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A tender and provocative debut novel about a mixed-race British woman who makes the shocking discovery in the days leading up to her wedding that her fiancé's family may have enslaved her ancestors“Simultaneously sweet and sobering, this is one you will not want to miss.”—Onyi Nwabineli, author of Someday, MaybeDominoes opens in London, twenty-nine days before a young couple's wedding. Layla is a mixed-race woman—with a Black, Jamaican mother, and a white father she's never met—and Andy is a white man of Scottish descent. When they first meet at a party, they can't believe how instant their chemistry is, and how quickly their relationship unfolds. Funnily enough, they even share a last name: McKinnon.Layla's best friend, Sera, isn't so sure about Andy, or the fact that her best friend is engaged a white man. As the wedding approaches, Sera prompts her friend to research her heritage more, leading Layla to make a shocking discovery: It's extremely likely that Andy's ancestors enslaved Layla's in Jamaica, and that the money from that enslavement helped build his family's wealth.What seemed like a fairy-tale romance is suddenly derailed as Layla begins to uncover parts of her history and identity that she never imagined—or had simply learned to ignore. The process takes her to Jamaica for the first time, where she uncovers truths about her family's history that will change the way she thinks about herself and her future. As the clock ticks down to her wedding, Layla must make a decision: commit to the man she loves or expose a shameful history that has gone unspoken for far too long.

A woman is pulled into a love affair with a radical activist, unknowingly echoing her family's dangerous past and risking the foundations of her future in this electrifying novel.“An exhilarating novel of star-crossed romances and radical politics, with writing so evocative I swear I could smell the tear gas.”—Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix and WellnessMinnow has always tried to lead the life her single father modeled—private, quiet, hardworking, apolitical. So she is rocked when an instinctive decision to help a student makes her the notorious public face of a scandal in the small town where she teaches. As tensions rise, death threats follow, and an overwhelmed Minnow flees to a teaching position in Paris. There, she falls into an exhilarating and all-consuming relationship with Charles, a young Frenchman whose activism has placed him at odds with his powerful family. As Minnow is pulled in to the daring protest Charles and his friends are planning, she unknowingly almost repeats a secret tragedy from her family's past. Her father wasn't always the restrained, conservative man he appears today. There are things he has taken great pains to conceal from his family and from the world.In 1968, Keen is avoiding the Vietnam draft by pursuing a PhD at Harvard. He lives his life in the basement chemistry lab, studiously ignoring the news. But when he unexpectedly falls in love with Olya, a fiery community organizer, he is consumed by her world and loses sight of his own. Learning that his deferment has ended and he's been drafted, Keen agrees to participate in the latest action that Olya is leading—one with more dangerous and far-reaching consequences than he could have imagined.Minnow's and Keen's intertwining stories take us through the turmoil of the late sixties student movements and into the chaos of the modern world. Exploding with suspense, heart, and intelligence, There's Going to Be Trouble is a story about revolution, legacy, passionate love, and how we live with the consequences of our darkest secrets.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • A comedy writer thinks she's sworn off love, until a dreamy pop star flips the script on all her assumptions—a “smart, sophisticated, and fun” (Oprah Daily) novel from the author of Eligible, Rodham, and Prep. “Full of dazzling banter and sizzling chemistry.”—People “If you ever wanted a backstage pass to Saturday Night Live, this is the book for you.”—Zibby Owens, Good Morning AmericaA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, BuzzFeed, PopSugar, Harper's Bazaar, Real Simple, She Reads, New York PostSally Milz is a sketch writer for The Night Owls, a late-night live comedy show that airs every Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she's long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life.But when Sally's friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actress who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who've gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called The Danny Horst Rule, poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman.Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week's show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder if there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn't a romantic comedy—it's real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her... right?With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Curtis Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.

An “extraordinary, ambitious” (The Times UK) novel that masterfully explores what constitutes a meaningful life in a violent world—from the award-winning author of Open CityNew York Times Book Review Editors'Choice • “Cole's mind is so agile that it's easy to follow him anywhere.”—The New YorkerWINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Vulture, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, Library JournalLife is hopeless but it is not serious. We have to have danced while we could and, later, to have danced again in the telling.A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing metropolis.We're invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus. He is a reader, a listener, a traveler, drawn to many different kinds of stories: stories from history and epic; stories of friends, family, and strangers; stories found in books and films. Together these stories make up his days. In aggregate these days comprise a life.Tremor is a startling work of realism and invention that engages brilliantly with literature, music, race, and history as it examines the passage of time and how we mark it. It is a reckoning with human survival amidst “history's own brutality, which refuses symmetries and seldom consoles,” but it is also a testament to the possibility of joy. As he did in his magnificent debut Open City, Teju Cole once again offers narration with all its senses alert, a surprising and deeply essential work from a beacon of contemporary literature.

After a humiliating scandal, a young writer flees to the West Coast, where she is drawn into the morally ambiguous orbit of a charismatic filmmaker and the teenage girls who are her next subjects.FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • ONE OF BUZZFEED'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “A blistering story about the costs of creating art.”—O: The Oprah MagazineNot too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as “a fierce new voice” and “queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea.” But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming, and flees to Los Angeles to escape—and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline's next semidocumentary movie, which follows the girls'clandestine activity: a Fight Club inspired by the violent classic. As Cass is drawn into the film's orbit, she is awed by Caroline's ambition and confidence. But over time, she becomes troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art—especially as the consequences become increasingly disturbing. With her past proving hard to shake and her future one she's no longer sure she wants, Cass is forced to reckon with her own ambitions and confront what she has come to believe about the steep price of success.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks.New York Times Book Review Editors'Choice • “Mitchell's rich imaginative stews bubble with history and drama, and this time the flavor is a blend of Carnaby Street and Chateau Marmont.”—The Washington Post “A sheer pleasure to read... Mitchell's prose is suppler and richer than ever... Making your way through this novel feels like riding a high-end convertible down Hollywood Boulevard.”—Slate NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • USA Today • The Guardian • The Independent • Kirkus Reviews • Men's Health • PopMattersUtopia Avenue is the strangest British band you've never heard of. Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss and guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, Utopia Avenue embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on Top of the Pops, the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon, and San Francisco during the autumn of'68.David Mitchell's kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue's turbulent life and times; of fame's Faustian pact and stardom's wobbly ladder; of the families we choose and the ones we don't; of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper; of music, madness, and idealism. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us?

