fiction / literary

"The daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. For her little brother, Wavy is the only responsible adult. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house. Until her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with Kellen, one of her father's thugs with a heart of gold. And when she is a teenager, Wavy's relationship with Kellen is the only tender thing in a brutal world"--Back cover.

"In the vein of Wicked, The Woodcutter, and Boy, Snow, Bird, a luminous reimagining of a classic tale, told from the perspective of Agnes, Cinderella's "evil" stepmother. We all know the story of Cinderella. Or do we? As rumors about the cruel upbringing of beautiful newlywed Princess Cinderella roil the kingdom, her stepmother, Agnes, who knows all too well about hardship, privately records the true story. A peasant born into serfdom, Agnes is separated from her family and forced into servitude as a laundress's apprentice when she is only ten years old. Using her wits and ingenuity, she escapes her tyrannical matron and makes her way toward a hopeful future. When teenaged Agnes is seduced by an older man and becomes pregnant, she is transformed by love for her child. Once again left penniless, Agnes has no choice but to return to servitude at the manor she thought she had left behind. Her new position is nursemaid to Ella, an otherworldly infant. She struggles to love the child who in time becomes her stepdaughter and, eventually, the celebrated princess who embodies everyone's unattainable fantasies. The story of their relationship reveals that nothing is what it seems, that beauty is not always desirable, and that love can take on many guises. Lyrically told, emotionally evocative, and brilliantly perceptive, All the Ever Afters explores the hidden complexities that lie beneath classic tales of good and evil, all the while showing us that how we confront adversity reveals a more profound, and ultimately more important, truth than the ideal of "happily ever after.""--.

"The year is 1988. The place, Baja California. And Philip Marlowe, now in his seventy-second year, is living out his retirement in the terrace bar of the La Fonda hotel. Sipping margaritas, playing cards, his silver-tipped cane at the ready. When in saunter two men dressed like undertakers, with a case that has his name written all over it. For Marlowe, this is his last roll of the dice, his swan song. His mission is to investigate the death of Donald Zinn - supposedly drowned off his yacht, and leaving behind a much younger and now very rich wife. But is Zinn actually alive? Are the pair living off the spoils?"--Provided by publisher.

"[Shares the story of] Robert Oppenheimer--father of the atomic bomb--as told by seven fictional characters"--Provided by publisher.

"Across three generations, the women of the Wise family hunt for contentment amid chaos of their own making. Evelyn set aside her career to marry, and motherhood never became her. Her daughter Laura discovers her husband Gabe expects too much of everyone in his life, especially his musician son. Grace has moved out from Laura and Gabe's house, but can't seem to live up to her potential--whatever that might be. As their story spans from World War II to the present, tethered in their small Midwestern town, they question: is a woman destined to repeat the mistakes of previous generations, or can she transcend the expectations of a place, and a time?"--OCLC.

From the best-selling author of The Monk of Mokha, a spare, powerful story of two men, Western contractors sent to work far from home, tasked with paving a road to the capital in a dangerous and largely lawless country. Four and Nine are partners, working for the same company, sent without passports to a nation recovering from ten years of civil war. Together, operating under pseudonyms and anonymous to potential kidnappers, they are given a new machine, the RS-90, and tasked with building a highway that connects the country's far-flung villages with the capital. Four, nicknamed the Clock, is one of the company's most experienced operators, never falling short of his assigned schedule. He drives the RS-90, stopping only to sleep and eat the food provided by the company. But Nine is an agent of chaos: speeding ahead on his vehicle, chatting and joking with locals, eating at nearby bars and roadside food stands, he threatens the schedule, breaks protocol, and endangers the work that they must complete in time for a planned government parade. His every action draws Four's ire, but when illness, corruption, and theft compromise their high-stakes mission, Four and Nine discover danger far greater than anything they could pose to each other.

"In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman. The man was in fact German, but in small?town India in those days, all white foreigners were largely thought of as British." So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, a rebellious, alluring artist who abandons parenthood and marriage to follow her primal desire for freedom. Though freedom may be stirring in the air of India, across the world the Nazis have risen to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, a German artist from Gayatri?s past seeks her out. His arrival ignites passions she has long been forced to suppress. What follows is her life as pieced together by her son, a journey that takes him through India and Dutch?held Bali. Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, he comes to understand his long?lost mother, and the connections between strife at home and a war?torn universe overtaken by patriotism.

The stories of Captain Tom Barnes, leader of British troops, and two boys growing up in the war zone, as well as the friends and family that radiate out from these characters, are told from the perspective of forty-five different inanimate objects that surround them.

"A woman recounts her progress to motherhood, while remember the death of her own mother ten years before, and the childhood summers she spent with her psychoanalyst grandmother"--Provided by publisher.

"Rendered paraplegic after a traumatic event four years ago, Cameron Harris has been living his new existence alongside his sister, Tanya, in their battered Biloxi, Mississippi neighborhood where only half the houses made it through Katrina. One stiflingly hot August afternoon, as Cameron sits waiting for Tanya during their daily run to the Biz-E-Bee convenience store, he suddenly and inexplicably rises up and out of his wheelchair. In the aftermath of this miracle, Cameron finds himself a celebrity at the center of a contentious debate about what's taken place. And when scientists, journalists, and a Vatican investigator start digging, Cameron' s deepest secrets--the key to his injury, to his identity, and, in some eyes, to the nature of his recovery--become increasingly endangered. Was Cameron's recovery a genuine miracle, or a medical breakthrough? And, finding himself transformed into a symbol, how can he hope to retain his humanity?"--Amazon.com.