"On the day John F. Kennedy is inaugurated, Claire--a young wife and mother obsessed with the glamor of Jackie--struggles over the decision of whether to stay in a loveless but secure marriage, or to follow the man she loves and whose baby she may be carrying. Decades earlier in 1919, Vivien Lowe--an obituary writer--is searching for her lover who disappeared in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. By telling the stories of the dead, Vivien...

Mississippi plantation mistress Amanda Satterfield loses her daughter to cholera after her husband refuses to treat her for what he considers to be a "slave disease". Insane with grief, Amanda takes a newborn slave child as her own and names her Granada, much to the outrage of her husband and the amusement of their white neighbors. Troubled by his wife's disturbing mental state and concerned about a mysterious plague sweeping through his slave population,...

Ex-slave Sadie Watson reveals to her granddaughter her experiences while in bondage and the love she had for her husband, Jim, who escaped down the Mississippi with Huck Finn when he learned he was to be sold.

"All his life, Elijah Goldstein has idolized his charismatic Uncle Poxl. Intensely magnetic, cultured and brilliant, Poxl takes Elijah under his wing, introducing him to opera and art and literature. But when Poxl publishes a memoir of how he was forced to leave his home north of Prague at the start of WWII and then avenged the deaths of his parents by flying RAF bombers over Germany during the war, killing thousands of German citizens, Elijah watches...

"Amidst the strange, silent aftermath of World War II, a widow, a poet, and a doctor search for lasting peace and fresh beginnings in this internationally acclaimed, award-winning novel. When Anikka Lachlan's husband, Mac, is killed in a railway accident, she is offered--and accepts--a job at the Railway Institute's library and searches there for some solace in her unexpectedly new life. But in Thirroul, in 1948, she's not the only person trying to...

After their pa falls deathly ill with smallpox, Jimmy and his sister, Hour, travel into Deadwood, South Dakota to seek help. While their pa is in quarantine, the two form unbreakable bonds with the surrogate family that emerges from the tragedy of loss. In a place where life is fragile and families are ripped apart by disease, death, and desperation, a surprising collection of Deadwood's inhabitants surround Jimmy, Hour, and Jane. There, in the most...

"An exquisite new collection of short stories from award-winning author Simon Van Booy. Over the past decade, Simon Van Booy has been listening to people's stories. With these personal accounts as a starting point, he has crafted a powerful collection of short fiction that takes readers into the innermost lives of everyday people. From a family saved from ruin by a mysterious benefactor, to a downtrodden boxer who shows unexpected kindness to a mugger,...

Once the countess of Riverdale, widowed Viola decides to run off with Marcel, the Marquess of Dorchester, but they soon find themselves victims of the age's ideas of respectability.

Returning home after nine years in prison for trying to kill the man who ran down her little boy, Alice Kessler connects with ex-Manhattan prosecutor and recovering alcoholic Colin McGinty, who has inherited his artist grandfather's Washington home, and tries to rebuild her relationship with her surviving son but finds herself struggling with the political corruption of the man she nearly murdered, who has become mayor, is paralyzed, and has taken...

"An epic story, set against the backdrop of World War I, from bestselling author Anita Shreve. When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in. A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but...