Three people--a suburban housewife, a talented documentary photographer, and a detective--living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede ... and that desperation and hunger can lurk behind even the prettiest facades.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • Frank and April Wheeler are a bright, beautiful, talented couple in the 1950s whose perfect suburban life is about to crumble in this "moving and absorbing story” (The Atlantic Monthly) from one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century.
"The Great Gatsby of my time...one of the best books by a member of my generation." —Kurt Vonnegut, acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five
Perhaps...

"Someone on this quiet cul-de-sac will be shot dead. Will it be Maggie, the perfectionist wife, or Craig, the husband who can't quite live up to her expectations? Maybe it will be Nick, an oncologist, or his wife, Dani, a successful dentist, both with secrets of their own. Or Julia, a widow, whose grandson has moved in with her, introducing unsavory habits and acquaintances into her quiet existence. Then there's Olivia and Sean. Having lost his job,...

Successful physician Duncan Avery was convicted 15 years ago of stabbing his wife Marsha to death in their suburban New Jersey home, scattering what remained of his family to the winds. His oldest son Patrick's girlfriend Lindsay Farrell is packed off to Europe to avoid the scandal, while Patrick slinks off to Rutgers in despair. Daughter Nina goes to live with her mother's elderly Aunt Mary, and Jimmy, the youngest, is left in care of the Averys'...

Upon moving to a new house, young Caroline and her parents encourage wildflowers to grow and birds and animals to stay in their yard, which soon has the whole suburban street living up to its name.

When Grace Lawson picks up a newly developed set of family photographs, there is a picture that doesn't belong-a photo from at least twenty years ago with a man in it who looks strikingly like her husband, Jack. And though Jack denies it's him, he disappears that night, taking the photo with him. Now, to save her family from a fierce, silent killer who will stop at nothing to get the photo, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past....

Holocaust survivor Meyer Maslow, the head of a human rights foundation, is baffled by the entreaties of Vincent Nolan, a young neo-Nazi who inadvertently transforms the lives of other people in his attempts to change his own life.