Pearl's job is to make people happy. Every day, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind...

"First published in Japan in 2003 and never before published in the United States, Dead-End Memories collects the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, quietly discover their ways back to recovery. Among the women we meet in Dead-End Memories is one betrayed by her fiancé who finds a perfect refuge in an apartment above her uncle's bar while seeking the real meaning of happiness. In "House of Ghosts," the daughter of a yoshoku...

A fox makes its way across London's Waterloo Bridge. The distraction causes two pedestrians to collide - Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist there to deliver a keynote speech. In this delicate tale of love and loss, of cruelty and kindness, Aminatta Forna asks us to consider the interconnectedness of lives, our co-existence with one another and all living creatures, and the true nature of happiness....

"Annie Hebden is stuck. Stuck in her boring job, with her irritating roommate, in a life no thirty-five-year-old would want. But deep down, Annie is still mourning the terrible loss that tore a hole through the perfect existence she'd once taken for granted--and hiding away is safer than remembering what used to be. Until she meets the eccentric Polly Leonard"--Amazon.com.

"Grow Happy is a gentle narrative about how the main character, Kiko, cultivates happiness. The story provides a metaphor that compares the cultivation of a garden to the nurturing of happiness"-- Provided by publisher. In this nonfiction picture book, Kiko describes all the tools she needs to grow a thriving garden. She also describes the tools she uses to nurture her own happiness, including informed choices, exercise, and social support.

"A story about finding love and proving that happiness is not just a myth"--Provided by publisher.

"In the Before, humankind is created with a hole in its heart, the designers not realizing their mistake - if it was a mistake - until too late.Elliot Chance is just a boy, and knows nothing of this. All he knows is that he doesn't feel at home in this world, and his desire for escape becomes more urgent as he grows into adulthood, where the turbulence of life seems to offer no cure for the emptiness. Desperate and lost, he stumbles upon a support...

A perfect square that is perfectly happy is torn into pieces, punched with holes, crumpled, and otherwise changed but finds in each transformation that it can be something new, and just as happy.

An invitation to find joy in the simple things that are all around, if you know how to notice them.

"Heart's Ease is the loveliest house anyone knows and home to the fortunate Blyth family. Siblings Felicity, Charity, Honor and Bruno enjoy a blissfully happy childhood there before life pulls them in very different directions. Beautiful Felicity gains her handsome husband, delightful children and elegant London house, but all is far from perfect ... Charity, the clever one, lives for her work, with no time for emotional involvement, until the least...