Bøger af Mary McGarry Morris

"There was the moment eight-year-old Ruth Corrigan ran away from playing in the woods with her best friend, and then the moment after, when Ceely was gone. Murdered. Now the silence of that day lives within Ruth. Lives in the judgment she sees in the faces of so many in the small town she still calls home. Ruth may be older now, tougher, a cop by trade, but her life has been unraveling ever since that tragic day in the woods. Alcohol, sex, broken marriages-nothing can lighten the truth she knows inside. Until the child-killer returns, free and unencumbered. A predator who will act again unless Ruth can prove him guilty. Only no one will listen to a police officer on suspended duty, a woman whose life has been one personal disaster after the next, not even Maddie Pardeau Klein, her dead playmate's older sister. It's up to Ruth alone to trap the vicious criminal before he strikes once more. No matter what it takes. Or who gets hurt."--Back cover.

Light from a Distant Star is a gripping coming-of-age story with a brutal murder at its heart and a heroine as unforgettable as Harper Lee's "Scout."It is early summer and Nellie Peck is on the cusp of adolescence--gangly, awkward, full of questions, but keenly observant and wiser than many of the adults in her life. The person she most admires is her father, Benjamin, a man of great integrity. His family's century old hardware store is failing and Nellie's mother has had to go back to work. Nellie's older half-sister has launched a disturbing search for her birth father. Often saddled through the long, hot days with her timid younger brother, Henry, Nellie is determined to toughen him up. And herself as well.Three strangers enter Nellie's protected life. Brooding Max Devaney is an ex-con who works in her surly grandfather's junkyard. Reckless Bucky Saltonstall has just arrived from New York City to live with his elderly grandparents. And pretty Dolly Bedelia is a young stripper who rents the family's small, rear apartment and becomes the titillating focus of Nellie's eavesdropping.When violence erupts in the lovely Peck house, the prime suspect seems obvious. Nellie knows who the real murderer is, but is soon silenced by fear and the threat of scandal. The truth, as she sees it, is shocking and unthinkable, and with everyone's eyes riveted on her in the courtroom, Nellie finds herself seized with doubt.No one will listen. No one believes her, and a man's life hangs in the balance. A stunning evocation of innocence lost, Light from a Distant Star stands as an incredibly moving and powerful novel from one of America's finest writers.

Abandoned by his wife, a man tries to protect his family during the Great Depression, in this ';powerful' novel by the bestselling author of Songs in Ordinary Time (Publishers Weekly). During the Great Depression, rural Vermont suffers along with the rest of the country, and Henry Talcott, with only occasional work as a butcher, is reduced to moving into a tent on the edge of Black Pond with his two children. Their beautiful but unreliable mother has left them, and Henry is devastated by her desertion. He hasn't told Thomas or Margaret why she leftor if she will return. Told from twelve-year-old Thomas's perspective, The Lost Mother follows this shattered family as a wealthy neighbor begins to woo the children as companions for her strange, housebound son, and Henry weighs an unexpected proposition, the consequences of which may cost him everything. ';A perfectly lovely story about perfectly awful things' by the New York Timesbestselling and National Book Awardnominated author of A Dangerous Woman and Light from a Distant Star, The Lost Mother is ';the quietest, subtlest novel that has ever kept [its readers] up into the small hours of the night, unable to look away' (The Washington Post).

The ';compelling, suspenseful' novel of a vulnerable misfit in a small town by the New York Timesbestselling author of Light from a Distant Star (Publishers Weekly). Named one of the five best novels of the year by Time magazine, A Dangerous Woman is the story of the damaged and emotionally unstable Martha Horgan, an outcast in her small Vermont town. She stares; she has violent crushes on people; and, perhaps most unsettling of all, she cannot stop telling the truth. After a traumatic experience during her teenage years, the thirty-two-year-old now craves love and companionship, but her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her: Frances, her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian; Birdy Dusser, who befriends her and then cruelly rejects her; and Colin Mackey, the seductive man who preys on her desires. Confused and bitter, distrusting even those with her best interests at heart, Martha is slowly propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her own life. The National Book Awardnominated author of Songs in Ordinary Time tells a tale of unnerving suspense and terrifying psychological insight that is ';at once thrilling and deeply affecting' (The New York Times).

National Book Award Finalist: A man, woman, and child are bound by a desperate needand a terrible secretin this suspenseful, ';astonishing' novel (Vogue). Aubrey Wallace is the kind of man no one notices. Dotty Johnson is the kind of woman no one can ignore. One afternoon, they both disappear from the small Vermont town where they live. The next day, two hundred miles away, a toddler is kidnapped from her Massachusetts home. For the next five years, Aubrey, Dotty, and the kidnapped childunited by a mix of strange love, desperate need, and the crime that brought them togetherare trapped in a nomadic existence governed by their constant fear of discovery. Canny, the little girl, becomes Aubrey's entire existence. But Dotty wants out. She is tired of being saddled with this fearful man, and when she meets a brutal ex-convict, the wheels of Canny's return to her natural parents are wrenched fatally into motion. A dark, riveting tale about the impulses and weaknesses that underlie an evil act, Vanished was nominated for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and marked the debut of the New York Timesbestselling author of Songs in Ordinary Time and A Dangerous Woman.

This New York Times bestseller of a troubled family in 1960s Vermont is ';teeming with incident and characters, often foolish, even nasty, but always alive' (The New Yorker). It is the summer of 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont. With no help from her alcoholic ex-husband, Marie Fermoyle is raising three children on the edge of poverty. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, Alice, is becoming emotionally involved with a local priest in a staunchly Catholic town that disapproves of Marie's divorce. Alice's brother Norm is a hotheaded sixteen-year-old, and twelve-year-old Benjy is isolated and full of anxieties, looking with yearning at the Klubocks next door, who seem to live an orderly, peaceful life much unlike his own family's. Now, Marie has met a new man: Omar Duvall, who talks about opportunities and riches but so far seems only to sponge off the Fermoyles. A lonely, desperate single mother like Marie is easy prey for con men, but she resists the temptation to doubt him. Young Benjy, though, may eventually reveal a disturbing secret that could shatter all her hopes. A portrait of a family as well as a town and its secrets, Songs in Ordinary Time is ';a gritty, beautifully crafted novel rich in wisdom and suspense' (The Miami Herald). An Oprah's Book Club selection from an author nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, it is ';extraordinary ... a deeply satisfying story' (USA Today).