The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder is a profound exploration of fate, love, and the interconnectedness of human lives, set in 18th-century Peru. The novel opens with a catastrophic event-a bridge collapses, sending five people to their deaths. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, witnesses the tragedy and becomes determined to understand why these particular individuals perished, seeking answers to whether their lives held any greater significance...

"Claire Cook has a husband whose temper burns as bright as his promising political career, and she has worked for months on a plan to get out. A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a stranger equally as desperate. Together they hatch a plan to switch tickets - Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland, and Eva traveling to Puerto Rico as Claire. But then one plane crashes, and it's clear that one of them wasn't telling the truth"--...

"Charles Vincent seems to have it all a beautiful wife, two successful children, and a well-paying career. Yet happiness remains out of reach. He is trapped in a loveless marriage and his job is simply a paycheck. But his life changes forever one night as he drives along the Normandy coast, heading to their lavish château for the weekend. In one terrifying moment, Charles falls asleep at the wheel and veers off the road, plunging thirty feet down...

Newlyweds Margaret and Patrick join a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya where a horrific accident occurs and a life is claimed; now Margaret struggles to understand what happened and how these events have transformed her marriage--perhaps forever.

"When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications. Ordinary people--power plant employees, firefighters, teachers, families, neighbors, and friends--are thrust into an extraordinary situation as they face the ultimate test of their lives. It...

For eleven year-old Hugo Ballard, flying on the Hindenburg is a dream come true. Hugo, his parents, and his four-year-old sister Gertie, are making the thrilling four thousand mile journey across the Atlantic in a zeppelin as big as the Titanic. But as the zeppelin gets ready to land, a blast rocks the Hindenburg and fire consumes the ship. The entire disaster lasts a mere thirty-two seconds, but in those few seconds, Hugo finds himself separated...

When Flight 1421 crashes into the ocean six minutes after take-off, the surviving passengers believe they are the lucky ones until the plane starts to sink to the ocean floor, trapping them inside, and they must wait to be rescued as both air and time run out.

"Pass Christian, Mississippi, 1980: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips up the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from a Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot's flight bag, the plane's black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that...

In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, she...

When his best friend drowns while they are both swimming in a treacherous river that they had promised never to go near, Joel is devasted and terrified at having to tell both sets of parents the terrible consequences of their disobedience.