Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family...

Christy Petrino hadn't planned on a vacation on Ocracoke Island, but when she learns her fiancé and boss, suave Michael DePalma, is a "made man" and the Philadelphia law firm where she works is a front for the mob, she breaks her engagement and quits her job. But no one walks away from the DePalma family business so easily....Only if she delivers a locked briefcase to a motel on Ocracoke Island will she -- and her mother and sisters -- be free.

Considers the global impact of the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, documenting its cause of an immense tsunami that killed 40,000 people, its impact on the weather for several years, and its role in anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism.

Elenora Lodge accepts a position as the paid companion of Arthur Lancaster, the Earl of St. Merryn, and soon discovers that he is concealing dark secrets that involve her as his unwilling partner in a quest to catch a killer.

Arkady Renko, Martin Cruz Smith's iconic sleuth returns with a case that epitomizes the New Russia. Pal Ivanov, powerful, vigorous, dangerous, and one of the nation's billionaire businessmen, has jumped to his death. When Renko is called in to investigate, he uncovers hidden demons and byzantine international plots that drove this oligarch to his death.

When his closest ally, Hawk, is brutally injured and left for dead, Spenser embarks on an epic journey ro rehabilitate his friend in body and spirit.

Sebastian Townshend, one of the most dashing bachelors in Kent, moves to the continent after being banished for dueling, where he becomes caught up in life as a mercenary, and it is not until the beautiful Lady Margaret Landor comes to find him, hoping he can protect his father from greedy heirs, that he believes he has a chance for redemption.

Spenser is hired by Lily Ellsworth to investigate her grandson's involvement in a school shooting.

Stone Barrington, suave Manhattan cop-turned-lawyer, is suspicious when he is offered a very hefty retainer to manage the affairs of Texan Billy Bob Barnstormer, and he soon discovers he should have heeded his instincts when his new client, who is wanted by the CIA and the U.S. attorney's office, leaves a dead prostitute in the guest room.

Mary, trying to handle the suffocating grief she feels over the death of her young daughter, Stella, reluctantly joins a knitting circle and over the course of time learns about the problems others in the group have had to face, and comes to cherish them as friends.