Misfits Alice and Mattia bond as teens over shared experiences of suffering before mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him far away, a situation that restores their isolation before they meet by chance years later.

Tired of her large, noisy, baboon family, young Leyla runs away and meets a lizard who teaches her to sit alone, be quiet, and do nothing.

Jake and a woman known only as The Girlfriend are taking a long drive to meet his parents at their secluded farm. But when Jake takes a sudden detour, leaving The Girlfriend stranded at a deserted high school, the story transforms into a twisted combination of the darkest unease, psychological frailty, and a look into the limitations of solitude.

There are run-of-the-mill eccentric Californians, and then there's former detective Charlie Waldo. Waldo, a onetime LAPD superstar, now lives in solitude deep in the woods, pathologically committed to owning no more than one hundred possessions. He has left behind his career and his girlfriend, Lorena, to pay self-imposed penance for an awful misstep on an old murder case. But the old ghosts are about to come roaring back. There are plenty of difficult...

"As the eldest child in a large family, Pauline struggles to find her niche, and she longs for peace and quiet -- a charming graphic novel. Pauline lives with her mother, father, little brother and sister, and there's a new baby on the way. Her friends tell her she's lucky to be the eldest -- she's the one who gets new clothes and can stay up late -- but Pauline isn't so sure. In her busy, crowded, noisy house, she never knows what she's supposed...

"Shipwrecked off the coast of Trinidad, Robinson Crusoe - a young man with a thirst for adventure - finds himself washed up on a remote tropical island with nothing but a few tools and animals for company. Castaway for thirty years, he must battle cannibals, mutineers and the elements in a tale so convincing that many readers at the time believed it to be non-fiction. A true page-turner, Robinson Crusoe is one of the most enduring novels in the English...