The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York.LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “A dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon... propelled by Kaufman's deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull's-eye wit.'—The Washington Post“An astonishing creation... riotously funny... an exceptionally good [book].”—The New York Times Book Review • “Kaufman is a master of language... a sight to behold.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND MEN'S HEALTH B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he's convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius. All that's left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to re-create the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of “likes” and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d'être. A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS'CHOICE • Set in Senegal, this modern-day Oliver Twist is a meditation on the power of love and the strength that can emerge when we have no other choice but to survive.“I loved this book because it is a story about generations of parents and children saving one another with a love so powerful that it transcends distance, time, and reason.”—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward Six-year-old Ibrahimah loves snatching pastries from his mother's kitchen, harvesting string beans with his father, and searching for sea glass with his sisters. But when he is approached in his rural village one day by Marabout Ahmed, a seemingly kind stranger and highly regarded teacher, the tides of his life turn forever. Ibrahimah is sent to the capital city of Dakar to join his cousin Étienne in studying the Koran under Marabout Ahmed for a year, but instead of the days of learning that Ibrahimah's parents imagine, the young boys, called Talibé, are forced to beg in the streets in order to line their teacher's pockets.To make it back home, Étienne and Ibrahimah must help each other survive both the dangers posed by their Marabout, and the darker sides of Dakar: threats of black-market organ traders, rival packs of Talibé, and mounting student protest on the streets.Drawn from real incidents and transporting readers between rural and urban Senegal, No Heaven for Good Boys is a tale of hope, resilience, and the affirming power of love.

A shocking crime triggers a media firestorm for a controversial talk show host in this provocative novel—a story of redemption, a nostalgic portrait of New York City, and a searing indictment of our culture of spectacle.One of the The New York Times's “10 Books to Watch for in April” • “Jennifer duBois is a brilliant writer.”—Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery—both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie's past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface.In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man's downfall through the perspectives of two spectators—Cel, Mattie's skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past. With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention—and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.Praise for The SpectatorsWith The Spectators, duBois is staking out larger literary territory. The new novel is full of small pleasures that accumulate as proof that this writer knows her stuff.... DuBois's mastery of... details earns our trust as she expands The Spectators into a billowing meditation on the responsibility of public figures to contribute something worthwhile to the culture. Although her book takes place decades ago, duBois's message has a contemporary urgency as well.”—The New York Times“Heart-rending and visceral... DuBois's language is dexterous, and her pacing impressive.... The Spectators is a treatise on the media's power and a finely wrought example of intimate pain.”—USA Today

“[Paula] Saunders skillfully illuminates how time heals certain wounds while deepening others.... A mediation of the violence of American ambition.”—The New York Times Book ReviewNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE“A deeply involving portrait of the American postwar family” (Jennifer Egan) about sibling rivalry, dark secrets, and a young girl's struggle with freedom and artistic desire In the years after World War II, the bleak yet beautiful plains of South Dakota still embody all the contradictions—the ruggedness and the promise—of the old frontier. This is a place where you can eat strawberries from wild vines, where lightning reveals a boundless horizon, where descendants of white settlers and native Indians continue to collide, and where, for most, there are limited options. René shares a home, a family, and a passion for dance with her older brother, Leon. Yet for all they have in common, their lives are on remarkably different paths. In contrast to René, a born spitfire, Leon is a gentle soul. The only boy in their ballet class, Leon silently endures often brutal teasing. Meanwhile, René excels at everything she touches, basking in the delighted gaze of their father, whom Leon seems to disappoint no matter how hard he tries. As the years pass, René and Leon's parents fight with increasing frequency—and ferocity. Their father—a cattle broker—spends more time on the road, his sporadic homecomings both yearned for and dreaded by the children. And as René and Leon grow up, they grow apart. They grasp whatever they can to stay afloat—a word of praise, a grandmother's outstretched hand, the seductive attention of a stranger—as René works to save herself, crossing the border into a larger, more hopeful world, while Leon embarks on a path of despair and self-destruction. Tender, searing, and unforgettable, The Distance Home is a profoundly American story spanning decades—a tale of haves and have-nots, of how our ideas of winning and losing, success and failure, lead us inevitably into various problems with empathy and caring for one another. It's a portrait of beauty and brutality in which the author's compassionate narration allows us to sympathize, in turn, with everyone involved.“A riveting family saga for the ages... one of the best books I've read in years.”—Mary Karr “Saunders'debut is an exquisite, searing portrait of family and of people coping with whatever life throws at them while trying to keep close to one another.”—Booklist (starred review)

