Faculty and Staff Reading Room

Everybody s Fool is classic Russo, filled with humor, heart, hard times, and people you can't help but love, possibly because their various faults make them so human. Everybody s Fool picks up roughly a decade since we were last with Miss Beryl and Sully on New Year's Eve 1984. The irresistible Sully, who in the intervening years has come by some unexpected good fortune, is staring down a VA cardiologist s estimate that he has only a year or two left, and it s hard work trying to keep this news from the most important people in his life: Ruth, the married woman he carried on with for years . . . the ultra-hapless Rub Squeers, who worries that he and Sully aren tstillbest friends . . . Sully s son and grandson, for whom he was mostly an absentee figure (and now a regretful one). We also enjoy the company of Doug Raymer, the chief of police who s obsessing primarily over the identity of the man his wife might ve been about to run off with, beforedying in a freak accident . . . Bath s mayor, the former academic Gus Moynihan, whose wife problems are, if anything, even more pressing . . . and then there s Carl Roebuck, whose lifelong run of failing upward might now come to ruin. And finally, there s Charice Bond a light at the end of the tunnel that is Chief Raymer s office as well as her brother, Jerome, who might well be the train barreling into the station.

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy. A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Truman Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape. Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's; her poignancy, wit, and naIvetE continue to charm. This volume also includes three of Capote's best-known stories, "House of Flowers," "A Diamond Guitar," and "A Christmas Memory," which the "Saturday Review" called "one of the most moving stories in our language." It is a tale of two innocents--a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend--whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer. Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.

FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GONE GIRL Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas." She survived--and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club--a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes--locates Libby and pumps her for details. They hope to discover proof that may free Ben. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: She'll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club--for a fee. As Libby's search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started--on the run from a killer.

FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GONE GIRL Fresh from a brief stay at a psych 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.

At the age of twelve, an orphan named Will Cooper is given a horse, a key, and a map and is sent on a journey through the uncharted wilderness of the Cherokee Nation. Will is a bound boy, obliged to run a remote Indian trading post. As he fulfills his lonesome duty, Will finds a father in Bear, a Cherokee chief, and is adopted by him and his people, developing relationships that ultimately forge Will’s character. All the while, his love of Claire, the enigmatic and captivating charge of volatile and powerful Featherstone, will forever rule Will's heart. In a voice filled with both humor and yearning, Will tells of a lifelong search for home, the hunger for fortune and adventure, the rebuilding of a trampled culture, and above all an enduring pursuit of passion.

It takes a graveyard to raise a child. Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy--an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack--who has already killed Bod's family.

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night--dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge--he follows her. Margo's always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she's always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they're for Q. Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.

Myra Lamb is a wild girl with mysterious, haint blue eyes who grows up on remote Bloodroot Mountain. Her grandmother, Byrdie, protects her fiercely and passes down "the touch" that bewitches people and animals alike. But when John Odom tries to tame Myra, it sparks a shocking disaster, ripping lives apart. Bloodroot is the dark and riveting story of the legacies--of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss--that haunt one family across the generations.

Annie Clyde Dodson and her three-year-old daughter Gracie are among the last holdouts in a tiny town, standing in the way of progress in the Tennessee River Valley. Just a few days before the Long Man river is scheduled to wash Yuneetah off the map, Gracie disappears one stormy evening. Did she simply wander off into the rain, or was she taken--perhaps by the mysterious drifter who has returned to his hometown on the verge of its collapse? Set against the backdrop of real-life historical events, "Long Man "is a searing portrait of a soon-to-be-scattered community brought together by change and crisis, and of one family facing a terrifying ticking clock.

"[Rachel] Joyce's beguiling debut is [a] modest-seeming story of 'ordinary' English lives that enthralls and moves you as it unfolds."--People (four stars) Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning a letter arrives, addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl, from a woman he hasn't heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye. But before Harold mails off a quick reply, a chance encounter convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. In his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold Fry embarks on an urgent quest. Determined to walk six hundred miles to the hospice, Harold believes that as long as he walks, Queenie will live. A novel of charm, humor, and profound insight into the thoughts and feelings we all bury deep within our hearts,

From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes an exquisite love story about Queenie Hennessy, the remarkable friend who inspired Harold's cross-country journey. A runaway international bestseller, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry followed its unassuming hero on an incredible journey as he traveled the length of England on foot--a journey spurred by a simple letter from his old friend Queenie Hennessy, writing from a hospice to say goodbye. Harold believed that as long as he kept walking, Queenie would live. What he didn't know was that his decision to walk had caused her both alarm and fear. How could she wait? What would she say? Forced to confront the past, Queenie realizes she must write again. In this poignant parallel story to Harold's saga, acclaimed author Rachel Joyce brings Queenie Hennessy's voice into sharp focus. Setting pen to paper, Queenie makes a journey of her own, a journey that is even bigger than Harold's; one word after another, she promises to confess long-buried truths--about her modest childhood, her studies at Oxford, the heartbreak that brought her to Kingsbridge and to loving Harold, her friendship with his son, the solace she has found in a garden by the sea. And, finally, the devastating secret she has kept from Harold for all these years. A wise, tender, layered novel that gathers tremendous emotional force, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy underscores the resilience of the human spirit, beautifully illuminating the small yet pivotal moments that can change a person's life.

The Giver, the 1994 Newbery Medal winner, has become one of the most influential novels of our time. The haunting story centers on twelve-year-old Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community.

The Ballad of Tom Dooleyis a literary triumph--what began as a fictional re-telling of the historical account of one of the most famous mountain ballads of all time became an astonishing revelation of the real culprit responsible for the murder of Laura Foster Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,the folk song, made famous by the Kingston Trio, recounts a tragedy in the North Carolina mountains after the Civil War. Laura Foster, a simple country girl, was murdered and her lover Tom Dula was hanged for the crime. The sensational elements in the case attracted national attention: a man and his beautiful, married lover accused of murdering the other-woman; the former governor of North Carolina spearheading the defense; and a noble gesture from the prisoner on the eve of his execution, saving the woman he really loved. With the help of historians, lawyers, and researchers, Sharyn McCrumb visited the actual sites, studied the legal evidence, and uncovered a missing piece of the story that will shock those who think they already know what happened--and may also bring belated justice to an innocent man. What seemed at first to be a sordid tale of adultery and betrayal was transformed by the new discoveries into an Appalachian Wuthering Heights. Tom Dula and Ann Melton had a profound romance spoiled by the machinations of their servant, Pauline Foster. Bringing to life the star-crossed lovers of this mountain tragedy, Sharyn McCrumb gifts understanding and compassion to her compelling tales of Appalachia, and solidifies her status as one of today's great Southern writers.

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in North Carolina to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains--but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any worker, overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness. Together Serena and George ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of their favor. But when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out on her own to kill the son George had without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons' intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking finale.

Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix readers everywhere. "Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no-nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town-riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car and fly a plane. And, with her husband, Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one who is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle. Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds-against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix readers everywhere.

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.

Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. She hikes up a mountain road behind her house toward a secret tryst, but instead encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames's closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson's greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

When we first meet 14-year-old Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. This was before milk carton photos and public service announcements, she tells us; back in 1973, when Susie mysteriously disappeared, people still believed these things didn't happen. In the sweet, untroubled voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and her own adjustment to the strange new place she finds herself. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. With love, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie watches her family as they cope with their grief, her father embarks on a search for the killer, her sister undertakes a feat of amazing daring, her little brother builds a fort in her honor and begin the difficult process of healing. In the hands of a brilliant novelist, this story of seemingly unbearable tragedy is transformed into a suspenseful and touching story about family, memory, love, heaven, and living.

