"Amelia MacQueen has lost her favorite son, Gavin, to a suspicious drowning, for which her daughter-in-law has been convicted. She's been awarded temporary custody of Gavin and Cassie's twelve-year-old daughter, Heaven, a name that makes Amelia cringe. Reluctantly, she takes Heaven in, but asks the girl to call her Grandmelia instead of Grandma, a name that doesn't make Amelia feel quite so old.The daughter of drug addicts, who has long been left...

"When social worker Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister, Lexie, she assumes that it's just another one of her sister's episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother's estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister's things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family...

"This stunning collection of stories offers an unsentimental glimpse of life among the immigrants from the Dominican Republic-and other front-line reports on the ambivalent promise of the American dream-by an eloquent and original writer who describes more than physical dislocation in conveying the price that is paid forleaving culture and homeland behind."--San Francisco Chronicle. Junot Diaz's stories are as vibrant, tough, unexotic, and beautiful...

Maud Flynn is "plain, clever, and bad," so it comes as a surprise when she's plucked from the Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans and adopted by the elderly Hawthorne sisters. Maud eagerly hopes to be pampered and cherished by the sisters, and life seems perfect -- until Maud learns of the role she has to play in the high-stakes "family business." Set in the early twentieth century, a drowned Maiden's Hair takes readers into the shadowy world of spiritualism...

"What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or...

"What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or...

"The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands. Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden...

Billy isn't one to back down from a bet. But this one is gross: If he eats fifteen worms in fifteen days, Alan will pay him fifty dollars. Billy takes the bet and tries worms smothered in ketchup, drowned in mustard, even breaded and fried. Worm by worm, Billy gets closer to victory. But Alan won't let him win that easily...

It's 2002, a year after 9/11. It's an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who's tired of being stereotyped. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She's tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments--even the physical violence--she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. So she's built up protective walls and refuses...