In Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, a consummate storyteller, artfully crafts a portrait using the finest of details in everyday events and confrontations. The novel is comprised of vignettes, images, fragments of conversations, events--all building powerfully toward the completed group portrait of a family, closely knit on the surface but deeply divided by loneliness, boredom, misunderstandings, isolation, sexual longing, and terminal isolation. In...

In a story told in letters, when Claire's best friend moves away just before the start of fifth grade, Claire becomes the only girl in her tiny island elementary school--and suddenly boys she has been friends with her whole life turn into resentful, bullying strangers.

"In 1916, Sven Ormson leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year and he might witness the splendor of the Northern Lights one night and be attacked by a polar bear the next. But his time in a mining camp ends when an avalanche nearly kills him, leaving him disfigured, after which Sven flees even farther, to an uninhabited fjord. There, with the company of a...

Amelia is no stranger to sex and death. Her job in her family’s funeral parlour, doing make-up on the dead, might be unusual, but she’s good at it. Life and warmth comes from the men she meets online – combining with someone else’s body at night in order to become something else, at least for a while. But when a sudden loss severs her ties with someone she loves, Amelia sets off on a seventy-two-hour mission to outrun her grief – skipping...

When Kara Westfall was five years old, her mother was convicted of the worst of all crimes: witchcraft. Years later, Kara and her little brother, Taff, are still shunned by the people of their village, who believe that nothing is more evil than magic... except, the mysterious forest that covers nearly the entire island. It has many names, this place. Sometimes it is called the Dark Wood, or Sordyr's Realm. But mostly it's called the Thickety. The...

Struggling young lovers in desperate need of money agree to take part in an experiment designed to determine why married people fall out of love.

"In her new book, Alexandra Robbins explores the ways group identity theories play out among cliques - and the students they exclude. She reveals the new labels students stick onto each other today, the long-term effects of this marginalization, and the reasons students falling under these categories are often shunned. And then she will celebrate them. In this ever-conformist, cookie-cutter, magazine-celebrity-worshipping, creativity-stifling society,...

"Like everyone else, twelve-year-old Cleo and her parents are sealed in an apartment without windows or doors. They never leave. They never get visitors. Their food is dropped off by drones. So they're safe. Safe from the disease that nearly wiped humans from the earth. The trade-off? They're alone. Thus, when they receive a package clearly meant for someone else--a package containing a substance critical for a stranger's survival--Cleo is stuck"--...

"In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease causing sensory damage, nerve loss, and, in most cases, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London-perhaps humanity's last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers-Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper-cannot hide from...

"Moon has spent his life hiding what he is--a shape-shifter able to transform himself into a winged creature of flight. An orphan with only vague memories of his own kind, Moon tries to fit in among the tribes of his river valley, with mixed success. Just as Moon's true nature is once again discovered and he is cast out by his adopted tribe, he encounters a shape-shifter like himself... someone who seems to know exactly what Moon is, who promises...