On a passenger steamer, on the passage from New York to Buenos Aires, there is an extraordinary confrontation: The reigning world chess champion Mirko Czentovic, a rude, insensitive man whose island talent for chess alone and lost in characteristically desolate, occurs at the instigation of other passengers against the mysterious, sensitive Austrian Dr. B. an.--And this wins with playful ease and elegance against the grandmaster. But where does B....

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 deaf elementary school girl, Shoko Nishimiya, upon transferring, meets a boy named Shoya Ishida in her new class. Shoya, who is not deaf, leads the class in bullying Shoko, because she is deaf. As the bullying continues, the class starts to bully Shoya for bullying Shoko. After graduating from elementary school, Shoko and Shoya do not speak to each other... until later, when Shoya, tormented over his past, decides he must see Shoko once more. Shoya...

Willa Parker, 646th and least popular resident of What Cheer, Iowa, is headed east to start a new life. Did she choose this new life? No, because that would be too easy -- and nothing in Willa's life is easy. It's her famous genius mother's idea to send her to ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Pembroke Prep, and it's only the strength of her name that got Willa accepted in the first place. But Willa has no intentions of fitting in at Pembroke. She's...