In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. He was an inspired salesman-a visionary, in fact-and a beneficent real estate magnate who once bought a whole town just to make sure it would never change. Animals loved him. People loved him. Women loved him (and he loved them back). And he knew more jokes than any man alive. Or at least that's what he's...

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty...

The perfect wife and mother of three grown children, Marilyn Grimes copes with the problems of midlife as she struggles to recall some of her own postponed dreams and reinvent her marriage, friendships, family, and herself.

"Lisey Landon shared a profound and sometimes frightening intimacy with her husband, Scott, a celebrated bestselling novelist - and a man with many secrets. One was the place where his gifts of imagination came from, a place that could heal or destroy him. Now, two years after his death, it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons on a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited..." - from back cover.

When her daughter accidentally hits and kills another high school girl with the family's car, Leigh, a troubled mother, is forced to confront her relationship with her daughter, her resentment toward her husband (who understands the daughter better) and her long-buried feelings towards her own neglectful mother.

The winner of the National Book Award returns with a moving story of a family of women drawn together by the trials of the times. The women in the Hand family are no strangers to either controversy or sadness. Those traits seem, in fact, to be a part of their family's heritage, one that stretches back through several generations and many wars. A Dangerous Age is a celebration of the strength of these women and of the bonds of blood and shared...

Husband and father Monte Becket, unable to repeat the success of his first novel despite years of attempts, leaves his family behind in Minnesota in 1915 to join self-confessed rascal Glendon Hale, an aging train robber, on a journey in search of the wife he abandoned nearly two decades earlier--pursued by ex-Pinkerton detective Charles Siringo every step of the way.

Sally Werner experiences something between rape and seduction at the hands of her cousin, resulting in a baby, family shame and her running away. Each time Sally feels her past catching up with her, she finds a new town and assumes a new identity, eventually graduating from taking the charity--and more--of others to supporting herself. A doomed love affair, a cat and mouse chase with the brutal father of a second child, and a longing for safety and...

When Truly Plaice's mother was pregnant, all of Aberdeen was betting on how huge her baby boy would be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity. Her mother died in childbirth. Her father, who blamed her, was ill-equipped to raise this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane. When he died, the sisters were separated - Serena Jane to a life of privilege and Truly to the farm of the town Sadsack.

"The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family including Judd's mother, brothers, and sister - has been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd's wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd's radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public." "Simultaneously mourning the death of his father and the demise of his marriage, Judd joins the rest of the Foxmans as they reluctantly submit to their...