Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them. "Jess and Jason," she calls them. Their life -- as she sees it -- is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost. And then she sees something shocking. It's only a...

Early spring in Maine is not the season for swimming nor for the spurts of unexpected violence that begin to erupt when strangers move in to a tranquil country village.

In the words of Alexander McCall Smith: 'You feel the rocking of the train, you hear the sound of its wheels on the rails; you are in the world rather than suspended somewhere above it. And sometimes there are conversations to be had, which is what the overarching story in this collection is all about. It is a simple device: people brought together entertain one another with tales of what happened to them on trains. It takes place on a journey I frequently...

After a rough childhood in multiple foster homes, Krista Galloway is not a fan of Christmas. When she accepts a job as a city manager in the mountain town of Winter Hill, Washington, Christmas is part of the deal: the small town is famous for its Christmasville celebration. Krista doesn't always feel welcomed in the close-knit town, and her daughter Emily continually wonders, "Where's the snow?" Can a friendly stranger and his family help restore...

Every summer the Newton family retreats to their beloved home on Nantucket for three months of sunshine, cookouts, and bonfires on the beach. But this summer will not be like any other. When prominent attorney Arch Newton dies in a plane crash his beautiful widow, Beth, can barely keep things together. She decides that she must continue the family tradition of going to Nantucket, and at the same time fulfill a promise that Arch made before he died......

"A gripping debut domestic suspense novel, Nora Murphy's thrilling The Favor explores with compassion and depth what can happen when women pushed to the limit take matters into their own hands. Staying is dangerous. Leaving could be worse. Leah and McKenna have never met, though they have parallel lives. They don't-ever-find themselves in the same train carriage or meet accidentally at the gym or the coffee shop. They don't-ever-discuss their problems...

A monumental novel about trees and people by one of our most "prodigiously talented" (The New York Times Book Review) novelists. An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures...

"Just in time for the centennial celebration of groundbreaking noir fiction writer Patricia Highsmith comes a reissue of her propulsive, engrossing debut, Strangers on a Train, with a new introduction by best-selling author Paula Hawkins. Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno are passengers on the same train. Haines is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno a mysterious smooth-talker with a sadistic proposal: he'll murder Haines's...

"Once upon a morning in Hong Kong, in the alley of Tai Yuen Street, a girl is promised a mooncake with a double-yolk center ... the special mooncake seems like the only excitement on an otherwise boring day in the market where nothing changes ... until an exhausted stranger falls to his knees right in the street! He ran through forests, swam through rivers, and even stowed away on a ship, all to get to Hong Kong. Now at the end of his journey, all...

"It?s been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories?a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there?s something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. No matter how or where they appear, strangers are walking mysteries, complete unknowns in once-familiar...