Reuniting in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living "funerals," celebrations to remind themselves life is worth living--and living well--five friends find their pact upended when one of them reveals a shocking secret.

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey--named Beatrice and Virgil--and the epic journey they undertake together.

An aspiring photographer is about to get the chance of a lifetime in New York-and face a forbidden love that just might be her downfall.
Kristin Burns has lived her life by the philosophy "Don't think, just shoot"-pictures, that is. Struggling to make ends meet, she works full-time as a nanny for the fabulously wealthy Turnbull family, looking after their two wonderful children and waiting for her glamorous life as a New York photographer...

In nineteenth century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two women exchange messages written on silk fans and handkerchieves using nu shu, a unique language that women created in order to communicate in secret, sharing their experiences, but when a misunderstanding arises, their friendship threatens to tear apart....

From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.

"In the early hours of a summer morning, a young woman steps into the path of an oncoming bus. A tragic accident? Or suicide? At the center of this puzzle is Adrian Wolfe, a successful architect and grief-stricken widower, who, a year after his third wife's death, begins to investigate the cause. As Adrian looks back on their brief but seemingly happy marriage, disturbing secrets begin to surface"--Amazon.com.

An impulsive good deed transforms the mundane life of Ridley Jones, a young New York City writer, when she receives a mysterious package that forces her to question everything she knows about herself and sends her on a dangerous quest.

The first novel by the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See, one of the most beautiful, wise, and compelling debuts of recent times. David Winkler begins life in Anchorage, Alaska, a quiet boy drawn to the volatility of weather and obsessed with snow. Sometimes he sees things before they happen-a man carrying a hatbox will be hit by a bus; Winkler will fall in love with a woman in...

"The Lake Shore Limited" is the story of how Wilhelmina "Billy" Gertz has come to create the title's play out of emotions surrounding an imagined terrorist bombing of a Chicago train, how the play is then created anew on the stage, and how the play's performance touches and changes the lives that intersect and interweave with Billy's.

A tale imparted from the perspective of long-time imaginary friend, Budo, traces his awareness of his advancing age and constant thought of the inevitable day when eight-year-old Max, an autistic boy, will stop believing in him.