Literary Life

It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night. Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.

When Amy loses her best friend, Kat, to cancer, she knows their dream of a secret trip to Paris will never come true. Yet Kat's words haunt her, urging her to embark on the Paris trip alone and shed the dissatisfaction of her life in Phoenix. Little by little, Amy, grappling with a failing marriage and struggling with painful childhood memories, lets herself be swayed. Guided by Kat's bold voice, Amy sneaks off to Paris while her husband is away on a business trip. Once there, however, she finds that her problems have come right along with her.

The trip of a lifetime! Rosie Lewis has her life together. A swanky job as a Michelin-starred sous chef, a loving husband and future children scheduled for exactly January 2021. That’s until she comes home one day to find her husband’s prepacked bag and a confession that he's had an affair. Heartbroken and devastated, Rosie drowns her sorrows in a glass (or three) of wine, only to discover the following morning that she has spontaneously invested in a bright pink campervan to facilitate her grand plans to travel the country.

His name is synonymous with high-stakes wilderness survival stories. Now, beloved author Gary Paulsen portrays a series of life-altering moments from his turbulent childhood as his own original survival story. If not for his summer escape from a shockingly neglectful Chicago upbringing to a North Woods homestead at age five, there never would have been a Hatchet. Without the encouragement of the librarian who handed him his first book at age 13, he may never have become a reader.

In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal. Nearly 30 years later, Hugo's estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father's funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.

Once more, we catch up with the delightful goings-on in the fictitious 44 Scotland Street from Alexander McCall Smith. With customary charm and deftness, Alexander McCall Smith gives us another instalment in this popular series, now running in its eighth season in The Scotsman.

Penny is settling in on Magnolia Island. As the new owner of Magnolia Daily, she's determined to make the most of her new investment. Nothing is going to get in her way. That is, until her rental floods and she's forced to find another place. Wanting to allow her daughter her own autonomy, Penny discovers there is a room for rent. Everything seems perfect until she realizes that it's in the home of Spencer - the quiet, brooding mechanic at Clementine's hardware store.

1948, Japan. The celebrated painter Masuji Ono fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson; his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet lantern-lit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to the past - to a life and a career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism - a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child. CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make: tell the truth, and destroy her family, or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies....

The Lovely Bones: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! * Once in a generation comes an audiobook that taps a vein of universal human experience, resonating with listeners of all ages. The Lovely Bones is such an audiobook - a number one best seller celebrated at once for its artistry, for its luminous clarity of emotion, and for its astonishing power to lay claim to the hearts of millions of fans around the world.

In the 1930s, fresh from a stint in the Royal Navy Reserve, and against the wishes of his disapproving father, Fingal O'Reilly goes to Dublin to study medicine. Fingal and his fellow aspiring doctors face the arduous demands of Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. The hours are long and the cases challenging, but Fingal manages to find time to box and play rugby—and to romance a fetching, gray-eyed nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan.

La historia empieza en 1911, el día de la coronación del rey Jorge V en la abadía de Westminster. El destino de los Williams, una familia minera de Gales, está unido por el amor y la enemistad al de los Fitzherbert, aristócratas y propietarios de las minas.

In Lionel Shriver's entertaining send-up of today's cult of exercise - which not only encourages better health, but now like all religions also seems to promise meaning, social superiority, and eternal life - an aging husband's sudden obsession with extreme sport makes him unbearable.

In the summer of 1990, fourteen-year-old Trevor Riddell gets his first glimpse of Riddell House. Built from the spoils of a massive timber fortune, the legendary family mansion is constructed of giant, whole trees, and is set on a huge estate overlooking Puget Sound. Trevor’s bankrupt parents have begun a trial separation, and his father, Jones Riddell, has brought Trevor to Riddell House with a goal: to join forces with his sister, Serena, dispatch Grandpa Samuel—who is flickering in and out of dementia...

Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship. Written with originality, precision, and poise, Where Reasons End is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.

Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda’s 12th birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear about him again until 16 years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy, and one final scavenger hunt.

Bigger Thomas, the central figure in Richard Wright’s novel Native Son (1940), eludes easy categorization. A violent and troubled character who rejects the rules of society, Bigger is both victim and perpetrator, damaged by racism and segregation on the South Side of Chicago, seemingly raping and killing without regrets. His story has electrified readers for more than eight decades, and it continues to galvanize debates around representation, respectability, social justice, and racism in American life.

When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother, Emma Jean, tells her bewildered daughter, "You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain't what you was supposed to be. So from now on, you gon' be a boy. It'll be a little strange at first, but you'll get used to it, and this'll be over after while." From this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. Meanwhile, the Peace family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.

The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley.

When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, Bergljot is drawn back into the orbit of the family she fled 20 years before. Her mother and father have decided to leave two island summer houses to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. To outsiders, it is a quarrel about property and favoritism. But Bergljot, who has borne a horrible secret since childhood, understands the gesture as something very different - a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.