A novel of childhood and discovery, innocence and love, betrayal, and its haunting consequences.

From the perspective of those who live in Herot Hall, the suburb is a paradise. Picket fences divide buildings--high and gabled--and the community is entirely self-sustaining. Each house has its own fireplace, each fireplace is fitted with a container of lighter fluid, and outside--in lawns and on playgrounds--wildflowers seed themselves in neat rows. But for those who live surreptitiously along Herot Hall's periphery, the subdivision is a fortress...

Can you stop a murder after it's already happened? Late October. After midnight. You're waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He's late. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn't alone: he's walking toward a man, and he's armed. You can't believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don't know who. You don't know why. You only...

Attorney Danielle Parkman knows her teenage son Max, autistic and whip-smart, emotionally fragile and aggressive, has been getting worse, using drugs and lashing out. But she can't accept the diagnosis she receives at a top-notch adolescent psychiatric facility that her son is deeply disturbed. Dangerous. Until she finds Max, unconscious and bloodied, beside a patient who has been brutally stabbed to death. Trapped in a world of doubt and fear, barred...

Laural Lockwood's 15-year-old son Andy is "special". She lost him once through neglect, but is determined to make up for her mistakes. When she allows Andy to attend a local church social she is terrified when the church is consumed by fire. Andy survives and saves other children as well. Initially Andy basks in the role of unlikely hero but when the suspicion of arson is cast upon Andy, Laurel must ask herself how well she really knows her son, and...

Katie Wilkinson believes she has found the perfect man, until he vanishes, leaving behind a diary penned by a woman named Suzanne who wrote it for her baby boy Nicholas.

"An electrifying novel about the primal and unyielding bond between a mother and her son, and the lengths she'll go to to protect him. The zoo is nearly empty as Joan and her four-year-old son soak up the last few moments of playtime. They are happy, and the day has been close to perfect. But what Joan sees as she hustles her son toward the exit gate minutes before closing time sends her sprinting back into the zoo, her child in her arms. And for...

A story alternating between Iowa and Los Angeles follows Joan Gower, a mother who deserted her family but wants a second chance with her son, Micah, who moves with her to L.A. and has trouble adjusting to its fast and furious life of excess.

"Held captive by her employers-and by her own demons-on a mysterious farm, a widow struggles to reunite with her young son in this uniquely American story of freedom, perseverance, and survival" -- "Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs, and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears without...

Mary Beth Latham is first and foremost a mother, whose three teenaged children come first, before her career as a landscape gardener, or even her life as the wife of a doctor. Caring for her family and preserving their everyday life is paramount. And so, when one of her sons, Max, becomes depressed, Mary Beth becomes focused on him, and is blindsided by a shocking act of violence.