Still known to millions primarily as the author of “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) has been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America more deeply than anyone. Now, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author of such classics as THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE.

Seventeen-year-old Ivan Isaenko is a life-long resident of the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. For the most part, every day is exactly the same for Ivan, which is why he turns everything into a game, manipulating people and events around him for his own amusement. Until Polina arrives. She steals his books. She challenges his routine. The nurses like her. Soon, he cannot help being drawn to her, and the two forge a romance that is tenuous and beautiful and everything they never dared dream of. Before, he survived by being utterly detached from things and people. Now, Ivan wants something more: he wants Polina to live.

Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington, D.C., Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel in 11 years is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the meaning of home --- and the fundamental question of how much aliveness one can bear.

Lena Woodward has lived a comfortable life among Chicago Society since she immigrated to the US and began a new life at the end of World War II. But now something has resurfaced that Lena cannot ignore: an unfulfilled promise she made long ago that can no longer stay buried. Driven to renew the quest that still keeps her awake at night, Lena enlists the help of lawyer Catherine Lockhart and private investigator Liam Taggart. She begins to recount a tale, harkening back to her harrowing past in Nazi-occupied Poland, of the bond she shared with her childhood friend Karolina. But there are questions that must be answered about what is true and what is not, and what Lena is willing to risk to uncover the past.

Seventeen-year-old American exchange student Quinn Perkins stumbles out of the woods near the small French town of St. Roch. Barefoot, bloodied and unable to say what has happened to her, Quinn’s appearance creates quite a stir, especially since the Blavettes --- the French family with whom she’s been staying --- have mysteriously disappeared. Now the media, and everyone in the idyllic village, are wondering if the American girl had anything to do with her host family’s disappearance. When she is arrested for the murders of the Blavette family, she finds an unlikely ally in journalist Molly Swift, who must unravel the disturbing secrets of the town’s past in an effort to clear Quinn’s name.

How far will a mother go to save her family? The Hammond family is living in DC, where everything seems to be going just fine, until it becomes clear that the oldest daughter, Tilly, is developing abnormally --- a mix of off-the-charts genius and social incompetence. Once Tilly --- whose condition is deemed undiagnosable --- is kicked out of the last school in the area, her mother is out of ideas. The family turns to Camp Harmony and the wisdom of child behavior guru Scott Bean for a solution. But what they discover in the woods of New Hampshire will push them to the very limit.

Nick and Phoebe Maguire are a young couple who move cross-country to Southern California in search of a fresh start for themselves and their infant son following a trauma. But they arrive at the worst possible economic time, cemented into the dark heart of foreclosure alley and surrounded by neighbors swamped by debt who set fire to their belongings, flee in the dead of night, and eye one another with suspicion while keeping shotguns by their beds. Trapped, broke and increasingly desperate, Nick and Phoebe each devise their own plan to claw their way back into the middle class and beyond. Hatched under one roof, their two separate, secret agendas will inevitably collide.

Twelve contestants on a reality TV show are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens. But how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? When one of the contestants stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways --- and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing.

Sal seems to appear out of nowhere --- a bruised and tattered 13-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home where he's welcomed into the Bliss family, assuming he's a runaway from a nearby farm town. When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, Ohio, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. While the Bliss family wrestles with their own personal demons, a fanatic drives the town to the brink of a catastrophe that will change this sleepy Ohio backwater forever.

A would-be Miss America auditions for a shady local talent scout over vodka and Sunny D; a NASA engineer begins to wonder if the woman he’s having an affair with is slowly poisoning her husband; a Boy Scout troop leader, recovering from a stroke, tries to protect one of his scouts from being bullied by his own sons; a grandmother, sentenced to driver’s ed after a traffic accident, surprises herself by falling for her instructor. THE DREAM LIFE OF ASTRONAUTS balances heartbreak with wry humor as its characters try to make sense of the paths they find themselves on.