Until the phone calls came at three o'clock on a November morning, the Golds and their neighbors, the Hartes, had been inseparable. It was no surprise to anyone when their teenage children, Chris and Emily, began showing signs that their relationship was moving beyond that of lifelong friends. But now seventeen-year-old Emily is dead--shot with a gun her beloved and devoted Chris pilfered from his father's cabinet as part of an apparent suicide pact--leaving two devastated families stranded in the dark and dense predawn, desperate for answers about an unthinkable act and the children they never really knew. From New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult--one of the most powerful writers in contemporary fiction--comes a riveting, timely, heartbreaking, and terrifying novel of families in anguish and friendships ripped apart by inconceivable violence.

For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe she was abandoned, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice's old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother's whereabouts.   Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest: Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons, only to later doubt her gifts, and Virgil Stanhope, the jaded private detective who'd originally investigated Alice's case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they'll have to face even harder answers. As Jenna's memories dovetail with the events in her mother's journals, the story races to a mesmerizing finish. A deeply moving, gripping, and intelligent page-turner, Leaving Time is Jodi Picoult at the height of her powers.

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles terrified American radio listeners by describing a Martian invasion of Earth in a broadcast that became legendary. Forty years earlier, H. G. Wells had first penned the story: The War of the Worlds, a science-fiction classic that endures in our collective subconscious. Deeply concerned with the welfare of contemporary society, Wells wrote his novel of interplanetary conflict in anticipation of war in Europe, and in it he predicted the technological savagery of twentieth century warfare. Playing expertly on worldwide security fears, The War of the Worlds grips readers with its conviction that invasion can happen anytime, anywhere--even in our own backyard.

Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in this midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change his life forever.

In Lisa Genova's extraordinary New York Times bestselling novel, an accomplished professor diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease learns that her worth is comprised of more than her ability to remember. Now a major motion picture from Sony Pictures Classics starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth, and Kristen Stewart! Look for Lisa Genova's next novel Inside the O'Briens. Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. At fifty years old, she's a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics with a successful husband and three grown children. When she becomes increasingly disoriented and forgetful, a tragic diagnosis changes her life-and her relationship with her family and the world-forever. At once beautiful and terrifying, Still Alice is a moving and vivid depiction of life with early-onset Alzheimer's disease that is as compelling as A Beautiful Mind and as unforgettable as Ordinary People.

David Nicholls brings the wit and intelligence that graced his enormously popular New York Times bestseller, One Day, to a compellingly human, deftly funny new novel about what holds marriages and families together--and what happens, and what we learn about ourselves, when everything threatens to fall apart. Douglas Petersen may be mild-mannered, but behind his reserve lies a sense of humor that, against all odds, seduces beautiful Connie into a second date . . . and eventually into marriage. Now, almost three decades after their relationship first blossomed in London, they live more or less happily in the suburbs with their moody seventeen year-old son, Albie. Then Connie tells him she thinks she wants a divorce. The timing couldn't be worse. Hoping to encourage her son's artistic interests, Connie has planned a month-long tour of European capitals, a chance to experience the world's greatest works of art as a family, and she can't bring herself to cancel. And maybe going ahead with the original plan is for the best anyway? Douglas is privately convinced that this landmark trip will rekindle the romance in the marriage, and might even help him to bond with Albie. Narrated from Douglas's endearingly honest, slyly witty, and at times achingly optimistic point of view, Us is the story of a man trying to rescue his relationship with the woman he loves, and learning how to get closer to a son who's always felt like a stranger. Us is a moving meditation on the demands of marriage and parenthood, the regrets of abandoning youth for middle age, and the intricate relationship between the heart and the head. And in David Nicholls's gifted hands, Douglas's odyssey brings Europe--from the streets of Amsterdam to the famed museums of Paris, from the cafés of Venice to the beaches of Barcelona--to vivid life just as he experiences a powerful awakening of his own. Will this summer be his last as a husband, or the moment when he turns his marriage, and maybe even his whole life, around?

Verily speaks Christopher Moore, much-beloved scrivener and peerless literary jester, who hath writteneth much that is of grand wit and belly-busting mirth, including such laureled bestsellers of the Times of Olde Newe Yorke as Lamb, A Dirty Job, and You Suck: A Love Story. Now he takes on no less than the legendary Bard himself (with the utmost humility and respect) in a twisted and insanely funny tale of a moronic monarch and his deceitful daughters--a rousing story of plots, subplots, counterplots, betrayals, war, revenge, bared bosoms, unbridled lust . . . and a ghost (there's always a bloody ghost), as seen through the eyes of a man wearing a codpiece and bells on his head.

For One More Day is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one? As a child, Charley "Chick" Benetto was told by his father, "You can be a mama's boy or a daddy's boy, but you can't be both." So he chooses his father, only to see the man disappear when Charley is on the verge of adolescence. Decades later, Charley is a broken man. His life has been crumbled by alcohol and regret. He loses his job. He leaves his family. He hits bottom after discovering his only daughter has shut him out of her wedding. And he decides to take his own life. He makes a midnight ride to his small hometown, with plans to do himself in. But upon failing even to do that, he staggers back to his old house, only to make an astonishing discovery. His mother--who died eight years earlier--is still living there, and welcomes him home as if nothing ever happened. What follows is the one "ordinary" day so many of us yearn for, a chance to make good with a lost parent, to explain the family secrets, and to seek forgiveness. Somewhere between this life and the next, Charley learns the astonishing things he never knew about his mother and her sacrifices. And he tries, with her tender guidance, to put the crumbled pieces of his life back together. Through Albom's inspiring characters and masterful storytelling, readers will newly appreciate those whom they love--and may have thought they'd lost--in their own lives.

From the wonderful landscapes of the Shire and Lothlorien, to the stark and sunless land of Mordor, the courageous Hobbits pursue their quest, bearing the awesome Ring of Sauron, the Dark Lord! This epic trilogy takes up where The Hobbit leaves off, tracing the legend of the One Ring, found by Bilbo in the Goblin's cave, to its final destruction in the Crack of Doom.

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories by English author Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893-94. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India and worked there for about six-and-a-half years. These stories were written when Kipling lived in Vermont. There is evidence that it was written for his daughter Josephine, who died in 1899 aged six, after a rare first edition of the book with a poignant handwritten note by the author to his young daughter was discovered at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire in 2010.The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about the Indian jungle." Other readers have interpreted the work as allegories of the politics and society of the time. The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of an abandoned "man cub" Mowgli who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. The most famous of the other stories are probably "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the story of a heroic mongoose, and "Toomai of the Elephants", the tale of a young elephant-handler. As with much of Kipling's work, each of the stories is preceded by a piece of verse, and succeeded by another.

The Water Doctor's Daughters is the fascinating tale of Dr James Marsden, a wealthy 19th-century homeopathist and water-cure practitioner, and his troubled family life. Though Marsden's children grew up knowing some of the most famous personalities of the day, including Charles Darwin and Alfred Tennyson, they were severely emotionally deprived. Their mother had died in childbirth and Marsden himself was both self-absorbed and autocratic. In 1852 he employed French born Célestine Doudet as a governess. Doudet came highly recommended, having once served as wardrobe mistress to Queen Victoria. Within weeks she had accused the doctor's five young daughters of "self-abuse." Marsden urged the governess to do everything in her power to "cure" them, condoning the use of physical restraints and insisting on a rigid homeopathic diet aimed at decreasing sensuality. By the autumn of 1853 Marian Marsden and her sister Lucy were dead and the governess was charged with manslaughter and cruelty. Two sensational trials followed, but who was more culpable: the girls' father or their governess?

It was the closest kingdom to the queen's, as the crow flies, but not even the crows flew it. You may think you know this story. There's a young queen, about to be married. There are some good, brave, hardy dwarfs; a castle, shrouded in thorns; and a princess, cursed by a witch, so rumor has it, to sleep forever. But no one is waiting for a noble prince to appear on his trusty steed here. This fairy tale is spun with a thread of dark magic, which twists and turns and glints and shines. A queen might just prove herself a hero, if a princess needs rescuing. . . .

