Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon; the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him 'the bitter neighbour from hell'. But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty...

"A small, incongruous man receives an excruciating piece of news. His son has died in a POW camp in Korea. It is August 15, 1953, the day of a tumultuous street carnival in Elephant Park, an Italian immigrant enclave in Ohio. The man is Rocco LaGrassa, and his many years of dogged labor, paternal devotion, and steadfast Christian faith are about to come to a crashing end. He is the first of many characters we meet that day, each of whom will come...

"Welcome to Stanhope. A safe neighborhood. A place for families. On the surface, William Wooler is a family man. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery's family declares her missing. Suddenly Stanhope doesn't...

"An adventurous cat named Sam explores her neighborhood at night, and maps of all types reveal her journey, illuminating different points of view and the various spots Sam visits"--

One by one, a number of people of varying ages and backgrounds transform a trash-filled inner-city lot into a productive and beautiful garden, and in doing so, the gardeners are themselves transformed. .

Julian and Claire Perry and their two children, Megan and James, have made the move to a bigger, nicer home in the city's historic district. But something isn't right. The neighbors seem so reluctant to visit. Claire can't shake the feeling that she's not alone. Megan receives increasingly menacing and obscene texts. And James is having dreadful dreams. No wonder, considering what he's seen int he corner of the basement, staring at him, and shuffling...

"Britt-Marie can't stand mess. When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband, she finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, and layabouts. Most alarming of all, she's given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children's soccer team to victory. In this small town of big-hearted misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?"--

Welcome to the eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood of Cobble Hill. Ex-groupie Mandy, underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state, fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her skateboarding, ex-boyband member husband Stuart. He has a crush on the school nurse, Peaches, whose husband Greg wears noise-canceling headphones-- everywhere. A few blocks away Roy, a newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel......

Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life--except when there's a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora's dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a safe harbor, a tranquil village amid the urban craziness. Then one morning she returns from her run to discover that a terrible incident has shaken the...

Twins Nikki and Maya Younger always agreed on most things, but as they head into their senior year they react differently to the gentrification of their Portland, Oregon, neighborhood and the new--white--family that moves in after their best friend and her mother are evicted.