A missing woman leads her twin sister on a twisted scavenger hunt in this clever debut novel with eccentric, dysfunctional characters who will keep you guessing until the end—for readers of Luckiest Girl Alive and The Wife Between Us. Ava has her reasons for running away to Paris. But when she receives the shocking news that her twin sister, Zelda, is dead, she is forced to return home to her family's failing vineyard in upstate New York. Knowing Zelda's penchant for tricks and deception, Ava is not surprised when she receives her twin's cryptic message from beyond the grave. Following her sister's trail of clues, Ava immerses herself in Zelda's drama and her outlandish circle of friends and lovers, and soon finds herself confronted with dark family legacies and twisted relationships. Is Zelda trying to punish Ava for leaving? Or is she simply trying to write her own ending? Caite Dolan-Leach's debut thriller is a literary scavenger hunt for secrets hidden everywhere from wine country to social media, and buried at the dysfunctional heart of one utterly unforgettable family. Praise for Dead Letters “Dolan-Leach writes like Paula Hawkins by way of Curtis Sittenfeld.”—Amy Gentry, author of Good as Gone “A sharp, wrenching tale of the true love only twins know... Dolan-Leach nimbly entwines the clever mystery of Agatha Christie, the wit of Dorothy Parker, and the inebriated Gothic of Eugene O'Neill.”—Kirkus Reviews “A smart, dazzling mystery... Dolan-Leach revels in toying with both Ava and her audience... and the result is captivating.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Draws you in like you are part of the story itself, living and breathing alongside the compelling characters as they uncover the dark secrets of their complicated family.”—Wendy Walker, author of All Is Not Forgotten “Push-pull tension... This book is wine-soaked yet lucid, comforting and frightening, asking the big questions about intimacy and loyalty.”—Caroline Kepnes, author of You

Before the Corleones, before the Lannisters, there were the Borgias. One of history's notorious families comes to life in a captivating novel from the author of The Birth of Venus.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY COSMOPOLITAN (UK) AND THE TIMES (UK) “In the end, what's a historical novelist's obligation to the dead? Accuracy? Empathy? Justice? Or is it only to make them live again? Dunant pays these debts with a passion that makes me want to go straight out and read all her other books.”—Diana Gabaldon, The Washington Post Bestselling novelist Sarah Dunant has long been drawn to the high drama of Renaissance Italy: power, passion, beauty, brutality, and the ties of blood. With In the Name of the Family, she offers a thrilling exploration of the House of Borgia's final years, in the company of a young diplomat named Niccolò Machiavelli. It is 1502 and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, aged twenty-two—already three times married and a pawn in her father's plans—is discovering her own power. And then there is his son Cesare Borgia, brilliant, ruthless, and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with Machiavelli that gives the Florentine diplomat a master class in the dark arts of power and politics. What Machiavelli learns will go on to inform his great work of modern politics, The Prince. But while the pope rails against old age and his son's increasingly erratic behavior, it is Lucrezia who must navigate the treacherous court of Urbino, her new home, and another challenging marriage to create her own place in history. Sarah Dunant again employs her remarkable gifts as a storyteller to bring to life the passionate men and women of the Borgia family, as well as the ever-compelling figure of Machiavelli, through whom the reader will experience one of the most fascinating—and doomed—dynasties of all time. “Enthralling... combines flawless historical scholarship with beguiling storytelling.”—The Guardian“Renaissance-rich details fill out the humanity of the Borgias, rendering them into the kind of relatable figures whom we would hope to discover behind the cold brilliance of The Prince.”—NPR “[Dunant] has an enviable command of this complex political scene, with its shifting alliances and subtle betrayals.... [She] has a special gift for attending to her female characters.”—The New York Times

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A wheeling meditation on the wired life, on privacy, on what being human in the age of binary code might mean” (The New York Times), from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The NetanyahusNAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VULTURE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND THE WALL STREET JOURNAL “Shatteringly powerful... I cannot think of anything by anyone in [Cohen's] generation that is so frighteningly relevant and composed with such continuous eloquence. There are moments in it that seem to transcend our impasse.”—Harold BloomThe enigmatic billionaire founder of Tetration, the world's most powerful tech company, hires a failed novelist, Josh Cohen, to ghostwrite his memoirs. The mogul, known as Principal, brings Josh behind the digital veil, tracing the rise of Tetration, which started in the earliest days of the Internet by revolutionizing the search engine before venturing into smartphones, computers, and the surveillance of American citizens. Principal takes Josh on a mind-bending world tour from Palo Alto to Dubai and beyond, initiating him into the secret pretext of the autobiography project and the life-or-death stakes that surround its publication. Insider tech exposé, leaked memoir-in-progress, international thriller, family drama, sex comedy, and biblical allegory, Book of Numbers renders the full range of modern experience both online and off. Embodying the Internet in its language, it finds the humanity underlying the virtual. Featuring one of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction, Book of Numbers is an epic of the digital age, a triumph of a new generation of writers, and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do. Praise for Book of Numbers“The Great American Internet Novel is here.... Book of Numbers is a fascinating look at the dark heart of the Web.... A page-turner about life under the veil of digital surveillance... one of the best novels ever written about the Internet.”—Rolling Stone “A startlingly talented novelist.”—The Wall Street Journal“Remarkable... dazzling... Cohen's literary gifts... suggest that something is possible, that something still might be done to safeguard whatever it is that makes us human.”—Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A daring story of adventure, friendship, and love in the shadow of WWII” (Harper's Bazaar) from the renowned author of Ape House and Water for Elephants “Gripping, compelling... Gruen's characters are vividly drawn and her scenes are perfectly paced.”—The Boston Globe In January 1945, when Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a retired army colonel who is ashamed of his son's inability to serve, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father's favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed—by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster. Leaving her sheltered world behind, Maddie reluctantly follows Ellis and his best friend, Hank, to a remote village in the Scottish Highlands. Gradually, the friendships Maddie forms with the townspeople open her up to a larger world than she knew existed. Maddie begins to see that nothing is as it first appears, and as she embraces a fuller sense of who she might be, she becomes aware not only of darker forces around her but of life's surprising possibilities.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A fascinating portrait of life as a Chinese American woman in the 1930s and'40s.”—The New York Times Book Review “Superb... This emotional, informative and brilliant page-turner resonates with resilience and humanity.”—The Washington Post (One of the Best Books of the Year) San Francisco, 1938: A world's fair is preparing to open on Treasure Island, a war is brewing overseas, and the city is alive with possibilities. Talented Grace, traditional Helen, and defiant Ruby, three young women from very different backgrounds, meet by chance at the exclusive and glamorous Forbidden City nightclub. The girls become fast friends, relying on one another through unexpected challenges and shifting fortunes. When their dark secrets are exposed and the invisible thread of fate binds them even tighter, they find the strength and resilience to reach for their dreams. But after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, paranoia and suspicion threaten to destroy their lives, and a shocking act of betrayal changes everything. Praise for China Dolls “A sweeping, turbulent tale of passion, friendship, good fortune, bad fortune, perfidy and the hope of reconciliation.”—Los Angeles Times “Bravo! Here's a roaring standing ovation for this heartwarming journey into the glittering golden age of Chinese nightclubs.”—Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet “Lisa See masterfully creates unforgettable characters that linger in your memory long after you close the pages.”—Bookreporter “Stellar... The depth of See's characters and her winning prose make this book a wonderful journey through love and loss.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

