In his stories, Saunders explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. Wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned, the stories challenge and surprise as they encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality. -- adapted from back cover "The 'best short story writer in English' (Time) is back with a masterful collection...

While continuing to help his classmates solve their problems, Humphrey, pet hamster of Longfellow School's Room 26, faces many surprises, like rolling in a hamster ball, a substitute janitor who might be an alien, and the possibility of Mrs. Brisbane retiring.

"For the past six months, Arthur Moses's days have looked the same: He tends to his rose garden and to Gordon, his cat, then rides the bus to the cemetery to visit his beloved late wife for lunch. The last thing Arthur would imagine is for one unlikely encounter to utterly transform his life. Eighteen-year-old Maddy Harris is an introspective girl who visits the cemetery to escape the other kids at school. One afternoon she joins Arthur--a gesture...

Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Bankhead, while at the same time an old friend of hers resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny.

"Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, "Folly," tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place...

A collection of stories spanning centuries of time in mercurial Florida examines the decisions and connections behind life-changing events in characters ranging from two abandoned sisters to a conflicted family woman. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries. Yet Florida-- its landscapes, climate, history, and state of mind-- becomes the gravitational center as Groff writes about loneliness, rage, family, and...

When four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone? Sophia Cleves is seeing things. Her son, Art, is seeing things himself. Winter makes all things visible-- history, memory, art, love.... When four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone?

"Nine months ago, Mark Taylor abruptly left Cedar Cove on a perilous mission to right a wrong from his past. Though Mark finally confessed his love for her, innkeeper Jo Marie Rose is unsure if he's ever coming back. The Rose Harbor Inn barely seems the same without Mark, but Jo Marie can't bear to lose herself in grief once more. Determined to move forward, she begins dating again, and finds companionship when she takes on a boarder who is starting...

Twelve-year-old Jonathan Grisby has been sent to the Slabhenge Reformatory School for Troubled Boys, a former lunatic asylum which is currently run by a sadist who enjoys punishing the boys and setting them against each other; but when a lightning strike kills all the adults the boys find themselves suddenly free--and trapped on Scar Island which seems to be sinking into the ocean.

Seven fifth-graders at Snow Hill School in Connecticut relate how their lives are changed for the better by "rookie teacher" Mr. Terupt.