Jess Aarons, a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia, finds a beloved and unexpected friend in Leslie, the new girl at school, with whom he creates a secret kingdom in the woods and from whom he learns lifelong lessons when tragedy strikes.

From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between.

 

The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who

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Weaves three stories about 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement park. Eddie meets 5 individuals in heaven each with a story to share, a secret to reveal and a lesson. They have profound meanings for Eddie on the real purpose of his life.

Cotton Malone knows that his father died when his submarine sunk in the North Atlantic in 1971, but not much else. Using his government contacts to discover the details behind his father's demise, he learns that the sub was on a highly classified mission. Now he must find the lost manuscript from Charlemagne's tomb which points to an Aryan civilization in Antarctica in order to answer the questions surrounding his fathers death.

"This novel provides an examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. Stark and penetrating, it's an exploration of psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing" --Publisher.

Elenora Lodge accepts a position as the paid companion of Arthur Lancaster, the Earl of St. Merryn, and soon discovers that he is concealing dark secrets that involve her as his unwilling partner in a quest to catch a killer.

Seventeen-year-old Quinn provides closure to grieving families by taking on the short-term role of a deceased loved one, until huge secrets come to the surface about Quinn's own past.

Charlie Asher, a neurotic and anxious hypochondriac who hates change, confronts the challenges of being a widower and a single parent when his wife dies of a freak medical condition on the day his new daughter, Sophie, is born.

After stabbing and killing her boyfriend, sixteen-year-old Mallory, who has no memory of the event, is sent away to a boarding school to escape the gossip and threats, but someone or something is following her.

In the wake of her sister's death, lawyer Alma Terrebonne is forced to return home to rural Montana to deal with the family trouble she thought she'd left behind, and discovers that her sister's death may not have been an accident.