BONUS: This edition contains an Unfinished Desires discussion guide. From Gail Godwin, three-time National Book Award finalist and acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Evensong and The Finishing School, comes a sweeping new novel of friendship, loyalty, rivalries, redemption, and memory. It is the fall of 1951 at Mount St. Gabriel's, an all-girls school tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina. Tildy Stratton, the undisputed queen bee of her class, befriends Chloe Starnes, a new student recently orphaned by the untimely and mysterious death of her mother. Their friendship fills a void for both girls but also sets in motion a chain of events that will profoundly affect the course of many lives, including the girls'young teacher and the school's matriarch, Mother Suzanne Ravenel. Fifty years on, the headmistress relives one pivotal night, trying to reconcile past and present, reaching back even further to her own senior year at the school, where the roots of a tragedy are buried. In Unfinished Desires, a beloved author delivers a gorgeous new novel in which thwarted desires are passed on for generations–and captures the rare moment when a soul breaks free.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNAMED ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR BY Slate • Daily Candy • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian (U.K.)“Novelists get called master storytellers all the time, but Sittenfeld really is one.... What might be most strikingly excellent about Sisterland is the way Sittenfeld depicts domesticity and motherhood.”—Maggie Shipstead, The Washington Post “Psychologically vivid... Sisterland is a testament to [Curtis Sittenfeld's] growing depth and assurance as a writer.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “[Sittenfeld's] gifts are in full effect with this novel, and she uses them to create a genuinely engrossing sense of uncertainty and suspense.”—Sloane Crosley, NPR's All Things ConsideredCurtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife and Prep, returns with a mesmerizing novel of family and identity, loyalty and deception, and the delicate line between truth and belief. From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people's secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them. Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she's long tried to deny. Funny, haunting, and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves. With her deep empathy, keen wisdom, and unerring talent for finding the extraordinary moments in our everyday lives, Curtis Sittenfeld is one of the most exceptional voices in literary fiction today.Praise for Sisterland “What's most captivating about Sisterland is the intimate, intense portrayal of identical twin sisters.... [The novel] unfolds like a good prophecy—inevitable and shocking.”—San Francisco Chronicle“The accomplished Sittenfeld... is as skillful as ever at developing an intriguing premise and likable characters.... Sittenfeld's affectionate take on sibling rivalry is spot-on.”—People “The power of [Sittenfeld's] writing and the force of her vision challenge the notion that great fiction must be hard to read. She is a master of dramatic irony, creating fully realized social worlds before laying waste to her heroines'understanding of them.... Her prose [is] a rich delight.”—The Boston Globe “Wise and often wickedly entertaining... Readers who have siblings—especially women with sisters—will likely come away feeling as if the author really is psychic.”—USA Today

Twenty-five years in the making, a first novel that has already been compared to The Sun Also Rises and The Last Tycoon, Cheat and Charmer is certain to be one of the most admired literary debuts of the season. Written by Pulitzer Prize—winning biographer Elizabeth Frank, Cheat and Charmer is a masterful and richly detailed work of fiction–a Tolstoyan novel of marriage, sisterhood, art, politics, compromise, and betrayal set in Hollywood, New York, Paris, and London of the 1950s.Dinah Lasker grew up in the shadow of her sister, Veevi, a stunning beauty and emerging star who enchanted both the Hollywood set and its imported New York literati. But Veevi's home was also a hotbed of political activity, owing to her marriage to Stefan Ventura, a Bulgarian filmmaker and high-profile Communist. At the end of the 1930s, when things go badly for him in Hollywood, Ventura and Veevi flee to Paris and into the lengthening shadows of Hitler and fascism.Cut to 1951, when Dinah is subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which threatens to ruin her husband, Jake, and derail his successful career as a Hollywood writer, producer, and director unless she cooperates. Can Dinah live with herself if she names Veevi–whom she both loves and loathes–in order to save her husband and preserve her idyllic married life? The choices Dinah makes set in motion an unforgettable chain of events. Like Anna Karenina, Dinah must face the consequences of her choices and her needs.Written with elegance and style, Cheat and Charmer grippingly dramatizes the interior lives of Dinah, Veevi, Jake, and their social circle. Spanning decades and following complex characters on their impassioned pursuits through America and Europe, this is a novel of grand scope, about love and deception, idealism and accommodation, the lies we live, and the truths we cannot avoid.

