Twelve stories deal with loneliness, loss, the tragic banality of everyday life, and redemption.

Recounts the triumphs and tragedies of the characters in a small-town in upstate New York.

No discussion of great modern authors is complete without mention of Cormac McCarthy, whose rare and blazing talent makes his every work a true literary event. A grand addition to the American literary canon, Suttree introduces readers to Cornelius Suttree, a man who abandons his affluent family to live among a dissolute array of vagabonds along the Tennessee river. "Suttree contains a humor that is Faulknerian . and a freakish imaginative flair reminiscent...

Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

Anne Fossicker, a successful magazine editor who has a good, thoughtful husband, Ted, and three bright children, suffers paralyzing guilt after their youngest daughter disappears from school one day.

"In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan's debut novel--now widely regarded as a modern classic--examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between these four women and their American-born daughters."--Publisher's description....

Blinking Jack Stokes was a skinny tenant farmer, and Ruby Pitt Woodrow was "the carefully raised daughter of Carolina gentry ... They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life."--Pbk. cover.