In 1871, nineteen men, women, and children, voyaging on the Arctic explorer USS Polaris found themselves cast adrift on an ice floe as their ship began to founder. Based on one of the most remarkable events in polar history, Afterlands tells the haunting story of this small society of castaways -- a white and a black American, five Germans, a Dane, a Swede, an Englishman, and two Inuit families -- and the harrowing six months they spend marooned in...

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat,...

Recently divorced high school librarian Joy Faith Candellaro, facing Christmas alone after being betrayed by her husband and sister, decides to flee California in search of a holiday adventure, but a plane crash and fate place her in the path of widower Daniel O'Shea and his young son, and set the stage for a bit of Christmas magic.

Three women's lives convrge around the century-old mystery of a shipwreck. As they discover the truth about lost love and buried secrets, each woman finds hope, healing, and strength to face the future.