Elizabeth and Jackson Shore married young, raised two daughters, and weathered the storms of youth as they built a family. From a distance, their lives look perfect. But after the girls leave home, Jack and Elizabeth quietly drift apart.

It's early 2000 on New York City's Upper East Side, and the alienation of Moshfegh's unnamed young protagonist from others is nearly complete when she initiates her yearlong siesta, during which time she experiences limited personal interactions. Her parents have died; her relationships with her bulimic best friend Reva, an ex-boyfriend, and her drug-pushing psychiatrist are unwholesome. As her pill-popping intensifies, so does her isolation and determination...

A woman embarks on a first road trip with her boyfriend, Jake, amidst doubts and questions of commitment. When the two take an unexpected detour, she is stranded in a deserted high school, wondering if there is any escape at all.

Text and illustrations describe some of the special places that one can go to be quiet and alone and to imagine, such as a woods, a seashore, a library, or inside oneself.

Seth is a teenage deckhand on his father's boat when he and his dog are washed overboard and swept to one of Alaska's small islands where they struggle for months to survive off land and sea, while his desperate father endures his own emotional journey and never gives up hope.

After she is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Katherine abandons her successful advertising firm and seeks refuge in the solitude of her wilderness cabin. Living off the land in complete isolation brings Katherine peace - until the day she realizes she is not alone, and never was. Katherine's sudden and unanticipated arrival at the cabin unsettles Danny, a Vietnam veteran tormented by the demons of his past, who has been squatting in the previously...

"It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts--or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she...