Listen to all seven stories in C. S. Lewis's classic fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia in this unabridged 31-CD collection, read by some of the world's most renowned performers: The Magician's Nephew narrated by Kenneth Branagh The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe narrated by Michael York The Horse and His Boy narrated by Alex Jennings Prince Caspian narrated by Lynn Redgrave The Voyage of the Dawn Treader narrated by Derek Jacobi The Silver Chair narrated by Jeremy Northam The Last Battle narrated by Patrick Stewart Enter C. S. Lewis's magical world of Narnia. Each of these extraordinary, timeless stories stands alone, but together they are the history of a fantastic world that becomes as real as our own.

Enjoy the complete Harry Potter series performed by the Grammy Award-winning Jim Dale. This complete unabridged audiobook collection contains the following: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Wonderfully tender and hilariously funny, "Eligible" tackles gender, class, courtship, and family as Curtis Sittenfeld reaffirms herself as one of the most dazzling authors writing today. This version of the Bennet family and Mr. Darcy is one that you have and haven t met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray. Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master s degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won t discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane s fortieth birthday fast approaches. Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show "Eligible." At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip s friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . . And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.

The #1 "New York Times" Bestseller One of the Best Books of the Year "Entertainment Weekly" One of theTop Ten Books of the Year "People"magazine It s a knowing, touching, and entertaining page-turner. What a wonderful writer smart, wise, funny. Anne Lamott ""The Husband's Secret" is so good, you won't be able to keep it to yourself." "USA Today" Shocking, complex and thought-provoking, this is a story reading groups will devour. A knockout " Emily Giffin, "New York Times" bestselling author Emotionally astute, immensely smart, and as cinematically plotted as any Tom Perrotta Novel destined for critical accolades and a big-screen adaptation. "Entertainment Weekly" A novel that s perfect for vacation reading. "People" "Brilliant." Sophia Hannah, international bestselling author of "The Wrong Mother" At the heart of "The Husband s Secret "is a letter that s not meant to be read My darling Cecilia, if you re reading this, then I ve died. . . Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . . Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all she s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia or each other but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband s secret. Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses and, ultimately, ourselves."

After his father dies, David Balfour is told to go to his uncle for his inheritance. But the uncle has no intention of letting the riches go--so he plots to kill Balfour, ultimately arranging for him to be kidnapped as a slave bound for the American colonies. Balfour's future looks bleak--until he witnesses a shipwreck and befriends the lone survivor, a rugged Highlander named Alan Breck Stewart. Together, they plan their rebellion--and the fight back home to claim Balfour's inheritance. Spirited, romantic, and full of danger, Kidnapped is Robert Louis Stevenson's classic of high adventure.

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, theI Ching is as common as theYellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan. This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.

A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives. Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, The Nest, which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest mid-life supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest's value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems.

The publication in 1857 of Madame Bovary, with its vivid depictions of sex and adultery, incited a backlash of immorality charges. The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a doctor’s wife bored and unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood. She embarks upon a series of affairs in search of passion and excitement, but is unable to achieve the splendid life for which she yearns. Instead, she finds herself trapped in a downward spiral that inexorably leads to ruin and self-destruction. Along with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Flaubert’s tragic novel stands as a brilliant portrayal of infidelity, an incisive psychological portrait of a woman torn between duty and desire. Written with acute attention to telling detail, Madame Bovary not only exposes the emptiness of one woman's bourgeois existence and failure to fill that void with fantasies, sex, and material objects. Emma's thirst for life mirrors the universal human impulse for idealized fulfillment.

Harper Lees Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father, a crusading local lawyer risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams scholar Robert Bray, editor of , reappraises the play more than half a century after it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award: "More than fifty years after telling his story of a family whose lives form a triangle of quiet desperation, Williams's mellifluous voice still resonates deeply and universally." This edition of also includes Williams's essay on the impact of sudden fame on a struggling writer, "The Catastrophe of Success," as well as a short section of Williams's own "Production Notes." The cover features the classic line drawing by Alvin Lustig, originally done for the 1949 New Directions edition.

Pride and Prejudice: A delightful novel about "how girls catch husbands." Listen in to find out: What will happen to sister Lydia? Will the arrogant Lady Catherine de Burgh's intrigues be foiled? Will sister Jane marry Mr. Bingley? And especially, will Elizabeth, cured of her prejudice, and Mr. Darcy, cured of his pride, fall into each other's arms? Listeners will also savor the wit, the sly irony and satire and comedy that Miss Austen crowds into almost every quiet, well-bred line of this novel. There is great sanity, common sense and worldly wisdom to be found in her exploration of human nature. Sir Walter Scott said, Jane Austen had "that exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting." This quality provides today's listeners of Pride and Prejudice with a fascinating trip into the lives of the privileged in England during the eighteenth century. Persuasion: Anne Elliot is a young woman of perfect breeding and unwavering integrity. Austen wrote of her, "She is almost too good for me." Persuasion is the story of Anne and Captain Wentworth and their long awaited union. The world of country gentry in Regency England serves as a setting while portraying the many aspects of proper society - its failings and humor. Jane Austen's works have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity since the success of several motion picture adaptations of her novels. She wrote the novels Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Emma. Emma: The funny and heartwarming story of a young lady whose zeal, snobbishness and self-satisfaction lead to several errors in judgment. Emma takes Harriet Smith, a parlour boarder and unknown, under her wing and schemes for advancement through a good marriage. The attempts at finding Harriet a suitor occupy all of Emma's time. However, in the midst of the search she settles on a most unlikely union with her own constant critic: Mr. Knightly. Jane Austen's works have claimed a renewed popularity and audience with the release of motion pictures Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Clueless based upon Austen's classic novels. Emma was originally published in 1816.

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

With a Foreword by Edwidge Danticat and an Afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston's masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published—perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.

In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Truman Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape. Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's; her poignancy, wit, and naIvetE continue to charm. This volume also includes three of Capote's best-known stories, "House of Flowers," "A Diamond Guitar," and "A Christmas Memory," which the "Saturday Review" called "one of the most moving stories in our language." It is a tale of two innocents--a small boy and the old woman who is his best friend--whose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.

Orphaned Jane journeys from a harsh childhood to become the loving caregiverof a child at the mysterious manor of Mr. Rochester. Jane is drawn to her enigmatic employer, but as dark secrets emerge, she must choose between her newfound security and the uncertainty of a life lived for oneself.

A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression. They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation. Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.

America has enemies--ruthless people that the police, the FBI, even the military can't stop. That's when the U.S. government calls on Will Robie, a stone cold hitman who never questions orders and always nails his target. But Will Robie may have just made the first--and last--mistake of his career . . . THE INNOCENT It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn't seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable. He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people. Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn't an ordinary runaway-her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. Against all of his professional habits, Robie rescues her and finds he can't walk away. He needs to help her. Even worse, the more Robie learns about the girl, the more he's convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up, one that may explain her parents' deaths and stretch to unimaginable levels of power. Now, Robie may have to step out of the shadows in order to save this girl's life . . . and perhaps his own.

When Web London's FBI Hostage Negotiation Team is ambushed in a dark alley, Web is the only survivor. As the FBI investigates, suspicion surrounding Web deepens. Now, he needs help from an unlikely ally in his desperate search for the killer of his friends, and finds himself up against a force intent on finishing the job that began in the alley.

