The bestselling coming-of-age classic novel by John Irving-now in a limited 40th anniversary edition with a new introduction by the author. The opening sentence of John Irving's breakout novel, The World According to Garp, signals the start of sexual violence, which becomes increasingly political. "Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater." Jenny is an unmarried nurse; she becomes a single...

Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds. It is also the story of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

Struggling with her rebellious daughter and her conflicting feelings for a soul-seeking priest and a cynical man, cardiologist Madelaine learns to overcome past betrayals when a tragedy brings them all together.

The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii—a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the...

"When Mikaela Campbell, beloved wife and mother of two, falls into a coma, it is up to her husband, Liam, to hold the family together, to care for their grieving, frightened children. Day after day, he sits by her bedside, telling stories of the precious life they have built, hoping, always hoping, that she will wake up. Then he discovers evidence of her secret past: a hidden first marriage to Julian True, a man no woman could resist…or forget....

Big Cherry Holler, the extraordinary sequel to Big Stone Gap, takes us back to the mountain life that enchanted us in Adriana Trigiani's bestselling debut novel. It's been eight years since the town pharmacist and longtime spinster Ave Maria Mulligan married coal miner Jack MacChesney. With her new found belief in love and its possibilities, Ave Maria makes a life for herself and her growing family, hoping that her fearless leap into commitment will...

With the kids off at college and her husband enjoying a jump-started career, Elizabeth "Birdie" Shore, feeling lonely, embarks on a search for self, believing that her former passion for life can only be rediscovered outside of her twenty-four-year-old marriage.

In the rural town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney struggles to deal with change as her daughter enters her teen years, growing more and more strong-willed, and Ave Maria embarks on a journey into her past that she never thought she would take.

An autobiography of growing up as an Iranian-American describes the author's family's 1971 move from Iran to Southern California, the members of her diverse family, and their struggle with culture shock.

This is the story of Azar Nafisi's dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. They were unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about...