Anna Quindlen, the #1 New York Times bestselling author, has an unmatched eye for the essential relationships in our lives—the powerful bonds between mothers and children, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers. This eBook bundle pairs two of Quindlen's most acclaimed novels—Rise and Shine and Every Last One. With her mesmerizing prose and deeply felt storytelling, Anna Quindlen “captures both the beauty and the breathtaking fragility of family life” (People). EVERY LAST ONE “Spellbinding.”—The New York Times Book Review Mary Beth Latham has built her life around her family, around caring for her three teenage children and preserving the rituals of their daily life. When one of her sons becomes depressed, Mary Beth focuses on him, only to be blindsided by a shocking act of violence. What happens afterward is a testament to the power of a woman's love and determination, and to the invisible lines of hope and healing that connect one human being to another. RISE AND SHINE “Superb... The book seduces.”—Chicago Tribune It's an otherwise ordinary Monday when Meghan Fitzmaurice's perfect life hits a wall. The host of Rise and Shine, the country's highest-rated morning television talk show, Meghan cuts to a commercial break—but not before she does something that, in an instant, marks the end of an era, not only for Meghan, who is unaccustomed to dealing with adversity, but also for her younger sister, Bridget. A social worker in the Bronx, Bridget has always looked up to Meghan while living in her long shadow. What follows is a story about how the Fitzmaurice sisters adapt, survive, and manage to bring the whole teeming city of New York to heel by dint of their smart mouths, quick wits, and powerful connection that even the worst tragedy cannot shatter. More praise for Anna Quindlen “Packs an emotional punch... Quindlen succeeds at conveying the transience of everyday worries and the never-ending boundaries of a mother's love.”—The Washington Post, on Every Last One “[Quindlen] welcomes us into her fictional world with open arms.... We fall into this novel as if it were an easy chair, comforted by a writer who knows her craft.”—Los Angeles Times, on Every Last One “Anna Quindlen's writing is like knitting: prose that wraps the reader in the warmth and familiarity of domestic life.... Then, as in her novels Black and Blue and One True Thing, Quindlen starts to pull at the world she has knitted, and lets it unravel across the pages.”—The Seattle Times, on Every Last One “Stands on its own as a writerly achievement, [Quindlen's] best so far... Sentence by sentence Ms. Quindlen is the soul of brevity.”—The New York Times, on Rise and Shine “The dialogue sparkles, the insights are right on... and the characters are appealing.... [It] has humor, heartbreak and drama.... [A] pleasure read.”—The Charlotte Observer, on Rise and Shine “New friends await readers... characters you will delight in getting to know and miss once you've finished the book.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on Rise and Shine

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn this superb new novel by the beloved author of Open House, Home Safe, and The Last Time I Saw You, four women venture into their pasts in order to shape their futures, fates, and fortunes. Cecilia Ross is a motivational speaker who encourages others to change their lives for the better. Why can't she take her own advice? Still reeling from the death of her best friend, and freshly aware of the need to live more fully now, Cece realizes that she has to make a move—all the portentous signs seem to point in that direction. She downsizes her life, sells her suburban Minnesota home and lets go of many of her possessions. She moves into a beautiful old house in Saint Paul, complete with a garden, chef's kitchen, and three housemates: Lise, the home's owner and a divorced mother at odds with her twenty-year-old daughter; Joni, a top-notch sous chef at a first-rate restaurant with a grade A jerk of a boss; and Renie, the youngest and most mercurial of the group, who is trying to rectify a teenage mistake. These women embark on a journey together in an attempt to connect with parts of themselves long denied. For Cece, that means finding Dennis Halsinger. Despite being “the one who got away,” Dennis has never been far from Cece's thoughts. In this beautifully written novel, leaving home brings revelations, reunions, and unexpected turns that affirm the inner truths of women's lives. “Maybe Freud didn't know the answer to what women want, but Elizabeth Berg certainly does,” said USA Today. Elizabeth Berg has crafted a novel rich in understanding of women's longings, loves, and abiding friendships, which weave together into a tapestry of fortunes that connects us all.Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader's Circle for author chats and more.Praise for Tapestry of Fortunes “A testament to the power of female friendships... Berg strips her writing down to what is essential and takes an unflinching look at lifelong regrets. The characters... will settle in your heart.”—Booklist (starred review) “Elizabeth Berg has carved out a place as one of America's most beloved chroniclers of female friendship.”—Chicago Tribune “Luminous... As always, her writing is spare and lyrical, filled with... elegant description and profound insight.”—Library Journal “An incredibly uplifting and life-affirming story... Berg explores the themes of change and personal reinvention with exquisite phrasing, sharply-focused attention to detail, and boundless joy and heart.”—BookreporterPraise for Elizabeth Berg “Truth rings forth clearly from every page. [Elizabeth] Berg captures the way women think—and especially the way they talk to other women—as well as any writer I can think of.”—The Charlotte Observer, about Talk Before Sleep “Elizabeth Berg's gift as a storyteller lies most powerfully in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday.”—The Boston Globe “Berg's writing is to literature what Chopin's études are to music—measured, delicate, and impossible to walk away from until their completion. [Grade:] A+.”—Entertainment Weekly

One of the most exceptional voices in literary fiction today, Curtis Sittenfeld is renowned for her rich prose, irresistible storytelling, and fascinating characters who struggle with the rules of gender, race, and privilege. Now, in this convenient eBook bundle, here are her blockbuster bestselling and critically acclaimed novels, Prep and American Wife. PREP Named One of the Top Ten Books of the Year by The New York Times Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when she leaves her family behind in Indiana to attend the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. Over the next four years, her experiences at Ault—complicated relationships with teachers, intense friendships with other girls, an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush—coalesce into a singular portrait of the universal pains and thrills of adolescence. AMERICAN WIFE Named One of the Top Ten Books of the Year by Time, People, and Entertainment Weekly A bookish only child born in the 1940s and raised in a small Wisconsin town, Alice Lindgren has no idea that she will one day end up in the White House, married to the president. So when the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family sweeps her off her feet, she is surprised to find herself admitted into a world of privilege. As he unexpectedly becomes governor and then president, she discovers that she is married to a man she fundamentally disagrees with yet deeply loves. And upon the advent of her husband's second term, Alice must finally face questions nearly impossible to answer. Praise for Curtis Sittenfeld “One of the most tender and accurate portraits of adolescence in recent memory.”—San Francisco Chronicle, on Prep “A tart and complex tale of social class, race, and gender politics.”—The Boston Globe, on Prep “[Sittenfeld's] dialogue captures teenage humor brilliantly, and her characters show remarkable depth.”—Chicago Tribune, on Prep “An intelligent, bighearted novel about a controversial political dynasty.”—Entertainment Weekly, on American Wife “Smart and sophisticated... Sittenfeld has an astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers'heads.”—The Washington Post, on American Wife “An intimate and daring story... Alice is a woman of considerable intellect, compassion and character.” —USA Today, on American Wife

