A deaf-mute who has lost his only friend to a hospital for the insane becomes the recipient of the confidences of several other town residents. "Carson McCullers' prodigious first novel was published to instant acclaim when she was just twenty-three. Set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, it is the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner...

Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl in an America whose love for blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, people will notice her, and her world will be different. The story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, the tragic heroine of Toni Morrison's haunting first novel, grew out of her memory of a girlhood friend who wanted blue eyes. Shunned by the town's...

The story of a fantastic wedding, the return of the bride to her parents in disgrace, her brothers' resolve to seek revenge on her corruptor, and the townspeoples' refusal to depart from routine.

A woman is falsely accused of molesting a child and goes to jail. The drama begins when Alice Goodwin, a school nurse in a small town in Wisconsin, has a moment of inattention while caring for children and one of them drowns, an occasion for the community to settle scores with an outsider. By the author of The Book of Ruth.

A family of six disintegrates after a daughter is raped by a high-school student. It happens to the wealthy Mulvaneys in upstate New York. The disgrace -- there is some question if it was rape -- sends the father to drink and financial ruin, the girl leaves home, the others follow. By the author of What I Lived For.

At the age of fifteen, Michael Berg falls in love with a woman who disappears, and while observing a trial as a law student years later, he is shocked to discover the same woman as the defendant in a horrible crime.

Just when Glennon Doyle Melton was beginning to feel she had it all figured out--three happy children, a doting spouse, and a writing career so successful that her first book catapulted to the top of the New York Times bestseller list--her husband revealed his infidelity and she was forced to realize that nothing was as it seemed. A recovering alcoholic and bulimic, Glennon found that rock bottom was a familiar place. In the midst of crisis, she knew...

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy: his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. His skill on the basketball court earned him a scholarship to a college far away from his childhood home. Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman, surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. With Julia comes her three younger sisters: Sylvie, the dreamer, happiest with her nose in a book and dreams...