Ranging from the 19th to the 20th centuries, writers include James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, Richard Edward Connell, Henri Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Jack London, Henri Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant and Edgar Allan Poe.

    They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.Written with a voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works, Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork—a feat of literary genius.

    Deasy quietly explores the ties that bind, and the evolution of a heart that everyone will recognize, and root for" -- Jane McCafferty, author of "One Heart" --- Ransom Seaborn is an astonishing literary debut in the spirit of Gatsby and Holden Caulfield.

    The signature sounds of Motown are filling Detroit's airwaves, and automobile factories are supporting a burgeoning black middle class, which works by day and plays bid whist by night. Rae's hip older sister, Kimmie, has moved home from New Orleans;her mother's nerves have calmed enough for her to stop taking her "vitamins"; her father has discovered new painkillers that ease his chronic migraines; and now, despite her parents' sleeping in separate rooms, the peace between them seems to be holding. All that shifts, however, when Rae's mother suddenly takes off with her lover down a stretch of highway.Left to care for her ailing father, Rae grows up faster than any young girl should and is forced to admit that her mother may be incapable of love, that her father's love may be too all-consuming. What's most obvious is that neither seems fully capable of looking after Rae, who is searching not only for a way to make her family whole again but also for a way to make sense of her own budding sexuality.With fully realized characters and an infinitely imaginative storyline, Shifting Through Neutral heralds the arrival of a promising new talent.

    Two sisters. One Ghost. An impossible sacrifice.Feuding half-sisters inherit a cottage on the Italian coast, along with its resident spirit and a secret manuscript. Their rivalry explodes through a struggle for control of their haunted house, but Italy infuses its magic into them until a shocking night changes everything for the sisters and their friends.A tale of sisterhood and the supernatural, perfect for fans of Mary Ellen Taylor and Barbara O'Neal."Two sisters, very different, both love and frustrate each other. When their father dies, they are co-inheritors of his house in Italy and must agree on what to do with it. They descend on the house and, slowly and gently, come to terms with their differences and reinforce the love they’ve always had for each other ... Romance blooms in all directions as each sister finds what she most needs, in a most surprising way." – Diane Byington, author of WHO SHE IS

    When he arrives in Ethiopia on an archeological trip, his only interest is to raid as much of the country's lost treasures as possible so that he can make big bucks on his return to the States. The last thing he expects is to be held captive in the six-thousand-year-old buried city of Telassar, ruled by the beautiful Queen Candace. In Queen Candace's glittering palace, surrounded by diamonds, rubies, sapphires — wealth beyond his wildest dreams — Reuel discovers his true Blackness and the painful truth about blood, race and the "other half" of his history which has never been told.Relevant, thought-provoking, and entertaining, Hopkins’s novel is intended, in her own words, to “raise the stigma of degradation from [the Black] race” and its title, Of One Blood, refers to the biological kinship of all human beings.

    But her quiet, self-sufficient life could use some excitement. High school teacher Troy Headly appoints himself Grace's fun coach, and they decide to enjoy a little no-strings-attached fling. Then Grace's past catches up with her, and she knows that complications are not what Troy signed up for. But Troy is determined to help her fight for the life she always wished for—and maybe they can find real love along the way. A New Hope Ginger Dysart is swept up in the pleasure of assisting with a wedding at the beautiful Lacoumette farm. But the occasion is ruined when the bride's brother, Matt, makes a drunken spectacle of himself. Then Matt shows up at the flower shop, determined to make amends for his embarrassing pass at Ginger, and they find a connection deeper than either of them expected. Everyone worries Ginger will end up with a broken heart yet again. But with a little courage, there may still be hope for a happy ending. Wildest Dreams Professional triathlete Blake Smiley wants to put down the roots he's never had and focus on his training without distractions. But his new neighbors change everything. A single mother, Lin Su Simmons has her hands full coping with her nursing job, debt and her teenage son's health issues. Lin Su resents any interference in her life. But Blake is certain he can break through her barriers and be the man she and her son need. Together, they can recognize that family is who you choose it to be.

    A female officer who is attacked in the line of duty must protect her own husband from his worst impulses in this short story, first published in The Blue Religion (Michael Connelly, ed.) and recognized as one of 2009's Best American Mystery Stories (Jeffery Deaver, ed.).

    An award-winning author makes her fiction debut with this coming-of-age story of three young black children set against the backdrop of the Atlanta child murders of 1979.

    Includes tales about an American wife who, homesick for rural Vermont, turns to the hippies of the Indian hills for consolation; and a painter who renders pictures of creatures he has never seen.

