Jerry Renault is forced into a psychological showdown with Trinity School's gang leader, Archie Costello, for refusing to be bullied into selling chocolates for the annual fund raising.

Pearl Tull is nearing the end of her life but not 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 oldest son, Cody, a wild and incorrigible youth possessed by the lure of power and money; and sweet and clumsy Ezra, Pearl's favorite,...

When eleven-year old Shabanu, the daughter of a nomad in the Cholistan Desert of present-day Pakistan, is pledged in marriage to an older man whose money will bring prestige to the family, she must either accept the decision, as is the custom, or risk the consequences of defying her father's wishes.

It is the 1960s, in suburban New York City. Maggie and her family, are in the thrall of her powerful grandfather Jack Scanlan. In the summer of her twelfth year, Maggie is despertately trying to master the object lessons her grandfather fills her head with. But there is too much going on to concentrate. Everything at home is in upheaval, her grandfather is changing, and Maggie is unsure if what she wants is worth having.

On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for her breasts to blossom; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have struggled to understand their increasingly distant, often violent father. While Diane escapes into the arms of her boyfriend, Katie hides in her room or...

After suffering a heart attack, film actor Angel DelMarco is taken to a hospital in Seattle where he nearly suffers from a second heart attack when he discovers that his cardiologist is Dr. Madelaine Hillyard, a woman he abandoned years earlier while she was pregnant with his child.

Presents an exhaustively researched biography that reveals the personality, private life, and romantic intrigues of Elizabeth I.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ' 'An absolute delight to read . . . How lucky we are that [Ruth Reichl] had the courage to follow her appetite.''NewsdayAt an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that 'food could be a way of making sense of the world. If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were.' Her deliciously crafted memoir Tender at the Bone is the story of a life defined, determined, and enhanced in equal measure by a passion...

When Mikaela Campbell, beloved wife and mother, falls into a coma, it is up to her husband, Liam, to hold the family together and care for their grieving, frightened children. Doctors tell Liam not to expect a recovery, but he believes that love can accomplish what medical science cannot. Daily he sits at Mikaela’s bedside, telling her stories of the precious life they have built together, hoping against hope that she will wake up. But then he discovers...

"In "A Conspiracy of Paper, " David Liss has woven a tale of 18th-century finance, murder, and religion that is a remarkable debut and a thoroughly satisfying novel."--Arthur Golden, author of "Memoirs of a Geisha."