Sex is forbidden at the Dasgupta Institute, the Buddhist retreat where Beth Marriot has taken refuge, and that's a big advantage. Beth has been working as a server, assisting in the kitchen and helping out-discreetly, so the meditators aren't disturbed. The meditators are making big sacrifices to come here and change their lives. So the servers must observe the rules, and silence and separation of the sexes are chief among them. But Beth is fighting...

A SLY, WITTY, BEAUTIFULLY ORCHESTRATED TALE ABOUT THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING GOOD. Edward Baltram is overwhelmed by guilt. His nasty little prank has gone horribly wrong: he has fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic and the young man has fallen out the window to his death. Stuart Cuno, Edward's stepbrother, has renounced both sex and a promising academic career to live a monk like life helping others. As Stuart seeks salvation,

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The powerful debut novel from New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult, Songs of the Humpback Whale is a moving story of love and family told through the eyes of five people: Jane Jones, her daughter Rebecca, and three very different men in their lives. After a watershed moment in their marriage, Jane leaves Oliver, her renowned marine biologist husband, and begins a journey across the country with Rebecca in search of understanding about her...

"A keen sociological eye for class and ideology; an understanding of the contradictory impulses of the human heart; an ability to conjure a place, a mood and a time through seemingly matter-of-fact descriptions." — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Shocking, intimate, often uncomfortably honest, Adore reaffirms Doris Lessing's unrivaled ability to capture the truth of the human condition.

Roz and

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Donna VanLiere's books movingly portray ordinary people reaching for more meaningful lives. In The Christmas Promise, she follows two seemingly separate individuals and shows how their lives intersect. Chaz McConnell realizes that his life is empty-and he's made it that way. He goes home every night to a bare apartment. For the first time in his life, he's working at a job that will last more than a few weeks, as security for Wilson's Department Store....

"A woman describes a series of encounters she has with various people in the ordinary course of her life: an ex she runs into by chance at a public forum, an Airbnb owner unsure how to interact with her guests, a stranger who seeks help comforting his elderly mother, a friend of her youth now hospitalized with terminal cancer. In each of these people the woman finds a common need: the urge to talk about themselves and to have an audience to their...

A collection of newly discovered and never-before-published stories by the late Kathleen Collins, a brilliant yet little-known African American writer, artist, and filmmaker.

Exuberant, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, these sixteen stories by Kathleen Collins explore deep, far-reaching issues—relating to race, gender, family, and sexuality—that shape the ordinary moments in our lives. Collins’s work

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David receives a curse from an elderly woman he has helped his schoolmates attack, and he learns to regret his weakness in pandering to others for the sake of popularity before new friends and a very nice girl help him to be a stronger, more assertive person.

Dear Reader, Early in my career, I wrote several novels inspired by Oregon's stunning scenery. I'm thrilled that three of these books are now available again in one volume, with a new title, Ruthless. Best of all, here you'll meet three of my favorite heroes: Attorney Jake McGowan, world-class skier Gavin Doel, and developer Brandon Scarlotti. Each is as rugged and memorable as the landscape-and as intriguing as the women they can't forget. Jake...

Haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, involving a French artist and her baby, Nick Burns, with only months left to live, enlists Jenny, a college dropout, to help him unravel the mystery, forcing them both to reckon with regret, betrayal and the lives they've left behind.