The setting is The Yankee Green-an enormous shopping center and entertainment mall located in a suburb of Boston. A self-sufficient, environmentally controlled, electronically secure indoor city, The Yankee Green has tens of thousands of people pass through its five pavilions every day. The children play in the indoor amusement park; young professionals work out in the state-of-the-art health club and jog on the atrium's overhead running track; the...

While working at the mall, organizing a school fundraiser, and trying to prove that her best friend's boyfriend is seeing another girl, high-school student Charlotte's best intentions always seem to backfire.

When a local developer is found dead in a boutique window after someone liberates the reptiles from the Herpetology Hut, E. J. Ferris, after an arrogant homicide detective dismisses her as "only" a mall cop, decides to solve the case herself with the help of her grandpa, a retired CIA operative.

"A lump of coal landed in Sylvie Stark's stocking. Bad enough she's been passed over for promotion, now she learns her new boss is none other than her old love, Chase McCann. No matter. She refuses to let him distract her from her job. Easier said than done. The more office time they share, the harder it is to fight the undeniable attraction, and soon her long-ago wishes are coming true. But their clashes over the fate of the business threaten the...

"The city of Wichita, Kansas, is wracked with panic over the abduction of toddler pageant princess Lindy Bobo. However, the dealers at The Heart of America Antique Mall are too preoccupied by their own neurotic compulsions to take much notice. Postcards, perfume bottles, Barbies, vinyl records, kitschy neon beer signs--they collect and sell it all. Rather than focus on Lindy, this colorful cast of characters is consumed by another drama: the impending...

"For mall cop E.J. Ferris, catching customers who "forgot to pay" is quite a change of pace from her former life in the military. But when a real crisis heats up her climate-controlled domain, her old instincts come back quicker than last year's skinny jeans. On good days, Fernglen Galleria is a tranquil haven of capitalist splendor - but today is not one of those days. Arriving for her morning shift, E.J. spots a sleeping homeless person outside...

Whether by showing his baby pictures to his teacher or smoothing his hair with spit, Andrew's mother constantly embarrasses him while at the mall until he figures out a way to get even.

"This novel is about five suburbanites whose lives intersect in one violent and life-altering night at the local mall."--Jacket.