From beyond the grave came a cry for help she could not ignore. Reminiscent in style to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and to Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Veronica's Grave is the story of a young girl whose mother vanishes one night. No one tells her that her mother has died. She is left a confused child whose father is intent upon erasing any memory of the mother.

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family; she called herself an "excitement addict."

A collection of 17 wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. The short stories are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly - thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families.

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

In late 2003, in his column in Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King called The Memory of Running "the best novel you won't read this year." This glowing endorsement of the audiobook resulted in Ron McLarty receiving a $2 million two-book deal from Viking Penguin. Also, Warner Brothers has shelled out big bucks for the movie rights to The Memory of Running, for which McLarty will write the script.

Allie is still recovering from the loss of her family's beloved waterfront restaurant on Florida's Gulf Coast when she loses her second husband to a terrifying highway accident. Devastated and losing hope, she shudders to contemplate the future - until a cherished person from her past returns. Joseph has been adrift for many years, wounded in both body and spirit and unable to come to terms with the trauma of his Vietnam War experiences. Just as he resolves to abandon his search for peace, he discovers a mother and her two small children lost in the forest.

On a balmy midsummer's evening in 1923, a young woman - foreign, dishevelled and heavily pregnant - is found unconscious just off the railway tracks in the tiny logging community of Woody Creek. The town midwife, Gertrude Foote, is roused from her bed when the woman is brought to her door. Try as she might, Gertrude is unable to save her, but the baby lives.

What would you do if you lost everything - your job, your home, and the love of your life - all at the same time? When it happens to Seattle ad executive Alan Christoffersen, he's tempted by his darkest thoughts. A bottle of pills in his hand and nothing left to live for, he plans to end his misery. Instead, he decides to take a walk. But not any ordinary walk. Taking with him only the barest of essentials, Al leaves behind all that he's known and heads for the farthest point on his map.

They are five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who leaves them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all, they have each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives "like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path". But when Regina emancipates herself as a minor and escapes, her siblings are separated.

In 1906 I was barely over 14 years old, and it was my wedding day. My older sister, Helen, came to my room, took me by the hand, and sat me down on the bed. She said, "You've always been a good girl, Maude, and done what I told you. Now you're going to be a married woman, and he will be the head of the house. When you go home tonight after your party, no matter what he wants to do to you, you have to let him do it. Do you understand?"

Ray Midge is waiting for his credit card bill to arrive. His wife, Norma, has run off with her ex-husband, taking Ray’s cards, shotgun, and car. But from the receipts, Ray can track where they’ve gone. He takes off after them, as does an irritatingly tenacious bail bondsman, both following the romantic couple’s spending as far as Mexico.

An American literary treasure, Charles Portis penned the Western classic True Grit. Set in the 1960s, Norwood is a picaresque romp taking audiences on a journey from Texas to New York and back again. An ex-marine, troubadour Norwood Pratt is on a mission to recover money he once loaned to a buddy in the service. Along the way, he gets into all manner of trouble involving stolen cars, beautiful women, and a chicken with a college education.

It's 1978, and Ave Maria Mulligan is the thirty-five-year-old self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She’s also the local pharmacist, the co-captain of the Rescue Squad, and the director of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, the town’s long-running Outdoor Drama.

In his heartbreaking yet hopeful fourth novel, award-winning author Willy Vlautin demonstrates his extraordinary talent for illuminating the disquiet of modern American life, captured in the experiences of three memorable characters looking for meaning in distressing times. Severely wounded in the Iraq war, Leroy Kervin has lived in a group home for eight years. Frustrated by the simplest daily routines, he finds his existence has become unbearable.