In Archer's collection of 13 stories, some of these stories were inspired by the two years Archer spent in prison, including the story of the company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St. Petersburg--with unexpected consequences.

Jones offers a complex, sometimes somber collection of 14 short stories, four of which have appeared in the New Yorker. As in his previous collection of short fiction, Lost in the City (1992), Jones centers his storytelling on his native Washington, D.C. Here, though, Jones broadens his chronological scope to encompass virtually the entire 20th century and a wide range of experiences and African-American perspectives.

A troublesome twelve-year-old orphan, staying with an elderly artist who needs her, remembers the only other time she was happy in a foster home, with a family that truly seemed to care about her.

On one of the coldest nights in Minnesota history, the difference between life and death is literally the blink of an eye for Phil Broker, until recently St. Paul's most successful undercover cop. That blink will convey the urgent warning of a comatose man who knows the dark truth binding Broker to a remarkable cast of characters -- a weary anesthesiologist, a brilliant surgeon, a wealthy novelist, his exwife (a reformed exotic dancer), and her unrepentant...

In 1972, fire broke out in Idaho's Sunshine Mine. When the first whisps of smoke appeared, the miners thought little of it. But soon, 91 workers were dead from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning. New York Times best-selling author Gregg Olsen delivers the shocking true story of this disaster, which led to much-needed improvements in mine safety.

From the Japanese soldiers' carefully calculated-and ultimately foiled-attempt to build a series of impregnable island forts on the ground to the tireless efforts of the Americans who struggled against a tenacious adversary and the temperature and terrain of the island itself, Robert Leckie captures the loneliness, the agony, and the heat of twenty-four-hour-a-day fighting on Guadalcanal. Combatants from both sides are brought to life: General Archer...