique among the girls on the beach dissolve in a panicked moment when he cannot save a child. In "The Glass-Bottom Boat," a mother...  more

The Lifeguard combines Mary Morris's consummate craft as a storyteller with her gift for dramatic travel writing. In the title story, a teenage lifeguard sees his mystique among the girls on the beach dissolve in a panicked moment when he cannot save a child. In "The Glass-Bottom Boat," a mother on her first trip abroad learns about trust from a solicitous stranger.The Lifeguard is a powerful collection of ten short stories that shows Morris's great sensitivity to men and women at moments of turbulence, uncertainty, and crisis.

Bestselling author Donna Tartt returns with a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother?s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents? yard. Twelve years...  more

Bestselling author Donna Tartt returns with a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother?s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents? yard. Twelve years later Robin?s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin?s sister Harriet?unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town?s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family?s history of loss. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and ?a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens? (The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.

When Cameron was fifteen, she and Sonia were best friends -- so close it seemed nothing would ever come between them. Now Cameron is a twenty-nine-year-old research assistant with no meaningful ties to anyone except her aging boss, noted historian Oliver Doucet. Nearly a decade after the...  more

When Cameron was fifteen, she and Sonia were best friends -- so close it seemed nothing would ever come between them. Now Cameron is a twenty-nine-year-old research assistant with no meaningful ties to anyone except her aging boss, noted historian Oliver Doucet. Nearly a decade after the incident that ended their friendship, Cameron receives an unexpected letter from her old friend. Despite Oliver’s urging, she doesn’t reply. But when he passes away, Cameron discovers that he has left her with one final task: to track down Sonia and hand-deliver a mysterious package to her. The Myth of You and Me captures the intensity of a friendship as well as the real sense of loss that lingers after the end of one. Searingly honest and beautiful, it is a celebration and portrait of a friendship that will appeal to anyone who still feels the absence of that first true friend.

In this sequel to the mega-hit The Nanny Diaries, Nan Hutchinson returns to New York with her husband after 12 years of living abroad. The happy couple finds a dilapidated Harlem mansion in need of some renovation and starts to talk about starting a family of their own, but their plans are...  more

In this sequel to the mega-hit The Nanny Diaries, Nan Hutchinson returns to New York with her husband after 12 years of living abroad. The happy couple finds a dilapidated Harlem mansion in need of some renovation and starts to talk about starting a family of their own, but their plans are interrupted when 16-year-old Grayer X, last seen as the four-year-old Nan looked after in the first book, arrives on their doorstop in a drunken funk. As Nan finds herself nurturing Grayer and his little brother Stilton through their parents' messy divorce, she realizes that she has once again surrendered her identity and become subject to the whims of the X family. McLaughlin and Kraus manage to keep all the divine wit and humor of their previous bestseller while adding a number of satisfying contemporary elements to the mix.

Meet Syd Redding, the gruff, streetwise narrator of The Narcissist’s Daughter. An ambitious working-class young man and pre-med student, Syd passes the stultifying hours in Ethics class fantasizing about the destruction of the Kesslers, his boss’s well-to-do family, a threesome...  more

Meet Syd Redding, the gruff, streetwise narrator of The Narcissist’s Daughter. An ambitious working-class young man and pre-med student, Syd passes the stultifying hours in Ethics class fantasizing about the destruction of the Kesslers, his boss’s well-to-do family, a threesome “moneyed and beautiful and installed high in the city’s society.” As he steps onto the doorstep of their great, grand mansion in the estate section of town, Syd has no detailed plan in mind, only vague, delicious dreams of vengeance. But when he meets the boss’s daughter, he soon finds himself caught in the sexual machinations of this magnetic family on the brink of unraveling.

Two brothers and a friend find $4 million in the cockpit of a downed plane. The pilot is dead. No one is looking for the money. To keep it, all they have to do is wait. It all sounded so simple... But from the moment their plan is set in motion, Hank Mitchell's well-ordered life...  more

Two brothers and a friend find $4 million in the cockpit of a downed plane. The pilot is dead. No one is looking for the money. To keep it, all they have to do is wait. It all sounded so simple... But from the moment their plan is set in motion, Hank Mitchell's well-ordered life spins out of control, sending him on a downward spiral of deceit, treachery, and blackmail--total chaos leading to the unthinkable... cold-blooded murder. Doomed to keep the secret of the money safe, Hank will kill and kill again, helped by the most calculating accomplice of all--his pregnant wife, Sarah. A Simple Plan plunges you into the world of a seemingly rational man whose descent into madness and murder will chill you to the bone. A masterpiece of psychological suspense, it will leave you wondering just how far you would go to hold onto a dream.

Set in the Vermont countryside, Water Witches is a tale of the clash between progress and tradition, science and magic. In the midst of a nightmarish New England drought, cynical ski industry lobbyist Scottie Winston is trying to get a large ski resort the permits it needs to tap already...  more

Set in the Vermont countryside, Water Witches is a tale of the clash between progress and tradition, science and magic. In the midst of a nightmarish New England drought, cynical ski industry lobbyist Scottie Winston is trying to get a large ski resort the permits it needs to tap already beleaguered rivers for snow. His wife, his little girl, and his sister-in-law -- dowsers or "water witches" all -- hope to stop him, however, in this gentle, comic, life-affirming novel.

With his trademark emotional heft and storytelling skill, bestselling author Chris Bohjalian presents this resonant novel about the formation of an unconventional family -- the ties that bind it, and the strains that pull it apart. Two years after their twin daughters died in a flash flood,...  more

With his trademark emotional heft and storytelling skill, bestselling author Chris Bohjalian presents this resonant novel about the formation of an unconventional family -- the ties that bind it, and the strains that pull it apart. Two years after their twin daughters died in a flash flood, Terry and Laura Sheldon, a Vermont state trooper and his wife, take in a foster child. His name is Alfred; he is ten years old and African American. And he has passed through so many indifferent families that he can't believe that his new one will last. In the ensuing months Terry and Laura will struggle to emerge from their shell of grief only to face an unexpected threat to their marriage: Terry's involvement with another woman. Meanwhile, Alfred cautiously enters the family circle, and befriends an elderly neighbor who inspires him with the story of the buffalo soldiers, the black cavalrymen of the old West. Out of the entwining and unfolding of their lives, The Buffalo Soldier creates a suspenseful, moving portrait of a family, infused by Bohjalian's moral complexity and narrative assurance.