BONUS: This edition contains a reader's guide.When fifteen-year-old Lydia Pasternak's popular older brother Danny disappears late one summer night, she unwillingly becomes a celebrity in her community and an afterthought to her bereaved parents. In Danny's absence, Lydia blossoms from a bookish outcast to the center of attention, all while grappling with her grudging grief for a brother she never particularly liked. When an intriguing private investigator enters the picture, Lydia finds herself drawn into the search for clues to Danny's whereabouts. The shocking end to that trail of clues—an end that Lydia never prepares for—will haunt her for the rest of her life. An authentic and at times surprisingly funny dissection of public and private grief, The Local News is an accomplished, affecting debut.

“Clever and accomplished... A little Irving, a little Doctorow, a little Winston Groom—[The Irresistible Henry House] is storytelling for story lovers; realism with an enchanting touch of fairy tale.”—Newsday“Sweeps along with such page-turning vitality that [Henry's] story is indeed irresistible. [Grade:] A”—Entertainment WeeklyIn this captivating novel, bestselling author Lisa Grunwald gives us the sweeping tale of an irresistible hero and the many women who love him. In the middle of the twentieth century, in a home economics program at a prominent university, orphaned babies are being used to teach mothering skills to young women. For Henry House, raised in these unlikely circumstances, finding real love and learning to trust will prove to be the work of a lifetime. From his earliest days as a “practice baby” through his adult adventures in 1960s New York City, Disney's Burbank studios, and the delirious world of the Beatles'London, Henry remains handsome, charming, universally adored—but unable to return the affections of the many women who try to lay claim to his heart. It is not until Henry comes face-to-face with the truths of his past that he finds a chance for real love.Praise for The Irresistible Henry House“Like T. S. Garp, Forrest Gump or Benjamin Button, Henry House, the hero of Grunwald's imaginative take on a little-known aspect of American academic life, has an unusual upbringing. Grunwald nails the era just as she ingeniously uses Henry and the women in his life to illuminate the heady rush of sexual freedom (and confusion) that signifi ed mid-century life.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review, Pick of the Week) “A smart, enjoyable read that will leave you with a pleasing thought: Even for guys who just aren't that into anyone, there's hope.”—People “Truly extraordinary... Get ready for a story, an adventure, and a cast of characters you'll never forget.”—Liz Smith “Imaginatively picaresque and often gut-wrenching.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Grunwald's novel runs parallel to perfection.”—Chicago Sun-Times

In the stunning tradition of Lisa See, Maeve Binchy, and Alice Hoffman, The Tin Horse is a rich multigenerational story about the intense, often fraught bond sisters share and the dreams and sorrows that lay at the heart of the immigrant experience. It has been more than sixty years since Elaine Greenstein's twin sister, Barbara, ran away, cutting off contact with her family forever. Elaine has made peace with that loss. But while sifting through old papers as she prepares to move to Rancho Mañana—or the “Ranch of No Tomorrow” as she refers to the retirement community—she is stunned to find a possible hint to Barbara's whereabouts all these years later. And it pushes her to confront the fierce love and bitter rivalry of their youth during the 1920s and'30s, in the Los Angeles Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Though raised together in Boyle Heights, where kosher delis and storefront signs in Yiddish lined the streets, Elaine and Barbara staked out very different personal territories. Elaine was thoughtful and studious, encouraged to dream of going to college, while Barbara was a bold rule-breaker whose hopes fastened on nearby Hollywood. In the fall of 1939, when the girls were eighteen, Barbara's recklessness took an alarming turn. Leaving only a cryptic note, she disappeared. In an unforgettable voice layered with humor and insight, Elaine delves into the past. She recalls growing up with her spirited family: her luftmensch of a grandfather, a former tinsmith with tales from the Old Country; her papa, who preaches the American Dream even as it eludes him; her mercurial mother, whose secret grief colors her moods—and of course audacious Barbara and their younger sisters, Audrey and Harriet. As Elaine looks back on the momentous events of history and on the personal dramas of the Greenstein clan, she must finally face the truth of her own childhood, and that of the twin sister she once knew. In The Tin Horse, Janice Steinberg exquisitely unfolds a rich multigenerational story about the intense, often fraught bonds between sisters, mothers, and daughters and the profound and surprising ways we are shaped by those we love. At its core, it is a book not only about the stories we tell but, more important, those we believe, especially the ones about our very selves.Praise for The Tin Horse“Steinberg, the author of five mysteries, has transcended genre to weave a rich story that will appeal to readers who appreciate multigenerational immigrant family sagas as well as those who simply enjoy psychological suspense.”—BookPage

New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard's novels, with their riveting stories and unforgettable characters, have won the hearts of millions of readers. Now, from the author of The Deep End of the Ocean and No Time to Wave Goodbye, comes the fierce and moving tale of one woman's fight for her identity and her life when fate holds out a second chance.Sicily Coyne was just thirteen when her father was killed in a school fire that left her face disfigured. Twelve years later, a young surgeon, Eliza Cappadora, offers hope in the form of a revolutionary new surgery that may give Sicily back the grace and function she lost. Raised by a dynamic, tenacious aunt who taught her to lead a normal life, and engaged to a wonderful man who knew her long before the accident, Sicily rejects the offer: She knows who she is, and so do the people who love her. But when a secret surfaces that shatters Sicily's carefully constructed world, she calls off the wedding and agrees to the radical procedure in order to begin a new life.Her beauty restored virtually overnight, Sicily rushes toward life with open arms, seeking new experiences, adventures, and, most of all, love. But she soon discovers that her new face carries with it risks that no one could have imagined. Confronting a moral and medical crisis that quickly becomes a matter of life and death, Sicily is surrounded by experts and loving family, but the choice that will transform her future, for better or worse, is one she must make alone.An intense and moving story of courage, consequence, and possibility, Second Nature showcases the acclaimed storyteller at her very best.

