When she hears that her younger brother Danny has committed suicide, Sayre Lynch relinquishes her vow to never return to Destiny, the small Louisiana town in which she grew up. She plans to leave immediately after the funeral, but soon finds herself drawn into the web cast by Huff Hoyle, her controlling and tryannical father. Hoyle owns the town's sole industry and runs the lives of everyone who lives there

Marilynne Robinson's mythical world of Gilead, Iowa -- the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack -- and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson's fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead's Presbyterian minister, and...

In Mildred Pierce, noir master James M. Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devasting emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.
Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses:...

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Jasmine Houston, a widow with a young son, agrees to harbor former slaves at her horse farm outside of Lowell, even though her father, a plantation owner, supports slavery. When a boardinghouse keeper unwittingly becomes involved with a traveling peddler who sells something infinitely more valuable than shoes, Jasmine is devastated to discover that her son and the former slaves have been kidnapped. Jasmine's determination to free them threatens to...

"Quinn Maybrook just wants to make it to graduation. She might not make it to morning. When Quinn and her father move to a tiny town with a weird clown for a mascot, they're looking for a fresh start. But ever since the town's only factory shut down, Kettle Springs has been cracked in half. Most of the town believes that the kids are to blame. After all, the juniors and seniors at Kettle Springs High are the ones who threw the party where Arthur...

Jean Wright is a widow in a small New England city and the owner of a venerable glassworks company. When a tragic car accident robs her of a loved one, Jean must put aside her grief to raise the surviving child, the one-year-old Guin, as her own. As the child blossoms into an independent young woman, the two generations clash. When guin defies the only mother she's ever known by striking out on her own--pursuing a completely different kind of career,...

Siddalee Walker, a successful theater director, is thrown into a void of uncertainty when she has a falling out with her mother over a New York Times article in which Vivi is characterized as an abusive parent, and the Ya-Yas, Vivi's gang of lifelong girlfriends, conspire to restore the mother-daughter relationship.

Horseman, Pass By tells the story of Homer Bannon, an old-time cattleman who epitomizes the frontier values of honesty and decency, and Hud, his unscrupulous stepson. Caught in the middle is the narrator, Homer's young grandson Lonnie, who is as much drawn to his grandfather's strength of character as he is to Hud's hedonism and materialism. When first published in 1961, Horseman, Pass By caused a sensation in Texas literary circles for its stark,...

The second installment in Pearl S. Buck's acclaimed Good Earth trilogy: the powerful story of three brothers whose greed will bring their family to the brink of ruin. Sons begins where The Good Earth ended: Revolution is sweeping through China. Wang Lung is on his deathbed in the house of his fathers, and his three sons stand ready to inherit his hard-won estate. One son has taken the family's wealth for granted and becomes a landlord; another is...