Maile Meloy

"When Liv and Nora decide to take their families on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. The ship's comforts and possibilities seem infinite. The children--two eleven-year-olds, an eight-year-old, and a six-year-old--love the nonstop buffet and the independence they have at the Kids' Club. But when they all go ashore in beautiful Central America, a series of minor misfortunes leads the families farther and farther from the ship's safety. One minute...

"An octopus is taken from his undersea home to live in an aquarium, but he soon tires of captive life"--

A tale set two years after the events of The Apothecary finds Benjamin and his father treating the sick and wounded in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam until a magical communication formula reveals that Janie is in trouble, prompting a desperate chase around the world.

This richly textured novel tells a story of love and loss, sex and longing, and of the deceit that can lie at the heart of family relationships. Set in California, Liars and Saints follows four generations of the Catholic Santerre family from World War II to the present. In a family driven as much by jealousy and propriety as by love, an unspoken tradition of deceit is passed from generation to generation. When tragedy shatters their precarious domestic...

El pulpo vivía feliz en su cueva submarina hasta que un día, un buzo lo captura y lo lleva a vivir a un acuario. Los humanos le dan comida y le ponen pruebas que parecen juguetes. Pero todos los días son iguales, y el pulpo pronto se cansa de la vida cautiva. Y así, al amparo de la oscuridad, emprende un escape audaz. The octopus lived happily in its underwater cave until one day, a diver captured it and took it to live in an aquarium. Humans...

Presents a volume of eleven short works that explores the complexity of life in austere landscapes of the American West, from the tale of a ranch hand who falls for a reluctant newcomer to the story of a young father who is shocked by the reappearance of his late grandmother.

A collection of captivating and thought-provoking photographs by award-winning photographer Melissa Ann Pinney that contemplate the essence of duality in our relationships and in the world that surrounds us. Pinney, whose work is in the permanent collections of dozens of American museums, including the Metropolitan, MoMA, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Getty, aims her lens at pairs--mostly, but not always human--that display or imply elusive...

Presents twenty of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.

"Edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher R. Beha, this volume provides an important overview of the contemporary short story and a selection of the very best that American short fiction has to offer."--Jacket.

"With a world full of foolishly dangerous men, what's a mother to do?... Edward was my only living child, Private Edward Marcus Gaines of the 108th Infantry, 27th Division, Company such-and-such. I had it written down in his letter. In a trench in a place in France..." - From Mother in the Trenches by Robert Olen Butler

What happens to people's lives during times of battle and strife? From the American Revolution to the ongoing

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