Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

A novel on a dysfunctional family in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town. The mother is in jail for killing the father and the four children are on their own. They are supported by the eldest, Harley Altmyer, 20, who is having an affair with the mother of a friend of his sister.

A winless high school basketball team is on the rebound after two stars move to town and inspire coach Sam Pickett to get down to business.

A tour-de-force novel set in ancient Japan filled with passion, fantasy, and feuding warlords. The first volume in the highly anticipated "Tales of the Otori" trilogy. Sixteen-year-old Takeo's village has been massacred by an evil warlord, and he is about to be slain by the men who murdered his parents and neighbors. At the last moment, his life is saved by a nobleman, who claims the boy as his kin and begins his education. But nothing is as it seems....

Eleven-year-old asthmatic Reuben Land chronicles the Land family's odyssey in search of Reuben's older brother, Davy, who has escaped from jail before he can stand trial for the killing of two marauders who came to their Minnesota farm to harm the family. A first novel. Reprint.

A boy named Seth drowns, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying. So how is he here? And where is this place? It looks like the suburban English town where he lived as a child, before an unthinkable tragedy happened and his family moved to America. But the neighborhood around his old house is overgrown, covered in dust, and completely abandoned....

"Slow Way Home is a warm, witty, fresh, and innovative novel." - --Homer Hickam, author of October Sky "Slow Way Home is a gem -- both gritty and heartwarming at once. A wonderful, emotional read." - --Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls "Slow Way Home is a novel for the heart. It is pitch perfect and the character Brandon is going to linger in a lot of minds. The opening chapter is one of the most poignant and poweful I have ever read. This is...

Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan,...

The third book in the Zion Covenant series, continuing the breathtaking drama of Vienna Prelude and Prague Counterpoint. 800 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution set sail on a battered freighter with no harbor that will take them in.