Jack Madigan is, by many accounts, blessed. He can still effortlessly turn a pretty head. And thanks to his legendary rock star father, he lives an enviable existence in a once-glorious, now-crumbling Boston town house with his teenage son, Harlan. But there is one tiny drawback: Jack is an agoraphobe. As long as his dad's admittedly dwindling royalties keep rolling in, Jack's condition isn't a problem. But then the money runs out . . . and all hell breaks loose.

The bank is foreclosing. Jack's ex is threatening to take Harlan to California. And Lucinda, the little girl next door, won't stay out of his kitchen . . . or his life. To save his sanity, Jack's path is clear, albeit impossible—he must outwit the bank's adorably determined real estate agent, win back his house, keep his son at home, and, finally, with Lucinda's help, find a way back to the world outside his door.

*** Winner of the 2012 eFestival of Words award for best literary fiction! *** Village Books is a local institution…which is good, because most of the staff probably belong in one. The manager’s addiction to WebMD has turned him into a closeted hypochondriac. The cashier’s husband may have just gone AWOL with a small arsenal of fragmentary explosive devices. The fiction lead is buying urine on the black market. Trying to hold it all together is the store’s long-suffering assistant manager, who is spinning his wheels in retail while he waits for something better to come along. That something better may be Leah Dashwood, an aspiring actress and new assistant manager with an ambitious plan to transform the store and its staff in a way that will turn their carefully disordered world on its head. Will the store survive or will it be bought over by its evil corporate competition?

When River Freeman gets an opportunity to live in a bargain beach home in Carmel, Caifornia, she takes it. Unfortunately, this puts her son Rusty in the position of new kid just as he's hitting sixth grade. With his advanced vocabulary and love of books, he's a primary target for twelve-year-old boys and their difference detectors. With a comic and slightly violent solution, Rusty manages to wriggle out, but just then their tenant, college student Autumn, suffers a terrible family tragedy that sends the household into a grief-ridden funk. It's a long road back to the good life, but it might be marked by baseballs - and the lost young man who once told Rusty he was a natural. A heartwarming coming-of-age tale from the acclaimed author of Lavender and A Painting Called Sylvia.

A “masterpiece” (Robert Goolrick) about a withdrawn husband, a desperate wife, and the young Japanese woman who is hired to break down the walls between them.

Thomas Tessler has cloistered himself in his bedroom and shut out the world for the past three years. His wife, Silke, lives right in the next room, but Thomas no longer shares his life with her. He leaves his hideout only occasionally, in the wee hours of the night, to pick up food at the grocery store around the corner from their Manhattan apartment. Unable to cope with a devastating loss, Thomas has become isolated and withdrawn. The Japanese have a word for this phenomenon: hikikomori. They also have a solution for it: the “rental sister.”

Desperate for one last chance to salvage their life together, Silke hires Megumi, a young Japanese immigrant, to lure Thomas back into the world. Fleeing from her own shattering experience, Megumi has buried her pain in a fast life spent in nightclubs with nameless men. Now she will try to help Thomas and Silke as a rental sister. At first Thomas remains steadfast and sequestered, but as he grows to trust Megumi, a deepening—and increasingly sensual—relationship unfolds.

The Rental Sister is a taut, “serenely beautiful” (The Wall Street Journal) novel that packs a big philosophical punch and asks: What are the risks of intimacy? Can another woman ever lead a husband back to his wife? And what must we surrender for love?

“[A] quiet but poignant exploration of loneliness and self-discovery.” —USA Today

“A mesmerizing debut at once sorrowful, intimate, and optimistic . . . an enthralling success.” —Booklist, starred review

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