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A Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, New York Times best-selling author Dave Eggers is the voice of a generation. This stunning collection of his matchless short fiction includes the highly acclaimed “The Only Meaning of Oil-Wet Water.”

She was from the hills of Yorkshire, country born and bred. He was a city boy. By the stream where they fished they were two young people falling in love. Overhead, the bombers roared, threatening to blow their idyllic world, so young, so fresh, to smithereens.

An old man lies dying during the rainy season in the Queensland outback. And in the night, slipping in and out of an opium sleep that drifts him towards death, he draws his listener into a tale that opens onto incredible horizons.

Allan had been away from Coombaragana, flying in the Royal Air Force. Now he has returned, wounded and disillusioned, to his ancestral home. Days before, Jessie Proctor had taken her own life. Why? Allan looked at the young face in the photograph in Jessie’s passport and froze. He knew who she really was.

When Stanton Laird, American geologist, goes prospecting for the Topeka Exploration Company in the savage Australian outback, he finds something a good deal more precious than oil.

Booklist hails the “snappy, smart writing, and memorable characters” in this novel that is steeped in Southern sensibility. The last thing widow Hattie Bohannon expects when she opens a truck stop in Alabama is controversy. But that’s just what she gets when allegations surface that the parking lot is a haven for prostitution. With the local Bible-thumping minister crusading to close the truck stop, Hattie and her unruly daughters must fight to preserve their names and their way of life.

After Alfie Budd’s beloved wife dies, he returns to England to find his parents feuding and his grandmother’s health failing. Alfie’s ambitions to be a writer are fading as well. But when he begins tutoring a young single mother for her A level exams, his bewildering life is suddenly transformed. A widely published journalist and the best-selling author of Man and Boy, Tony Parsons also regularly appears on BBC television.

A small section of vine with bloodstained thorns has been encased in candle wax for centuries - and some believe the blood came from Christ. Convicted killer and death-row inmate Michael Coleman agrees to have the genes from the mysterious blood planted into his body. The results are so astonishing that the research must continue outside prison walls. But nobody can predict what will happen when Coleman assumes a new identity and reenters society. Blood of Heaven delves deep into the human heart and examines the very nature of good versus evil.

Martha Horgan is unpredictable, obsessive, and “different.” Townspeople pity the strange young woman, but they are also frightened by her. Ruth Ann Phimister’s narration gives full voice to Martha’s collision course through life. A Dangerous Woman was made into a major motion picture and chosen as one of the best books of the year by the editors of ALA Library Journal and Time magazine.

Set in the time of the infamous Spanish Inquisition, Catalina is a novel both richly historical and affectingly human. Two eminent persons, natives of the city, were arriving after an absence of many years, and great doings had been arranged in their honor. In the Lady Chapel of the church a crippled girl prayed to the Blessed Virgin whose day it was, too. No greater things were planned for the girl, Catalina, but greater things awaited her.

Abra Dixon is well educated, fashionable, and married to the perfect man. She also runs a film production company with her childhood friend, Natasha. Abra’s perfect life is suddenly thrown off course when her husband leaves her for a sexy young model.As Abra and Natasha try to find a backer for their latest film, they must navigate the opulent world of directors and investors. But now Abra must learn to be single and strong again. In a world where everyone seems so confident, Abra will need to develop her own definition of success.

One of the great novelists of British literature, Thomas Hardy caused quite a stir when this powerful novel was first published. Michael Henchard, down on his luck and drunk, sells his wife and child to a sailor for five guineas. As time goes by, Henchard becomes Mayor of Casterbridge—but he cannot escape the tragedy of his past.

Virginia Woolf once called Thomas Hardy "the greatest tragic writer among English novelists". His atmospheric novels were often considered shocking upon their publication. In this classic, Clym Yeobright returns to Egdon Heath from Paris, intending to settle down and improve the lives of his townspeople. But the alluring and mysterious Eustacia Vye has other plans. Like so many of Hardy’s masterpieces, The Return of the Native is both a rich character study and a critical examination of Victorian society.

Ron Hansen has won an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for his rich writing and poetic style. Atticus begins in the vein of a contemporary western. As it unfolds, it includes an intriguing murder mystery and a dramatic parable of the prodigal son. For years, prosperous Colorado rancher Atticus Cody has tried to understand his rootless son, Scott, who is now living a marginal life in Mexico.

In Summerlin, North Carolina, it is - quite literally - a race to the finish. Glenn and Laura Bales lie dying in the same house, and although Laura is more interested in her Whitman’s Sampler chocolates, and Glenn in whatever happened to his first wife, Evelyn, their children have their eyes unswervingly fixed on the inheritance. Who will get the money, and what it will mean for this unusual little Southern community is a richly comic novel about endings.

The Copeland family history is rich and ambiguous. Beginning with patriarch Walker and his wife Caroline, who once threatened a troop of Yankee soldiers with a pan of boiling water, the Copeland legacy continues with Walker’s great grandson, Albert, who builds floatplanes that never fly. Albert’s floatplane logbook becomes a family album, with each member of the family penning in his personal revelations, from Meredith, a maverick Vietnam veteran, to Noralee, who shocks everyone by dating a hippie.

When Dr. Ernst stands in the center of the ICU, surrounded on all sides by computer terminals and cardiac monitors, he imagines he is on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, a guardian of unknown galaxies. But by 3:00 a.m. the space fantasy has dissipated into the air like so much ether, leaving behind only a profound and desperate desire for sleep. The needs of Ernst’s patients are as endless as his round of duty. Their lives are mere blips on the VDT console, their last bids for fading life sound as alarm bells in the night.

Beautifully simple and marvelously strong, the stories of Guy de Maupassant have enchanted generations around the world. One of the finest short story writers of all time, de Maupassant believed that the most heart-wrenching and powerful moments in life lay in the simple events of daily life, and he proved it by turning those moments into timeless stories.

Carter Coleman delivers a novel about the Rutledge brothers: Cage, the golden boy, Nick, slow to blossom but full of potential, and Harper, struggling to live up to his brothers. When the tragedy of Nick’s death throws Cage into the vicious cycles of manic depression, Harper and his family discover the true strength of love in their attempt to hold together a broken home.

Hailed as Charlotte Brontë’s “finest novel” by Virginia Woolf, Villette is the timeless semi-autobiographical tale of Lucy Snowe. Left with no family and no money, Lucy goes against her own timid nature and travels to the small city of Villette, France, where she becomes a school teacher in Madame Beck’s school for girls. During her stay, she falls in love—twice—and discovers an independent, inner strength rarely seen in women of her time.