Jess needs a fresh start. She's broke and alone, and she's just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn't sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn't say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up, to find a very nice apartment, (could Ben really have afforded this?) he's not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig...

"After fifty years of marriage, Stan and Joy Delaney are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy's door. She says she chose their house because it looked the friendliest. And since Savannah is bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend, the Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that was all she wanted. Later, everyone will...

Rivalry between rich and poor gangs in 1960s Oklahoma leads to the deaths of three teenagers and intense soul-searching for one of the kids involved, a sensitive fourteen-year-old writer named Ponyboy. Includes an interview with the author and a discussion guide.

Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880), is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disastrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system,...

The summer after her first year of college, Isobel "Belly" Conklin is faced with a choice between Jeremiah and Conrad Fisher, brothers she has always loved, when Jeremiah proposes marriage and Conrad confesses that he still loves her.

Peter finds his demanding two-year-old brother an ever increasing problem. Living with his little brother, Fudge, makes Peter feel like a fourth grade nothing. Fudge is never far from trouble. He's a two-year-old terror who gets away with everything-and Peter's had enough. When Fudge walks off with Dribble, Peter's pet turtle, it's the last straw

"Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I'm Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I'd killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it's a little more complicated than that. Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let's get started."--...

"When John Puller's older brother Robert inexplicably escapes from the military's most secure prison, where he's being held for national security crimes, Puller finds himself part of an investigation to hunt down his own brother. As he digs more deeply into the case, Puller discovers troubling details about his brother's conviction and that someone is out there who doesn't want the truth to ever come out." --

"Explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to...