Karen E Bender Books in Order

Lena, a woman with an intellectual disability, slips away with her young niece Shelley during a California day. Their adventure and her mother's anxious search expose tensions between protection, independence, grief, and the desire to belong.

Edited by Scott Turow with series editor Otto Penzler, this annual anthology selects twenty-one mystery, crime, and suspense stories. Its contributors include C. J. Box, whose Yellowstone story "Pirates of Yellowstone" appears alongside work by established crime writers.

Edited by Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont, this nonfiction collection presents personal essays about reproductive decisions. Contributors explore pregnancy, contraception, abortion, and adoption, emphasizing the individual circumstances and emotions behind a frequently politicized subject.

Grieving and increasingly estranged, Serena and Dan Shine relocate with their children from New York to North Carolina. A troubled synagogue and a watchful neighbor draw them into competing communities, testing their marriage, faith, and sense of belonging.

These stories examine how money shapes relationships and ideas of personal worth. A swindler seeks human connection, a wealthy television producer faces his granddaughter’s illness, and parents displaced by September 11 dispute an apartment refund with a stranger.

This collection explores American lives shaped by violence, prejudice, harassment, and insecurity. Rival young musicians confront a school shooting, an unemployed reporter faces unsettling interviews, and a political candidate encounters forces that challenge her public ideals.

These stories explore relationships between parents and children in familiar settings and imagined dystopias. Unwanted pregnancy, a forgotten child, families separated in orbit, and plans to escape Earth expose struggles over care, freedom, aging, and control.