American women - American wives - have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era's mandate to be "helpmeets" to their ambitious husbands...

"Mab is the "normal" one, never mind Bourne Memorial High School has banned that term, and besides, she's a stickler for words and definitions and knows normal isn't normal in Bourne. Monday is a stickler for everything else. She doesn't like abbreviations, contractions, lies, typos, or wearing green clothes on yellow days. When the Bourne library shut down-funds desperately needed elsewhere-she stashed the books under her bed, behind the sofa, along...

"Coo, a ten-year-old girl raised by a flock of pigeons, delights in finally making human contact, but quickly learns that our world is more cruel and complicated than she could have guessed"--

Companion to: Tornado brain. Mere months after her best friend's death, thirteen-year-old Tess spends a summer with family in Wyoming, making friends at art camp while being haunted by Colette and her own anxieties.

To Milla Bloom everything seems easy for her best friend, Honey Wine. Milla envies Honey's confidence, her charm, and her big, chaotic, loving family -- especially when they provide a welcome escape from Milla's small family and their silent house. The two friends do everything and go everywhere together. So when Honey joins Millas school for sixth grade, why is it not as great as Milla expected? Will she ever find the courage to step out of Honey's...