"Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. That, combined with her unusual appearance (scarred cheek, tendency to wear the same clothes year in, year out), means that Eleanor has become a creature of habit (to say the least) and a bit of a loner. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza,...

Twenty-three stories chronicle the experiences of people who have answered an ad for an artist's retreat, believing that they will find a peaceful refuge, only to find themselves isolated and trapped in a cavernous old theater.

When a new virus surfaces, Lucy and her husband Reed, along with their five closest friends and family, sequester themselves on Reed's family's private island off the coast of Maine where she feels her own grip on reality slipping as tempers flare, strange signs appear and accidents turn deadly.

Three caretakers and a single remaining researcher, who keep the Northern Institute in working order in case research ever resumes, find their work upended by a mysterious object that appears in the snow that soon challenges their every notion of what is normal.

"A couple, Bell and Sigh, move into a remote house in the Irish countryside with their dogs. Both solitary with misanthropic tendencies, they leave the conventional lives stretched out before them to build another ... They make a promise to climb the mountain, but--over the course of the next seven years--it remains unclimbed. We move through the seasons with Bell and Sigh as they come to understand more about the small world around them, and as their...

A collector of objects, Amy Ashton, who believes it is easier to love things than people, finds her solitary existence interrupted when a new family moves in next door with two young boys--one of whom has a collection of his own.

"Emily can't remember the last time she left the house. Or spoke to anyone besides her grandmother, beloved children's author Catriona Robinson. After Catriona's death, Emily is at a complete loss . . . until she gets an unexpected letter from the woman she loved most. Catriona has revealed there might be one last, lost unpublished manuscript in her wildly popular book series. And she's left a secret diary and trail of clues that only Emily can follow....

"Meredith Maggs hasn't left her house in 1,214 days. But she insists she isn't alone... She has her cat Fred. Her friend Sadie visits when she can. There's her online support group, StrengthInNumbers. She has her jigsaws, favorite recipes, her beloved Emily Dickinson, the internet, the Tesco delivery man and her treacherous memories for company. But something's about to change. Whether Meredith likes it or not, the world is coming to her door... Does...

"In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last two left. But when the girl suddenly finds herself alone in an unknown...

"In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease causing sensory damage, nerve loss, and, in most cases, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London--perhaps humanity's last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers--Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper--cannot hide from...