There were very few land burials in Moon Beach. It was considered old-fashioned, unhealthy and something that only happened to the poor. Instead the dead were buried in ocean cemeteries, twelve miles out. A special festival was held every year in their honour. Children loved it. They were given white chocolate bones, marzipan skulls and ice-cream coffins on a stick. There were costume parties too. You had to wear something blue because that was the colour people went when they were buried under the sea. You could paint your hands and face if you liked, or even dye your hair. That's what people did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then they turned blue forever...

According to Jack Haywood, the trouble with the Hill—the farm—is that nothing ever happens there. He expects this summer, the summer of his fourteenth year, to be no different. First there is Jenny Holmes, whom he can go to see only on the pretext of seeing her brother, Les, a real pain. Jenny, who lives a mile and a half away by moonlit trail through piney woods and cypress swamp. Then there is the 'gator hole, even further from the Hill, where one can bravely swim in the secret conviction that the 'gator is a myth. There are the great summer thunderstorms, but they are to be expected. And then there is Rodney, also fourteen, down from White Plains, New York—his mother recently deceased—come to spend the summer on the Hill. But even if Jack never says so, at the summer's end, he'll know that much indeed has happened this summer on the Hill, much that is tender and warm—and quite real—in this story that is not so much of adolescence as it is...

Hired to track down a fourteen-year-old runaway named Jessica Finney, Oregon private eye Zachariah Smith leaves the small town of Mackie, heading to Portland to follow his clues. Not far down the road, he picks up a young woman named Allison, who is also clearly on the run--from what, Zachariah can't imagine, and she won't say. In Portland, Zachariah checks into a motel with one runaway and sets out to track down the other. Before long, it becomes clear that they're both going to be a whole lot more trouble than he ever would have guessed. [Hardcover edition by Council Oak Books 1991] The sequel to Cat's-Paw, Inc. is Dogsbody, Inc., also available as a Kindle ebook.

It's a hot summer night in a small town in North Carolina. A pretty girl named Anna Shockley has arrived in the emergency room after a drug overdose. And so, David Livingston, emergency room orderly, fledgling artist, and incorrigible romantic, meets the obsession of a lifetime. When David moves into the communal house where Anna lives, he soon discovers that Anna Shockley is dangerous to herself and others—and that there are those around her, drawn by the "doomed shout" of her beauty, who are far more dangerous.

'It was a tough, wiry wig with plenty of personality. It rode around on his head like an animal. It was a vigorous brown. I was very fond of it as a child. I thought that it liked me back.' Anne Enright's extraordinary first novel is narrated by Grace, a TV producer, whose life is transfigured when she answers the door to a fully-fledged angel. Stephen was a bridge-builder in Canada before he killed himself, but now that he has come to stay with Grace he spends the night hanging by the neck in her shower, to help himself think. Needless, to say, she falls in love, moving steadily from the spiritual to the anatomical. Meanwhile as her TV day job on the 'Love Quiz' begins to spiral out of control, on the other side of her life is her father, benign, bewigged and stricken by a stroke -apparently mad but probably the sanest person in her life. As the three worlds meet and merge in a forest of contradictions, we watch Grace take the pacific path from cynicism to...

Return to the golden beauty of Minnesota's Butternut Lake in this emotional story that vividly captures the joy and pain of first love, as a mother and daughter each come to terms with the desires of her heart.Summer at Butternut Lake--a season full of surprises . . . and life-changing choices.Preparing for her final year of college, Daisy is crazy busy now that she's back at Butternut Lake. She's helping her mother, Caroline, run their coffee shop and trying to build a relationship with the absentee father who's suddenly reappeared. She never expected to fall in love with Will, the bad-boy from high school who works at the local garage. With every passing day she and Will grow closer to each other . . . and closer to the day they will have to say goodbye. As summer's end looms, Will and Daisy face heartbreaking choices that might tear them apart.Caroline already has her hands full trying to make ends meet at the coffee shop without having her...

Bella, exiled to Jamestown, Virginia, in the seventeenth century, seeks to escape from her abusive husband. Marina Oliver has published over fifty novels and several non-fiction books. Many of her historical novels, twentieth-century sagas, contemporary romances and crime books are now available as e-books.

The poems in Adam Thorpe's latest collection are concerned with the continuum between two worlds: the lived present and the felt past. With the attentive care of an archaeologist he uncovers and examines fragments - from a personal history or the historic past - and rebuilds the narrative: a fossil in Hitler's stadium, a wedding photograph, marks on the wall where an eighteenth-century priest was shot. With formal dexterity and rhythmic assurance, these versatile, subtle poems investigate the vertiginous dynamic of history - where a shard of stone stands for civilisation, where a silver of memory becomes a life re-lived. After nine years, during which time he has emerged as one of Britain's most powerful and innovative novelists, Adam Thorpe now returns - triumphantly - to poetry.

What happens when everything you've got to give isn't enough to save someone you love?It's Maine. It's winter. And it's FREEZING STINKIN' COLD! Dinah is wildly worried about her best friend, Skint. He won't wear a coat. Refuses to wear a coat. It's twelve degrees out, and he won't wear a coat. So Dinah's going to figure out how to help. That's what Dinah does—she helps. But she's too busy trying to help to notice that sometimes, she's doing more harm than good. Seeing the trees instead of the forest? That's Dinah.And Skint isn't going to be the one to tell her. He's a helper guy too. He's worried about a little boy whose dad won't let him visit his mom. He's worried about an elderly couple in a too-cold house down the street.But the wedge between what drives Dinah and what concerns Skint is wide enough for a big old slab of ice. Because Skint's own father is in trouble. Because Skint's mother refuses to ask for help even though she's at he...

These quirky, brilliant stories launched Rick Bass on his literary career.Set in the South and West, they pursue themes of friendship, loyalty, and freedom, of escape, where valiant holdouts refuse to grow up, or to grow old.

John Cutler is a hunter who can hunt and kill any animal. When a rogue wolf troubles the range - there is only one man for the job: John Cutler.Written by the best-selling author of FARGO and SUNDANCE.