Amos Decker's life changed forever--twice. The first time was on the gridiron. A big, towering athlete, he was the only person from his hometown of Burlington ever to go pro. But his career ended before it had a chance to begin. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect--he can never forget anything. The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare--his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered. His family destroyed, their killer's identity as mysterious as the motive behind the crime, and unable to forget a single detail from that horrible night, Decker finds his world collapsing around him. He leaves the police force, loses his home, and winds up on the street, taking piecemeal jobs as a private investigator when he can. But over a year later, a man turns himself in to the police and confesses to the murders. At the same time a horrific event nearly brings Burlington to its knees, and Decker is called back in to help with this investigation. Decker also seizes his chance to learn what really happened to his family that night. To uncover the stunning truth, he must use his remarkable gifts and confront the burdens that go along with them. He must endure the memories he would much rather forget. And he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

"Dick, I need a war." Nicolas Creel is a man on a mission. He heads up the world's largest defense contractor, The Ares Corporation. Dick Pender is the man Creel retains to "perception manage" his company to even more riches by manipulating international conflicts. But Creel may have an even grander plan in mind. Shaw, a man with no first name and a truly unique past, has a different agenda. Reluctantly doing the bidding of a secret multi-national intelligence agency, he travels the globe to keep it safe and at peace. Willing to do anything to get back to the top of her profession, Katie James is a journalist who has just gotten the break of a lifetime: the chance to interview the sole survivor of a massacre that has left every nation stunned. In this terrifying, global thriller, these characters' lives will collide head-on as a series of events is set in motion that could change the world as we know it. An utterly spellbinding story that feels all too real, THE WHOLE TRUTH delivers all the twists and turns, emotional drama, unforgettable characters, and can't-put-it-down pacing that readers expect from David Baldacci-and still goes beyond anything he's written before.

Kari Wynne is desperately searching for the truth surrounding her husband's death but the man who destroyed his reputation, who she should really hate, is awakening in her a passion that she has never known before.

Jack Reacher finds trouble in Texas in the fifth novel in Lee Child's New York Times bestselling series. Thumbing across the scorched Texas desert, Jack Reacher has nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there. Cruising the same stretch of two-lane blacktop is Carmen Greer. For Reacher, the lift comes with a hitch. Carmen's got a wild story to tell--all about her husband, her family secrets, and a hometown that's purely gothic. She's also got a plan. Reacher's part of it. And before the sun sets, this ride could cost them both their lives.

Susan Mark, the fifth passenger, had a big secret, and her plain little life was being watched in Washington, and California, and Afghanistan--by dozens of people with one thing in common: They're all lying to Reacher. A little. A lot. Or just enough to get him killed. A race has begun through the streets of Manhattan, a maze crowded with violent, skilled soldiers on all sides of a shadow war. For Jack Reacher, a man who trusts no one and likes it that way, the finish line comes when you finally get face-to-face and look your worst enemy in the eye.

Six shots. Five dead. One heartland city thrown into a state of terror. But within hours the cops have it solved: a slam-dunk case. Except for one thing. The accused man says: You got the wrong guy. Then he says: Get Reacher for me. And sure enough, ex-military investigator Jack Reacher is coming. He knows this shooter, a trained military sniper who never should have missed a shot. Reacher is certain something is not right, and soon the slam-dunk case explodes. Now Reacher is teamed with a beautiful young defense lawyer, moving closer to the unseen enemy who is pulling the strings. Reacher knows that no two opponents are created equal. This one has come to the heartland from his own kind of hell. And Reacher knows that the only way to take him down is to match his ruthlessness and cunning and then beat him shot for shot.

Jack Reacher takes aim at the White House in the sixth novel in Lee Child's New York Times bestselling series. Skilled, cautious, and anonymous, Jack Reacher is perfect for the job: to assassinate the vice president of the United States. Theoretically, of course. A female Secret Service agent wants Reacher to find the holes in her system, and fast--because a covert group already has the vice president in their sights. They've planned well. There's just one thing they didn't plan on: Reacher.

The World's Bestselling Mystery "Ten . . ." Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen." "Nine . . ." At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead. "Eight . . ." Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . one by one they begin to die. "Seven . . ." Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?

A man named Mohammed sits in a café in Vienna, about to propose a deal to a Colombian. Mohammed has a strong network of agents and sympathizers throughout Europe and the Middle East, and the Colombian has an equally strong drug network throughout America. What if they were to form an alliance, to combine all their assets and connections? The potential for profits would be enormous--and the potential for destruction unimaginable. In the Brave New World of terrorism--where anybody with a spare AK-47, a knowledge of kitchen chemistry, or simply the will to die can become a player--the old rules no longer apply. No matter what new governmental organizations come into being, the only truly effective ones are those that are quick and agile, free of oversight and restrictions...and outside the system. Way outside the system. In a nondescript office building in suburban Maryland, the firm Hendley Associates does a profitable business in stocks, bonds, and international currencies, but its true mission is quite different: to identify and locate terrorist threats, and then deal with them, in whatever manner necessary. Established with the knowledge of President John Patrick Ryan, "the Campus" is always on the lookout for promising new talent, its recruiters scattered throughout the armed forces and government agencies--and three men are about to cross its radar. The first is Dominic Caruso, a rookie FBI agent, barely a year out of Quantico, whose decisive actions resolve a particularly brutal kidnap/murder case. The second is Caruso's brother, Brian, a Marine captain just back from his first combat action in Afghanistan, and already a man to watch. And the third is their cousin...a young man named Jack Ryan, Jr. Jack was raised on intrigue. As his father moved through the ranks of the CIA and then into the White House, Jack received a life course in the world and the way it operates from agents, statesmen, analysts, Secret Service men, and black ops specialists such as John Clark and Ding Chavez. He wants to put it all to work now--but when he knocks on the front door of "the Campus," he finds that nothing has prepared him for what he is about to encounter. For it is indeed a different world out there, and in here...and it is about to become far more dangerous.

In this sixth novel in the award-winning Myron Bolitar series, Harlan Coben delivers a riveting powerhouse thriller--a twisting mystery of betrayal, family secrets, and murder. Myron Bolitar's colleague at MB SportsReps, Esperanza, has been arrested for the murder of a client, a fallen baseball star attempting a comeback. Myron is determined to prove Esperanza's innocence--even if she won't speak to him on the advice of her lawyer, who warns Myron to keep away from both the case and his client. But Myron is already too close, too involved, and has too much at stake. And the closer Myron gets to the truth, the more the evidence points to the only viable suspect besides Esperanza: Myron himself.

Terry McCaleb, the retired FBI agent who starred in the bestseller "Blood Work," is asked by the LAPD to help them investigate aseries of murders that have them baffled. They are the kind of ritualized killings McCaleb specialized in solving with the FBI, and he is reluctantly drawn from his peaceful new life back into the horror and excitement of tracking down a terrifying homicidal maniac. More horrifying still, the suspect who seems to fit the profile that McCaleb develops is someone he has known and worked with in the past: LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch.

The vision has haunted him for four years--a young woman lying crumpled in death, her hand outstretched in silent supplication. Harry Bosch was taken off the Angella Benton murder case when the production assistant's death was linked with the violent theft of two million dollars from a movie set. Both files were never closed. Now retired from the L.A.P.D., Bosch is determined to find justice for Angella. Without a badge to open doors and strike fear into the guilty, he's on his own. And even in the face of an opponent more powerful and ruthless than any he's ever encountered, Bosch is not backing down.

On the ocean liner Mauretania, two European scientists with a groundbreaking new invention are rescued from abduction by the Van Dorn Detective Agency's intrepid chief investigator, Isaac Bell. Unfortunately, they are not so lucky when the thugs attack a second time--and one of the scientists dies. What are the scientists holding that is so precious? Only something that will revolutionize business and world culture--and perhaps something more. For war clouds are looming, and a ruthless espionage agent has spotted a priceless opportunity to give the German Empire an edge. It is up to Isaac Bell to figure out who he is, what he is up to, and stop him, but Bell may already be too late.

Kay Scarpetta is starting over with a unique private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina. And the death of a sixteen-year-old tennis star will usher in a string of murders more baffling--and terrifying--than any that have come before.

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Even more so when Kinsey Millhone's only lead is a grown man dredging up a repressed childhood memory-of something that may never have happened...

