A young widow opens a chocolate shop in a French village, transforming its normally austere inhabitants into unabashed sensualists. The event coincides with Lent, and the villagers' rejection of traditional self-denial angers the parish priest who declares war. A first novel.

Middle-aged sisters Meredith and Nina, having been estranged from one another and their parents by the actions of their disapproving mother, reunite after their father falls ill, and, by carrying out their dad's dying wish of hearing the true story of their mother's life in war-torn Leningrad, the women find their relationships mending and begin to have a deeper understanding and respect for their mom.

Henry, a writer, receives a curious letter from an elderly taxidermist who wants Henry to help him write a play about a donkey and a howler monkey--Beatrice and Virgil--but Henry feel increasingly uncomfortable as he learns more about the odd world of the taxidermist and his perilous plans for Beatrice and Virgil.

The citizens of Mapleton are confused and frightened following the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of people from their community. Had the Rapture happened and they had been left behind? Kevin Garvey, the mayor, is trying to speed up the healing process, return a sense of hope, and help them get past their fears, while trying to hold his own family together.

Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

Alex Cross' life is finally getting back to normal following the shooting death of his wife several years earlier. He's set up a practice as a psychologist once again and even has a chance at a new love. Then Cross' former partner, John Sampson, calls in a favor. He's tracking a serial rapist in Georgetown that bears a similarity to a case the two worked on years earlier and reveals a connection to Alex's wife's death. Cross is about to go for the...

Restless and unable to find peace in her rural Vermont home in the wake of her husband's death, seventy-five-year-old Sarah finds new meaning in her life when her home becomes a kind of refuge for wayward souls, from her troubled granddaughter and a family that lost their home to fire, to a mother and child fleeing an abusive partner and an Israeli pacifist needing a retreat.

"Fledgling, Octavia Butler's last novel, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating...

Tony Webster has always made the very reasonable assumption that he could trust his memories, but when he's forced to revisit his past, everything he believes about himself and his life is challenged. The fact is that Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, never gave much thought to his past at all until his closest childhood friends' return with a vengeance -- one of them from the grave and another maddeningly present. Tony thought he'd left all this uncertainly...

"Welcome to Stanhope. A safe neighborhood. A place for families. On the surface, William Wooler is a family man. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery's family declares her missing. Suddenly Stanhope doesn't...