But when the pair enters the lives of Alice, an unfulfilled cellist, her brother Marshall, and Fabia and Victor, another sister and brother who are as bumbling as they are overindulged, it is certain that Kelton will never again be the same unassuming place.

    Miss Butterworth is a nosy high-society lady whose wealth and lack of family give her the free time solve several Victorian-era crimes.Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was a pioneering American author of detective fiction. Her legally accurate and intricately-plotted works served to inspire later generations of writers, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, who patterned her 'Miss Marple' character after Green's spinster crimefighter Amelia Butterworth. Includes an active table of contents with back-linking for easy navigation.• That Affair Next Door• Lost Man’s Lane• The Circular Study

    With full-cloth binding and a silk ribbon marker. EVERYMAN'S POCKET CLASSICS.In an interview, Updike once said, "If I had to give anybody one book of me, it would be the Olinger Stories." These stories were originally published in The New Yorker and then in various collections before Vintage first put them together in one volume in 1964, as a paperback original. They follow the life of one character from the age of ten through manhood, in the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger (pronounced, according to Updike, with a long O and a hard G), which was loosely based on Updike's own hometown. "All the stories draw from the same autobiographical well," Updike explained, "the only child, the small town, the grandparental home, the move in adolescence to a farm." The selection was made and arranged by Updike himself, and was prefaced by a lovely 1,400-word essay by the author that has never been reprinted in full elsewhere until now.

    Her chilling new short story, An Arrangement of Light, is irrefutable evidence of Krauss’s gifts.Narrated by the personal secretary to a world-famous landscape architect, it’s a haunting tale about how survival of the fittest, whether for flora or fauna, beast or man, is often a guarantee of treachery, and how our loyalties can become as trapping as any prison.Set in an unnamed country as familiar as it is otherworldly, the story begins with a young horticulturist’s admiration for the work of a great man and his hope to help build a new public park in the capital. He ends up securing far more than that: a complicity with the park’s celebrated designer he could never have imagined or indeed wished for. And when a military coup ushers capricious generals into power and they arrive in their black sedans with dark plans for the new park, the personal secretary discovers that dreams risk running headlong into nightmares. Ultimately he must reckon with the fact that nature, for all its beauty, is cruel and conniving, and that a good gardener cannot tame it, only bend its neck.

    These few days will validate Dale Whitehead’s work—or expose him as a fraud. When a tragic death devastates the conference, only Dale suspects murder. Computer geeks care about code. But do they care enough… to kill?

    In one narrative, a man wakes up one morning to find the odor of dead fish won't go away, but no one else can smell it. In another, a couple's visit with friends to watch the Academy Awards has the protagonist envying his friends' lawn and lifestyle. In these and eleven other stories, Christopher Meeks balances tragedy and wit. As novelist David Scott Milton explains, "In this collection, Christopher Meeks examines the small heartbreaks of quiet despair that are so much a part of all our lives. He does it in language that is resonant, poetic, and precise.... If you like Raymond Carver, you'll love Meeks. He may be as good--or better."

    They are as different as Clyde Merriman, who "had no particular ambitions" but whose future is quickly decided when his girlfriend gets pregnant; the Maloney brothers, one the student body president, the other an outcast; Janet Salterlee, who trained for fifteen years to be Queen of the Rose Festival; Blaze Cooney, who attempts to write a novel; Anne Tressman, whose only interest is ballet; and Tommy German, the hanger-on, who tries desperately to meet girls on the seaside boardwalk—yet behind their fantasies and foibles lies a common rite of passage."One Pocket" traces the fascination of a writer, stuck in the air force, with the game of pool. He discovers that on occasion he can shoot "in a 'zone' way over his head," a discovery at once exhilarating and alarming. Finally, in "Glitter: A Memory," the writer, at work on a screenplay for a fading star, learns the lesson of Hollywood that things are not as they seem in a world of fantasy, deception, and calculated illusion.Comical, lively, and tender, The Class of '49 shows Don Carpenter's voice to be one of the most vital in contemporary American writing.