Kyle McAvoy possesses an outstanding legal mind. Good-looking and affable, he has a glittering future. He also has a dark secret that could destroy his dreams, his career, even his life. One night that secret catches up with him. The men who accost Kyle have a compromising video they'll use to ruin him unless he does exactly what they say. What they offer Kyle is something any ambitious young lawyer would kill for: a job in Manhattan as an associate at the world's largest law firm. If Kyle accepts, he'll be on the fast track to partnership and a fortune. But there's a catch. Kyle won't be working for the firm but against it in a dispute between two powerful defense contractors worth billions. Now Kyle is caught between the criminal forces manipulating him, the FBI, and his own law firm in a malignant conspiracy not even Kyle with all his intellect, cunning, and bravery may be able to escape alive.

An innocent man is about to be executed. Only a guilty man can save him. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, Travis Boyette abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row. Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what's right and confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they're about to execute an innocent man?

This riveting collection of short stories features an unforgettable cast of characters: Wheelchair-bound Inez Graney and her two older sons embark on a bizarre road trip through the Mississippi Delta to visit Inez's youngest son, Raymond--on death row. A hard-drinking, low-grossing divorce lawyer fed up with his wife, his life, and the law plans a drastic escape after an unexpected phone call. A quiet, unassuming data collector sets out to bring down a flashy casino owner with his skill at blackjack--as payback for the theft of his wife. A stalker hunts victims in a retirement home, a lawyer confronts a vengeful adversary from the past, and a young man from a prominent family is driven off by scandal and fear--but finds unexpected redemption on the wrong side of the tracks. Often hilarious, frequently moving, and always entertaining, this collection makes it abundantly clear why John Grisham is our most popular storyteller.

In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron's home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death--in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man's already broken life, and let a true killer go free. Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, John Grisham's first work of nonfiction reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence--a book no American can afford to miss.

A pillar of the community who towered over local law and politics for forty years, Judge Atlee is now a shadow of his former self--a sick, lonely old man who has withdrawn to his sprawling ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. Knowing that the end is near, Judge Atlee has issued a summons for his two sons to return to Clanton to discuss his estate. Ray Atlee is the elder, a Virginia law professor, newly single, still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. Forrest is Ray's younger brother, the family's black sheep. The summons is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study. Ray reluctantly heads south to his hometown, to the place he now prefers to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray . . . and perhaps to someone else.

A masterful, intensely suspenseful novel about a reader whose obsession with a reclusive writer goes far too far-a book about the power of storytelling, starring the same trio of unlikely and winning heroes King introduced in Mr. Mercedes. "Wake up, genius." So begins King's instantly riveting story about a vengeful reader. The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn't published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising. Morris kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, yes, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel. Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then he is locked away for another crime. Decades later, a boy named Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now it is Pete and his family that Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney, and Jerome Robinson must rescue from the ever-more deranged and vengeful Morris when he's released from prison after thirty-five years. Not since Misery has King played with the notion of a reader whose obsession with a writer gets dangerous. Finders Keepers is spectacular, heart-pounding suspense, but it is also King writing about how literature shapes a life-for good, for bad, forever.

Eerie, dreamlike, set in a world that is weirdly related to our own, The Gunslinger introduces Roland Deschain of Gilead, of In-World that was, as he pursues his enigmatic antagonist to the mountains that separate the desert from the Western Sea. Roland is a solitary figure, perhaps accursed, who with a strange singlemindedness traverses an exhausted, almost timeless landscape. The people he encounters are left behind, or worse left dead. At a way station, however, he meets Jake, a boy from a particular time (1977) and a particular place (New York City), and soon the two are joined "khef," "ka," and "ka-tet." The mountains lie before them. So does the man in black and, somewhere far beyond...the Dark Tower."

Dean Koontz is at the peak of his acclaimed powers with this major new novel. A young boy, a musical prodigy, discovering life's wonders--and mortal dangers. His best friend, also a gifted musician, who will share his journey into destiny. His remarkable family, tested by the extremes of evil and bound by the depths of love . . . on a collision course with a band of killers about to unleash anarchy. And two unlikely allies, an everyday hero tempered by the past and a woman of mystery who holds the key to the future. These are the people of The City, a place where enchantment and malice entwine, courage and honor are found in the most unexpected quarters, and the way forward lies buried deep inside the heart. Brilliantly illumined by magic dark and light, their unforgettable story is a riveting, soul-stirring saga that speaks to everyone, a major milestone in the celebrated career of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz and a dazzling realization of the evergreen dreams we all share.

In the third volume of the Millennium series, Lisbeth Salander lies in critical condition in a Swedish hospital, a bullet in her head. But she's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll stand trial for three murders. With the help of Mikael Blomkvist, she'll need to identify those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she'll seek revenge--against the man who tried to killer her and against the corrupt government institutions that nearly destroyed her life.

Part blistering espionage thriller, part riveting police procedural, and part piercing exposé on social injustice, The Girl Who Played with Fire is a masterful, endlessly satisfying novel. Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander's innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past.

Murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue combine into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel. Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

Sometimes it's the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. . . . A murder; . . . a tragic accident . . . or just parents behaving badly?   What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.   But who did what?   Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a crossroads:   Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She's funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline's youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline's teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline';s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?). Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn't be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.   Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

When a horrifying attack leaves one of the four members of the Women's Murder Club struggling for her life, the others fight to keep a madman behind bars before anyone else is hurt. And Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the San Francisco police department run flat-out to stop a series of kidnappings that has electrified the city: children are being plucked off the streets together with their nannies--but the kidnappers aren't demanding ransom. Amid uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the knowledge that one member of the club could be on the brink of death. And just when everything appears momentarily under control, the case takes a terrifying turn, putting an entire city in lethal danger. Lindsay must make a choice she never dreamed she'd face--with no certainty that either outcome has more than a prayer of success.

Two of the greatest villains James Patterson has ever created in one book! Minutes after soldiers evacuate a Nevada town, a bomb completely destroys it. On vacation, FBI agent Alex Cross gets the call: the blast was perpetrated by the Wolf. A supercriminal and Cross's deadliest nemesis, the Wolf threatens to obliterate major cities, including London, Paris, and New York. Then evidence reveals the involvement of a ruthless assassin known as the Weasel. Could these two dark geniuses be working together? Now with just four days to prevent an unimaginable cataclysm, Cross is catapulted into an international chase of astonishing danger - and toward the explosive truth about the Wolf's identity, a revelation that Cross may not survive.

Somebody is murdering Hollywood's A-list. Her calling card: "You've got mail." On a family vacation, FBI agent Alex Cross is asked to investigate the shooting of a top actress and an e-mail sent to the Los Angeles Times with shocking details about the murder, signed Mary Smith. More killings and more e-mails follow, and Mary Smith is getting better every time. To hunt down this merciless killer of Tinseltown's elite, Cross must navigate a world where the stars sip San Pellegrino at the Ivy as hopefuls hover around studio gates with 8 X 10 glossies. And when the case catapults into blockbuster proportions, Cross and the LAPD scramble to find a pattern-before Mary sends one more chilling update.

America's #1 bestselling thriller writer, James Patterson presents his most suspenseful, explosive tale ever. Only an hour out of port, the Dunne family's summer getaway to paradise is already turning into the trip from hell. The three children are miserable-and not shy about showing it. Katherine Dunne had hoped this vacation would bring back the togetherness they'd lost when her husband died four years earlier. Maybe if her new husband had joined them it would all have been okay. Suddenly, a disaster hits-and it's perfect. Faced with this real threat, the Dunnes rediscover the meaning of family. But this catastrophe is just a tiny taste of the true danger that lurks ahead-somewhere out there, someone wants to make sure that the Dunne family never leaves paradise alive.

The bestselling author returns with the pinnacle of all Alex Cross thrillers: the chance at last to capture the psychopath who murdered Alex's wife, Maria. Patterson also goes back in time to answer the questions fans have been asking since the first Alex Cross appearance in Along Came A Spider.

