Alison McGhee

Ten days before the start of kindergarten, a preschooler can not tie her shoes by herself and fears the worst.

"Twenty-one-year-old Mallie Williams - scrappy, headstrong, and wise beyond her years - has just landed on her feet following a tumultuous youth when the unthinkable happens: she is violently assaulted. The crime leaves her comatose, surrounded by friends and family who are hoping against hopes for a full recovery. But soon Mallie's small community finds themselves divided. The rape has left Mallie pregnant, and while some friends are convinced that...

"When Clara Winter left her rural Adirondack Mountain town for college, she never looked back. Her mother, Tamar, a fiercely independent but loving woman who raised Clara on her own, all but pushed her out the door, forcing Clara to build a new life for herself, far from her roots, far from her high school boyfriend, far from the life she has always known. Now more than a decade has passed, and Clara, a successful writer, has been summoned home. Tamar...

Because their dreams of daring adventures go against the cautious teachings of their nations, Firefly and Cricket set out on their own, find a home with kindly Vole, and together help a grieving "miniature giant" named Peter.

Pablo, nearly ten, has many questions about his origins and how he arrived at Isla as a baby, but finding the answers may mean losing his lifetime companion, Birdy the parrot.

Winner of the Minnesota Book Award, author Alison McGhee pens tales shimmering with shrewd truth and wild imaginings. In this moving novel, she tells of the growing friendship between two oddly matched people as they share their very different world. With a missing father, sister, and grandfather-and a mother who refuses to explain-11-year-old Clara lives with many questions. When she begins interviewing an elderly immigrant for a school biography...

Nine-year-old Julia Gillian learns a lot about facing fear as she and her St. Bernard, Bigfoot, take long walks through their Minneapolis neighborhood one hot summer, and she seeks the courage to finish a book that could have an unhappy ending.

Brother chronicles life with his frequently-annoying Sister, from the time she is born until she is ten and he leaves for college, through a series of letters and drawings.

A father tells his young son the story behind each of his tattoos.

Since his father's suicide, Will, sixteen, has mainly walked, worked at Dollar Only, and tried to replicate his father's cornbread recipe, but the rape of his childhood friend shakes things up.