"Engaging, surprising, provocative and moving...a thoroughly intelligent book, an intimate domestic drama that nonetheless deals with big issues touching us all: religion, race, class, politics and, above all else, family." — Washington Post

From New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett comes an engrossing story of one family on one fateful night in Boston where secrets are unlocked and new bonds are formed.

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A liberal New England college campus is a peculiar place for a girl to grow up in this “lovable, psychologically intricate [and] bittersweet farce” (The New York Times Book Review).
 
Massachusetts, 1970s. Born to a pair of “bleeding heart” professors who live on campus as dorm parents, Frederica Hatch soon finds herself the unofficial mascot of Dewing College. Life is so ideal...

Lily Ellsworth the grand dame of Dowling, Massachusetts hires Spenser to investigate her grandson Jared Clark's alleged involvement in a school shooting. Though seven people were killed in cold blood, and despite Jared's being named as a co-conspirator by the other shooter, Mrs. Ellsworth is convinced of her grandson's innocence.

An armed man has barricaded himself in with his wife and child. Through the scope of his sniper rifle, State Trooper Bobby Dodge watches the hostage stand-off unfold - and has only a split second to react...Twenty-five years ago Catherine Gagnon was buried underground during a nightmare of abduction and abuse.

A man is murdered in Boston by crucifixion, recalling a similar murder 20 years earlier for which a killer is serving time in prison. So it can't be him, or can it? As bodies pile up PIs Angela Dimassi Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie go to work. By the author of a Drink Before the War.

Master storyteller Henry James transports readers to New England in the 1870s for his satire of the American women's rights movement. Charismatic speaker Verena Tarrant is at the center of an acrimonious struggle between two distant cousins. Olive Chancellor sees Verena as a potential leader of the suffragettes and jealously attempts to isolate her protegee from the society of men. The man Olive particularly abhors is cynical Southern lawyer Basil...

When state police trooper Tessa Leoni claims to have killed her husband in self-defense, Detective D.D. Warren must investigate a difficult case when she discovers that Tessa's six-year-old daughter is also missing.

"A beautiful, grief-stricken woman has vanished without a trace. So has the detective hired to find her. So has a pile of money. . . Enter tough-nosed private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. Rooted in the streets of blue-collar Dorchester, they've seen it all--and survived. But this case leads them into unexpected territory: a place of lies and corruption, where trusting anyone could get them killed, and where nothing is sacred."--Provided...

Recovering alcoholic Frankie Elkin has devoted her life to searching for lost and forgotten missing persons. Frankie faces resistance from the police and the victim's family in the case of missing Haitian teen, Angelique Badeau. A recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings, Frankie Elkin spends her life doing what no one else will-- searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston...

Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro delve into the disappearance of a four-year-old girl who was abducted while her mother was out drinking in a search that takes them into Boston's underworld of drug dealers, kidnappers, and pedophiles.