With the narrative grace, compelling characters, and intricate plotting that have made her Richard Jury mysteries an international byword for sophisticated intrigue, Grimes presents two thematically linked novellas with a "poignancy that pierces the heart" ("The Washington Post").

While searching for his missing wife, Japanese lawyer Toru Okada has strange experiences and meets strange characters. A woman wants phone sex, a man describes wartime torture, he finds himself at the bottom of a well. Part detective story, part philosophical meditation.

"Two young men meet by chance in a Polish resort town in the Carpathian Mountains. Intending to spend their vacation relaxing, they find a secluded family-run pension. But the two become embroiled first in a macabre event on the way to the pension, then in the peculiar activities and psychological travails of the family running it." -- Cover.

A runaway wife leaves one domestic situation, only to fall into another. She is Delia Grinstead, 40, of Baltimore, the wife of a physician and mother of three. One day she decides she's had enough of being invisible, moves to another town and gets herself a job--caring for a boy whose mother has abandoned the family. By the author of Saint Maybe.

Civilization doesn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ends with a call on your cell phone. What happens on the afternoon of October 1 came to be known as the Pulse, a signal sent though every operating cell phone that turns its user into something...well, something less than human. Savage, murderous, unthinking-and on a wanton rampage. Terrorist act? Cyber prank gone haywire? It really doesn't matter, not to the people who avoided the technological...

Mizoguchi, an acolyte at a Buddhist temple in Kyoto who also suffers from a childhood stutter, struggles to overcome his obsession with the beauty of the Golden Temple.

Her Saturday night started normally. Recently separated from her husband, Ali has been persuaded by her friends to go on a date with a new man. She is ready, she is nervous, she is excited. She is about to take a step into her new future. By Sunday morning, Ali's life is unrecognizable. She wakes, and she knows that something is wrong. She is home, she is alone, she is hurt and she has no memory of what happened to her ...

"Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright...Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University,...