A literary sensation published to outstanding accolades in America and around the world, Lord of the Barnyard was one of the most auspicious fiction debuts of recent years. Now available in paperback, Tristan Egolf's manic, inventive, and painfully funny debut novel is the story of a town's...  more

A literary sensation published to outstanding accolades in America and around the world, Lord of the Barnyard was one of the most auspicious fiction debuts of recent years. Now available in paperback, Tristan Egolf's manic, inventive, and painfully funny debut novel is the story of a town's dirty laundry -- and a garbagemen's strike that lets it all hang out. Lord of the Barnyard begins with the death of a woolly mammoth in the last Ice Age and concludes with a greased-pig chase at a funeral in the modern-day Midwest. In the interim there are two hydroelectric dam disasters, fourteen tavern brawls, one shoot-out in the hills, three cases of probable arson, a riot in the town hall, and a lone tornado, as well as appearances by a coven of Methodist crones, an encampment of Appalachian crop thieves, six renegade coal-truck operators, an outraged mob of factory rats, a dysfunctional poultry plant, and one autodidact goat-roping farm boy by the name of John Kaltenbrunner. Lord of the Barnyard is a brilliantly comic tapestry of a Middle America still populated by river rats and assembly-line poultry killers, measuring into shot glasses the fruits of years of quiet desperation on the factory floor. Unforgettable and linguistically dizzying, it goes much farther than postal.

"Superbly crafted and astonishingly powerful. . . . It will thrill readers who cherish their worn copies of To Kill A Mockingbird." --People With a suspense, lyricism, and moral complexity that recall To Kill a Mockingbird and Presumed Innocent, this compulsively readable novel explores what...  more

"Superbly crafted and astonishingly powerful. . . . It will thrill readers who cherish their worn copies of To Kill A Mockingbird." --People With a suspense, lyricism, and moral complexity that recall To Kill a Mockingbird and Presumed Innocent, this compulsively readable novel explores what happens when a woman who has devoted herself to ushering life into the world finds herself charged with responsibility in a patient's tragic death. The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if--as Sibyl's assistant later charges--the patient wasn't already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her? As recounted by Sibyl's precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except for the fact that all its participants are acting from the highest motives--and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.

Here is Just's masterpiece - an epic chronicle of three generations of Washington power brokers and the womenfolk who loved them (except when they didn't). The Washington Post described this book as "a fascinating if ultimately painful fairy tale, complete with a family curse. The decline of the...  more

Here is Just's masterpiece - an epic chronicle of three generations of Washington power brokers and the womenfolk who loved them (except when they didn't). The Washington Post described this book as "a fascinating if ultimately painful fairy tale, complete with a family curse. The decline of the Behls represents the decline of Washington from the bright dawn of the American century into the gathering shadows of an alien new millennium."

Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now he's hearing the private thoughts of the people around him--and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom's existence becomes a waking nightmare, greater jolts...  more

Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now he's hearing the private thoughts of the people around him--and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom's existence becomes a waking nightmare, greater jolts are in store when he becomes the unwilling recipient of a compelling message from beyond the grave!

Perched in the far corner of a run-down New England mall, the Red Lobster hasn't been making its numbers and headquarters has pulled the plug. But manager Manny DeLeon still needs to navigate a tricky last shift. With four shopping days left until Christmas, Manny must convince his...  more

Perched in the far corner of a run-down New England mall, the Red Lobster hasn't been making its numbers and headquarters has pulled the plug. But manager Manny DeLeon still needs to navigate a tricky last shift. With four shopping days left until Christmas, Manny must convince his near-mutinous staff to hunker down and serve the final onslaught of hungry retirees, lunatics, and holiday office parties. All the while, he's wondering how to handle the waitress he's still in love with, his pregnant girlfriend at home, and where to find the present that will make everything better. A Bittersweet Tale of Work and Love from one of "America's Best Young Novelists" (Granta).

On two remote islands off the coast of Maine, the local lobstermen have fought savagely for generations over the fishing rights to the ocean waters between them. Young Ruth Thomas is born into this feud, the daughter of one of the greediest lobstermen in Maine. Eighteen years old, as smart as a...  more

On two remote islands off the coast of Maine, the local lobstermen have fought savagely for generations over the fishing rights to the ocean waters between them. Young Ruth Thomas is born into this feud, the daughter of one of the greediest lobstermen in Maine. Eighteen years old, as smart as a whip, and irredeemably unromantic, Ruth returns home from boarding school determined to throw her education overboard and join the "stern men." As the feud escalates, she helps work the lobster boats, brushes up on her profanity, and eventually falls for Owney Wishnell, a handsome young lobsterman. "Funny, clever and wise" (Seattle Times), STERN MEN captures a feisty American spirit through this unforgettable heroine who is destined for greatness despite herself.

Some children dream of joining the circus. Mat dreams of escaping it. Abandoned by her mother when she was five, she was adopted into a traveling circus where the only solace she could find was in her work helping rig the circus tent. Now 15 years old, she has created a family from an odd...  more

Some children dream of joining the circus. Mat dreams of escaping it. Abandoned by her mother when she was five, she was adopted into a traveling circus where the only solace she could find was in her work helping rig the circus tent. Now 15 years old, she has created a family from an odd menagerie of circus hands. There's Al, a hard-drinking cook and one-time transvestite clown; Tante, the costume mistress, whose disfiguring scars run deeper than her skin; and her lover Jayson, the ring crew-chief 20 years her senior. Together they inhabit a peripatetic world of drugs, booze and sex that Mat secretly longs to leave. Written with the insider savvy of an author who has lived the circus life, Roustabout marks a debut of uncommon impact that readers will not soon forget.

Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger, and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years... In the South of France in 1790 two convent girls hide...  more

Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger, and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years... In the South of France in 1790 two convent girls hide valuable pieces of a chess set all over the world, because the game that can be played with them is too powerful....

A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness. Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life...  more

A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness. Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although she has her hands full - keeping track of her brother, Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious notes on How to Survive in the Wild - she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With consummate, spellbinding skill, Nicole Krauss gradually draws together their stories.  

In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard's world changed forever, when Caitlin Somers chose her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomed Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha's...  more

In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonard's world changed forever, when Caitlin Somers chose her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomed Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Martha's Vineyard, a magical, wind-blown island where two friends became summer sisters. . . . Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin has begged Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will go, for the friend whose casual betrayals she remembers all too well. Because Vix wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friend, her summer sister, still has the power to break her heart....