NATIONAL BESTSELLERIt's 1893, and at the Chicago World's Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows that he hopes will earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women's division, who conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which Tiffany will long be remembered. Never publicly acknowledged, Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman. She also yearns for love and companionship, and is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who enforces a strict policy: He does not employ married women. Ultimately, Clara must decide what makes her happiest—the professional world of her hands or the personal world of her heart.

“Cerebral and capacious, Teju Cole's novel asks what it means to roam freely.”—The New York Times (One of the 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years) “Influential... makes you think about what kind of city is revealed to us based on where we cannot go.”—Katie Kitamura, bestselling author of Intimacies ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR • WINNER: PEN/Hemingway Award, Rosenthal Foundation Award, New York City Book Award “A timely and compelling argument for tolerance and moral character in times of extreme antagonism.”—The New York Times One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsAlong the streets of Manhattan, a young Nigerian doctor named Julius doing his residency wanders aimlessly. The walks are a release from the tightly regulated mental environment of work, and they give him the opportunity to process his relationships, his recent breakup, his present, his past. Though he's navigating the busy parts of town, the impression of countless faces does nothing to assuage his feelings of isolation.Julius crisscrosses social territory as well, encountering people from different cultures and classes who provide insight on his journey—which takes him to Brussels, to the Nigeria of his youth, and into the most unrecognizable facets of his own soul.Seething with intelligence and written in a clear, rhythmic voice, Open City is a haunting, mature, profound work about our country and our world. FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle Award, Young Lions Fiction Award • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, Newsweek, The New Republic, New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, GQ, Salon, Slate, New York, The Week, The Kansas City Star, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times

This new deluxe eBook edition of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan features more than fifty additional pages of exclusive, author-approved annotations throughout the text to enrich your reading experience. You can access the eBook annotations with a simple click or tap on your eReader via the convenient links. Access them as you read the novel or as supplemental material after finishing the entire story. There is also Random House Reader's Circle bonus content, sure to inspire discussion at book clubs everywhere. In Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See takes us on a journey back to a captivating era of Chinese history and delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship. In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, an “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she has written a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on the fan and compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together they endure the agony of footbinding and reflect upon their arranged marriages, their loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace in their friendship, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their relationship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

FINALIST FOR THE FRANK O'CONNOR SHORT STORY AWARDNOW WITH AN ADDITIONAL STORY.Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all: A father struggles to forge an independent identity as his blind daughter prepares for college. A mother comes to terms with her adult daughter's infidelity. An artist mourns the end of a romance while painting the portrait of a dying man. Brilliant, hopeful, and fearlessly honest, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This illuminates the truths of human relationships, truths we come to recognize in these characters and in ourselves. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Robin Black's Life Drawing.Look for the If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This discussion guide inside.Praise for If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This“I want to shout about how just when you thought no one could write a story with any tinge of freshness let alone originality about childhood... about marriage... about old age, Black has done it.... Black delivers real emotion, the kind that gives you pause.... Will Robin Black win [the Pen/Hemingway Prize] for this book? If I were a judge, she would.”—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune “Pitch-perfect... so deft, so understated, and so compelling that you have to slow down to savor each vignette.... Fans of Mary Gaitskill, Amy Bloom, and Miranda July will feel like they've found gold in a river when they discover Robin Black.... [A] writer to watch.”—O: The Oprah Magazine“Each story reads like a mini-novel... worlds are contained in a single page. And the writing... oh, the writing... There's no narrative cohesion, no point. Rather, If I Loved You is a ‘Fantastic Voyage'into the bloodstream of the human species.... Maybe it's midlife maturity, maybe it's raw talent, but If I Loved You leaves you longing for more.'—San Francisco Chronicle“Incisive... peopled with characters so fully imagined you'll feel they're in the room.”—People'Exquisitely distilled tales of loss and reckoning... [Black] evokes a Sparkian blend of skepticism and grace.'—Vogue

Bitter in the Mouth is a brilliant, virtuosic novel about a young woman's search for identity and the true meaning of family from the author of The Sweetest Fruits“What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the prophetic last words that Linda Hammerick's grandmother says to her. Growing up in small-town North Carolina in the 1970s and'80s, Linda already knows that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. She can “taste” words. In this and in other ways, her body is a mystery to her. Linda's awkward girlhood is nonetheless enlivened and emboldened by her dancing great-uncle Harper, and Kelly, her letter-writing best friend. Linda makes her way north to college and then to New York City, trying her best to leave her past behind her like “a pair of shoes that no longer fit.” But when a family tragedy compels her to return home, Linda uncovers the startling secrets of her past. Monique Truong's acclaimed novel questions our assumptions about what it means to be a family and to be a friend, to be foreign and to be familiar, to be connected to and disconnected from our bodies, our histories, ourselves.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “spellbinding” (The New York Times Book Review) novel, the author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs creates an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions. “In a tale that rings strikingly true, [Anna] Quindlen captures both the beauty and the breathtaking fragility of family life.”—PeopleMary Beth Latham has built her life around her family, around caring for her three teenage children and preserving the rituals of their daily life. When one of her sons becomes depressed, Mary Beth focuses on him, only to be blindsided by a shocking act of violence. What happens afterward is a testament to the power of a woman's love and determination, and to the invisible lines of hope and healing that connect one human being to another. Ultimately, as rendered in Anna Quindlen's mesmerizing prose, Every Last One is a novel about facing every last one of the things we fear the most, about finding ways to navigate a road we never intended to travel.

