It’s 1947. Nine-year-old Jane Gable first lays eyes on young Milo Turner the day that her alcoholic father is buried. The Turners are the first black family ever to live in Morgan Hill, and Jane can’t understand why some people are bitter. When tragedy strikes the Turner household,...  more

It’s 1947. Nine-year-old Jane Gable first lays eyes on young Milo Turner the day that her alcoholic father is buried. The Turners are the first black family ever to live in Morgan Hill, and Jane can’t understand why some people are bitter. When tragedy strikes the Turner household, the Gables are asked to make a decision that could rip their family apart. One path might open up a whole new world to them and bring them closer than ever. The other might bring them nothing but trouble and heartache. As Jane struggles to make sense of the changes in her community, she will soon learn about the angels who surround her, every day, in the most extraordinary—and ordinary—ways.

Now, from the award-winning author of Love Medicine,  comes a vibrant tale of abandonment and sexual obsession, jealousy and unstinting love. On a spring morning in 1932, young Karl and Mary Adare arrive by boxcar in Argus, North Dakota. Orphaned in a most peculiar way, Karl and Mary look...  more

Now, from the award-winning author of Love Medicine,  comes a vibrant tale of abandonment and sexual obsession, jealousy and unstinting love. On a spring morning in 1932, young Karl and Mary Adare arrive by boxcar in Argus, North Dakota. Orphaned in a most peculiar way, Karl and Mary look for refuge to their mother's sister Fritzie, who with her husband, Pete, runs a butcher shop. So begins an exhilarating 40-year saga brimming with unforgettable characters: Ordinary Mary, who causes a miracle ; seductive Karl, who lacks Mary's gift for survival; Sita, their lovely, disturbed, ambitious cousin; Wallace Pfef, a town leader bearing a lonely secret; Celestine James, a mixed-blood Chippewa; and her daughter, Dot. Theirs is a story grounded in the tenacity of relationships, the magic of natural events and the unending mystery of the human condition.

"Everybody has a story. You listen to their story, Honeygirl, and your story will come find you." Her Grand Lady spoke these words when Abby was just a girl growing up in rural Louisiana, surrounded by an extended, loving family. She's been listening carefully ever since. Now Abby...  more

"Everybody has a story. You listen to their story, Honeygirl, and your story will come find you." Her Grand Lady spoke these words when Abby was just a girl growing up in rural Louisiana, surrounded by an extended, loving family. She's been listening carefully ever since. Now Abby is raising her own family thousands of miles away. And even though Hawaii might seem like paradise to some, it's a long way away from those idyllic days she remembers, sitting with her grandmother, learning about the beauty and mystery of life. So Abby has just one wish: that her daughter Hannah might be touched by the beauty of her 92-year-old Grand Lady's stories, before it's too late. But when Hannah finally does spend time with her Grand Lady, the old woman crushes her tender spirit. A mother-daughter journey "home" becomes an adventure of discovery-about the importance of family and the healing found in forgiveness.

Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents. Twelve year-old Ren is...  more

Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents. Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony's Orphanage for boys. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world. But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren's long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. But is Benjamin really who he says he is? Journeying through a New England of whaling towns and meadowed farmlands, Ren is introduced to a vibrant world of hardscrabble adventure filled with outrageous scam artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves. If he stays, Ren becomes one of them. If he goes, he's lost once again. As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well.

As a child, Elizabeth White was sent from her war-torn London home to a safer life in the small Irish town of Kilgarret.  It was there, in the crowded, chaotic O'Connor household, that she met Aisling -- who would become her very best friend, sharing her pet kitten and secretly teaching...  more

As a child, Elizabeth White was sent from her war-torn London home to a safer life in the small Irish town of Kilgarret.  It was there, in the crowded, chaotic O'Connor household, that she met Aisling -- who would become her very best friend, sharing her pet kitten and secretly teaching her the intricacies of Catholicism.  Aisling's boldness brought Elizabeth out of her proper shell; later, her support carried Elizabeth through the painful end of her parents' chilly marriage.  In return, Elizabeth's friendship helped Aisling endure her own unsatisfying marriage to a raging alcoholic.  Through the years, they always believed they could overcome any conflict, conquer any hardship.  They believed they could survive anything, as long as they had each other.  Now they're about to find out if they were right....

