Jake and a woman known only as The Girlfriend are taking a long drive to meet his parents at their secluded farm. But when Jake takes a sudden detour, leaving The Girlfriend stranded at a deserted high school, the story transforms into a twisted combination of the darkest unease, psychological frailty, and a look into the limitations of solitude.

Why would a man who has it all suddenly turn his back on the world at the height of his power? A celebrated journalist, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker, Harold Cleaver has just trounced the president in a damning television interview. But balancing Cleaver's success is the unbearable scrutiny of his elder son's equally damning roman à clef, Under His Shadow. Overweight and overwrought, Cleaver abruptly abandons his home, his wife, his mistresses,...

A novel based on the true life of Henry Stuart. When the 67-year-old former professor finds out he is dying of tuberculosis, he vows to "learn in solitude how to save myself." He sets off for Fairhope, Alabama, with only the writings of his beloved Tolstoy for company. There, the barefoot poet builds himself a small hut and slowly becomes an inspiration for the rest of the utopian town. When his last few months become his last few years, Henry's attempt...

Le Monde Claudio's apartment faces a wall. Rising from bed, he sets his feet on the floor at the same time, to ground himself. Cecilia sits at her window, contemplating a cemetery, the radio her best companion. In parallel and entwining stories that move from Havana to Paris to New York City, no routine, no argument for the pleasures of solitude, can withstand our most human drive to find ourselves in another, and fall in love. And no depth of emotion...

A boy enjoys living quietly by himself at The End of the World until Mr. Constantine Shimmer, "Professional Visionary," builds an inn and an amusement park, demanding that tourists come and have "Fun Without End!"

Pathologically committed to a minimalist life in solitude, former LAPD detective Charlie Waldo is drawn into the case of once-famous, heavily-drinking actor Alastair Pinch, whose wife has been found dead.

Oliver is different. He enjoys his solitude. He likes playing with his friends, who are puppets, stuffed animals, and other toys. With his rich imagination, Oliver's day is never dull. But maybe toys don't always give a boy everything he needs. Maybe he needs another kind of companion. Will Oliver discover a way to be, well, different? When his tennis ball rolls across the lawn into the yard of the girl next door, he just might be surprised.

Courtney Winston is a writer on a deadline. Eager to finish her book and get over a recent break-up, she ditches Christmas with her family and retreats to a secluded cabin in the mountains. Appliances rarely work, and cell service is spotty, but Courtney senses there is more to her rustic rental--something dark and haunting. Then Peter, the attractive Stone Mountain Lodge owner, and a meddling cook, Mrs. Finn, keep coming around, shattering her peace...

Bear likes playing piano for all the other animals, but they keep asking him for more, and Bear has trouble setting boundaries and expressing that he needs time for himself until he finds sympathetic Zebra.

"On a miserable November day in 1967, two women disappear from a working-class town on the Fraser River. The community is thrown into panic, with talk of drifters and murderous husbands. But no one can find a trace of Bette Parsons or Alice McFee. Even the egg seller, Doris Tenpenny, a woman to whom everyone tells their secrets, hears nothing. Ten-year-old Lulu Parsons discovers something, though: a milk-stained note her mother, Bette, left for her...