Fourteen-year-old Harry Potter joins the Weasleys at the Quidditch World Cup, then enters his fourth year at Hogwarts Academy where Potter he is mysteriously entered in an unusual contest that challenges been his wizarding skills, friendships and character, amid signs that an old enemy is growing stronger.

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni...

Sexy Trenton bounty hunter Stephanie Plum joins vice cop Joe Morelli in a search for Ranger, a bounty hunter on the run, just when Grandma Mazur decides to move in with Stephanie and Rex, her hamster.

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic...

If America had a royal family, the Taylor Winthrops would wear the crown. The popular, charismatic Winthrops have captured the imagination of the world with their public service, their enormous charity, and their glamorous lives. But in the period of one year., all five members of the family are killed in a series of accidents. Beautiful young anchor woman Dana Evans begins an investigation and starts unraveling compelling evidence that she can hardly...

"Political speechwriter Jessie Matlock is at the top of her professional game, working for the re-election campaign of New York's popular governor, when she receives the first phone call: "Stop sleeping with the governor or I'll kill him." Though Jessie isn't sleeping with the governor, the menacing ultimatums persist. The police suddenly stop believing her, even after the stalker murders an innocent person to prove his point. When the governor is...

In a federal prison, three former judges who call themselves "the brethren" meet in the law library to run a rougher form of justice inside their community and to make some money, but when one of their scams derails, they are forced to confront the world of their own creation.

In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, and the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on the planet. The result is a deliciously funny, fact-filled, and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiousity. Despite the fact that Australia...

Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily...

An Oprah's Book Club selection Samantha Morrow's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her 11-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tried to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second,...