    It has been many long years since Claudia last saw her Japanese-American stepsister. Once upon a time, Claudia’s Jewish father fell in love with Rei’s Japanese mother and abandoned his family to be with her. Though Claudia resented this new family her father so readily embraced, from the moment she and Rei met, the two girls formed a bond not even their parents understood. Their long-standing joke is that they are mirror reflections of each other--though in truth they are striking opposites. Claudia is blond and large-boned; Rei is dark-haired and thin, with distinct Asian features.Now in their early thirties, Claudia and Rei have found a way back into each other’s troubled life. As impulsively affectionate as ever, Rei has come to Boston to recuperate from a potentially life-threatening illness, while the typically cautious Claudia has found herself replicating the behavior of her step-mother by falling in love with a married man. As they come together, the two women realize they must strike a balance between the friendship they long to recover and the secrets they have learned to keep. And they discover that despite the distance that has grown between them, their bond is as strong as ever--and could help them repair the other wounded relationships in their lives. Lyrical, evocative, and richly imagined, Once Removed is an exceptional tale of two families, two cultures, and the connection between two women that survives the betrayals of those around them. Taking us from the exotic Japan of the 1940s and ’50s, to the verdant English countryside, to the urban streets of Boston, Mako Yoshikawa is a gifted storyteller who has firmly established her place in contemporary fiction. From the Hardcover edition.

    Beginning with a wonderful portrait of tha author's remarkable father, the book follows Dos Passos through Harvard; through World War I as an ambulance driver in France & Italy; through the chaotic postwar Middle East; through the vast reaches of Soviet Russia; the 'Russian Experiment' & through the literary world on both sides of the Atlantic.

    The Monkees' immensely popular television series began in 1966. It was immediately followed by a remarkable four consecutive Number 1 albums and six Top 10 singles. In the 1980s the Monkees reached an entirely new audience when MTV began re-running the TV show. Their cult status remains solid today as critics reassess their music and new fans discover the show. Follow the band's short but explosive career in this examination that includes exclusive interviews with each member of the group, details of recording sessions, filming commitments, concert performances, other public appearances, and over 100 photographs and illustrations.

    Left to her own devices, Grady turns up the heat on the secret affair she's been having with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran who works as a parking lot attendant. As the season passes, the romance turns more serious and morally ambiguous, and Grady must eventually make a series of decisions that will forever affect her life and the lives of everyone around her.

    Martin, in the middle of a divorce, is seeking solace. But settles in for some rest and rehabilitation with his soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law.

    . . a beautifully wrought hymn of praise to readers and book-lovers in the most sacred of places, the libraries where we find both." --Cassandra King, author of the best-selling novels The Sunday WifeWHEN ADELE COVINGTON becomes an author in her sixties, she goes on a book tour to speak to the Friends of the Library groups in ten small towns in her home state of Mississippi. Chasing her personal demons through the Christ-haunted South of her childhood, Adele befriends an eclectic group of wounded people and decides to tell their stories. From Eupora to Meridian, from a budding artist with an abusive husband to a seven-year-old with a rare form of cancer, each story contains elements of hope and healing and honors the heart, soul, and history of the Magnolia State.

    An architect turned crooked real estate developer, Abbie claims to be chasing after an unexpected heavenly vision—one that inevitably embroils the Mayer family within the political and familial machinations of Fayette County, Pennsylvania.

    Schroder relates the story of Eric's urgent escape years later to Lake Champlain, Vermont, with his six-year-old daughter, Meadow, in an attempt to outrun the authorities amid a heated custody battle with his wife, who will soon discover that her husband is not who he says he is. From a correctional facility, Eric surveys the course of his life to understand - and maybe even explain - his behavior: the painful separation from his mother in childhood; a harrowing escape to America with his taciturn father; a romance that withered under a shadow of lies; and his proudest moments and greatest regrets as a flawed but loving father. Alternately lovesick and ecstatic, Amity Gaige's deftly imagined novel offers a profound meditation on history and fatherhood, and the many identities we take on in our lives - those we are born with and those we construct for ourselves.