The suicide of a woman and the disappearance of her teenage son, Mark, draws the boy's uncle, Timothy Underhill, back to his hometown of Millhaven, where his investigation uncovers a neighborhood haunted by a serial killer.

". . .'To the Lighthouse' is the story of a woman and her family experiencing the passage of time and seeking to recapture meaning from the flux of things. Though Mrs. Ramsay's death is the event on which the novel turns, her presence pervades every page in a poetic evocation of loss and memory which is a celebration of domestic life and its intimate, trivial details. But, through the character of Mrs. Ramsay's friend Lily Briscoe, Virginia Woolf's....

Having returned to her hometown to attend her mother's funeral, Vancouver businesswoman Rebecca McKenzie must rekindle ties to her estranged family to solve the mystery of a missing child and clear local police suspicion against her brother.

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves,...

"In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, gather to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. United in unspeakable loss and new hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. . . . Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, memories that reveal these women's strength, worries, and determination, which their American-born daughters reject as irrelevant. The daughters, in turn, recall pivotal moments...

"After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm's length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn't been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before. While going...

A woman grieving for the loss of her mother is disturbed to discover her special needs brother is being investigated for the crime and must work to unravel family secrets when a stranger is named in her mother's will.

Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not of her memory. It was a Sunday night in 1944 when her husband left the little row house on Baltimore's Calvert Street, abandoning Pearl to raise their three children alone: Jenny, high-spirited and determined, nurturing to strangers but distant to those she loves; the older son, Cody, a wild and incorrigible youth possessed by the lure of power and money; and sweet, clumsy Ezra, Pearl's favorite, who...

"When Katy's mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn't just Katy's mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: two weeks in Positano, the magical town Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy's father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking...