Billie Jo Kelby, whose hands were burned and whose mother died in a kerosene accident in the 1930s Oklahoma Dust Bowl, runs away by train but returns home.

David Lurie, a disgraced professor living on his daughter Lucy’s farm in post-apartheid South Africa, accepts that Lucy will keep the farm and her baby, conceived when she was raped by three men.

Astrid Magnussen, who spent years in Los Angeles foster homes after her poet mother Ingrid was imprisoned for poisoning an ex-lover with oleander, is asked to testify to help free Ingrid.

Pollyanna is hit by a car and loses the use of her legs.

To save their friend T.J.

The book ends with Molly Bloom’s long interior monologue, closing with her remembering her youth and saying yes.

Stuart Little, a mouse born into a human family in New York, sets off to find his friend Margalo, a bird who fled after hearing a cat plotting to eat her.

Ten-year-old Bud Caldwell, an orphan in 1936 Michigan, finds jazz bandleader Herman E.

Drifter Frank Chambers and Cora Papadakis murder Cora’s husband Nick and escape conviction through a lawyer’s trick.

Jimmy Marcus, believing his childhood friend Dave Boyle murdered his daughter Katie, kills Dave by the river.