When Daniel Musgroves family moves to a small Mississippi town at the beginning of his junior year, he faces all the pain and thrills of adolescence, with extra helpings of hormones and humiliation. But then he meets Tim, a fellow outsider, and the two become fast friends. You only need one best...  more

When Daniel Musgroves family moves to a small Mississippi town at the beginning of his junior year, he faces all the pain and thrills of adolescence, with extra helpings of hormones and humiliation. But then he meets Tim, a fellow outsider, and the two become fast friends. You only need one best friend, Daniel reasons, to make it through high school alive. Together, they negotiate the triumphs and tribulations of junior year: going to the prom in sky blue tuxesit is 1973, after allplaying in an original Baptist musical entitled Christ!, and an unforgettable encounter with their secret heroes, Sonny and Cher. But when the first-ever black prom queen of Minor High School is hit by a car and emerges from her coma believing shes white, Daniel and Tim find themselves caught up in a shocking chain of events that leads to a shattering climax. In the spirit of Richard Russo and Tom Perrotta, Mark Childress is one of our sharpest and most keen-eyed chroniclers of small-town life. ONE MISSISSIPPI is his most ambitious and accomplished novel yet.

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing–a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent. Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the...  more

Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thing–a literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent. Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the rural “badlands” of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. For the farming Pye family, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occur–offstage. Centerstage are the Morrisons, whose tragedy looks more immediate if less brutal, but is, in reality, insidious and divisive. Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt’s protegee, her fascination for pond life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope but seems blind to the state of her own emotional life. And she thinks she’s outgrown her siblings–Luke, Matt, and Bo–who were once her entire world. In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harbored and driven underground, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control, continually overturning one’s expectations right to the very end. Tragic, funny, unforgettable, Crow Lake is a quiet tour de force that will catapult Mary Lawson to the forefront of fiction writers today.

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.

In the cellar there was no sound at all except her own breathing and the soft rustle of her skirts. After her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, she noticed a niche in the wall a yard from where she stood. She saw something there about the size of her fist. Agnes quietly picked it up. It was...  more

In the cellar there was no sound at all except her own breathing and the soft rustle of her skirts. After her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, she noticed a niche in the wall a yard from where she stood. She saw something there about the size of her fist. Agnes quietly picked it up. It was wrapped in a cloth and surprisingly heavy. . . a pistol, the hilt filthy with mud and dirt. Suddenly she heard the chinking sound of glasses nearby. There was no mistaking the voices now. Before she had time to call out, another door creaked open and the pair emerged from the darkness. Agnes Meadowes is cook to the Blanchards of Foster Lane, the renowned London silversmiths. Preparing jugged hare, oyster loaves, almond soup, and other delicacies for the family has given her a dependable life for herself and her son. But when the Blanchards' most prestigious commission, a giant silver wine cooler, is stolen and a young apprentice murdered, Theodore Blanchard calls on Agnes to investigate below stairs. Soon she is inside the sordid underworld of London crime, where learning the truth comes at a high price.

With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life...  more

With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself. Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age. Utterly courageous, uproariously funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, I Feel Bad About My Neck is a scrumptious, irresistible treat of a book, full of truths and laugh-out-loud moments that will appeal to readers of all ages.

