"In 1851, at a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, a Lutheran minister known as Mad Lasse tries in vain to convert the native Sámi reindeer herders to his faith. But when one of the most respected herders has a dramatic awakening and dedicates his life to the church, his impetuous son, Ivvár, is left to guard their diminishing herd alone. By chance, he meets Mad Lasse's daughter Willa, and their blossoming infatuation grows into something...

Excerpt from "Gates of the Morning": "Dick standing on a ledge of coral cast his eyes to the South. Behind him the breakers of the outer sea thundered and the spindrift scattered on the wind; before him stretched an ocean calm as a lake, infinite, blue, and flown about by the fishing gulls-the lagoon of Karolin. Clipped by its forty-mile ring of coral this great pond was a sea in itself, a sea of storm in heavy winds, a lake of azure, in light airs-and...

Rick Moody, the award-winning author of The Ice Storm, shares the harrowing true story of the first year of his second marriage-an eventful month-by-month account-in The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Struggle and Hope in Matrimony. At this story's start, Moody, a recovering alcoholic and sexual compulsive with a history of depression, is also the divorced father of a beloved little girl and a man in love; his answer to the question "Would you...