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"Jesmyn Ward's universally acclaimed memoir shines a light on the community she comes from, in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young men dear to her, including her beloved brother--to accidents, murder, and suicide. Their deaths were seemingly unconnected, yet their lives had been connected, by identity and place, and as Jesmyn dealt with these losses,...

"Award-winning author Willy Vlautin explores loneliness, art, regret, and hard-won empathy in this poignant novel--his most personal to date--that captures the life of a journeyman musician unable to escape the tragedies of his past. Al Ward lives on an isolated mining claim in the high desert of central Nevada fifty miles from the nearest town. A grizzled man in his sixties, he survives on canned soup, instant coffee, and memories of his ex-wife,...

It's 1948 on a tobacco farm in southern Virginia and a poor young farm girl hopes to break away from an abusive alcoholic father by finding a suitor to rescue her. But the life she is escaping is ideal compared to the hell she is about to enter.

Off the easternmost coast of India lies the immense archipelago of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans. Life here is precarious, ruled by the unforgiving tides and the constant threat of attacks by Bengal tigers. Into this place of vengeful beauty come two seekers from different worlds, whose lives collide with tragic consequences. The settlers of the remote Sundarbans believe that anyone without a pure heart who ventures into the watery island labyrinth...

A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's family is stocking food--but there isn't much to save. Over twelve days leading up to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, the family pulls itself up the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty to struggle for another day.

Muhammad Yunus discusses the obstacles he overcame in setting up a bank devoted to providing the poor of Bangladesh with small loans.

In the first novel, a New England farmer must choose between his duty to care for his invalid wife and his love for her cousin, and in the second novel, Charity Royall enjoys an idyllic summer romance with visiting architect Lucius Harvey.

On a poor farm near Starkfield in western Massachusetts, Ethan Frome struggles to wrest a living from the land, unassisted by his whining and hypochondrialcal wife Zeena. Zeena's young cousin Mattie Silver is left destitute, and only place she can go is to Ethan's farm. An embittered man and an enchanting young woman meet in such circumstances, unleashing predictable consequences as passions are aroused between the three protagonists.

Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man. Light in August is the story of Lena Grove's search for the father of her unborn child, and features one of Faulkner's most memorable characters: Joe Christmas, a desperate drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry.

Ward (Salvage the Bones) tells the story of three generations of a struggling Mississippi family in this astonishing novel. "We don't walk no straight lines. It's all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once." This is the explanation 13-year-old Jojo is provided by his grandmother, the family matriarch, on her deathbed. "I'll be on the other side of the door," she reassures him, "With everybody else that's gone before." Jojo and his little...