    A. riots of the 1990s.Straight's brilliant story of the effects of violence in America on three generations of a family is told through the lives of the Thompsons, a large clan who live in Treetown, above downtown Rio Seco, California, and operate a car towing and repair business. Patriarch Hosea is a proud man, and a hardened one, whose father was killed in the violence that erupted in Tulsa many years earlier. All Hosea's memories come flooding black with ferocious force when the bodies of two white women are found engulfed in flames in an abandoned car on his property. These are the first signs that someone wants Hosea off his land; it is up to his son Marcus, the only one of the six children of Hosea and his half-Mexican wife who can negotiate with the white world, to help the family hold on to their home and their livelihood.But it is only when Marcus' nephew Motrice-a young man infatuated with guns and the power that they bring- comes back to Rio Seco from gang-ridden Los Angeles that the real secrets of the bodies found on Thompson land are revealed, as Rio Seco erupts in the same wave of trashing and looting that has engulfed the nearby metropolis.The Gettin Place is a powerful portrait of a family struggling to defend its turf in a changing world, to hold on to the gettin place, the source from which they derive the tools for survival.

    Wolf men, dolphin women, defiant old ladies, and middle-aged manufacturers of erotic leatherwear -- in Jigs & Reels the miraculous goes hand in hand with the mundane, the sour with the sweet, and the beautiful, the grotesque, the seductive, and the disturbing are never more than one step away. Whether she's exploring the myth of beauty, the pain of infidelity, or the wonder of late-life romance, Joanne Harris once again proves herself a master of the storyteller's trade.

    She has since retired from the Chicago Police Department in order to raise her toddler daughter.But old grudges never die. They fester until the right opportunity comes along.While on vacation in the Wisconsin north woods, Jack learns--too late--that her old adversary is out of prison. He has revenge on his mind. And he's bringing an army with him.Outnumbered, outgunned, and cut off from the outside world, Jack Daniels is about to learn the meaning of last stand.L A S T C A L LThis is where it all ends. An epic showdown in the desert, where good and evil will clash one last time.His name is Luther Kite, and his specialty is murdering people in ways too horrible to imagine. He's gone south, where he's found a new, spectacular way to kill. And if you have enough money, you can bet on who dies first.Legendary Chicago cop Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels has retired. She's no longer chasing bad guys, content to stay out of the public eye and raise her new daughter. But when her daughter's father, Phin Troutt, is kidnapped, she's forced to strap on her gun one last time.Since being separated from his psychotic soulmate, the prolific serial killer known as Donaldson has been desperately searching for her. Now he thinks he's found out where his beloved, insane Lucy has been hiding. He's going to find her, no matter how many people die in the process.All three will converge in the same place. La Juntita, Mexico. Where a bloodthirsty cartel is enslaving people and forcing them to fight to the death in insane, gladiator-style games.Join Jack and Phin, Donaldson and Lucy, and Luther, for the very last act in their twisted, perverse saga.Along for the ride are Jack's friends; Harry and Herb, as well as a mob enforcer named Tequila, and a covert operative named Chandler.There will be blood. And death. So much death...W H I T E R U S S I A NJust when you get out...Former Chicago cop Jack Daniels thought she'd left her former life behind. She'd traded her badge for a toddler, and her lifelong pursuit of heinous serial killers for a boring house in the suburbs....they pull you back in.Then Jack sees some pictures. Pictures of men who were supposed to be dead. And once again, against the fierce insistence of her husband, Phineas Troutt, Jack reluctantly straps on her gun and goes hunting. Hunting for the worst of the worst.This leads to a trek across the Great Plains, searching for a modern slavery ring, on a collision course with three of the most horrible villains Jack has ever faced.But Jack, and her irritating buddy Harry McGlade, will face them, and much more. Because they're prepared to go to hell and back to rescue an old friend.The trick will be getting back in one piece. And--spoiler alert--they don't.About JA KonrathJA Konrath is the author of twelve novels in the Jack Daniels thriller series.

    ' First published this Spring in the New Yorker, The Embassy of Cambodia is a rare and brilliant story that takes us deep into the life of a young woman, Fatou, domestic servant to the Derawals and escapee from one set of hardships to another. Beginning and ending outside the Embassy of Cambodia, which happens to be located in Willesden, NW London, Zadie Smith's absorbing, moving and wryly observed story suggests how the apparently small things in an ordinary life always raise larger, more extraordinary questions.

    The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.