Mary McGarry Morris

Light from a Distant Star is a gripping coming-of-age story with a brutal murder at its heart and a heroine as unforgettable as Harper Lee’s "Scout."
It is early summer and Nellie Peck is on the cusp of adolescence—gangly, awkward, full of questions, but keenly observant and wiser than many of the adults in her life. The person she most admires is her father, Benjamin, a man of great integrity. His family’s century old...

"It's the summer of 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont. Marie Fermoyle is a strong but vulnerable divorced woman whose loneliness and ambition for her children make her easy prey for dangerous con man Omar Duvall. Marie's children are Alice, seventeen-involved with a young priest; Norm, sixteen-hotheaded and idealistic; and Benjy, twelve-isolated and misunderstood, and so desperate for his mother's happiness that he hides the deadly truth he knows about Duvall....

Nora Hammond seems to have it all: a loving husband, two children, a job at her husband's family newspaper in a staid New England town, and an important role in her community's charitable activities. But her privileged life threatens to unravel when she learns of her husband's infidelity -- and when the specter of her own past returns with terrifying force. A tautly told tale that accelerates to a shattering conclusion, The Last Secret explores the...

A man returns to his hometown after twenty-five years in prison, in this "richly atmospheric" novel by the acclaimed author of Songs in Ordinary Time (The Washington Post). After decades in prison for a senseless juvenile murder, Gordon Loomis returns home to find his old neighborhood blighted by drugs and poverty. Desperate for work, he takes a job at the same rundown market where he once stocked shelves as a teenager. But while Gordon's situation...

National Book Award Finalist: A man, woman, and child are bound by a desperate need-and a terrible secret-in this suspenseful, "astonishing" novel (Vogue). Aubrey Wallace is the kind of man no one notices. Dotty Johnson is the kind of woman no one can ignore. One afternoon, they both disappear from the small Vermont town where they live. The next day, two hundred miles away, a toddler is kidnapped from her Massachusetts home. For the next five...

Divorcée Marie Fermoyle finds herself is opening her heart to love or harboring a criminal. Omar Duvall is a smooth-talking con man who seduces his way into her family. Barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck and determined to send her daughter to college, Marie is an easy target for someone offering a business opportunity that will make them wealthy. The more Omar promises, the more lies she and her children uncover. Finally, Marie discovers...