The heroine is Rue Shaw, a specialist in raising children who is headmistress of a private school for girls in California. But her training is of little use when her own daughter decides to quit music school for a rock-band leader. It is the start of one misfortune after another. By the author of Domestic Pleasures.

When a struggling mother loses her five-year-old daughter to a kidnapper, two women and one girl will find their loyalties and affections tested. Emma Townsend lives with her cruel mother and clueless father, retreating into her own world of quiet and solitude. When a chance encounter with Emma presents itself, Sarah Walker takes her. Has Emma been stolen, or rescued? Amy Townsend is unsure whether she wants her daughter back. She had physically...

"From Lou Berney, the acclaimed, multi award-winning author of November Road and The Long and Faraway Gone, comes a Dark Ride"-- "Twenty-one-year-old Hardy "Hardly" Reed--good-natured, easygoing, usually stoned--is drifting through life. A minimum wage scare actor at an amusement park, he avoids unnecessary effort and unrealistic ambitions. Then one day he notices two children, around six or seven, sitting all alone on a bench. Hardly checks if they're...

Glenna Daniels faces a midlife cul-de-sac. She bears a recent miscarriage and third divorce the way her Appalachian parents taught her to cope with tragedy-in stoic secrecy. She quits her social work position in Knoxville and runs away from home at the age of thirty-six, heading west with childhood friend, Carey, a gay professor in Atlanta. During their years in school, Glenna protected him from bullies. Now Carey is her savvy guide as she tries to...

"Lola Nox is sent to live with her estranged maternal grandmother in the mining town where her horror movie director father's most iconic film was set, when paranormal incidents and whispers of a century-old monster make her question if she'll make it out alive"--

Although Emma Thomas's secret abusive home life has been exposed and her tormentor eliminated, she is still haunted by her experience, and must learn to reclaim her life.

A modern-day reimagining of the story of Lizzie Borden, casting her as a shy seventeen-year-old whose blackouts become worse after her father and stepmother try to prevent her from studying to be a chef.

Three years after one secretly backed out of a plot to kill Raven's abusive stepmother, former friends Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna are drawn back together when one of them is arrested for the stepmother's murder. Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna would do anything to protect their best friend, Raven. When they discovered he was suffering abuse at the hands of his stepmother, they came up with a lethal plan: petals of poppy, belladonna, and lily in her...

At the end of high school, Johanna finally begins dating the girl she has loved from afar, but Reeve is as much trouble as she claims to be as she and her twin brother damage Johanna's self-esteem, friendships, and already precarious relationship with her sister.