Penrod sat morosely upon the back fence and gazed with envy at Duke, his wistful dog. A bitter soul dominated the various curved and angular surfaces known by a careless world as the face of Penrod Schofield. Except in solitude, that face was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod had come into his twelfth year wearing an expression carefully trained to be inscrutable. Since the world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere defensive...

Seventeen-year-old Elio, anticipating a boring summer at his parents' home on the Italian coast, finds himself powerfully attracted to Oliver, a handsome young American who has come to assist Elio's father for the summer, and the two young men soon fall into a romantic and sexual relationship that influences the course of their lives.

Based in part on the author's schooldays at Lancing and then Hertford College in England and subsequently as a teacher in North Wales, "Decline and Fall" is Evelyn Waugh's debut novel, first published in 1928. In the socially satirical style for which the author is known, Waugh brilliantly lampoons British society of the 1920s. The story tracks the life of Paul Pennyfeather, who following expulsion from Oxford, the result of a drunken prank, is forced...

Gene Forrester looks back fifteen years to a World War II year in which he and his best friend Phineas were roommates in a New Hampshire boarding school. Their friendship is marred by Finny's crippling fall, an event for which Gene is responsible and one that eventually leads to tragedy.

Eighteen-year-old Ned, having taken to hanging out at the barracks of state police Troop D in rural Pennsylvania after the death of his father, Trooper Curtis Wilcox, becomes obsessed with learning the truth about a 1954 Buick Roadmaster--apparently a conduit to the underworld--the squad has had secreted in a locked shed since 1979 when its owner mysteriously disappeared.

The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard...

With two sons of her own, and twelve boys at the Plumfield school, Jo March--now Jo Bhaer--couldn't be happier. But despite the help of the whole March family, boys have a habit of getting into scrapes, and there are plenty of troubles and adventures in store.

"Jake Whitmore is enjoying a rare bonding moment with his sixteen-year-old son, Kurt, when disaster strikes. They get in a terrible car accident that threatens to derail not only Kurt's chances at college, but his entire future. Jake makes a split-second decision that saves his son from formal punishment, but plunges them both into a world of guilt, lies, and secrecy. Just when Jake thinks he has everything under control, a malevolent outsider comes...

Able returns to Mythgathr possessing magical secrets and hoping to fulfill his vows to his king, his lover, his friends, his gods, and even his enemies by setting the world right and restoring the proper order among the seven worlds.

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the...