Fresh from a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment. She must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely...  more

Fresh from a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment. She must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims... a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story and survive this homecoming.

Lemaster Carlyle, the president of the country's most prestigious university, and his wife, Julie, the divinity school's deputy dean, are America's most prominent and powerful African American couple. Driving home through a swirling blizzard late one night, the couple skids off the...  more

Lemaster Carlyle, the president of the country's most prestigious university, and his wife, Julie, the divinity school's deputy dean, are America's most prominent and powerful African American couple. Driving home through a swirling blizzard late one night, the couple skids off the road. Near the site of their accident they discover a dead body. To her horror, Julie recognizes the body as a prominent academic and one of her former lovers.  In the wake of the death, the icy veneer of their town Elm Harbor, a place Julie calls "the heart of whiteness," begins to crack, having devastating consequences for a prominent local family and sending shock waves all the way to the White House.

Douglas Kennedy’s new novel demonstrates once again his talent for writing serious popular fiction. The Pursuit of Happiness and A Special Relationship were both Sunday Times bestsellers in paperback.That was the year my life fell apart, and that was the year I moved to Paris.When Harry...  more

Douglas Kennedy’s new novel demonstrates once again his talent for writing serious popular fiction. The Pursuit of Happiness and A Special Relationship were both Sunday Times bestsellers in paperback.That was the year my life fell apart, and that was the year I moved to Paris.When Harry Ricks arrives in Paris on a bleak January morning he is a broken man. He is running away from a failed marriage and a dark scandal that ruined his career as a film lecturer in a small American university. With no money and nowhere to live, Harry swiftly falls in with the city’s underclass, barely scraping a living while trying to finish the book he’d always dreamed of writing. A chance meeting with a mysterious woman, Margit Kadar, with whom Harry falls in love, is his only hope of a brighter future. However, Margit isn’t all she seems to be and Harry soon has to make a decision that will alter his life forever.

John Nickel is a black ex-jazz musician who only wants to be a good father. But when his son is taken away from him, he's left with nothing but the Memphis bar he manages. Then he hires Fay, a young white waitress, who has a volatile brother named Carl in tow. Nickel finds himself consumed with...  more

John Nickel is a black ex-jazz musician who only wants to be a good father. But when his son is taken away from him, he's left with nothing but the Memphis bar he manages. Then he hires Fay, a young white waitress, who has a volatile brother named Carl in tow. Nickel finds himself consumed with the idea of Taft, Fay and Carl's dead father, and begins to reconstruct the life of a man he never met. But his sympathies for these lost souls soon take him down a twisting path into the lives of strangers. . . .

The child was taken in broad daylight, on a warm June morning, in a crowded shopping area in downtown Pittsburgh. Marina Benedict first saw the baby with his mother. Then, just minutes later, she saw him again, in the arms of a man she was certain was not the child’s father. In a...  more

The child was taken in broad daylight, on a warm June morning, in a crowded shopping area in downtown Pittsburgh. Marina Benedict first saw the baby with his mother. Then, just minutes later, she saw him again, in the arms of a man she was certain was not the child’s father. In a single life-altering act, Marina followed them. What happens next will plunge her into a mystery that is both heartbreaking and chilling. Within hours of the abduction, the city is galvanized by the story: a child, the son of a pitcher for the Pirates, is missing. And soon a community begins to unravel...Detective Richard Christie struggles with his own demons as he tries to solve a baffling mystery. And Marina Benedict, pulled from the safety of her ordinary life by a brutal crime, is at the center of the story. Because once, Marina tried to save a life and it changed her forever. Now she will risk her life again -- for a child who is still out there somewhere, still in need of saving.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., the internationally known poet, psychoanalyst, and author of the seminal classic Women Who Run With The Wolves (99 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, translated into eighteen languages, and a bestseller worldwide), touches our lives anew, rendering...  more

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., the internationally known poet, psychoanalyst, and author of the seminal classic Women Who Run With The Wolves (99 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, translated into eighteen languages, and a bestseller worldwide), touches our lives anew, rendering in the strong and lyrical voice for which she has become known a powerful series of her signature healing stories.These elegantly interlocked tales of loss, survival, and fierce rebirth center around Dr. Estes's uncle, a war-ravaged Hungarian peasant farmer and refugee, a faithful gardener, and a storehouse of stories who was one of the "dancing fools, wise old crows, grumpy sages, and 'almost saints' who made up the old people" in Estés's childhood.Told with graceful simplicity, deep feeling, generous humor, and profound optimism, The Faithful Gardener is, at its captivating core, the story of an open-hearted child who listened well to her old-country elders and who grew up to remember, to bear witness, and, as one of the premier storytellers of our times, to remind readers and listeners of all ages of "that magisterial life force within all things that strengthens us in times of turmoil or transition, that faithful force which can never die."

It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that...  more

It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find the peace that neither will ever retreat from again. . . .

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood...  more

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood -- the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers -- Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah -- the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.

In the summer of '76, the Shulmans and the Melishes migrate to Kaaterskill, the tiny town in upstate New York where Orthodox Jews and Yankee year-rounders live side by side from June through August. Elizabeth Shulman, a devout follower of Rav Elijah Kirshner and the mother of five daughters, is...  more

In the summer of '76, the Shulmans and the Melishes migrate to Kaaterskill, the tiny town in upstate New York where Orthodox Jews and Yankee year-rounders live side by side from June through August. Elizabeth Shulman, a devout follower of Rav Elijah Kirshner and the mother of five daughters, is restless. She needs a project of her own, outside her family and her cloistered community. Across the street, Andras Melish is drawn to Kaaterskill by his adoring older sisters, bound to him by their loss and wrenching escape from the Holocaust. Both comforted and crippled by his sisters' love, Andras cannot overcome the ambivalence he feels toward his children and his own beautiful wife. At the top of the hill, Rav Kirshner is coming to the end of his life, and he struggles to decide which of his sons should succeed him: the pious but stolid Isaiah, or the brilliant but worldly Jeremy. Behind the scenes, alarmed as his beloved Kaaterskill is overdeveloped by Michael King, the local real estate broker, Judge Miles Taylor keeps an old secret in check, biding his time....

