NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of the widely acclaimed The Book of Ruth comes a harrowing, heartbreaking drama about a rural American family and a disastrous event that forever changes their lives.
"It takes a writer of rare power and discipline to carry off an achievement like A Map of the World. Hamilton proves here that she is one of the best." —Newsweek

The Goodwins, Howard, Alice, and their...

On a June day, a young woman in a summer dress steps off a Chicago-bound bus into a small midwestern town. She doesn't intend to stay. She is just passing through. Yet her stopping here has a reason and it is part of a story that you will never forget.
The time is the 1950s, when life was simpler, people still believed in dreams, and family was, very nearly, everything. The place is a small midwestern town with a high school and a downtown,...

"Small town secrets loom large in this spellbinding rural noir, Chris Harding Thornton's debut, about the aftershocks of crime and trauma that shake a Nebraskan town"--

Eliot Gordon would do anything for her family. A 38-year-old working mother, she lives an ordinary but fulfilling life in suburban Atlanta with her partner, Grant Delaney, and their three daughters. The two older girls are actually Eliot's stepdaughters, a distinction she is reluctant to make as she valiantly attempts to maintain a safe, happy household . . .Then Finn Montgomery, Eliot's long-lost first love, appears, triggering a shocking chain of...

Managing their grief by pretending that everything is normal after the tragic loss of a newborn, John and Ricky find themselves confronting long-suppressed uncertainties about their relationship at the same time a terrible secret emerges about the pregnancy.

Nancy Harmon had fled the heartbreak of her first marriage, the macabre deaths of her two little children, the hostile front-page newspaper stories and the shocking charges against her. She changed her name, dyed her red hair sable brown, and left California for the wind-swept peace of Cape Cod. Now she was married again, had two more beautiful children, and the terrible pain had begun to heal, until the morning when she looked in the back yard for...

"They say friends make life worth living... Once a spirited, independent woman with a rebellious streak, Masha's life was forever changed by a tragic event twelve years ago. Unable to let go of her grief, she finds comfort in her faithful canine companion Haizum, and peace in the quiet lanes of her town's swimming pool. Almost without her realizing it, her life has shuddered to a halt. It's only when Masha begins an unlikely friendship with the mysterious...

Sam and Holly Foster and their young son James seem to have a perfect life until Sam loses his job and James has a life-threatening accident. Hopelessness and constant caring for James takes their toll on Sam and Holly and they begin to drift apart. It takes the miracle of the rediscovery of James's toy boat and the appearance of a mysterious man to remind them of what is important in life, and that love and heaven are not far away.

North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence--but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux's...

Baby blessed: Molly Larabee left her husband, Jordan, after a tragedy destroyed her faith in their marriage. She began a new life as a foreign aid volunteer. But now, four years later, her safety is in jeopardy--and Jordan comes to her rescue. Yesterday once more: Three years ago, Julie Houser fled from Wichita, Kansas---and left her husband-to-be practically standing at the altar. Julie couldn't face the vast disparity between her own middle-class...