"The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays"-- ""Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. At the center of These Precious...

This is one of the early mystery stories, first published in 1860. The hero, Walter Hartright, encounters a solitary, terrified and beautiful woman dressed in white one moonlit night in north London. He feels impelled to solve the mystery of her distress. The intricate plot is peopled with a finely characterized case, from the peevish invalid Mr. Fairlie to the corpulent villain Count Fosco and the enigmatic woman in white herself. [From the back...

"An endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction. A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes--only to discover how claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins--turning for help to the famed motivator himself. A new arrival in Heaven, overwhelmed with options, procrastinates...

A collection of more than twenty-five short fictional works follows a theme of the intersections between life and death, perception and reality, and darkness and light. Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams-- and nightmares . . . A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night . . . In a Hugo Award-winning story, a great detective must solve a most unsettling...

P.G. Wodehouse earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the finest English prose stylists. In this collection of stories, Wodehouse introduces us to Jeeves, one of the author's most beloved fictional characters. If you could do with a good laugh, this hilarious collection will definitely do the trick.

"From one of Britain's most accomplished, acclaimed, and garlanded writers, Hilary Mantel delivers a brilliant collection of contemporary short stories that demonstrate what modern England has becomeIn The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel's trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display.Her classic wicked humor in each story--which range from a ghost story...

The Refugees is a collection of stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family. Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse...

This pulse-pounding collection marks the first time that all of Lee Child's short fiction starring Jack Reacher has been available in one place. It begins with "Too Much Time," a brand-new work that finds Reacher in a hollowed-out town in Maine, where he witnesses a random bag-snatching but sees much more than a simple crime. "Small Wars" takes readers back to 1989, when Reacher is an MP assigned to solve the brutal murder of a young officer found...

"Homecoming" takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham's unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he's not in the courtroom. He's called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again--until...

Criminals beware - there is no eluding the extraordinary mind of Father Brown Dr. Orion Hood is one of the eminent thinkers of his day, a psychologist whose expert opinion on human nature is sometimes sought by the police. Usually, he is called on to solve only the most spectacular crimes - a nobleman murdered, a diplomat poisoned - but today a more ordinary problem presents itself. An amiable little priest named Father Brown asks Dr. Hood to help...