Come visit Dr. Alinger in his Museum of Silence, where every breath could be your last.

Martin Lorensen is a twenty-three-year-old counselor for disturbed teenagers. He’s bright, compassionate, attractive, and outgoing. He’s also—and this is the most interesting thing—not dead. Martin has improbably survived not one but two deadly disasters that claimed dozens of lives. The kid is riding one hell of a lucky streak. Two federal agents think there is something darker at play. Now that they’ve arranged to interview Martin, they want answers. Martin is ready to share everything he knows. One thing is for certain: when it comes to escaping death, luck doesn’t figure into it at all.

Willy and Marianne’s farmhouse in Maine has acres of meadow and fresh air, and a lonesome bridle path in the forest along which Willy daydreams and ambles. When he’s loaned a decrepit old baby stroller to cart his groceries home, the rickety squeak of the wheels comforts him. So do the sweet coos of a baby Willy knows can’t be real. Can it? In this twisted thicket, wishes come true—with a price.

Wyatt can't help it: he screws things up, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. But taking a shortcut home one day, he finds himself caught in the middle of a bizarre, dangerous situation, with one chance � maybe � to save a life.

Killian is a drifter, a rail-car-rider, in the summer of '35, when no one can find work and even fewer make a living. But jumping off a train a little too soon one afternoon, he finds himself at the breakfast table of a recently widowed woman, and the recipient of an unexpected gift.

Eric is a 20-something burnout who just lost a girlfriend and a job. Once, though, he was the Red Bolt, and with his home-made cape, he could fly. Now the cape is back in his hands, and Eric's future is looking up... and up....

Max van Helsing's father - infamous, angry, brilliant - is a man haunted by the darkest of secrets...secrets which he will, one cold night just after the turn of the century, unfold at last to his oldest son.

Jack's mother is a storyteller, a game-player. On an impulsive trip out to the family lake house, she spins a macabre tale for Jack and his father - a tale that, as the weekend progresses, Jack finds more and more difficult to untangle from his family's real life.

Bobby Conroy's made a lot of mistakes - the biggest, perhaps, when he let Harriet Rutherford slip away from him. And now the two of them � and Harriet's young son � are all extras on the set of Dawn of the Dead, and Bobby has the chance to see what could have been.

Francis is unhappy. Francis is picked on. Francis doesn't have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but that's behind him. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust, and all of Calliphora, Nevada, will shudder to hear him sing.

Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

The 13 chapters of The Art of War, each devoted to one aspect of warfare, were compiled by the high-ranking Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher Sun-Tzu. In spite of its battlefield specificity, The Art of War has found new life in the modern age, with leaders in fields as wide and far-reaching as world politics, human psychology, and corporate strategy finding valuable insight in its timeworn words.