To some, the dead are a commodity. For Tempe Brennan, they hold the key to cracking a horrific crime ring. Among the ancient remains in a Native American burial ground, Tempe discovers a fresh skeleton -- and what began as an ordinary teaching stint at an archeology field school in Charleston, South Carolina, fast becomes a heated investigation into an alarming pattern of homicides. The clues hidden in the bones lead to a street clinic where a monstrous discovery awaits, and Tempe -- whose personal life is in upheaval, with two men competing for her -- can't afford any distractions as she pieces together a shattering and terrifying puzzle.

Shelby Foxworth lost her husband. Then she lost her illusions ... The man who took her from Tennessee to an exclusive Philadelphia suburb left her in crippling debt. He was an adulterer and a liar, and when Shelby tracks down his safe-deposit box, she finds multiple IDs. The man she loved wasn't just dead. He never really existed. Shelby takes her three-year-old daughter and heads south to seek comfort in her hometown, where she meets someone new: Griff Lott, a successful contractor. But her husband had secrets she has yet to discover. Even in this small town, surrounded by loved ones, danger is closer than she knows--and threatens Griff, as well. And an attempted murder is only the beginning ...

Virginia's Shenandoah Valley is a long way from Hollywood. And that's exactly how Cilla McGowan wants it. Cilla, a former child star who has found more satisfying work as a restorer of old houses, has come to her grandmother's farmhouse, tools at her side, to rescue it from ruin. Sadly, no one was able to save her grandmother, the legendary Janet Hardy. An actress with a tumultuous life, Janet entertained glamorous guests and engaged in decadent affairs-but died of an overdose in this very house more than thirty years earlier. To this day, Janet haunts Cilla's dreams. And during waking hours, Cilla is haunted by her melodramatic, five-times-married mother, who carried on in the public spotlight and never gave her a chance at a normal childhood. By coming east, rolling up her sleeves, and rehabbing this wreck of a house, Cilla intends to find some kind of normalcy for herself. Plunging into the project with gusto, she's almost too busy to notice her neighbor, graphic novelist Ford Sawyer-but his lanky form, green eyes, and easy, unflappable humor (not to mention his delightfully ugly dog, Spock) are hard to ignore. Determined not to perpetuate the family tradition of ill-fated romances, Cilla steels herself against Ford's quirky charm, but she can't help indulging in a little fantasy. But love and a peaceful life may not be in the cards for Cilla. In the attic, she has found a cache of unsigned letters suggesting that Janet Hardy was pregnant when she died-and that the father was a local married man. Cilla can't help but wonder what really happened all those years ago. The mystery only deepens with a series of intimidating acts and a frightening, violent assault. And if Cilla and Ford are unable to sort out who is targeting her and why, she may-like her world-famous grandmother- be cut down in the prime of her life.

Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling. When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days--as he has done before--and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives--meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced. When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before... A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, THE SILKWORM is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant, Robin Ellacott.

A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

FBI agents Savich and Sherlock face two baffling cases in Catherine Coulter's electrifying thriller, a riveting novel of knife-edge suspense.

A page-turning thriller for readers of Stephen King, Gillian Flynn, and Stieg Larsson, Night Film tells the haunting story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the mysterious death of a troubled prodigy--the daughter of an iconic, reclusive filmmaker. On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley's life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova--a man who hasn't been seen in public for more than thirty years. For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova's dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself. Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova's eerie, hypnotic world. The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more. Night Film, the gorgeously written, spellbinding new novel by the dazzlingly inventive Marisha Pessl, will hold you in suspense until you turn the final page.

When a simple robbery turns deadly, the thieves close in on the only witness: Lucas Davenport's wife...

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems. At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at the same public school. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi eventually left to become a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. As Kaga investigates, he eventually uncovers evidence that indicates that the two writers' relationship was very different that they claimed, that they were anything but best friends. But the question before Kaga isn't necessarily who, or how, but why. In a brilliantly realized tale of cat and mouse, the detective and the killer battle over the truth of the past and how events that led to the murder really unfolded. And if Kaga isn't able to uncover and prove why the murder was committed, then the truth may never come out. Malice is one of the bestselling--the most acclaimed--novel in Keigo Higashino's series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga, one of the most popular creations of the bestselling novelist in Asia.

Fighting terrorism on foreign ground, CIA superagent Mitch Rapp does whatever it takes to protect American freedom in this blistering political thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn. CIA intelligence has pointed to a major terrorist attack on the United States, just as the nation's capital prepares for a grand Memorial Day tribute to the veterans of World War II. Racing to Afghanistan, Mitch Rapp leads a commando raid on an al Queda stronghold in a remote border village-and defuses plans for a nuclear strike on Washington. The crisis averted, the special ops work is done. But Rapp knows, in the face of a new kind of enemy, nothing is as it seems-and it's up to him alone to avert a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

When John Sutter's aristocratic wife killed her mafia don lover, John left America and set out in his sailboat on a three-year journey around the world, eventually settling in London. Now, ten years later, he has come home to the Gold Coast, that stretch of land on the North Shore of Long Island that once held the greatest concentration of wealth and power in America, to attend the imminent funeral of an old family servant. Taking up temporary residence in the gatehouse of Stanhope Hall, John finds himself living only a quarter of a mile from Susan who has also returned to Long Island. But Susan isn't the only person from John's past who has reemerged: Though Frank Bellarosa, infamous Mafia don and Susan's ex-lover, is long dead, his son, Anthony, is alive and well, and intent on two missions: Drawing John back into the violent world of the Bellarosa family, and exacting revenge on his father's murderer--Susan Sutter. At the same time, John and Susan's mutual attraction resurfaces and old passions begin to reignite, and John finds himself pulled deeper into a familiar web of seduction and betrayal. In THE GATE HOUSE, acclaimed author Nelson Demille brings us back to that fabled spot on the North Shore -- a place where past, present, and future collides with often unexpected results.

Jeffery Deaver returns with the new, long-awaited, Kathryn Dance thriller. A tragedy occurs at a small concert venue on the Monterey Peninsula. Cries of "fire" are raised and, panicked, people run for the doors, only to find them blocked. A half dozen people die and others are seriously injured. But it's the panic and the stampede that killed; there was no fire. Kathryn Dance--a brilliant California Bureau of Investigation agent and body language expert--discovers that the stampede was caused intentionally and that the perpetrator, a man obsessed with turning people's own fears and greed into weapons, has more attacks planned. She and her team must race against the clock to find where he will strike next before more innocents die.

Queen of Suspense Mary Higgins Clark crafts a thrilling mystery in which a news reporter develops an interest in her birth parents just as she is assigned to cover the high-profile trial of a woman accused of murdering her wealthy husband. Television journalist Delaney Wright is on the brink of stardom after she begins covering a sensational murder trial for the six p.m. news. She should be thrilled, yet her growing desire to locate her birth mother consumes her thoughts. When Delaney s friends Alvirah Meehan and her husband Willy offer to look into the mystery surrounding her birth, they uncover a shocking secret they do not want to reveal. On trial for murder is Betsy Grant, widow of a wealthy doctor who has been an Alzheimer s victim for eight years. When her once-upon-a-time celebrity lawyer urges her to accept a plea bargain, Betsy refuses: she will go to trial to prove her innocence. Betsy s stepson, Alan Grant, bides his time nervously as the trial begins. His substantial inheritance hangs in the balance his only means of making good on payments he owes his ex-wife, his children, and increasingly angry creditors. As the trial unfolds, and the damning evidence against Betsy piles up, Delaney is convinced that Betsy is not guilty and frantically tries to prove her innocence.