Allegra Goodman has delighted readers with her critically acclaimed collections Total Immersion and The Family Markowitz, and her celebrated first novel, Kaaterskill Falls, which was a national bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. Abandoned by her folk-dancing partner, Gary, in a...  more

Allegra Goodman has delighted readers with her critically acclaimed collections Total Immersion and The Family Markowitz, and her celebrated first novel, Kaaterskill Falls, which was a national bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. Abandoned by her folk-dancing partner, Gary, in a Honolulu hotel room, Sharon realizes she could return to Boston--and her estranged family--or listen to that little voice inside herself. The voice that asks: “How come Gary got to pursue his causes, while all I got to pursue was him?” Thus, with an open heart, a soul on fire, and her meager possessions (a guitar, two Indian gauze skirts, a macramé bikini, and her grandfather’s silver watch) Sharon begins her own spiritual quest. Ever the optimist, she is sure at each stage that she has struck it rich “spiritually speaking”--until she comes up empty. Then, in a karmic convergence of events, Sharon starts on the path home to Judaism. Still, even as she embraces her tradition, Sharon’s irrepressible self tugs at her sleeve. Especially when she meets Mikhail, falls truly in love at last, and discovers what even she could not imagine--her destiny.

A heartwarming tale of an unlikely friendship amid love, loss, and lingerie In the basement of her Brooklyn apartment, Sima Goldner welcomes women of all shapes and sizes with warmth, acceptance -- and a bra that gives them the support and lift they need. But Sima, regretfully childless at...  more

A heartwarming tale of an unlikely friendship amid love, loss, and lingerie In the basement of her Brooklyn apartment, Sima Goldner welcomes women of all shapes and sizes with warmth, acceptance -- and a bra that gives them the support and lift they need. But Sima, regretfully childless at sixty, and harboring a secret that has embittered her marriage, can't seem to do the same for herself. Then Timna, a young Israeli with enviable cleavage, arrives in search of a demi-cup and stays on to become the shop's seamstress. As they laugh, gossip, and sell lingerie, Sima finds herself awakening to hope and the possibility of happiness in this beguiling story of New York's underground sisterhood, and one woman's second chance.

Asmart, touching novel about the intimate yet fragile relationships among five very different people, thrown together in a small medical office, and how each life affects the others. Alicia, Brice, and Caroline are the ABCs-three close friends who have been brought together while working at the...  more

Asmart, touching novel about the intimate yet fragile relationships among five very different people, thrown together in a small medical office, and how each life affects the others. Alicia, Brice, and Caroline are the ABCs-three close friends who have been brought together while working at the cozy medical practice of Drs. Markowitz and Strub in Midburg, Ohio. But when Alicia and Dr. Strub begin an affair, a dramatic chain of events ensues that gradually but drastically alters the office environment-ultimately requiring all five coworkers to redefine their relationships to one another. As Dr. Strub's romantic life is thrown into turmoil, Dr. Markowitz is faced with the dire illness of his own wife and the secret life she has kept from him. Nurse Alicia withdraws to focus on her prodigy son; receptionist Caroline enters into a strange romance she previously would have dismissed; and office manager Brice, his once-ordered world disintegrating, is set dangerously adrift. Finally, a questionable business venture that evolves into financial scandal precipitates a monstrous tragedy that threatens to destroy everyone involved.

Anne Rosenbaum leads a life of Los Angeles privilege: the wife of a Hollywood executive, Howard Rosenbaum, and mother of their teenage son, Sam. Years ago Anne and Howard met studying literature at Columbia—she, the daughter of a British diplomat from London; he, a boy from an Orthodox...  more

Anne Rosenbaum leads a life of Los Angeles privilege: the wife of a Hollywood executive, Howard Rosenbaum, and mother of their teenage son, Sam. Years ago Anne and Howard met studying literature at Columbia—she, the daughter of a British diplomat from London; he, a boy from an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. When one of Howard's friends asks Anne to make a reading list, she agrees and soon finds herself leading a book club for the industry elite. But when a crisis of identity turns Howard back toward the Orthodoxy he left behind, Anne must set out to save what she values above all else: her husband's love.

St. Elizabeth's is a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s. Life there is not unpleasant, and for most, it is temporary. Not so for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed. She plans to give up her baby because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs....  more

St. Elizabeth's is a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s. Life there is not unpleasant, and for most, it is temporary. Not so for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed. She plans to give up her baby because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth's is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she cannot go through with her plans, not all of them. And she cannot remain forever untouched by what she has left behind ... and who she has become in the leaving.

Anna, a self-sufficient and reliable single mother, packs her bags one day for a short vacation to Italy. She leaves her beloved daughter at home in London with good friends. When Anna doesn't return, everyone begins to make excuses, until the likelihood that she might not come back at all...  more

Anna, a self-sufficient and reliable single mother, packs her bags one day for a short vacation to Italy. She leaves her beloved daughter at home in London with good friends. When Anna doesn't return, everyone begins to make excuses, until the likelihood that she might not come back at all becomes chillingly clear. In this dazzling work of suspense, Sarah Dunant interweaves parallel narratives that are stretched taut with tension even as they raise difficult questions about love, trust, and accountability. We are challenged, unnerved, and ultimately exhilarated as Dunant redefines the boundaries of the psychological thriller.

Sofie and her husband have left Manhattan in search of a more tranquil life in the suburbs. But when a member of Sofie's new neighborhood book club turns up dead, things get messy. She discovers that everybody has something to hide, including her own husband. Her neighbor Priscilla has been...  more

Sofie and her husband have left Manhattan in search of a more tranquil life in the suburbs. But when a member of Sofie's new neighborhood book club turns up dead, things get messy. She discovers that everybody has something to hide, including her own husband. Her neighbor Priscilla has been married to Gordon for fifteen years, but the love left their marriage a long time ago. Susan is Priscilla's biggest supporter until she has to choose between loyalty to her friend and telling the truth. Ashley is eager to fit in, but her youth and status as a second wife keep her on the outside. She may know more than they think she does, though. Julia seems to have it all - the perfect house, job and husband. But her untimely death has people questioning how perfect her life really was. Through this swamp of suburban secrets, Sofie must wade to find the truth behind Julia's murder and the state of her own marriage. They Did It with Love is a delightful, twisty, and twisted exploration of the things we'll do for love.