In this extraordinary fiction debut--rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion--two remarkable narratives converge on Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world.It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist...  more

In this extraordinary fiction debut--rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion--two remarkable narratives converge on Easter Island, one of the most remote places in the world.It is 1913. Elsa Pendleton travels from England to Easter Island with her husband, an anthropologist sent by the Royal Geographical Society to study the colossal moai statues, and her younger sister. What begins as familial duty for Elsa becomes a grand adventure; on Easter Island she discovers her true calling. But, out of contact with the outside world, she is unaware that World War I has been declared and that a German naval squadron, fleeing the British across the South Pacific, is heading toward the island she now considers home.Sixty years later, Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist, travels to Easter Island to research the island’s ancient pollen, but more important, to put back the pieces of her life after the death of her husband.A series of brilliant revelations brings to life the parallel quests of these two intrepid young women as they delve into the centuries-old mysteries of Easter Island. Slowly unearthing the island’s haunting past, they are forced to confront turbulent discoveries about themselves and the people they love, changing their lives forever.Easter Island is a tour de force of storytelling that will establish Jennifer Vanderbes as one of the most gifted writers of her generation.

James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water, was a literary achievement that topped bestseller lists for more than two years. Now McBride turns his extraordinary gift for storytelling to fiction. Miracle at St. Anna is a tale of courage and redemption inspired by the famed Buffalo soldiers of the...  more

James McBride's memoir, The Color of Water, was a literary achievement that topped bestseller lists for more than two years. Now McBride turns his extraordinary gift for storytelling to fiction. Miracle at St. Anna is a tale of courage and redemption inspired by the famed Buffalo soldiers of the 92nd Division and a little-known historic event in a small Tuscan village at the end of World War II-the massacre at St. Anna di Stazzema.

Arlen Wagner has seen it in men before--a trace of smoke in their eyes that promises imminent death. He is never wrong. So when he awakens on a train one hot Florida night and sees death's telltale sign in the eyes of his fellow passengers, he abandons the train with nineteen-year-old Paul...  more

Arlen Wagner has seen it in men before--a trace of smoke in their eyes that promises imminent death. He is never wrong. So when he awakens on a train one hot Florida night and sees death's telltale sign in the eyes of his fellow passengers, he abandons the train with nineteen-year-old Paul Brickhill. Soon the two men are stranded at the Cypress House--directly in the path of a hurricane. But there are much deadlier threats than the storm in this place, and Arlen's eerie gift warns that they'll never leave. From its chilling beginning to terrifying end, The Cypress House is a story of relentless suspense from the novelist Michael Connelly calls "one of the best of the best."

Tessa Gray is beginning to fight her way through the death of her child. Outside the gate of her preschool, her only child, Abby, was hit and killed by an unknown driver. The police claim there is little evidence and no witnesses. Abby's death is deemed unsolvable. Tessa, a staircase of...  more

Tessa Gray is beginning to fight her way through the death of her child. Outside the gate of her preschool, her only child, Abby, was hit and killed by an unknown driver. The police claim there is little evidence and no witnesses. Abby's death is deemed unsolvable. Tessa, a staircase of emotion, reluctantly agrees to her husband's request that she see a therapist. Tessa begins to confide in her therapist Celia. Listeners learn Celia is remarried to Alden, a man whose outward demeanor is centered and safe; a man her son Ian despises. In sharp contrast is her ex-husband Harry, an animated, sensitive man who dealt with the loss of his own beloved daughter by drowning his family in alcohol. As Ian descends into depression, Celia, a strong advocate for counseling for everyone but herself, fights Harry to get Ian help. The investigation stalled, Tessa vows to find out Abby's murderer herself. She becomes obsessed with a list of repeat drunk driving offenders in the area. She's desperate to do anything to keep herself from falling into the grief abyss, and hopes the list will lead to answers about what happened to Abby. As Celia inadvertently brings Tessa closer to finding and accepting the truth about what happened to Abby, Tessa unknowingly brings Celia closer to facing the death of her own daughter. The women's lives converge when the answers one needs turn out to be the other's only chance for peace.

