"Riveting and timely, a look at the research that is transforming our understanding of the cosmos in the quest to discover whether we are alone. For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we're alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. But once you look for life elsewhere, you realize it is not so simple. How do you find it over cosmic distances? What actually is life? As founding director of Cornell...

"From the author of the critically acclaimed The Illness Lesson ("astoundingly original"--NYTBR), comes a a page-turning and psychologically penetrating tale about the rules that govern women's bodies and lives. In 1948, Irene Willard, who's had five previous miscarriages in a quest to give her beloved husband the child he desperately desires and is now pregnant again, comes to an isolated house-cum-hospital in the Berkshires, run by a husband-and-wife...

"It's 1989 and Amos Fielding, onetime sheriff of Oscar, Iowa, is in his early seventies and grieving the recent loss of his wife, Sara. He packs up his few belongings and heads to a ranch in the far northwest corner of Washington State. The farther he can get from Oscar and his years there as sheriff, the better. Eager to escape painful memories, Fielding throws himself into the daily chores of a gentleman rancher. But there is evil afoot, as dark...

"Amelia and Kylee, two young sisters, were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in rural Missouri, leaving behind evidence of a violent struggle. Grace had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and going to work at the meatpacking plant. Her disappearance is a warning to...