From the soccer mom's (and a dentist's wife) secret to the Kokomo hum (that only the residents of the town can hear): "As David Lynch and 'Desperate housewives' have taught us, life in the burbs has a dark side and [this book] offers a creepy guided tour. Here are 60 spooky-but-true tales of haunted housing developments, corpses buried in backyards, UFO sightings, vanishing persons, and more"--Publisher description.

In the heart of the 1970s, amid a flurry of feathered hair and flared jeans, Gru (Oscar nominee Steve Carell) is growing up in the suburbs. A fanboy of a supervillain supergroup known as the Vicious 6, Gru hatches a plan to become evil enough to join them. Luckily, he gets some mayhem-making backup from his loyal followers, the Minions. Together, Kevin, Stuart, Bob, and Otto, a new Minion sporting braces and a desperate need to please, deploy their...

Do cities work anymore? How did they get to be such sprawling conglomerations of lookalike subdivisions, mega freeways, and "big box" superstores surrounded by acres of parking lots? And why, most of all, don't they feel like real communities? These are the questions that Alex Marshall tackles in this hard-hitting, highly readable look at what makes cities work. Marshall argues that urban life has broken down because of our basic ignorance of the...

Upon waking up after hibernation, a group of forest animals discover that a tall hedge has appeared out of nowhere, half their forest is gone, and they have little to no food left. Their leader Verne, a nervous turtle, suggests they must adapt. Newcomer RJ the raccoon gives them another option: go over the hedge and get food from the humans! The other forest animals quickly give in to RJ's blandishments, sneaking into the human world to get all the...

"Welcome to small town Connecticut, a place whose inhabitants seem to have it all-the status, the homes, the money, and the ennui. There's Tripp and Virginia, beloved hosts whom the community idolizes, and whose basement hides among other things a secret stash of guns and a drastic plan to survive the end times. There's Gunter and Rachel, recent transplants who left New York City to raise their children, only to feel imprisoned by the banality of...

1956, Ava Lark rents a house with her twelve-year-old son, Lewis, in a desirable Boston suburb. Ava is beautiful, divorced, Jewish, and a working mom. She finds her neighbors less than welcoming. Lewis yearns for his absent father, befriending the only other fatherless kids: Jimmy and Rose. One afternoon, Jimmy goes missing. The neighborhood -- in the throes of Cold War paranoia -- seizes the opportunity to further ostracize Ava and her son. Years...

"Celebrated by the Boston Globe as "a brilliant anthropologist of the suburbs," the seductively weird and darkly offbeat Lauren Acampora returns to the lush world that got us all hooked on the NPR Best Book of the Year The Wonder Garden, drawing us into the secret lives of a polished Connecticut haven and jolting us with the sparks that fly when those lives collide. Formerly a model and photographer trying to make it in New York, Louisa Rader is back...

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number...

Struggling to adjust to the upper-crust white suburb of Rolling Hills, Virginia, De'Andrea Whitman is challenged by her therapist to make a white girlfriend and finds one in Rebecca Myland as they are brought together to fight back against the community's rising racial sentiments. De'Andrea Whitman, her husband Malik, and their five-year-old daughter, Nina, are new to the upper-crust white suburb of Rolling Hills, Virginia--a move motivated by circumstance...

Priced out of Manhattan, Jessica, Aaron and their daughters move to the one place they swore they would never go: the suburbs. But to her surprise, life in the commuter belt makes a great first impression.--