The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years,...

Charlie Beale meets Sylvan Glass, the bride of the town's richest man, and Sam Haislett, the son of owner of the butcher shop where Charlie gets a job, and soon the interaction between Charlie, Sylvan, and Sam alters the town forever.

A country house is unhappy when the city, with all its buildings and traffic, grows up around her.

Centering her life on the successful Walker family, into which she plans to marry, Shea struggles to end her affair with a less-than-stellar boyfriend only to have her entire existence placed in question by the death of the family's mother.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls, this slyly funny, moving novel about a blue-collar town in upstate New York—and about Sully, one of its unluckiest citizens, who has been doing the wrong thing triumphantly for fifty years—is a classic American story.
"Remarkable.... A revelation of the human heart." —The Washington Post

Divorced from his own wife and carrying on halfheartedly...

After his wife's death and the collapse of his business, David Harwood returns to his childhood home with his son, where he uncovers a family secret that results in murder and other strange occurrences, including the ritual slaughtering of animals.

A young boy rides the bus across town with his grandmother and learns to appreciate the beauty in everyday things.

Walking away from her loveless marriage and taking a job in a derelict, financially devastated town, 63-year-old Britt-Marie uses her fierce organizational skills to become a local soccer coach to a group of lost children, becoming a vital community member along the way.

Serialized first in the Little Review in 1918 and published first in Paris in 1922, although its censorship for obscenity in America and England were not lifted until the mid-1930sIn terms of its story it defies abridgement or explanation except that it all takes place on one day, 16 June 1904, or Bloomsday, which was the anniversary of Joyces first walk with his beloved Nora Barnacle. It (very) loosely follows the episodes of Ulysses from the Odyssey...

One beautiful summer afternoon, Jody Linder receives shocking news: The man convicted of murdering her father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-three years since that stormy night when her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. Neither the protective embrace of Jody’s three uncles nor the safe haven of her grandparents’ ranch could erase the...