Set in rural Maine in the first half of this century, it tells the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch--obstetrician and director of the orphanage in the town of St. Clouds. It is also the story of his favorite orphan, Homer, who is never adopted.

"The man known as Wilde is a mystery to everyone, including himself. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. After the police concluded an exhaustive hunt for the child's family, which was never found, he was turned over to the foster system. Now, thirty years later, Wilde still doesn't know where he comes from, and he's back living in the woods on the outskirts of town, content to be an outcast, comfortable...

Oliver Twist is a classic tale of a boy of unknown parentage born in a workhouse and brought up under the cruel conditions to which pauper children were exposed in the Victorian England. With this novel, Dickens did not merely write a topical satire on the workhouse system and the role of the 1834 New Poor Law in fostering criminality. He created a moral fable about the survival of good, a romance, and a gripping story in which he exploited suspense...

"Elizabeth Duncan has nowhere to turn. In charge of her younger brother and sister after their parents die, her options are limited. When she hears that the Shaker community in the next county takes in orphans, she presents herself and her siblings at Harmony Hill. Despite the hard work and strange new beliefs around her, Elizabeth is relieved to have a roof overhead and food to eat. But when she feels a strong attachment to a handsome young Believer...

A thoroughly modern woman, Sarah Cain had ridiculed her sister's choice of a Plain life-style, which served only to intensify the lifelong rift between them. Now, twelve years later, Sarah is stunned by news of her sister's death and baffled by Ivy's choice of a guardian. How can Sarah sacrifice her successful career and her life in Portland to raise five Amish orphans? And what of Bryan Ford, the man who loves her? Upon her arrival in Lancaster...

Opal is a lot of things—orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic, and part-time cashier—but above all, she's determined to find a better life for her younger brother, Jasper. One which gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: bad luck and E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author of The Underland, who disappeared over a hundred years ago. All she left behind were dark rumors. And her home. Everyone...

A young woman, Marie-Ange Hawkins, returns to her childhood home in France and marries a dashing young widower, Comte Bernard de Beauchamp. The Comte seems like the perfect husband, but nothing is quite what it seems. After a chilling revelation, Marie-Ange must make a final leap of faith to ensure the survival of herself and her loved ones.

Just hours after his wife and her entire family perish in the Christmas Eve tsunami in Brisbane, American expat and former police officer Frank Mercy goes out to join his volunteer rescue unit and pulls a little boy from a submerged car, saving the childs life with only seconds to spare. In that moment, Franks own life is transformed. Not quite knowing why, Frank sidesteps the law, when, instead of turning Ian over to the Red Cross, he takes the boy...

Ian McEwan is known to skirt the edge with his writing; the fringes of society, to test the limits of what we can handle perhaps in our worlds as we bring his writing home with us and allow a whole new being to enter. So it is with The Cement Garden, the story of dying family who live in a dying part of the city. The father of four children decides, in an effort to make his garden easier to control, to pave it over. In the process, he has a heart...