Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value of solitude, of the arrival of the modern world, and above all, of the moments, great and small, that make us who we are.

A boy enjoys living quietly by himself at The End of the World until Mr. Constantine Shimmer, "Professional Visionary," builds an inn and an amusement park, demanding that tourists come and have "Fun Without End!"

Grandmother wants so badly to be left alone to finish the knitting for her grandchildren that she leaves her tiny home and her big family to journey to the moon and beyond to find peace and quiet to finish her knitting.

"I'm thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It's always there. Always. Jake once said, 'Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can't fake a thought.' And here's what I'm thinking: I don't want to be here." In this novel, a man and his girlfriend are on their way to a secluded farm. When the two take an unexpected detour,...

"Today I am an unemployed writer living as a recluse in the great Northwoods." So begins this North Country journal from the author of THIS SIDE OF A WILDERNESS. In the spring of 2011, Rice resigned from his career with the U.S. Geological Survey, and moved alone into a tent deep in the forests of northern Minnesota. THE UNPEOPLED SEASON is his daily record of the four months in isolation. But it is more than a catalog of events. It is a compassionate...

The life of Robinson Crusoe is a great adventure story from his shipwreck on an island off the coast of South America to his discovery of a fellow human being named Friday, to their escape from cannibals.

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.

This book is based on the true life of Henry Stuart. When the 67-year-old former professor finds out he is dying of tuberculosis, he vows to "learn in solitude how to save myself." He sets off for Fairhope, Alabama, with only the writings of his beloved Tolstoy for company. There, the barefoot poet builds himself a small hut and slowly becomes an inspiration for the rest of the utopian town. When his last few months become his last few years, Henry's...

In Night of the Republic, Alan Shapiro takes us on an unsettling night tour of America's public places-a gas station restroom, shoe store, convention hall, and race track, among others-and in stark Edward Hopper–like imagery reveals the surreal and dreamlike features of these familiar but empty night spaces. Shapiro finds in them not the expected alienation but rather an odd, companionable solitude rising up from the quiet emptiness. In other poems,...

"From internationally bestselling author Benedict Wells, a sweeping, heartbreaking novel of friendship, memory, and the lives we never get to live. At eleven years old, Jules Moreau loses his parents in a tragic accident, and in an instant, his childhood is shattered. Leaving a comfortable home in Munich and holidays in the south of France far behind, he and his siblings, Marty and Liz, are enrolled in a bleak boarding school, where the trio begin...