At once wry and shocking, humane and raw, ironic and visceral, Denise Mina brings a distinctive new voice to crime fiction in this gritty, award-winning debut novel set in the grim precincts of Glasgow's Garnethill. There the unlucky Maureen O'Donnell wakes up one fuzzy-headed morning to...  more

At once wry and shocking, humane and raw, ironic and visceral, Denise Mina brings a distinctive new voice to crime fiction in this gritty, award-winning debut novel set in the grim precincts of Glasgow's Garnethill. There the unlucky Maureen O'Donnell wakes up one fuzzy-headed morning to discover her therapist-boyfriend in the middle of the living room, tied to one of her kitchen chairs, with his throat slit clean through. Recently recovered from a breakdown, Maureen now finds herself the prime suspect in a grisly murder case. Harassed by the police and hounded by the press, she sets out to reconstruct her dead lover's last days and uncovers a dire trail of rape, deception, and suppressed scandal at a local psychiatric hospital. When a second mutilated corpse surfaces, she realizes hers could be the third. It's time for Maureen to get lucky.

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer -- his “Keltjin potatoes” are justifiably famous -- has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with...  more

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer -- his “Keltjin potatoes” are justifiably famous -- has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own. As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life back home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed. This long-awaited new novel by one of the most heralded writers of the past two decades is lyrical, funny, moving, and devastating.

Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose...  more

Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times). In The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character. When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American. The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

A life hanging in the balance…a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family, love, and letting go. Edward Warren, twenty-four, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an...  more

A life hanging in the balance…a family torn apart. The #1 internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult tells an unforgettable story about family, love, and letting go. Edward Warren, twenty-four, has been living in Thailand for five years, a prodigal son who left his family after an irreparable fight with his father, Luke. But he gets a frantic phone call: His dad lies comatose, gravely injured in the same accident that has also injured his younger sister Cara. With her father’s chances for recovery dwindling, Cara wants to wait for a miracle. But Edward wants to terminate life support and donate his father’s organs. Is he motivated by altruism, or revenge? And to what lengths will his sister go to stop him from making an irrevocable decision? Lone Wolf explores the notion of family, and the love, protection and strength it’s meant to offer. But what if the hope that should sustain it, is the very thing that pulls it apart? Another tour de force from Jodi Picoult, Lone Wolf examines the wild and lonely terrain upon which love battles reason.

Mr. Hood's Holiday House has stood for a thousand years, welcoming countless children into its embrace. It is a place of miracles, a blissful rounds of treats and seasons, where every childhood whim may be satisfied...There is a price to be paid, of course, but young Harvey Swick, bored with his...  more

Mr. Hood's Holiday House has stood for a thousand years, welcoming countless children into its embrace. It is a place of miracles, a blissful rounds of treats and seasons, where every childhood whim may be satisfied...There is a price to be paid, of course, but young Harvey Swick, bored with his life and beguiled by Mr. Hood's wonders, does not stop to consider the consequences. It is only when the House shows it's darker face -- when Harvey discovers the pitiful creatures that dwell in its shadows -- that he comes to doubt Mr. Hood's philanthropy.The House and its mysterious architect are not about to release their captive without a battle, however. Mr. Hood has ambitious for his new guest, for Harvey's soul burns brighter than any soul he has encountered in a thousand years...

Robert Vishniak is the favored son of Oxford Circle, a working-class Jewish neighborhood in 1970s Philadelphia. Handsome and clever, Robert glides into the cloistered universities of New England, where scions of unimaginable wealth and influence stand shoulder to shoulder with scholarship...  more

Robert Vishniak is the favored son of Oxford Circle, a working-class Jewish neighborhood in 1970s Philadelphia. Handsome and clever, Robert glides into the cloistered universities of New England, where scions of unimaginable wealth and influence stand shoulder to shoulder with scholarship paupers like himself who wash dishes for book money. The doors that open there lead Robert to the highest circles of Manhattan society during the heart of the Reagan boom where everything Robert has learned about women, through seduction and heartbreak, pays off. For a brief moment, he has it all -- but the world in which he finds himself is not the world from which he comes, and a chance encounter with a beautiful girl from the old neighborhood -- and the forgotten life she reawakens -- threatens to unravel his carefully constructed new identity.

Beautiful Girls is a dazzling debut collection about the secret lives of girls and women. The characters who inhabit Beth Ann Bauman’s stories are the timid, the not-quite-fabulous, the public school Ophelias, who yearn for something grander than their current lot. Told with irresistible...  more

Beautiful Girls is a dazzling debut collection about the secret lives of girls and women. The characters who inhabit Beth Ann Bauman’s stories are the timid, the not-quite-fabulous, the public school Ophelias, who yearn for something grander than their current lot. Told with irresistible humor and remarkable grace, these stories illuminate the search for love, friendship, connection, and identity. In "True," an exquisitely shy teenage girl tries to fathom the hidden secrets of beauty from a boy who’s "the prettiest person in the entire school." A lonely divorcée in "Safeway," wanders the darkened aisles of a grocery store during a power outage, and becomes "certain a touch of rot had taken root in her heart...and that she still might live better." In "Wash, Rinse, Spin", a hapless young woman loses her laundry and must resort to the decrepit wardrobe she wore while working in B movies, as her dying father fades in her hometown. And in the title story, voracious girls who long for love and admiration compete in a town pageant. From the fierce bonds among sisters, to the discoveries of a girl who roams her neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, to the allure of a tropical paradise where anything feels possible, Beautiful Girls explores what it means to be a woman in the modern world, looking for a place to call home. At once magical, tender, and wise, this book establishes Beth Ann Bauman as a bold new literary voice.

J. G. Ballard once again reveals his visionary mastery in this warped tale of the unexpected The setting for Cocaine Nights is the Costa del Sol and the stylish resort of Estrella de Mar. Into the queasy beauty of this artificial environment steps Charles Prentice, a travel writer from London...  more

J. G. Ballard once again reveals his visionary mastery in this warped tale of the unexpected The setting for Cocaine Nights is the Costa del Sol and the stylish resort of Estrella de Mar. Into the queasy beauty of this artificial environment steps Charles Prentice, a travel writer from London who has come to visit his brother Frank, manager of the resort's Club Nautico. Frank is in jail, having confessed to setting an explosive fire that has taken five lives. Certain that the confession was coerced, Charles launches his own investigation. As he allows himself to be drawn further into Estrella de Mar's dark underworld, this explosive novel accelerates toward a disturbing climax.

Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park, it is a virtual city-state in itself, built for the most elite high-tech industries. Isolated and secure, the residents lack nothing, yet one day, a doctor at the clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as...  more

Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park, it is a virtual city-state in itself, built for the most elite high-tech industries. Isolated and secure, the residents lack nothing, yet one day, a doctor at the clinic goes on a suicidal shooting spree. Dr. Jane Sinclair is hired as his replacement, and her husband Paul uncovers the dangerous psychological vents that maintain Eden-Olympia?s smoothly-running surface.