A severed arm, found buried in the White House Rose Garden." "A lethal message with terrible consequences for the Presidency.""And a hidden secret in one family's past that will have repercussions for the entire nation. There are stories no one knows. Hidden stories. I find those stories for a living. To most, it looks like Beecher White has an ordinary job. A young staffer with the National Archives in Washington, D.C., he's responsible for safekeeping the government's most important documents . . . and, sometimes, its most closely held secrets. But there are a powerful few who know his other role. Beecher is a member of the Culper Ring, a 200-year-old secret society founded by George Washington and charged with protecting the Presidency.Now the current occupant of the White House needs the Culper Ring's help. The alarming discovery of the buried arm has the President's team in a rightful panic. Who buried the arm? How did they get past White House security? And most important: What's the message hidden in the arm's closed fist? Indeed, the puzzle inside has a clear intended recipient, and it isn't the President. It's Beecher, himself. Beecher's investigation will take him back to one of our country's greatest secrets and point him toward the long, carefully hidden truth about the most shocking history of all: family history.

Single mom Lizabeth Kane isn't exactly carpenter material -- she's never picked up a hammer in her life. But she desperately needs the construction job that builder Matt Hallahan is offering. And even though he knows trouble is ahead, Matt can't refuse Lizbeth's irresistible smile. Matt Hallahan isn't exactly relationship material -- he has always been too busy working on other people's houses to make a home of his own. And even though she knows better, Lizabeth can't stop thinking about the rugged carpenter. Is the relationship Matt and Lizabeth are building solid -- or more like a house of cards?

Miami is still freakin' humid. The nights are even hotter. And there's a body on ice. And that's just the beginning of this adrenaline-rush of a hot-wired ride from phenomenal number one New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich. A woman with a taste for speed and a talent for breaking the rules, Barney also knows a little too much about cheating. First there was Hooker and that salesclerk. Now she's convinced one of the competitors is up to no good on the track. Snooping to find evidence, Hooker and Barney "borrow" a NASCAR hauler. Turns out, the hauler is carrying two race cars and a dead guy. It looks like Barney and Hooker are facing multiple counts of grand theft auto and homicide. So buckle up as Barney, Hooker, a 150-pound bundle of Saint Bernard love named Beans, and the Super Cigar Ladies Felicia and Rosa shift into gear on a wild race around South Florida and Concord, North Carolina. Everything you always wanted to know about righteous indignation, stealing an eighteen-wheeler, and sex in the fast lane.

Imagine a year without Christmas. No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That's just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they'll skip the holiday altogether. Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a rooftop Frosty, they won't be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash, they aren't even going to have a tree. They won't need one, because come December 25 they're setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But as this weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences--and isn't half as easy as they'd imagined. A classic tale for modern times, Skipping Christmas offers a hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition.

For a mother, life comes down to a series of choices. To hold on... To let go.. To forget... To forgive... Which road will you take? Night Road For eighteen years, Jude Farraday has put her children's needs above her own, and it shows--her twins, Mia and Zach--are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill moves into their small, close knit community, no one is more welcoming than Jude. Lexi, a former foster child with a dark past, quickly becomes Mia's best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable. Jude does everything to keep her kids on track for college and out of harm's way. It has always been easy-- until senior year of high school. Suddenly she is at a loss. Nothing feels safe anymore; every time her kids leave the house, she worries about them. On a hot summer's night her worst fears come true. One decision will change the course of their lives. In the blink of an eye, the Farraday family will be torn apart and Lexi will lose everything. In the years that follow, each must face the consequences of that single night and find a way to forget...or the courage to forgive. Vivid, universal, and emotionally complex, NIGHT ROAD raises profound questions about motherhood, identity, love, and forgiveness. It is a luminous, heartbreaking novel that captures both the exquisite pain of loss and the stunning power of hope. This is Kristin Hannah at her very best, telling an unforgettable story about the longing for family, the resilience of the human heart, and the courage it takes to forgive the people we love.

Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. Now she is a famous talk show host. Her daughter Ruby is a struggling comedienne. The two haven't spoken in more than a decade. Then a scandal from Nora's past is exposed, and Ruby is offered a fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. Reluctantly, she returns to the family house on Summer Island, a home filled with frayed memories of joy and heartache. Confronting a past that includes a never-forgotten love, a sick best friend, and a mother who has harbored terrible family secrets, Ruby finally begins to understand the complex ties that bind a mother and daughter and the healing that comes with forgiveness.

Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn't know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestsellerFirefly LaneandTrue Colorscomes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time--and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying thatit will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

A NEW BEGINNING: Hollywood actor Dayne Matthews and Katy Hart are married and living in Bloomington, Ind., where Dayne has found a solution to his on-camera love scenes-he wants Katy to star in his next film. Katy wins the part and is cast opposite her super-star husband. The story of a small town girl's dream come true is too much for the press to resist, and in an effort to appease them, the couple agrees to a 12-episode reality show. It seems like the perfect compromise but by the time they finish filming the movie, they feel cracks around the edges of their marriage. Now they face an uncertain future, and possibly the end of everything that truly matters to them. AN UNFORGETTABLE SUMMER: The Baxter family learns that Ashley and Kari are both pregnant, but an ultrasound reveals that something is wrong with one of the babies. As the summer progresses, the sisters pray for a miracle while trying to face the unthinkable. It's in this trying season that they must all learn the lesson God has been trying to teach them-He is still in control, and He will be with them regardless of the outcome. AN EMOTIONAL FAREWELL: The Flanigans continue to draw closer to their only daughter, yet Bailey struggles to find her way amidst the turmoil of adolescence. She has always made good decisions, but she wants to experience more of life. Her friendship with Cody Coleman-the young border staying with the Flanigans-continues to blossom in this summer after his graduation. But when Cody decides to enlist in the Army, he'll have to say goodbye to the family he's come to love and the girl he'll never forget.

Grief-stricken by a recent tragedy, Jennifer returns to the resort village where she grew up to help her beloved grandmother. There, Jennifer will discover new meaning in life and experience not one, but two of the most amazing love stories ever.

Three women learn that the heart of their historic home holds a mystery of years gone by, as #1 "New York Times "bestselling author Nora Roberts brings her In the Garden trilogy to a captivating conclusion. A Harper has always lived at Harper House, the centuries-old mansion just outside of Memphis. And for as long as anyone alive remembers, the ghostly Harper Bride has walked the halls, singing lullabies at night... Hayley Phillips came to Memphis hoping for a new start, for herself and her unborn child. She wasn't looking for a handout from her distant cousin Roz, just a job at her thriving In the Garden nursery. What she found was a home surrounded by beauty and the best friends she's ever had--including Roz's son Harper. To Hayley's chagrin, she has begun to dream about Harper--as much more than a friend... If Hayley gives in to her desire, she's afraid the foundation she's built with Harper will come tumbling down. And that wouldn't be the only consequence, since her dreams are tangled up with Roz and the nursery. Hayley will have to put the past behind her to know her own heart again--and to decide whether she's willing to risk it... Previously in the In the Garden trilogy "Blue Dahlia" and "Black Rose"

An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life--until he meets the girl of his dreams, Savannah. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything. John feels it is his duty to re-enlist. And sadly, the long separation finds Savannah falling in love with someone else. "Dear John," the letter read...and with those two words, a heart was broken and two lives were changed forever. Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love--and face the hardest decision of his life.

Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alientated from her parents, especially her father...until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church. The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story of love on many levels--first love, love between parents and children -- that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts...and heal them.

In his 14th book, bestselling author Sparks tells the unforgettable story of a man whose brushes with death lead him to the love of his life.

Jeremy Marsh is a born skeptic and a science journalist who specializes in debunking the supernatural. When he hears about ghostly apparitions in a cemetery in Boone Creek, North Carolina, he leaves his beloved New York City for this small, rural town-and what his instincts tell him could make a great story. What he doesn't plan on is meeting and falling hopelessly in love with Lexie Darnell, who is sure of one thing: her future is here in Boone Creek, close to the people she loves. Now, if the young lovers are to be together, Jeremy must make a difficult choice: return to the life he knows in New York, or do something he could never do before... take a giant leap of faith.

