A spoiled, tattooed rich man reluctantly agrees to become an assistant to two casually exploitative nonagenarians before unexpectedly catching the eye of the property's serious-minded manager. "An advertisement has been placed (again!) by the wealthy and eccentric Parloni Sisters. The salary is generous and the employers are 90 years old, so how hard could the job be? Well, none have lasted longer than a week. Most boys leave in tears. Ruthie Midona...

An eccentric like all Helmsleys, eleven-year-old Archer escapes his overprotective mother and recruits two friends, Oliver and Adelaide, to help him plan a rescue of his long-lost grandparents, world-famous explorers who disappeared atop an iceberg in the Antarctic.

Newly reissued as a Picador Modern Classic, Marilynne Robinson's brilliant, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning first novel Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake...

Thirteen-year-old Kyle participates in the last of Mr. Lemoncello's fantabulous games with the hopes of winning ownership of the entire Lemoncello empire.

While visiting her eccentric aunt who lives in Wyoming, twelve-year-old Jade befriends a boy who believes he is a descendant of Butch Cassidy.

"When the McCready sisters' parents are washed away in a tsunami, their Great Aunt Martha volunteers to have them live with her on her farm in British Columbia. But while they are traveling there, Martha dies unexpectedly, forcing Fiona, the eldest, to come up with a scheme to keep social services from separating the girls--a scheme that will only work if no one knows they are living on their own. Fiona approaches their grouchy and indifferent neighbor...

Emma Donoghue vividly brings to life stories inspired by her discoveries of fascinating, hidden scraps of the past. Here an engraving of a woman giving birth to rabbits, a plague ballad, surgical case notes, theological pamphlets, and an articulated skeleton are ingeniously fleshed out into rollicking, full-bodied fictions. Whether she's spinning the tale of an English soldier tricked into marrying a dowdy spinster, a Victorian surgeon's attempts...

Upon the death of his Aunt Julia, twelve-year-old Jack is whisked by his scheming and dreaming parents from Pennsylvania to a small Caribbean island, Compano, and soon finds himself alone on a deserted island.

Set on Cape Cod during one tumultuous summer, Elizabeth Kelly's gothic family story will delight readers of The Family Fang and The Giant's House.

The Last Summer of the Camperdowns, from the bestselling author of Apologize, Apologize!, introduces Riddle James Camperdown, the twelve-year-old daughter of the idealistic Camp and his manicured, razor-sharp wife, Greer. It's 1972, and Riddle's father is running for office from the family compound

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"As the new millennium approaches, the eccentric town of Thebes grows even stranger. Clocked by a Catholic statuette, Mrs. Leontina Scales begins speaking in tongues. Her daughter, Tabitha Scales, and her sons scheme to save their mother or surrender her to Jesus--whatever comes first. Meanwhile, choir director Jeremy Carr, caught between lust and ambition, fumbles his way toward Y2K. Only a modern master like Gregory Maguire can spin a tale this...