Collects the first four books in Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, in which middle school student Greg Heffley recounts his day-to-day adventures.

The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping...

What happens when a young sophisticated Chicagoan falls for the owner of a farm on Johns Island, a lush Lowcountry paradise off the coast of South Carolina -- trading the bustle of a cosmopolitan city for the vagaries of a small southern town.

"Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?" " I asked my sister. We were sitting in her car, parked in front of the Dutch House in the broad daylight of early summer. At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate...

Abel and Vera Paisley are a working-class Jamaican couple, striving to build a better life for their children. Abel travels to London in the early 1960s in search of fortune. Instead, he sees an opportunity to escape the drudgery of his life by faking his death and assuming a new identity. Vera, now a widow, is racked with guilt over her husband's death and takes out her grief on her children, Irene and Vincent. The effects of Abel's decision reverberate...

The story of what happens when you open your heart to the power of Christmas. Disenchanted single mom Jennifer Cullen is a Scroogette when it comes to anything Christmas. In fact, even her six-year-old son, Brian, is having trouble believing in Santa

Crossroads is the first novel in Jonathan Franzen's A Key to All Mythologies. The trilogy tells the story of a Midwestern family across three generations, mirroring the preoccupations and dilemmas of the United States from the Vietnam War to the 2020s-- It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless―unless...

"Honest and faithful Elsie Keim falls for her new neighbor, Landon, but she can't bear to tell him the truth: She's going blind. Landon is enamored with Elsie. When Elsie's brother Roman steps in and shares the truth of Elsie's disease, Landon is floored. His job is demanding and takes him away from home, sometimes for days at a time. He wonders how he'd be able to keep up with his responsibilities and take care of Elsie. In Eventide, three generations...

In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past--a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with...

"Open in New France in the late 18th century as Rene Sel, an illiterate woodsman makes his way from Northern France to the homeland to seek a living. Bound to a "seigneur" for three years in exchange for land, he suffers extraordinary hardship and violence, always in awe of the forest he is charged with clearing. In the course of this epic novel, Proulx tells the stories of Rene's children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, as well as the descendants...