Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a nineteen-year-old...

Everyone in King George, New Hampshire, loved Margaret Batten, part-time amateur actress, full-time wallflower, and single mother to a now-distant daughter, Sunny. The death of Margaret, side by side with her putative fiance, brings Sunny back to the scene of her unhappy adolescence. Unexpectedly, allies surface. Maybe, Sunny begins to think, she wasn't as beleaguered as she felt she was; maybe her mother's life was richer than anyone suspected; and...

Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

Despite his sister Ruby's admonitions, Max waits up on Christmas Eve to see Santa Claus coming down the chimney.

When Peter discovers his blue furniture is being painted pink for a new baby sister, he rescues the last unpainted item, a chair, and runs away.

The story of fourteen-year-old Nathaniel, and his older sister, Rachel. In 1945, just after World War II, they stay behind in London when their parents move to Singapore, leaving them in the care of a mysterious figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and they grow both more convinced and less concerned as they come to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women joined by a shared history of unspecified service during the...

After escaping imprisonment by the totalitarian regime known as the New Order, siblings Wisty and Whit Allgood, who possess magical powers, establish themselves as leaders of the Resistance, a hidden community of teenagers like themselves, hunted by the state and determined to defy its ban on the arts, magic, and all other forms of creativity.

Dear Reader, if you have picked up this book with the hope of finding a simple and cheery tale, I'm afraid you have picked up the wrong book altogether. The story may seem cheery at first, when the Baudelaire children spend time in the company of some interesting reptiles and a giddy uncle, but don't be fooled. If you know anything at all about the unlucky Baudelaire children, you already know that even pleasant events lead down the same road to misery....

Lost at sea, the Baudelaire orphans, along with the evil Count Olaf, wash up on the shore of an island populated by an oddly placid group of inhabitants, and they try to decide whether or not they are truly safe.

Carolyn Mackenzie is driven to solve the mystery of her older brother's disappearance ten years ago, hoping that she and her mother will achieve closure. Her pursuit of truth plunges her into a world of danger and unanswered questions. Do the police believe that Mack is a serial killer? Was Mack guilty of the murder of his drama teacher and the theft of his taped sessions with her?