In this skillfully told novel by the author of The Bean Trees, a young woman returns to her hometown to care for her father and, without knowing it, herself. As usual, Codi is seeking to avoid life, but instead she finds plenty of it. She begins a complicated romance with a former boyfriend, corresponds with her sister, Hallie, who is kidnapped and then murdered in Nicaragua, tries to convince her father that his declining mental abilities are interfering...

Jumping at the chance to spend a year away from her claustrophobic marriage to a workaholic British developer, Alice Coleman takes her two small children to the American desert lands between Arizona and the Mexican border. But the unpredictable southwest has room for the dreams of more than one fugitive. There's Benjamin, the kindly Mexican caretaker of an abandoned mining town; the desperate immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border; and...

Tombstone, Arizona in 1881: where veins of silver run like ley lines under the earth, a network of power that belongs to anyone who knows how to claim and defend it. Above ground, power is about allegiances. A magician can drain his friends' strength to strengthen himself, and can place them between him and danger. The one with the most friends stands to win the territory. The physician Chow Lung insists that Jesse Fox has a talent for magic; and...