The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.
The agency of revelation is the school literary contest,...

Someone has murdered euthanasia champion Dr. Eldon Mate--a self-styled Dr. Death responsible for scores of assisted suicides. In a burst of bloody irony, the killer chooses to dispatch the doctor in the back of his own suicide van, hooking Mate up to the killing apparatus dubbed the "humanitron"--and adding some butchering touches of his own. The case is assigned to veteran LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis, who turns, once again, to his friend...

A grieving Charlie Crosby (grandson of Tinkers protagonist George Washington Crosby) attempts to come to terms with the death of his daughter, Kate, and the subsequent dissolution of his marriage.

"More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss--a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's...

"Tired of the usual dating politics, Beatrice "Trixie" Jordan follows an impulse and replies to a personal ad. In doing so, she meets Jacob Grace, a charming young writer, a passionate seeker of life. Despite their jaded views of the world, they fall immediately in love"--Publisher.

After Rachel Childs, a former journalist, suffers an on-air mental breakdown, she lives as a virtual shut-in. In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband. Until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray. As does Rachel's marriage. As does Rachel herself. Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer...

"The chronicle of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth offers an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce. Exuberantly inventive, this coming-of-age story is a tour de force of style and technique"--Provided by publisher.

Something has happened to Peach. Staggering around the town streets in the aftermath of an assault, Peach feels a trickle of blood down her legs, a lingering smell of her anonymous attacker on her skin. It hurts to walk, but she manages to make her way to her home, where she stumbles into another oddly nightmarish reality: Her parents can't seem to comprehend that anything has happened to their daughter.

"One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister's No Two Persons is "a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives." That was the beauty of books, wasn't it? They took you places you didn't know you needed to go... Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open,...

""A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be." In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century. A diary is Nao's only solace--and will touch lives in ways she...