"First published in Japan in 2003 and never before published in the United States, Dead-End Memories collects the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, quietly discover their ways back to recovery. Among the women we meet in Dead-End Memories is one betrayed by her fiancé who finds a perfect refuge in an apartment above her uncle's bar while seeking the real meaning of happiness. In "House of Ghosts," the daughter of a yoshoku...

"It's been seven years since Chelsea Martin embarked on her yearlong post-college European adventure. Since then, she's lost her mother to cancer and watched her sister marry twice, while Chelsea's thrown herself into work, becoming one of the most talented fundraisers for the American Cancer Coalition, and with the exception of one annoyingly competent coworker, Jason Knightley, her status as most talented fundraiser is unquestioned. When her introverted...

For fans of "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" and "The Alchemist" comes this international bestseller--a charming fable about modern life and the quest for the secret of happiness.

"The novel begins with the character of Ethan, a lawyer living in New York City who tells us the story of his family's life just as they learn his father - a textile manufacturer who spent long trips throughout Asia - has fathered a secret family from a woman he met on one of his trips and set up in a house in Queens. From here, we move to different related characters as the novel expands outward to the woman, her sons, a few surprise relations, some...

"Spanning a wide range of distinct perspectives, voices, styles, and settings, the ten shimmering stories in Happy Like This offer lyrical, deeply felt, often humorous meditations on the complexity of choice and the ambiguity of happiness. Two identical twins watch their bodies and lives diverge as one of them takes up competitive bodybuilding. A part-time mermaid struggles with her fluid sexuality and turbulent romantic past when she finds herself...

It's 1994 and Adam, a drug addict from New York City, arrives at a kibbutz in Israel with a medieval sapphire brooch. To make up for a past crime, he needs to get the priceless heirloom to a woman his grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz fifty years earlier. There Adam joins other troubled people trying to turn their lives around: Ulya, the ambitious and beautiful Soviet emigre ; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand...

"On a small, unnamed coral atoll in the South Pacific, a group of troubled dreamers must face the possibility that the hopes they've labored after so single-mindedly might not lead them to the happiness they feel they were promised"--

Happiness is relative. For single mother Natalie Greene, that relative is her stepsister, Isabel Walker, known as The Happiness Guru. But even with Isabel's guidance, Natalie can't control her recently re-triggered PTSD over her mother's death in a car crash years ago. The old dread. The nightmares. And that all-consuming, terrifying thought: I think I killed my mother. But did she? And if not, who did?

"This dark-comedic novel is about a woman, Janet, who wears a cloak of gloomy realism, until one summer when she learns of a new pill that offers even confirmed cynics a short-term taste of happiness. Her family stages an intervention, her boyfriend leaves her, and she decides to take the pill to get through the Christmas holiday. What follows is life-changing for all concerned, in ways no one expected"-- Janet works at a rundown dog shelter in the...