Career burglar George "Pitty-Pitty" Patniks plots his crimes down to the last detail. He knows exactly what to expect when he hits the home of a wealthy suburban couple--that is until murder interrupts his "perfect" heist. The victim's grieving husband has a perfect alibi and all the evidence points to a burglary gone bad. But weary, wise police detective Abe Lieberman has seen it all--and his instincts tell him something doesn't add up.

This volume contains seven short stories by author Lethem, including three Nebula Award nominees and two nominees for the prestigious Tiptree Award.

A well-known American journalist travels to Germany to write about the Allied occupation--and also to find the German woman with whom he had an affair before the war began. In war-ravaged Berlin, he finds more than he expected, including a murdered American soldier and a stunning level of postwar corruption that is inextricably mixed with the American and Russian rocket projects. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

Xuela, a childless Dominican woman in her 70s whose own mother died while giving birth to her, tells the story of a life filled with tragedy and small triumphs: Sent at birth to live in the home of her father's washerwoman, she moves back to her father's house after seven years and must fend off the murderous rage of her jealous stepmother. The neglect and cruelty she suffers as a child sets the pattern for her life, as Xuela treats herself and others with calculated and often cruel disregard.

Lucy, a 19-year-old au pair from the West Indies, is pleased with her employers, who seem to be urbane and perfect, and their four daughters. Yet as she grows closer to the family and perceives the cracks in the facade of their lives, Lucy must come to terms with her own sexuality, her feelings towards her mother, and the memories of her past.

A book for children by the acclaimed Jamaican writer Jamaica Kincaid.

Allen Carmichael has been living on the edges of society since returning from Viet Nam. He has built himself a reputation by rescuing women and children from abusive relationships, but now, at 50, he is set to retire. When he takes one final case, though, things go disastrously wrong, and both Allen and the boy he is trying to save find themselves on the run from a very dangerous foe.

When Sherlock Holmes decides to marry, he chooses well in Oxford scholar Mary Russell. Husband and wife continue sleuthing, and travel to Devonshire where they investigate a murder on the moor.

This spirited re-telling of the Shakespearean tale from the view point of the young, love-struck Ophelia is darkly romantic, and, of course, tragic.

In 1996, on a magazine assignment, Krakauer joined an expedition up Mount Everest led by the New Zealand climber Rob Hall. He arrived at the summit just before a blizzard struck in which Hall and nine other climbers were killed. This book is Krakauer's first-person account of the tragedy.