An aspiring poet joins a cynical team of journalists in nineteenth-century Paris. When he agrees to write rave reviews for bribes, achieving material success at the expense of his conscience, and soon discovers that the written word can be an instrument of both beauty and deceit.

"When a new neighbor moves onto the block, Beverly Castle is curious. The woman, Quinn, has a daughter, like Beverly. And like Beverly's, the neighbors' mother-daughter relationship appears... fragile. Hoping to preserve the peace on Apple Hill Lane, Beverly decides to keep her questions to herself. Until a secret from the past comes rearing its head. The thing is, the secret has less to do with Quinn and more to do with every other woman who lives...

Hoping to distance himself from the fallout of a libel conviction, journalist Mikael Blomkvist retreats to a remote island in Sweden's far north where the unsolved murder of a young girl still haunts her industrialist uncle forty years later. Ensconced in a cottage on the island where the killer may still roam, Blomkvist's investigation draws him into the secrets and lies of the rich and powerful, and throws him together with one unlikely ally: tattooed,...

In the Highlands of 1950s Scotland, a boy is found dead in a canal lock. Two young girls tell such a fanciful story of his disappearance that no one believes them. The local newspaper staff - including Joanne Ross, the part-time typist embroiled in an abusive marriage, and her boss, a seasoned journalist determined to revamp the paper - set out to uncover and investigate the crime. Suspicion falls on several townspeople, all of whom profess their...

"Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food meets Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in this part memoir, part how-to guide by Tamar Haspel (author of the Washington Post column Unearthed) about the unexpected joys of what she calls "first-hand food"--meals we grow, forage, fish, or even hunt from the world around us"--

A volatile story about a Washington, D.C. political reporter who writes an explosive story about a government scandal in which she reveals the name of a covert CIA agent. Unexpectedly finding herself behind bars, she struggles to maintain her principles and relationship with her family when she refuses to divulge her source. Inspired by true events.

"R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood:...

Two stories about finding love, and never letting go. In Rules of the Game, Brooke is dying to deflate professional baseball player Parks Jones' ego. In Second Nature, reporter Lee gets an interview with the reclusive horror writer Hunter Brown.