Heart of A Dog written by legendary author Mikhail Bulgakov is widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. This great classic will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. For many, Heart of A Dog is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And...  more

Heart of A Dog written by legendary author Mikhail Bulgakov is widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. This great classic will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. For many, Heart of A Dog is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And for others who simply enjoy reading timeless piees of classic literature, this gem by Mikhail Bulgakov is highly recommended. Published by Classic House Books and beautifully produced, Heart of A Dog would make an ideal gift and it should be a part of everyone's personal library.

Set against the translucent beauty of France in summer, Bonjour Tristesse is a bittersweet tale narrated by Cécile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood, whose meddling in her father's love life leads to tragic consequences.Freed from boarding school, Cécile lives in...  more

Set against the translucent beauty of France in summer, Bonjour Tristesse is a bittersweet tale narrated by Cécile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood, whose meddling in her father's love life leads to tragic consequences.Freed from boarding school, Cécile lives in unchecked enjoyment with her youngish, widowed father -- an affectionate rogue, dissolute and promiscuous. Having accepted the constantly changing women in his life, Cécile pursues a sexual conquest of her own with a "tall and almost beautiful" law student. Then, a new woman appears in her father's life. Feeling threatened but empowered, Cécile sets in motion a devastating plan that claims a surprising victim.Deceptively simple in structure, Bonjour Tristesse is a complex and beautifully composed portrait of casual amorality and a young woman's desperate attempt to understand and control the world around her.

An actor and a divorcee meet in a deserted New York City afterhours bar. With little in common save loneliness, middle age, and a presentiment of escape, they improvise a love story. The fragility and fear that drive their experiment from moment to moment, bedroom to bedroom, transform this...  more

An actor and a divorcee meet in a deserted New York City afterhours bar. With little in common save loneliness, middle age, and a presentiment of escape, they improvise a love story. The fragility and fear that drive their experiment from moment to moment, bedroom to bedroom, transform this boy-meets-girl into a literary potboiler in which risk becomes salvation. Georges Simenon — supreme master of the modern psychological story — has been praised by writers from Ernest Hemingway to Andre Gide.

Franny and Zooey is a book which comprises the short story "Franny" and novella Zooey. Franny and Zooey, a sister and brother both in their twenties, are the two youngest members of the Glass Family, which was a frequent focus of Salinger's writings. Franny, named for...  more

Franny and Zooey is a book which comprises the short story "Franny" and novella Zooey. Franny and Zooey, a sister and brother both in their twenties, are the two youngest members of the Glass Family, which was a frequent focus of Salinger's writings. Franny, named for Franny Glass, takes place in an unnamed college town during the weekend of "the Yale game" and tells of an undergraduate who is becoming disenchanted with the selfishness and inauthenticity she perceives all around her. Zooey, named for Zooey Glass, a somewhat emotionally toughened genius who at the age of twelve had "a vocabulary on an exact par with Mary Baker Eddy’s." Whilst Franny, his younger sister, suffers a spiritual and existential breakdown in their parents' Manhattan living room -- leaving Bessie, their mother, deeply concerned -- Zooey comes to Franny's aid, offering what he thinks is brotherly love, understanding, and words of sage advice.

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermino Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs -- yet he reserves his...  more

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermino Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs -- yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again. With humorous sagacity and consummate craft, García Márquez traces an exceptional half-century story of unrequited love. Though it seems never to be conveniently contained, love flows through the novel in many wonderful guises -- joyful, melancholy, enriching, ever surprising.

In these five haunting stories, Vikram Chandra paints a remarkable picture of Bombay - its ghosts, its passions, its feuds, its mysteries - while exploring timeless questions of the human spirit. The stories are linked by a single narrator, an elusive civil servant, who, on each of five...  more

In these five haunting stories, Vikram Chandra paints a remarkable picture of Bombay - its ghosts, its passions, its feuds, its mysteries - while exploring timeless questions of the human spirit. The stories are linked by a single narrator, an elusive civil servant, who, on each of five evenings, recounts an extraordinary tale to those seated around him in a smoky Bombay bar. In 'Shakti', two feuding business families are united by a forbidden passion; in 'Dharma', a soldier forced to save his life through a terrible act of self-mutilation returns to his home in Bombay to find it haunted by the spirit of a small boy; in 'Kama', a police inspector takes on a murder case and finds himself drawn further and further into spiralling layers of corruption and deceit.

The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. When he falls for a fake story and implicates a powerful congressman in some rather nasty business on a radio program, Gus becomes embroiled in a slander suit. The stress makes it difficult for him to...  more

The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. When he falls for a fake story and implicates a powerful congressman in some rather nasty business on a radio program, Gus becomes embroiled in a slander suit. The stress makes it difficult for him to focus on his next novel, which is based on the suspicious death of billionaire Konstantin Zacharias. The convicted murderer is behind bars, but Gus is not convinced that justice was served. There are too many unanswered questions, and Konstantin’s hot-tempered widow will do anything to conceal the truth.

"The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Beware of Pity, the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings. Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the...  more

"The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Beware of Pity, the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings. Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of the barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host's lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder that will destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health.

Sam and his friends are like any normal gang of normal young boys. Roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town. Daring adults to challenge their freedom.Until the day Sam wakes to find the Tooth Fairy sitting on the edge of his bed. Not the benign figure of childhood myth, but an...  more

Sam and his friends are like any normal gang of normal young boys. Roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town. Daring adults to challenge their freedom.Until the day Sam wakes to find the Tooth Fairy sitting on the edge of his bed. Not the benign figure of childhood myth, but an enigmatic presence that both torments and seduces him, changing his life forever.

Graham Joyce travels to an enthralling, suspense-charged landscape in this hallucinatory novel of a father's quest to save his daughter -- without destroying himself. Dan Innes has received shattering news from the British Embassy in Bangkok: his daughter, Charlie, whom he hasn't seen or spoken...  more

Graham Joyce travels to an enthralling, suspense-charged landscape in this hallucinatory novel of a father's quest to save his daughter -- without destroying himself. Dan Innes has received shattering news from the British Embassy in Bangkok: his daughter, Charlie, whom he hasn't seen or spoken to in two years, has been imprisoned in a Thai jail for drug smuggling. Angry, terrified, seething with reprimands and questions, Dan leaves for Thailand. But the jail at Chiang Mai marks the beginning of his search rather than the end. Following the faintest of trails up into the lawless, dangerous mountain region near Myanmar, where opium grows abundantly, Dan must retrace Charlie's steps -- and brave the same traps that have swallowed her...on a terrifying mission of self-discovery, blind faith, and salvation.

