In an extraordinary tale of love and forgiveness, Mark Spragg brings us this novel of a complex, prodigal homecoming.Jean Gilkyson has a history of choosing the wrong men. After yet another night of argument turned to violence with her boyfriend, Roy, Jean knows it's time to leave—if not for herself, then for her ten-year-old daughter, Griff. But the only place they can afford to go is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean's family is dead and her deceased husband's father Einar wishes Jea...

Ishawooa, Wyoming, is far from bucolic nowadays. The sheriff, Crane Carlson, needs no reminder of this but gets one anyway when he finds a kid not yet twenty murdered in a meth lab. His other troubles include a wife who’s going off the rails with bourbon and pot, and his own symptoms of the disease that killed his grandfather.Einar Gilkyson, taking stock at eighty, counts among his dead a lifelong friend, a wife and—far too young—their only child; and his long-absent sister has lat...

Mark Spragg's first novel is the story of the lifelong friendship between two Wyoming ranchers, McEban and Bennett, and their love for the same woman--Gretchen Simpson. Gretchen is Bennett's wife, but as the novel opens, she has just spent the night with McEban. She leaves them both for a new life, but the two men follow her on a journey across the American West, though Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, testing the limits of their friendship and love.

The Fruit of Stone is the story of the lifelong friendship of two men and their love for the woman who eludes them.

An estranged daughter-in-law, a bitter father, and his suffering best friend are reunited for the sake of a child in this powerful tale of love, loss, and homecoming.

Jean Gilkyson is living in Iowa with yet another brutal boyfriend when she realizes this kind of life has got to stop, especially for the sake of her daughter, Griff. But the only place they can run to is Ishawooa, Wyoming, where her loved ones are dead and her father-in-law wishes she was too. For a decade, Einar Gilkyson has blamed her for the accident that took his son's life, and has chosen to go on living himself largely because his oldest friend couldn't otherwise survive. Bound toge...

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the YearFrom the beloved and best-selling author of Plainsong and Eventide comes a story of life and death, and the ties that bind, once again set out on the High Plains in Holt, Colorado.When Dad Lewis is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he and his wife, Mary, must work together to make his final days as comfortable as possible. Their daughter, Lorraine, hastens back from Denver to help look after him; her de...

In this provocative and starkly beautiful historical novel, a Quaker family moves from Pennsylvania to the Virginia frontier, where slaves are the only available workers and where the family' s values and beliefs are sorely tested. In 1798, Daniel Dickinson, recently widowed and shunned by his fellow Quakers when he marries his young servant girl to help with his five small children, moves his shaken family down the Wilderness Road to the Virginia/Kentucky border. Although determined to ho...

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown chil...

THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 'BOOK OF THE YEAR'AN ACCLAIMED WEST END THEATRE PRODUCTION *****'Neil Gaiman's entire body of work is a feat of elegant sorcery. He writes with such assurance and originality that the reader has no choice but to surrender to a waking dream' ARMISTEAD MAUPIN'Some books just swallow you up, heart and soul' JOANNE HARRIS'Summons both the powerlessness and wonder of child...

Twenty years ago, Melanie Stokes was abandoned in a Boston hospital, then adopted by a wealthy young couple. Gifted with loving parents, a doting brother, and an indulgent uncle, Melanie has always considered herself lucky. Until the first cryptic, threatening note arrives: “You Get What You Deserve.”Melanie has no memory of her life before the adoption. Now someone wants her to remember it all—even the darkest nightmare the Stokes family ever faced: the murder of their first daugh...

The incredible true story of Louis Zamperini, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie.THE INTERNATIONAL NUMBER ONE BESTSELLERIn 1943 a bomber crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Against all odds, one young lieutenant survives. Louise Zamperini had already transformed himself from child delinquent to prodigious athlete, running in the Berlin Olympics. Now he must embark on one of the Second World War’s most extraordinary odysseys. Zamperini faces thousands of miles...