"A NICE, NORMAL HOUSE ... Linda has lived in a quiet neighborhood ever since fleeing the dark events of her childhood in Wales. Now she sits in her kitchen, wondering if this is all there is--pushing the vacuum around and cooking fish sticks for supper is a far cry from the glamorous lifestyle she sees in the glossy catalogues coming through the mail slot addressed to the previous occupant, Rebecca. A NICE, NORMAL HUSBAND? Terry isn't perfect--he...

In a shiny new subdivision in 1970s Toronto, Marilyn greets new neighbors with fresh-baked cookies before she starts stealing from them. Stay-at-home-wife Francesca believes passion is just one yard away, only in the arms of another man. And Darren doesn't understand why his mother insists he keep his head down, even though he gets good grades like his white friends. When a series of inexplicable suicides begin to haunt their community, no one is...

Nestled on the edge of Chicago{u2019}s gritty west side, Oak Park is a suburb in flux. To the west, theaters and shops frame posh houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. To the east lies a neighborhood still recovering from urban decline. In the center of the community sits Ilios Lane, a pristine cul-de-sac dotted with quiet homes that bridge the surrounding extremes of wealth and poverty. On the first warm day in April, Mary Elizabeth McPherson, a...

"Martha used to be a force of nature: calm, collected, and in charge. But since moving her husband and two daughters to Dublin under sudden and mysterious circumstances, she can't seem to find her footing. Robin was the "it" girl in school, destined for success. Now she's back at her parents' with her four-year-old son, vowing that her ne'er-do-well ex is out of the picture for good. Edie has everything she could want, apart from a baby, and the acceptance...

The lushly descriptive and tragic Burmese Days, a devastating indictment of British colonial rule, is based on Orwell{u2019}s own experience while serving in the Indian Imperial Police. His beloved satirical classic, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, features a young idealist whose attempt to rebel against middle-class respectability{u2014}by working in a bookshop and trying to be a writer{u2014}goes terribly and comically awry. The hero of Coming Up for...

"When actress and model Allison Langley leaves her former rockstar husband, Christopher, in the middle of the night, it's all her Oak Hill neighbors can talk about. The gossip comes to an abrupt halt when five-year-old Billy Barnes goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten. Billy's mother, Rachel, blames herself for being at work and letting her only child walk alone. Cassidy, Billy's teenage babysitter, was also late to arrive on the afternoon...

"Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken. On Division Street, time...

"The national bestseller from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex and The Marriage Plot First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters-beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys-commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together...

"Allison Weiss has a great job...a handsome husband...an adorable daughter...and a secret. Allison Weiss is a typical working mother, trying to balance a business, aging parents, a demanding daughter, and a marriage. But when the website she develops takes off, she finds herself challenged to the point of being completely overwhelmed. Her husband's becoming distant, her daughter's acting spoiled, her father is dealing with early Alzheimer's, and her...