"Bree knew that life married to a beat cop would be tough, especially in the crime-infested city of East Bernheim, but she believes they will be fine living in "the Burner" even after she has their first child. Family life is manageable until one day crime follows them home, threatening their safety. At a loss of how to keep his family safe and keep his job, Jake agrees to stretch their finances and move an hour away, to a bigger house in a somewhat...

"A young man embarks on a desperate search for the truth in this chilling, razor-sharp thriller. Five years ago, Rosa walked to the pier in the dead of night, looked into the swirling water and jumped. She was a brilliant young Cambridge student who had just lost her father. Her death was tragic, but not unexpected. But is that what really happened? Her death was ruled a suicide. But Rosa's boyfriend, Jar, still can't let go. He sees Rosa everywhere--a...

"Alas, long-time mayor Francis Mingalone suffers from vivid hallucinations, real-estate tycoon José Hosea kidnaps innocent tourists on suspicion of being FBI agents, and Moira, the bad artist and bad poet, inflicts her suspect talent on anyone, on any occasion. No one knows what to make of the Gnome, a diminutive gadfly who pops in and out of scenes with advice and commentary. No one understands Tommy Mingalone, the mayor's nephew, who has subsumed...

"Do you know what it took for Socrates' enemies to make him stop pursuing the truth?" "Hemlock." The fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. But now, a long-dormant secret society called Prisom's Party seems to have reemerged, threatening the school's placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction. Iris...

"A literary mystery, following a man who works at a Northern Californian university as he investigates the death of his father"-- Provided by publisher. N is employed at a prestigious California university, where he has distinguished himself as an aloof and somewhat eccentric presence. His meticulous, ordered life is violently disrupted by the death of his estranged father-- unanticipated and, as it increasingly seems to N, surrounded by murky circumstances....

"When Lily moves into new boyfriend Marcus's apartment and plunges headlong into their relationship, she must contend with an intangible, hostile presence--Marcus's ex-girlfriend, Sinead. As Lily and Marcus become more deeply involved, Lily becomes obsessed with Sinead's fate and thinks she sees her everywhere. She must question not only her sanity, but whether the man she loves is someone she can, or should, be with at all."--Back cover.

Piedra Negra is an isolated village, whose citizens consist mainly of soldiers injured in the revolution who pass the time drinking a firewater so intense, all hallucinate, and most never recover. The firewater distiller's daughter Elena longs to be a poet, and after a chance encounter with Daniel Arcilla, Cuba's most important poet, Elena wins a national poetry prize and leaves Piedra Negra behind for Havana. There she encounters a population adjusting...

Gilbert Pinfold, an English writer suffering from a surfeit of sleeping pills, recounts his hallucinatory experiences while embarked on a boat for Ceylon.

In an unnamed Japanese city, three seemingly normal and unrelated characters find work at a sprawling industrial factory. They each focus intently on their specific jobs: one studies moss, one shreds paper, and the other proofreads incomprehensible documents. Life in the factory has its own logic and momentum, and, eventually, the factory slowly expands and begins to take over everything, enveloping these poor workers. The very margins of reality...