Full AspenCat Catalog

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon; the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him 'the bitter neighbour from hell'. But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time? Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty...

Lucy DiCamillo is safely surrounded by her books, music, and art--but none of these reclusive comforts or even the protective efforts of her grandmother, Kitty, can shield her thoughts from the mother she can barely recall. Lucy senses her grandmother holds the key, but Kitty seems as eager to hide the past as Lucy is eager to find it. From the streets of San Francisco and Sacramento to the lush vineyards of the Sonoma Valley, Lucy follows the thread...

The inimitable Joyce Carol Oates returns with Dear Husband-a gripping and moving story collection that powerfully re-imagines the meaning of family in America, often through violent means. Oates, a former recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction-as well as the National Book Award, Prix Femina, and numerous other literary honors-dazzles and disturbs with an outstanding compilation. Dear Husband is another triumph for the author...

"Failing memory has forced Eva Gordon to move in with her granddaughter, Breezy. But Eva hates the bustle of Boston. All she wants to do is move back to her quiet, cozy Cape Cod home and be left alone. Then Breezy announces she's getting married, and they'll be moving to her new husband's rundown family farm, where he lives with an elderly uncle. They'll be one big family-but only Breezy and her new husband think it'll be a happy one. It's all too...

"After he's forced to sell the family farm he's labored on his whole life, 63-year-old Gerrit Laninga doesn't know what to do with himself. He sacrificed everything for the land--his time, his health, his family--with nothing to show for it but bitterness, regret, and two grown children who want nothing to do with him. Fifteen-year-old Rae Walters has growing doubts and fears about The Plan--the detailed blueprint for high school that will help her...

"A debut novel about the unlikely friendship between a middle-aged woman trying to start over and an intelligent, unusual teenage girl that blossoms when she's assigned community service in her local library"--

"An unlikely friendship between a curmudgeonly old man and a desperate young woman delivers a funny and uplifting message about the power of human connection and how it's never too late to be the person you wanted to be. Eighty-eight-year-old Duffy Sinclair wants the last leg of his bachelor life to be strictly predictable, so Centennial Assisted Living is perfect: low-sodium meals, off-key sing-alongs, and the company of his best pal and roommate,...

There are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting your heart's desire and the other? Getting it. Fourteen-year-old Lucky Khahlil loves three things: football, Star Wars, and Portia, the girl who works in his grandfather's corner shop. In that order. But Lucky has a destiny - worse than a destiny, he has a dream. He dreams that one day, his lucky left foot will win the World Cup for England. It torments him, because it tastes real, because when...

Set in the lush, rolling hills of northern New Jersey and the romantic, windswept dunes of Cape Cod, this is the story of three generations of women who find their lives, and dreams, suddenly transformed in ways they never could have imagined; and the journey of one woman who comes to realize that when you're a mother, or a daughter, you are never truly free.

"Edward Powell lives with his Aunt Mildred in the Welsh town of Lywll. His aunt thinks Lywll an idyllic place to live, but Edward loathes the countryside-and thinks the company even worse. In fact, Edward has decided to murder his aunt."--