I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family...  more

I Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably. In "The Girl with the Blackened Eye," selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, a girl pushed to an even greater extreme of courage and desperation manages to survive her abduction by a serial killer. And in "Three Girls," two adventuresome NYU undergraduates seal their secret love by following, and protecting, Marilyn Monroe in disguise at Strand Used Books on a snowy evening in 1956. These vividly rendered portraits of women, men, and children testify to Oates's compassion for the mysterious and luminous resources of the human spirit.

The author of Song of Solomon now sets her extraordinary novelistic powers on a striking new course. Tar Baby, audacious and hypnotic, is masterful in its mingling of tones--of longing and alarm, of urbanity and a primal, mythic force in which the landscape itself becomes animate, alive with a...  more

The author of Song of Solomon now sets her extraordinary novelistic powers on a striking new course. Tar Baby, audacious and hypnotic, is masterful in its mingling of tones--of longing and alarm, of urbanity and a primal, mythic force in which the landscape itself becomes animate, alive with a wild, dark complicity in the fates of the people whose drama unfolds. It is a novel suffused with a tense and passionate inquiry, revealing a whole spectrum of emotions underlying the relationships between black men and women, white men and women, and black and white people.The place is a Caribbean island. In their mansion overlooking the sea, the cultivated millionaire Valerian Street, now retired, and his pretty, younger wife, Margaret, go through rituals of living, as if in a trance. It is the black servant couple, who have been with the Streets for years--the fastidious butler, Sydney, and his strong yet remote wife--who have arranged every detail of existence to create a surface calm broken only by sudden bursts of verbal sparring between Valerian and his wife. And there is a visitor among them--a beautiful young black woman, Jadine, who is not only the servant's dazzling niece, but the protegée and friend of the Streets themselves; Jadine, who has been educated at the Sorbonne at Valerian's expense and is home now for a respite from her Paris world of fashion, film and art.Through a season of untroubled ease, the lives of these five move with a ritualized grace until, one night, a ragged, starving black American street man breaks into the house. And, in a single moment, with Valerian's perverse decision not to call for help but instead to invite the man to sit with them and eat, everything changes. Valerian moves toward a larger abdication. Margaret's delicate and enduring deception is shattered. The butler and his wife are forced into acknowledging their illusions. And Jadine, who at first is repelled by the intruder, finds herself moving inexorably toward him--he calls himself Son;  he is a kind of black man she has dreaded since childhood; uneducated, violent, contemptuous of her privilege. As Jadine and Son come together in the loving collision they have both welcomed and feared, the novel moves outward--to the Florida backwater town Son was raised in, fled from, yet cherishes; to her sleek New York; then back to the island people and their protective and entangling legends. As the lovers strive to hold and understand each other, as they experience the awful weight of  the separate worlds that have formed them--she perceiving his vision of reality and of love as inimical to her freedom, he perceiving her as the classic lure, the tar baby set out to entrap him--all the mysterious elements, all the highly charged threads of the story converge. Everything that is at risk is made clear: how the conflicts and dramas wrought by social and cultural circumstances must ultimately be played out in the realm of the heart.Once again, Toni Morrison has given us a novel of daring, fascination, and power.From the Hardcover edition.

After years of unsuccessful attempts at conceiving a child, Ana and James become parents overnight, when a terrible accident makes them guardians to 2 ¿ year-old Finn. Suddenly, two people who were struggling to come to terms with childlessness are thrust into the opposite situation-responsible...  more

After years of unsuccessful attempts at conceiving a child, Ana and James become parents overnight, when a terrible accident makes them guardians to 2 ¿ year-old Finn. Suddenly, two people who were struggling to come to terms with childlessness are thrust into the opposite situation-responsible for a small toddler whose mother's survival is in question. Finn's crash-landing in their tidy, urban lives throws into high relief some troubling truths about their deepest selves, both separately and as a couple. Several chaotic, poignant, and life-changing weeks as a most unusual family give rise to an often unasked question: Can everyone be a parent?

From the prizewinning author of Mr. Fox, the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she?s...  more

From the prizewinning author of Mr. Fox, the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she?s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she?d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy?s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.

Harley Altmyer's mother is in prison for killing his father. So Harley is bringing up his younger sisters and working two jobs to pay the bills-and that doesn't leave a lot of time for distractions. But lately, he's getting distracted by Callie Mercer, an older woman who fills him...  more

Harley Altmyer's mother is in prison for killing his father. So Harley is bringing up his younger sisters and working two jobs to pay the bills-and that doesn't leave a lot of time for distractions. But lately, he's getting distracted by Callie Mercer, an older woman who fills him with such desire he fears he might explode. And as he struggles to keep it together while things begin to spin out of control, Harley finds that as shattered as his family is, there are still more shattering surprises in store...

Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions. It is also, as you might expect, very funny indeed. Just outside...  more

Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions. It is also, as you might expect, very funny indeed. Just outside of Boston, in the small college town of Wellington, lives a family that is anything but typical. Liberated by education, complicated by race, and hobbled by self-delusion, they are about to stray onto the battleground that divides personal belief from political conviction.

Identity, friendship, and a long-hidden crime lie at the heart of Naeem Murr’s captivating novel about five friends growing up in a small 1950s Missouri river town. A contender for the Man Booker Prize, this exhilarating story beautifully evokes the extreme joys, as well as the dark and...  more

Identity, friendship, and a long-hidden crime lie at the heart of Naeem Murr’s captivating novel about five friends growing up in a small 1950s Missouri river town. A contender for the Man Booker Prize, this exhilarating story beautifully evokes the extreme joys, as well as the dark and shameful desires, of childhood. Young Rajiv Travers hasn’t had much luck fitting in anywhere. Born to an Indian mother who was sold to his English father for £20, Raj is abandoned by his relatives into the reluctant care of Ruth, an American romance writer living in Pisgah, Missouri. While his skin color unsettles most of the townsfolk, who are used to seeing things in black and white, the quick-witted Raj soon finds his place among a group of children his own age. While the friends remain loyal to one another through the years, it becomes clear that their paths will veer in markedly different directions. But breaking free of the demands of their families and their community, as well as one another, comes at a devastating price: As the chilling secrets of Pisgah’s residents surface, the madness that erupts will cost Raj his closest friend even as it offers him the life he always dreamed of.

