The Dunnes have set off on a ten day boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the father, Stuart is staying behind on land. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Anne, with the help of her brother-in-law Jeff, is insistent on pulling everyone...

"Laid off from her department store job, Carmen has little cash and few options. Spending Christmas with her perfect sister Sofia and her perfectly ordered life does not appeal. But Sofia has a client who needs help revitalizing his bookshop. So Carmen moves in and takes the job. Thrown into the workings of Mr. McCredie's ancient bookshop in historic Edinburgh, Carmen is intrigued. The store is dusty and disorganized but undeniably charming. Can she...

Winner of the 2010 Edgar Award for Best Novel. John Hart's New York Times bestselling debut, The King of Lies, announced the arrival of a major talent. With Down River, he surpassed his earlier success, transcending the barrier between thriller and literature and winning the 2008 Edgar Award for best novel. Now, with The Last Child, he achieves his most significant work to date, an intricate, powerful story of loss, hope, and courage in the face of...

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...

"This beautiful novel tells the love story of young Arthur Moses and Nola, and how a young man grew up to become the wise old man known as Arthur Trulove. Set in the 1950s in the warm community of Mason, Missouri, Arthur is a shy, unathletic teenage boy, in love with the most beautiful girl in his class. He is thrilled when they become friends, but he wants more than friendship. Alas, he learns that Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses--Arthur's older...

"In the book of Genesis, when God calls out, 'Abraham!' to order him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham responds, 'Here I am.' Later, when Isaac calls out, 'My father!' to ask him why there is no animal to slaughter, Abraham responds, 'Here I am.' How do we fulfill our conflicting duties as father, husband, and son; wife and mother; child and adult? Jew and American? How can we claim our own identities when our lives are linked so closely to others'?...

Between school and Al-Anon meetings, Jenna helps Mrs. Gladstone cope with escalating problems that result from the merger of Gladstone Shoes with Shoe Warehouse Corporation, while managing a new employee with a shoplifting record.

"In 1969 Alabama, eleven-year-old Dixie Dupree learns that the family she once believed was happy has deep fractures and records everything in her diary in this coming-of-age story about mothers and daughters, the guilt and pain that pass between generations, and the truths that are impossible to hide, especially from ourselves"--