Results narrated by "Synthesized" in All categories

Young Jaimie, a high school senior, holes himself up in an isolated cabin on a New Hampshire lake to mourn the tragic death of his girlfriend. He expects to be alone. So who is that swimmer he sees through the mist, out on the lake? What is the wailing he hears as night falls...the cry of the loon? Maybe Jannie had something else in mind when she made him promise they would be together forever.

A young girl leaves Tokyo with her mother in 1979, carrying her pink suitcase to a new home, a new father and sister, on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. Thirty-three years later, her mother's belongings are found packed into boxes, her furniture draped in white sheets. Without so much as a note, a mother leaves these grown sisters to figure out where she has gone. What happens when people lose their way home? Like a little barn cat, they grab onto a second family... and start again.

What do you do when something magical happens...in your own backyard? Linda and Earl are a happy couple. Although married for many years, they have never had children. Still, they are content being together, and watching reruns of "I Love Lucy" keeps them close. That, and a magical garden that never seems to grow what they plant. One day Earl finds a set of infant toes in the loam. He and Linda plant them and watch in amazement as the garden produces an enormous baby.

I rediscovered a bit of myself in Jun-li, and in May-lee Chai's beautifully constructed and perfectly contained world. It's the deftly and subtly rendered intricacies that mark this story, link it to the experience of Asians in America, and linger in the imagination. Julie Shigekuni, author of A Bridge Between Us, In Plain View, and Invisible Gardens When you are eleven years old, is there anything more humiliating, or bound to cause a fight, than shopping with your mother when your body is in full-throttle warp? Yes, there is: picking out the school-required underwear. 

Rollo is tired of humans. Their cities are dirty, and their gizmos are dumb. He knows mankind is wrecking the planet. Rollo's dream is to escape to the Sierra Nevada mountains where he can live alone and be free of other people. There's just one problem with his scheme: Rollo's hungry human stomach. No matter how much food he carries in his backpack, he always runs out. Inevitably, Rollo has to come back to the "messed-up, man-made world" or starve. All this changes when Rollo finds an old, dusty, bear suit in a costume shop.