For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the...

When a peaceful weekend party at a posh English country manor house is ruined by a mysterious death, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould--from the best-selling Thomas Pitt series--takes on the role of sleuth to investigate the crime.

Joe Allston, the retired literary agent in Stegner's National Book Award–winning novel, The Spectator Bird, returns in this disquieting and keenly observed novel. Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat. And although their new home looks like Eden, it also has its serpents: Jim Peck, a messianic exponent of drugs, yoga, and...

Two sisters can't stand to live together, but can't bear to be apart. One worships the flashy world of Nashville, the other is a devout Pentecostal. One falls into the lap of any man, the other is afraid to even date. One gets pregnant in a flash, the other desperately wants to have a child. This is what's at the heart of Silas House's third novel, which tells the story of Easter and Anneth, tragically left parentless as children, who must raise themselves...

Introduces unconventional clergyman Sidney Chambers, who teams up with roguish Inspector Harry Keating to investigate a suspicious suicide, a jewelry theft, the unexplained demise of a jazz promoter, and a shocking art forgery.

"Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most-sought-after dead body in America ... Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And [his lawyer] will do anything to protect her client--even take a last, desperate gamble...

In Washington State, a widowed doctor suffering from cancer takes a hunting trip, the real purpose of which is to commit suicide, which he will masquerade as an accident. But Dr. Ben Givens' resolve is tested by several events which reaffirm the joy of living--he cheats death by fighting off wolves and helps a girl give birth.