Case Histories, once again featuring ex-cop turned private investigator Jackson Brodie.It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident – an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army,...  more

Case Histories, once again featuring ex-cop turned private investigator Jackson Brodie.It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident – an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander – until he becomes a suspect. With Case Histories, Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In One Good Turn she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson what each one actually discovers is their true self.Unputdownable and triumphant, One Good Turn is a sharply intelligent read that is also percipient, funny, and totally satisfying.

Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not her memory. Ever since 1944 when her husband left her, she has raised her three very different children on her own. Now grown, they have gathered together--with anger, with hope, and with a beautiful, harsh, and dazzling story to tell....

In this, her fourteenth novel--and one of her most endearing--Anne Tyler tells the story of a lovable loser who's trying to get his life in order. Barnaby Gaitlin has been in trouble ever since adolescence. He had this habit of breaking into other people's houses. It wasn't the big loot he was...  more

In this, her fourteenth novel--and one of her most endearing--Anne Tyler tells the story of a lovable loser who's trying to get his life in order. Barnaby Gaitlin has been in trouble ever since adolescence. He had this habit of breaking into other people's houses. It wasn't the big loot he was after, like his teenage cohorts. It was just that he liked to read other people's mail, pore over their family photo albums, and appropriate a few of their precious mementos.But for eleven years now, he's been working steadily for Rent-a-Back, renting his back to old folks and shut-ins who can't move their own porch furniture or bring the Christmas tree down from the attic. At last, his life seems to be on an even keel.Still, the Gaitlins (of "old" Baltimore) cannot forget the price they paid for buying off Barnaby's former victims. And his ex-wife would just as soon he didn't show up ever to visit their little girl, Opal. Even the nice, steady woman (his guardian angel?) who seems to have designs on him doesn't fully trust him, it develops, when the chips are down, and it looks as though his world may fall apart again.There is no one like Anne Tyler, with her sharp, funny, tender perceptions about how human beings navigate on a puzzling planet, and she keeps us enthralled from start to finish in this delicious new novel.

Ignatius J. Reilly, a grossly overweight medieval scholar who lives with his mother, is forced to seek employment when she can no longer tolerate his laziness. His disdainful encounters with the modern culture of New Orleans, his habitual misunderstanding of its inhabitants (some of them no less...  more

Ignatius J. Reilly, a grossly overweight medieval scholar who lives with his mother, is forced to seek employment when she can no longer tolerate his laziness. His disdainful encounters with the modern culture of New Orleans, his habitual misunderstanding of its inhabitants (some of them no less eccentric than himself) and his often hypocritical efforts at scholarly success make him one of the most memorable comic characters of modern literature.

"Tell me a story!" Katherine Shorter Sherritt Sagamore orders her husband Peter Sagamore -- and so lets loose a flood of tales that floats them both past encounteres with their own lives and loves, entanglements with the CIA and toxic waste, and fantastically inventive brushes with...  more

"Tell me a story!" Katherine Shorter Sherritt Sagamore orders her husband Peter Sagamore -- and so lets loose a flood of tales that floats them both past encounteres with their own lives and loves, entanglements with the CIA and toxic waste, and fantastically inventive brushes with some of the greatest characters of all time, including updated versions of Don Quixote, Odysseus, and Scheherazade.

The Nightingale meets Water for Elephants in this powerful novel of friendship and sacrifice, set in a traveling circus during World War II, by international bestselling author Pam Jenoff. Seventeen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier during the...  more

The Nightingale meets Water for Elephants in this powerful novel of friendship and sacrifice, set in a traveling circus during World War II, by international bestselling author Pam Jenoff. Seventeen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier during the occupation of her native Holland. Heartbroken over the loss of the baby she was forced to give up for adoption, she lives above a small German rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep.  When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants, unknown children ripped from their parents and headed for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the baby that was taken from her. In a moment that will change the course of her life, she steals one of the babies and flees into the snowy night, where she is rescued by a German circus. The circus owner offers to teach Noa the flying trapeze act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond. But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and Astrid must decide whether their unlikely friendship is enough to save one another?or if the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything.

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover--these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by...  more

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover--these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our private actions, but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.

From the author of the acclaimed debut Pretty Little Dirty comes a complex, seductive novel about race and culture, set in New Orleans.Babylon Rolling is a glittering, gritty, unflinching novel of five families living along an Uptown block in the year before Hurricane Katrina. Told in numerous...  more

From the author of the acclaimed debut Pretty Little Dirty comes a complex, seductive novel about race and culture, set in New Orleans.Babylon Rolling is a glittering, gritty, unflinching novel of five families living along an Uptown block in the year before Hurricane Katrina. Told in numerous voices, it explores what happens when forces collide in the boozy, humid city that care forgot. At once an exploration of ethnicity and a portrait of a city on the edge of annihilation, Babylon Rolling is a brave and masterful novel.

The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves?a twenty-first century, West Coast Bonfire of the Vanities by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity With The Barbarian Nurseries, Héctor Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great...  more

The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves?a twenty-first century, West Coast Bonfire of the Vanities by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity With The Barbarian Nurseries, Héctor Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions. Araceli is the live-in maid in the Torres-Thompson household?one of three Mexican employees in a Spanish-style house with lovely views of the Pacific. She has been responsible strictly for the cooking and cleaning, but the recession has hit, and suddenly Araceli is the last Mexican standing?unless you count Scott Torres, though you?d never suspect he was half Mexican but for his last name and an old family photo with central L.A. in the background. The financial pressure is causing the kind of fights that even Araceli knows the children shouldn?t hear, and then one morning, after a particularly dramatic fight, Araceli wakes to an empty house?except for the two Torres-Thompson boys, little aliens she?s never had to interact with before. Their parents are unreachable, and the only family member she knows of is Señor Torres, the subject of that old family photo. So she does the only thing she can think of and heads to the bus stop to seek out their grandfather. It will be an adventure, she tells the boys. If she only knew . . . With a precise eye for the telling detail and an unerring way with character, soaring brilliantly and seamlessly among a panorama of viewpoints, Tobar calls on all of his experience?as a novelist, a father, a journalist, a son of Guatemalan immigrants, and a native Angeleno?to deliver a novel as broad, as essential, as alive as the city itself.