Leaving Home brings together three previously published short pieces, each dealing with a variation on the theme of leaving home. The first, "Weights and measures," deals with the tragic loss of a child; the second is a non-fiction letter Picoult wrote to her eldest son as he left for college; and "Ritz" tells the story of a mother who takes the vacation all mothers need sometime.

It's summer and the three Barker brothers, Simon, Henry, and Jack just moved from Illinois to Arizona. Their parents have warned them repeatedly not to explore Superstition Mountain, which is near their home. But when their cat Josie goes missing, they see no other choice. There's something unusually creepy about the mountain and after the boys find three human skulls, they grow determined to uncover the mystery.

Twenty original tales by today's most elite mystery writers who explore the lifestyles and curious deaths of the rich and infamous.

"In the murky shadows of Boston's Chinatown lies a severed hand. On the tenement rooftop above is the corpse belonging to that hand, a red-haired woman dressed in black, her head nearly decapitated. Two strands of silver hair--not human--cling to her body. They are homicide cop Jane Rizzoli's only clues, but they're enough for her and medical examiner Maura Isles to make the startling discovery: that this violent death had a chilling prequel. ......

When their house mysteriously explodes and they are sent to live with an unknown relative named Grandma X, twelve-year-old twins Jaide and Jack Shield learn that they are troubletwisters, young Wardens just coming into their powers, who must protect humanity from The Evil trying to break into Earth's dimension.

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.

Seattle, 1933. Single mother Vera Ray kisses her three-year-old son, Daniel, good night and departs to work the night-shift at a local hotel. She emerges to discover that a May-Day snow has blanketed the city, and that her son has disappeared. Seattle, 2010. Seattle Herald reporter Claire Aldridge, assigned to cover the May 1 'blackberry winter' storm and its twin, learns of the unsolved abduction and vows to unearth the truth. Are she and Vera linked...

In the mid-19th century, Leonie Monroe Russell works alongside her husband, Junius, an oysterman in Shoalwater Bay in the Pacific Northwest. At night she continues her father's lifelong obsession, collecting artifacts and studying the native culture that once thrived in the Washington Territory. On her thirty-seventh birthday, Leonie discovers a mummy protruding from the riverbank bordering her property, a mummy that by all evidence shouldn't exist....

The enemy of your enemy is…your lover? A peasant farm girl has no place consorting with feuding lords, yet that's exactly what Jocelyn Cutler sets out to do. Now Jocelyn finds herself trapped between the tyrannical Lord Kerr, and the dangerous rogue, Sir Trent Wescott. When her younger brother is sentenced to death for rebelling against Lord Kerr, Jocelyn in desperation appeals to his rival, Sir Trent Wescott. Rumors mark Trent a highwayman, a murderer,...

Sam Hopkins fights back when he sees bullies harrassing Jennifer, an eccentric schoolmate who, he learns, is having terrifying hallucinations about demons, death, and destruction which may just come true unless Sam can stop them.