"Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. At 28, he's focused only on walking a straight line - getting his teaching degree, working out at the gym religiously, and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his earlier life. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when Maria Sanchez crosses paths with him on a rainswept night in North Carolina, his plans are upended in a way that will rattle...

Dawn Edelstein is on a plane when she is told to prepare for a crash landing. She braces herself as thoughts flash through her mind. The shocking thing is, the thoughts are not of her husband but of a man she last saw fifteen years ago: Wyatt Armstrong. Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, their beloved daughter, and her...

Alexander Karpenko is no ordinary child, and from an early age, it is clear he is destined to lead his countrymen. But when his father is assassinated by the KGB for defying the state, he and his mother will have to escape from Russia if they hope to survive. At the docks, they are confronted with an irreversible choice: should they board a container ship bound for America, or Great Britain? Alexander leaves that choice to the toss of a coin. In a...

When Jodi Winfield comes to Lancaster to house-sit, the last thing she expects to find is a disheveled little girl alone on the side of the road. The young teacher is mystified when she learns there have been no reports of a missing child, and the girl herself is of no help, since she can't speak English. It's as if the child appeared out of nowhere. Then Jodi turns her attention to Hickory Hollow -- and the cloistered world of the Old Order Amish...

"The story of four unforgettable sisters navigating work, love, and their dreams in 1920s Australia. Because they are two sets of twins, the four Latimer sisters are as close as can be. They are famous throughout New South Wales for their beauty, wit, and ambition, but as they step into womanhood, they are not enthusiastic about the limited prospects life holds for them. Instead, Edda wants to be a doctor, Tufts wants to organize everything, Grace...

"Bill Wile is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bar tending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car. If you don't take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice...

Tackling a variety of themes, such as love, loss, and redemption, author Alice Munro delivers a masterfully crafted collection of short stories. In the title story, Too Much Love, Sonia Kovalevsky, a Russian bohemian, embarks on a winter-long journey across Europe with her love, discovering that love and monogamy are exactly the perfect match.

Now nearly halfway through his trek, Alan Christoffersen walks from South Dakota to Memphis, Tennessee. He covers more than 800 miles on foot, but it's the people he meets along the way who give the journey its true meaning.

While driving along a suburban back road, Hilary Cantor, who's just lost her job and whose deadbeat husband has left her alone to care for her son with Asperger's, witnesses a freakish accident. A car ahead of her careens down a hill and slams into a tree. Stopping to help, she discovers the driver dead-- and a satchel stuffed with a half a million dollars. That money could prevent her family's ruin and keep her special needs son in school. In an...

An elderly London resident befriends the little boy who moves in downstairs, but his parents' fighting brings her back to her harrowing escape from Nazi Germany at age twelve and grim post-war years in France with her mother. Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby has lived in the same well-to-do mansion block in London for decades. She lives a quiet, comfortable life, despite her deeply disturbing, dark past. She doesn't talk about her escape from Nazi...