A son is worth ten thousand pieces of gold, a daughter only a thousand..."Jenny, my daughter, heart of my heart..."To Jenny, Ma Ma has always been a pillar of strength, a courageous woman who left everything behind to build a life in a faraway land.  To Ma Ma, Jenny has always been her...  more

A son is worth ten thousand pieces of gold, a daughter only a thousand..."Jenny, my daughter, heart of my heart..."To Jenny, Ma Ma has always been a pillar of strength, a courageous woman who left everything behind to build a life in a faraway land.  To Ma Ma, Jenny has always been her cheen gum, her thousand pieces of gold, her precious only daughter...even if Jenny did marry a "white ghost" and move to New Jersey, even if the only Chinese food she serves her family is takeout.Now Ma Ma has suffered a stroke, leaving Jenny feeling as helpless as Ma Ma lying in her hospital bed.  Suddenly it's Jenny's turn to hold the family together.  But Jenny is stronger than she knows.  As Ma Ma struggles to relearn the simplest tasks, Jenny will discover the thousand ways a mother and daughter are joined heart to heart, connected by painful family secrets and rich cultural lore, and by a treasure beyond price.In this poignant first novel based on her own experiences, Nancy Young Mosny has fashioned a patchwork of growing old and growing up, of Chinese and American, of strengths and frailties, of the love and hatred that bind us all.

Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories -- the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild -- yet her distant past is miraculously preserved...  more

Bit by bit, the ravages of age are eroding Marina's grip on the everyday. An elderly Russian woman now living in America, she cannot hold on to fresh memories -- the details of her grown children's lives, the approaching wedding of her grandchild -- yet her distant past is miraculously preserved in her mind's eye. Vivid images of her youth in war-torn Leningrad arise unbidden, carrying her back to the terrible fall of 1941, when she was a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum and the German army's approach signaled the beginning of what would be a long, torturous siege on the city. As the people braved starvation, bitter cold, and a relentless German onslaught, Marina joined other staff members in removing the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, leaving the frames hanging empty on the walls to symbolize the artworks' eventual return. As the Luftwaffe's bombs pounded the proud, stricken city, Marina built a personal Hermitage in her mind -- a refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more...

The author of The Things They Carried offers a riveting novel of love and mystery. When long-hidden secrets about the atrocities he committed in Vietnam come to light, a candidate for the U.S. Senate retreats with his wife to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within days of their arrival,...  more

The author of The Things They Carried offers a riveting novel of love and mystery. When long-hidden secrets about the atrocities he committed in Vietnam come to light, a candidate for the U.S. Senate retreats with his wife to a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Within days of their arrival, his wife mysteriously vanishes into the watery wilderness.

It is 1540, and Matthew Shardlake, the lawyer renowned as "the sharpest hunchback in the courts of England," is pressed to help a friend’s young niece who is charged with murder. Despite threats of torture and death by the rack, the girl is inexplicably silent. Shardlake is about...  more

It is 1540, and Matthew Shardlake, the lawyer renowned as "the sharpest hunchback in the courts of England," is pressed to help a friend’s young niece who is charged with murder. Despite threats of torture and death by the rack, the girl is inexplicably silent. Shardlake is about to lose her case when he is suddenly granted a reprieve--one that will ensnare him in the dangerous schemes of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s feared vicar-general. In exchange for two more weeks to investigate the murder, Shardlake accepts Cromwell’s dangerous assignment to find a lost cache of "dark fire," a legendary weapon of mass destruction. Cromwell, out of favor since Henry’s disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves, is relying on Shardlake to save his position at court, which is rife with treasonous conspiracies.  

Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Dedicated to his work, respected and admired by his colleagues and community, he represents integration at its most successful. He has learned to live with the violence and chaos that plague his city, and on the...  more

Dr. Amin Jaafari, an Arab-Israeli citizen, is a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Dedicated to his work, respected and admired by his colleagues and community, he represents integration at its most successful. He has learned to live with the violence and chaos that plague his city, and on the night of a deadly bombing in a local restaurant, he works tirelessly to help the shocked and shattered patients brought to the emergency room. But this night of turmoil and death takes a horrifyingly personal turn. His wife’s body is found among the dead, with massive injuries, the police coldly announce, typical of those found on the bodies of fundamentalist suicide bombers. As evidence mounts that his wife, Sihem, was responsible for the catastrophic bombing, Dr. Jaafari is torn between cherished memories of their years together and the inescapable realization that the beautiful, intelligent, thoroughly modern woman he loved had a life far removed from the comfortable, assimilated existence they shared. From the graphic, beautifully rendered description of the bombing that opens the novel to the searing conclusion, The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its incalculable spiritual costs. Intense and humane, devoid of political bias, hatred, and polemics, it probes deep inside the Muslim world and gives readers a profound understanding of what seems impossible to understand.

Audere, agere, auferre. To dare, to strive, to conquer. For generations, elite young men have attended St. Oswald’s School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric classics teacher who has been a revered fixture for more than 30 years. But this year,...  more

Audere, agere, auferre. To dare, to strive, to conquer. For generations, elite young men have attended St. Oswald’s School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric classics teacher who has been a revered fixture for more than 30 years. But this year, things are different. Suits, paperwork, and Information Technology rule the world, and Straitley is reluctantly contemplating retirement. He is joined in this, his 99th, term by five new faculty members, including one who -- unknown to Straitley and everyone else -- holds intimate and dangerous knowledge of St. Ozzie’s ways and secrets, it’s comforts and conceits. Harboring dark ties to the school’s past, this young teacher has arrived with one terrible goal: Destroy St. Oswald’s. As the new term gets underway, a number of incidents befall students and faculty alike. Beginning as small annoyances -- a lost pen, a misplaced coffee mug -- they soon escalate to the life threatening. With the school unraveling, only Straitley stands in the way of St. Ozzie’s ruin. But the old man faces a formidable opponent -- a master player with a strategy that has been meticulously planned to the final move.

Deborah Green is a woman of passionate contradictions--a rabbi who craves goodness and surety while wrestling with her own desires and with the sorrow and pain she sees around her. Her life changes when she visits the hospital room of Henry Friedman, an older man who has attempted suicide. His...  more

Deborah Green is a woman of passionate contradictions--a rabbi who craves goodness and surety while wrestling with her own desires and with the sorrow and pain she sees around her. Her life changes when she visits the hospital room of Henry Friedman, an older man who has attempted suicide. His parents were murdered in the Holocaust when he was a child, and all his life he’s struggled with difficult questions. Deborah’s encounter with Henry and his family draws her into a world of tragedy, frailty, love, and, finally, hope.

In the tumultuous days after World War I, Herman Richter returns from the front to find his only sister, Liesel, allied with Lester Sutter, the "slow" son of a rival clan who spends his days expertly trapping lake turtles. Liesel has sought Lester?s friendship in the wake of her parents? deaths...  more

In the tumultuous days after World War I, Herman Richter returns from the front to find his only sister, Liesel, allied with Lester Sutter, the "slow" son of a rival clan who spends his days expertly trapping lake turtles. Liesel has sought Lester?s friendship in the wake of her parents? deaths and in the shadow of her own dark secret. But what begins as yearning for something of a human touch quickly unwinds into a shocking, suspenseful tragedy that haunts the rural town of New Germany, Minnesota, for generations.Woven into this remarkable story are the intense, illuminating experiences of German immigrants in America during the war and the terrible choices they were forced to make in service of their new country or in honor of the old. The Turtle Catcher is a lyrical, vibrant, beautifully wrought look at a fascinating piece of American history—and the echoing dangers of family secrets.  

After years of unrequited love, a lonely man commits a desperate act that affects the lives of everyone it touches, triggering a chain of events no one could have anticipated.

In New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never...  more

In New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family's modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness?until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood. Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police?while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement. Not since Ray Bradbury's classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family?all balancing on a razor's edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable?The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction's most fearless and inventive artists.