Trying to maintain her inner light in an increasingly dark world, young Hong Kong-based scientist Lily Barnes, as the human race dwindles due to a "depression plague," comes across something that could lead to happiness and journeys through time and space to find out.

After her fiancé's brother convinces him to break up with her before the wedding, Athena Greydon moves into a ten-foot-wide Spite House between the two and engages in some well-deserved payback.

At the center of winter, in Motley, Minnesota, Arnold Schiller gives in to the oppressive season that reigns outside and also to his own inner demons — he commits suicide, leaving a devastated family in his wake.

Claire Schiller, wife and mother, takes shelter from the emotional storm with her husband's parents but must ultimately emerge from her grief and help her two young children to recover. Esau, her oldest, is haunted by the same

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Satsuki Takamoto is an invisible otaku teenager living in Hiroshima. The only thing she has going for her is the upcoming birth of her sister. No longer will she be alone. But when Satsuki loses her one chance at happiness, she spirals into a deep depression, shutting out everyone and everything by locking herself inside her bedroom-- for good. Her sadness, however, pales in comparison to her uncontrollable anger. It spreads like a nuclear fire, ambivalent...