"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become...

Worn out from nursing soldiers at a Milwaukee hospital and struggling to recover from a traumatic love affair, Amanda Starkey returns to her family's rural Wisconsin farm to stay with her beloved sister, Mattie, and a young niece, Ruth. An Oprah Book Club selection and bestseller in hardcover, Drowning Ruth, now in paperback, is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart. Schwarz's first novel explores...

"The Dog Islands are a small, isolated cluster of islands in the Mediterranean - so called because together, when viewed from above, they form the shape of a dog, twisting and baring its teeth against a brilliant blue sea. One of the only inhabited islands (the one that takes the place of one of the dog's teeth) is dominated by a gently smoking volcano, fringed by black volcanic beaches and under the iron rule of the heads of community who are loath...

Housekeeper Mrs. Jeffries and her employer, Inspector Gerald Witherspoon, investigate the drowning of the owner of a medical supply company, a man without greedy relatives or business rivals but a flair for amateur sleuthing that may have caused his murder.

Returning to Whisper Cove to attend theater camp and solve the mystery surrounding her mother's death 12 years earlier, 17-year-old Avril soon discovers the truth is ready to be revealed, but at a high price.