"Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life-living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher-was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she...

When his mother passed away at the age of 78, Sherman Alexie responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is this memoir. Featuring 78 poems and 78 essays, Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine -- growing up dirt-poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. Throughout, a portrait emerges of his mother as a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent,...

A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece.

Young David Earl always knows what day of the week it is, because his mother, Ma Dear, has a different apron for every day except Sunday.

What Happens Next is a raw, realistic story told by an unnamed protagonist who is made to feel different from everybody else-even invisible sometimes. Bullied by a girl at school, our narrator gives a terse script of the related facts (What Her Friends Do: Laugh. What Everyone Else Does: Nothing.) and emotions (How I Feel Sometimes: Bad. Really Bad.). The narrator takes these hurt feelings home, where Mom listens and offers some ideas. At school...

An oddball mama's boy who lives to carry water for football players becomes a star when a coach discovers his hidden ferocity and channels it into gridiron greatness.

Part crime thriller, part romantic comedy, Louis Garrel2s The Innocent shows the dangerous and outlandish lengths two men go to for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, an aquarium educator whose mother, Sylvie, marries one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary, Michel. Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life but soon reverts to his old ways, eventually roping Abel into one of his schemes. Complicating matters is Clm̌ence,...

When Anne Deveraux finds her bandleader husband Dan in bed with another woman, she packs her bags, empties the cash drawer, buys a baby blue Cadillac convertible and begins a cross-country trek with her sons. From Boston to Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Albuquerque and finally Hollywood, her search for a new life continues to turn up short. But the richness of coming to really know her sons -- Robbie, who dreams of a life on stage, and George, a cynical,...

"An emotionally-charged, brilliantly realized novel set in the l930's about five American women--Gold Star Mothers--who travel to France to visit the graves of their WWI soldier sons: a pilgrimage that will change their lives in unforeseeable and indelible ways. The women meet for the first time just before their journey begins: Katie, an Irish maid from Dorchester, Massachusetts; Minnie, wife of an immigrant Russian Jewish chicken farmer; Bobbie,...