Nineteen-year-old Annabelle Worthington was born into a life of privilege, but everything changed on an April day in 1912, when the sinking of the Titanic shattered her family and her world forever. Finding strength within her grief, Annabelle pours herself into volunteer work, igniting a passion for medicine that would shape the course of her life. But for Annabelle, first love, and a seemingly idyllic marriage, will soon bring grief caused by the secrets of her husband. Betrayed, and pursued by undeserved scandal, Annabelle flees New York for war-ravaged France, hoping to lose herself in a life of service. There, in the heart of the First World War, in a groundbreaking field hospital run by women, Annabelle finds her true calling, studying medicine and saving lives. When the war ends, Annabelle begins a new life in Paris--now a doctor, a mother, her past almost forgotten...until a fateful meeting opens her heart to the world she had left behind. Filled with breathtaking images and historical detail, Danielle Steel's new novel introduces one of her most unique and fascinating characters: Annabelle Worthington, a remarkable woman--a good woman--who triumphs against overwhelming odds. More than compelling fiction, her story is a powerful celebration of life, dignity, and courage--and a testament to the human will to survive.

Carole Barber has come to Paris to work on her novel and to find herself. A legend of film and stage, Carole has set a standard of grace, devoting herself to her family and causes around the world. But one fiery instant of terror shatters hundreds of lives--and leaves Carole alone, unconscious and unidentified. In the days that follow, as the truth emerges, the paparazzi swarm. A mysterious stranger quietly visits the hospital to see the woman he once loved and never forgot. Carole's grown children rush to her bedside, waiting and praying--until the miraculous begins to happen. But as a woman whom the whole world knows slowly awakens, she knows nothing of herself. Every detail must be pieced back together--from a childhood in rural Mississippi to the early days of her career, from the unintentional hurt inflicted on her daughter to a fifteen-year-old secret love affair that went tragically wrong. Carole has been given a second chance to count her blessings, heal wounded hearts, recapture lost love...and to live a life that will truly honor others--beginning with herself. A tale of survival and dignity, of small miracles and big surprises, Honor Thyself creates an unforgettable portrait of a public figure whose hopes, fears, and heartbreaks are as real as our own. Her courageous journey inspires us all.

In this spellbinding blend of suspense and human drama, Danielle Steel tells a powerful and unusual story of one woman's journey from darkness into light, as she fights to escape a mesmerizing sociopath who holds her in his thrall. . . . Top photographer Hope Dunne has known joy and heartbreak, and finds serenity through the lens of her camera. Content in her SoHo loft, she isn't looking for a man or excitement. But these things find her when she flies to London to photograph one of the world's most celebrated writers. Finn O'Neill exudes warmth and a boyish charm. Enormously successful, he is a perfect counterpoint to Hope's quiet, steady grace--and he's taken instantly by her. He courts her as no one ever has before, whisking her away to his palatial, isolated Irish estate. Hope finds it all, and him, irresistible. But soon cracks begin to appear in his stories: Gaps in his history, a few innocent lies, and bouts of jealousy unnerve her. Suddenly Hope is both in love and deeply in doubt, and ultimately frightened of the man she loves. Is it possible that this adoring man is hiding something even worse? The spell cast by a brilliant sociopath has her trapped in his web, too confused and dazzled to escape, as he continues to tighten his grip on her. Danielle Steel delivers an unforgettable tale of danger and obsessive love, as she explores the dark secrets that sometimes lurk just below the surface of ordinary lives, writing about men and women and their courage to prevail even in the face of evil.

The wildly popular New York Times bestseller and reading group favorite Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She's full of ambition, but without a husband, she's considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town...

She's undercover and in over her head . . . When FBI analyst Tara Jacobs's fellow agent and best friend goes missing while investigating a sex ring, Tara goes undercover as a submissive in a Dallas BDSM club called Dominion. But no man can top a woman with Tara's moxie convincingly enough - until an edgy, dangerous Dom takes control of the scene and sets her heart racing with a single, commanding glance. Too bad he's also the man who stole her innocence years ago - and one to whom she will never submit. He's got everything under control . . . until he falls for her again. Navy SEAL Logan Edgington once left the woman he loved to save her life. He knows Tara will never forgive him, but he has no doubt that he possesses the knowledge to help her master her fears and the strength to guide her through an unfamiliar world of pleasure and pain. He alone can protect her on a dangerous mission that reveals both wicked depravities and terrible secrets. Logan relishes the exquisite torture of holding her again and feeling her uninhibited response. No matter how much Tara insists their fling will end after this mission, he's determined that she will be his once more - and this time, he'll never let her go.

Thanks to a presidential pardon, the Sisterhood can put their fugitive days behind them and resume their lives in peace. Still, all the women admit that lately things are a little too calm and peaceful. Meeting up for the first time in months to celebrate Kathryn's birthday--in the City of Sin, no less--seems like the perfect antidote. But before they can kick up their heels something too big to pass up is dropped into their laps. The time has come to deal with Enemy #1, a/k/a Hank Jellicoe. Wanted by the FBI, the CIA, and Homeland Security for starters, President Connor herself has run out of patience with their lack of results. Only the Sisterhood, with their special blend of guts, imagination, and friends in all places are capable of pulling off the impossible--of hunting down this monster and taking him out once and for all. . .

Nicholas Sparks turns his unrivaled talents to a new tale about love found and lost, and the choices we hope we'll never have to make. Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life - boating, swimming, and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies -- he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door. Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, THE CHOICE ultimately confronts us with the most heartwrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?

In Larry McMurtry's Sin Killer, the first novel of a major four-volume work, it is 1830, and the Berrybender family, rich aristocratic English, and fiercely out of place, is on its way up the Missouri River to see the American West as it begins to open up. At the core of the book is daughter Tasmin's relationship with Jim Snow, frontiersman, ferocious Indian fighter, and part-time preacher (known up and down the Missouri as the "Sin Killer"), the strong, handsome, silent Westerner who captures her heart. Larry McMurtry has created a wonderfully engaging family confronting every bigger-than-life personality of the frontier as the Berrybenders make their way up the great river, surviving attacks, discomfort, savage weather, and natural disaster. At once epic, comic, and as big as the West itself, it is the kind of novel that only Larry McMurtry can write.

Not since the publication of his own beloved classic "Lonesome Dove" has there been a novel like this one -- another big, brilliant, unputdownable saga of the West from Larry McMurtry. "Telegraph Days" is at once a major work of literature and a completely absorbing read, not just great fiction, but fiction on a great scale, encompassing many years, many characters, real and fictional, and the whole vast landscape of place, time, life, and heart, which has served for more than one hundred thirty years as the background for "the Western" in fiction and on the screen. Nobody writes, or has ever written, better about the West than Larry McMurtry, and nobody has caught better in words its myths, its often brutal reality, its overwhelming size, and the way it captured both the imagination and the hopes of those who settled there, only, as was so often the case, to dash those hopes. Told in the voice of Nellie Courtright, a spunky, courageous, attractive young woman whose story this is in part, "Telegraph Days" is the big novel of the Western gunfighters that people have been hoping for years Larry McMurtry would write. When Nellie and her brother Jackson are unexpectedly orphaned by their father's suicide on his new and unprosperous ranch, they make their way to the nearby town of Rita Blanca, where Jackson manages to secure a job as a sheriff's deputy, while Nellie, ever resourceful, becomes the town's telegrapher. Together, they inadvertently put Rita Blanca on the map when young Jackson succeeds in shooting down all six of the ferocious Yazee brothers in a gunfight that brings him lifelong fame but which he can never repeat because his success came purely out of luck. Propelled by her own energy and commonsense approach to life, Nellie meets and almost conquers the heart of Buffalo Bill, the man she will love most in her long life, and goes on to meet, and witness the exploits of, Billy the Kid, the Earp brothers, and Doc Holliday. She even gets a ringside seat at the Battle at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight in Western history, and eventually lives long enough to see the West and its gunfighters turned into movies. Full of life, love, shootings, real Western heroes and villains, "Telegraph Days" is Larry McMurtry at his epic best, in his most ambitious Western novel since "Lonesome Dove."