Emma Donoghue

In this beautiful story of adventure and survival from the New York Times bestselling author of Room, three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them. In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks--young Trian and old Cormac--he rows down the river Shannon...

Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

"In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have fallen sick are quarantined into a separate ward to keep the plague at bay. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders, a woman doctor who is a rumored Rebel, and a teenage girl, Bridie, procured by the nuns from their orphanage as an extra set of hands. At first, this Bridie seems unschooled...

Nine-year-old Sumac Lottery considers it her job to make sure none of the Lottery celebrations are forgotten, especially now at Christmas time, and in her large, gay, and multiethnic family there are a lot of occasions for celebration in the house they all call Camelottery--but when a terrible ice storm hits Toronto, one of her dads, and her favorite brother cannot make it home from India, and it becomes increasingly difficult to hang on to the holiday...

After five-year old Jack and his Mom escape from the enclosed environment that Jack has known his entire life, the boy makes a miraculous discovery: the outside world.