White Elephant

A turf war between neighbors leads to a small-town crisis in this sharply observed debut novel perfect for fans of Tom Perrotta, Meg Wolitzer, and Celeste Ng. The white elephant looms large over the town of Willard Park: a newly-constructed behemoth of a home, it towers over the quaint houses, including Allison and Ted Millers’ tiny hundred year old home. When owner Nick Cox cuts down the Millers’ precious red maple—in an effort to make his unsightly property more appealing to buyers—their once serene town becomes a battleground. While tensions between Ted and Nick escalate, other dysfunctions abound: Allison finds herself compulsively drawn to the man who threatens to upend her quietly organized life. A lawyer with a pot habit and a serious mid-life crisis skirts his responsibilities. And in a quest for popularity, a teenage girl gets caught up in a not-so-harmless prank. Newcomers and longtime residents alike clash in conflicting pursuits of the American Dream, with trees mysteriously uprooted, fingers pointed, and lines drawn. White Elephant is a tangled-web tale of a community on the verge and its all-too-human inhabitants, who long to connect but can’t seem to find the words. It's a story about opposing sides struggling to find a middle ground—a parable for our times.

A crackling Christmas mystery that combines murder and blackmail at a holiday office party, in a mashup reminiscent of Big Little Lies and Clue. There are only a few rules in a White Elephant gift exchange: 1) Everyone brings a wrapped, unmarked gift. 2) Numbers are drawn to decide who picks first. 3) Gifts don’t need to be pricey—and often they’re downright tacky. But things are a little different in Aspen, Colorado, at the office holiday party for the real estate firm owned by Henry Calhoun and his wife Claudine. Each Christmas sparks a contest among the already competitive staff to see who can buy the most coveted gift: the one that will get stolen the most times, the one that will prove just how many more commissions they earned that year than their colleagues. Designer sunglasses, deluxe spa treatments, front row concert tickets—nothing is off the table. And the staff is even more competitive this year as Zara, the hottest young pop star out of Hollywood, is in town and Claudine is determined to sell her the getaway home of her dreams. Everyone is puzzled when a strange gift shows up in the mix: an antique cowboy statue. At least the sales agents are guessing it’s an antique—otherwise it’d be a terrible present. It’s certainly not very pretty or expensive-looking. In fact, the gift makes sense only to Henry and Claudine. The statue is the weapon Henry used to commit a murder years ago, a murder that helped start his company and a murder that Claudine helped cover up. She swore that no one would ever be able to find the statue or trace it to their crime. So which of their employees did? And why did they place it in the White Elephant? What could possibly be their endgame? Over the course of the evening, Henry and Claudine race to figure out who could have planted the weapon, and just what the night means for the secrets they’ve been harboring. Further adding to the drama is a snowstorm that closes nearby roads—preventing anyone from leaving, as well as keeping law enforcement from the scene. And by the end of this crazy night, the police will most definitely be required…

The White Elephant The Grain of Corn The Timid Little Rabbit Singh Rajah and the Cunning Little Jackals The Kingdom of Mouseland The Alligator and the Jackal The Bold Blackbird The Kid and the Tiger The Brahmin and the Tiger The Bear's Bad Bargain The Man Who Rode a Tiger

Sarah-Jane and her two cousins try to uncover the identity of the mysterious old woman who makes the sock monkeys sold at the local craft store.

Examines churches and chapels built on campuses during the twentieth century to reveal declining role of religion within the mission of the modern American university.

How can a beautiful white elephant be a terrible curse? Run-Run, a young elephant trainer, discovers the answer when he incurs the fury of the prince. The boy's punishment? The gift of an elephant, white as a cloud. From that moment forward, the curse reveals itself. According to tradition, so rare an elephant cannot be allowed to work for its keep. It is poor Run-Run who must feed the beast the hundreds of pounds of food it eats each day, and scrub it clean, and brush its pom-pom of a tail, and wash behind its ears, and, above all, keep it from doing any work. Oh, if only Run-Run could make the magnificent white elephant disappear! Clever as a magician, he does—but the curse has tricks of its own for Run-Run.

If elephants could tell just one story, it would be the story of Mud, a young elephant cow orphaned at birth and blessed with visionary powers. Mud’s life on the African plain is changed forever when she and her adopted family are forced by prolonged drought to linger at one of the few remaining watering holes. The herd is ambushed there by ivory poachers, who kill almost all the cows and their young. The traumatized survivors, including a pregnant Mud, set out in search of the talismanic white bone that can lead them to a paradise free from human savagery.

A man and his girlfriend wait for a train to Madrid at station in rural Spain, the almost casual nature of their conversation evading the true emotional depth of what’s happening between the two of them. “Hills Like White Elephants” is considered to be among Ernest Hemingway’s best short fiction, showcasing the author’s powerful ability to strip writing down to its bare bones and allow the reader’s imagination to fill in the subtext. One of America’s foremost journalists and authors, Ernest Hemingway as also a master of the short story genre, penning more than fifty short stories during his career, many of which featured one of his most popular prose characters, Nick Adams. The most popular of Hemingway’s short stories include “Hills Like White Elephants,” “Indian Camp,” “The Big Two-Hearted River,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.