This novel is a portrait of three siblings who have lived in the shadow of unresolved grief since their mother's disappearance when they were children. Everyone in Emlyn Springs knows the story of Hope Jones, the physician's wife whose big dreams for their tiny town were lost along with her in the tornado of 1978. For Hope's three young children, the stability of life with their preoccupied father, and with Viney, their mother's spitfire best friend,...

A portrait of gifted violinist Nathaniel Ayers traces his education at Juilliard, his struggles with schizophrenia, the factors that led to his homelessness in Los Angeles, his friendship with the author, and the author's efforts to improve the musician's life.

A celebrity chef shows her friends and family the joy of fulfillment and manages to spice up her own life at the same time.

First published in English in 1927, "Elmer Gantry" is Sinclair Lewis' novel which satirizes the Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic movements of the early part of the 20th century. From the 17th century onward there have been a number of efforts to reassert the influence of Christianity on social, cultural, and political life. In America, Christian Revivalism, as it is often referred to, has come in four waves, or "Great Awakenings" starting...

A parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for...

British secret agent James Bond is lured into a trap using the beautiful Russian spy Tatiana Romanova as bait. She's asked for passage to Paris with Bond as her chaperone in exchange for a top secret decoding machine. To survive the train ride from Istanbul, 007 will need to keep his wits about him and his Beretta close at hand, dealing with SMERSH's deadliest assassin and their operations chief, Rosa Klebb.

A small-town murder leads to international intrigue in this “first-class thriller” from the New York Times–bestselling master of Scandinavian crime (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Inspector Kurt Wallander returns in the second of Henning Mankell’s award-winning, internationally-bestselling detective novels, this time to investigate the execution-style killing of a Swedish housewife....

Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker, fills his days with movies and casual sex. His life offers him nothing worth retaining; what he treasures are scenes from The Third Man or Stagecoach, not the personal experiences he knows other people hold dear. On the cusp of turning thirty, however, something changes: At Mardi Gras, he embarks on a quest for some form of authentic experience. The consequences of Binx's quest, on both himself and his...

Massive fish kills from flesh-eating parasites. Unusual concentrations of cancer and other diseases. Recalls of meats, vegetables, and fruits because of deadly E-coli bacterial contamination. Recent public health crises raise urgent questions about how our animal-derived food is raised and brought to market. This book is about our American food system gone terribly wrong--and the people who are fighting to restore sustainable farming practices and...

"Despite having little in common, Eddie [Enidina] and Mary need one another for survival and companionship. But as the Great Depression threatens, the delicate balance of their reliance on one another tips, pitting neighbor against neighbor, exposing the dark secrets they hide from one another, and triggering a series of disquieting events that threaten to unravel not only their friendship but their families as well."--From flap on front cover.