To open this book is to enter the perilous, thrilling world of Billy Bathgate, the brazen boy who is accepted into the inner circle of the notorious Dutch Schultz gang. Like an urban Tom Sawyer, Billy takes us along on his fateful adventures as he becomes good-luck charm, apprentice, and finally protégé to one of the great murdering gangsters of the Depression-era underworld in New York City. The luminous transformation of fact into fiction that is E. L. Doctorow's trademark comes to triumphant fruition in Billy Bathgate, a peerless coming-of-age tale and one of Doctorow's boldest and most beloved bestsellers.

BONUS: This edition contains a The Coral Thief discussion guide and an excerpt from Rebecca Stott's Ghostwalk.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND BOOKLIST Paris, 1815. Daniel Connor, a young medical student from Edinburgh, has arrived to study anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes—only to realize that his letters of introduction and precious coral specimens, on which his tenure with the legendary Dr. Cuvier depends, have been stolen. His thief turns out to be a beautiful woman who lives in a shadowy realm of outlaws, philosophers, and émigrés. As Daniel falls in love with her, he discovers a radical theory of evolution that irrevocably changes his conception of the world.

NATIONAL BESTSELLERNow with an additional story.Every now and then, right in the middle of an ordinary day, a woman kicks up her heels and commits a small act of liberation. What would you do if you could shed the “shoulds” and do, say—and eat—whatever you really desired? Go AWOL from Weight Watchers and spend an entire day eating every single thing you want? Start a dating service for people over fifty to reclaim the razzle-dazzle in your life—or your marriage? Seek comfort in the face of aging, look for love in the midst of loss, find friendship in the most surprising of places? In these beautiful, funny stories, Elizabeth Berg takes us into the heart of the lives of women who do all these things and more—confronting their true feelings, desires, and joys along the way.

The New York Times bestseller by the author of the forthcoming novel Alice & Oliver | Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters | A New York Times Notable Book “One word: bravo.”—The New York Times Book Review “Truly powerful... Beautiful Children dazzles its readers on almost every page.... [Charles Bock] knows how to tug at your heart, and he knows how to make you laugh out loud, often on the same page, sometimes in the same sentence.”—NewsweekOne Saturday night in Las Vegas, twelve-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesn't come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her son's room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boy's father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy. As the Ewings navigate the mystery of what's become of their son, the circumstances surrounding Newell's vanishing and other events on that same night reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected strangers: a comic book illustrator in town for a weekend of debauchery; a painfully shy and possibly disturbed young artist; a stripper who imagines moments from her life as if they were movie scenes; a bubbly teenage wiccan anarchist; a dangerous and scheming gutter punk; a band of misfit runaways. The people of Beautiful Children are “urban nomads,” each with a past to hide and a pain to nurture, every one of them searching for salvation and barreling toward destruction, weaving their way through a neon underworld of sex, drugs, and the spinning wheels of chance. In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption heralding the arrival of a major new writer.Praise for Beautiful Children “Exceptional... This novel deserves to be read more than once because of the extraordinary importance of its subject matter.”—The Washington Post Book World “Magnificent... a hugely ambitious novel that succeeds... Beautiful Children manages to feel completely of its moment while remaining unaffected by literary trends.... Charles Bock is the real thing.”—The New Republic “A wildly satisfying and disturbing literary journey, led by an author of blazing talent.”—The Dallas Morning News “Wholly original—dirty, fast, and hypnotic. The sentences flicker and skip and whirl.”—Esquire “An anxious, angry, honest first novel filled with compassion and clarity... The language has a rhythm wholly its own—at moments it is stunning, near genius.”—A. M. Homes “From start to finish, Bock never stops tantalizing the reader.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Rich and compelling... captures the hallucinogenic setting like a fever dream.”—Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and fate into a brilliant portrait of a first lady—from the author of Rodham and Eligible “Terrific... an intelligent, bighearted novel about a controversial political dynasty.”—Entertainment Weekly NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time • People • Entertainment Weekly A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice Lindgren has no idea that she will one day end up in the White House, married to the president. In her small Wisconsin hometown she learns the virtues of politeness, but a tragic accident when she is seventeen shatters her identity and changes the trajectory of her life. More than a decade later, when the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family sweeps her off her feet, she is surprised to find herself admitted into a world of privilege. And when her husband unexpectedly becomes governor and then president, she discovers that she is married to a man she both loves and fundamentally disagrees with—and that her private beliefs increasingly run against her public persona. As her husband's presidency enters its second term, Alice must confront contradictions years in the making and face questions nearly impossible to answer. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • Chicago Tribune • NPR • Rocky Mountain News • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Washington Post Book World

The daughter of an American diplomat, Mila has spent her childhood moving from country to country. When her mother is reassigned to Mexico City for Mila's senior year of high school, Mila has no idea what to expect. Mexico seems to be a country with the ultimate freedoms: the wealthy students at her private international school—the sons and daughters of Mexico's ruling class—party hard at exclusive clubs, dress in expensive clothing, and see more of their housekeepers than they do of their globe-trotting parents. But Mila has more in common with them than they know: her father, whose identity has been kept from her, is a high-ranking politician with whom Mila's mother had a one-night stand in her hippie days. Now Mila is determined to discover who he is, whatever the cost may be.Mexican High is a coming-of-age story about identity, belonging, and first love. In a setting rife with sex, drugs, and political corruption, it is also a revealing look at elite Mexican society and its freedoms, dangers, and excesses. Monroy's flawless evocation of the brink of adulthood, in many ways mirrored by the turmoil of Mexico City itself, makes this a truly memorable debut.

In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak of only two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second. [p. 3]The daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who left their collapsing country and married in America, Yalini finds herself caught between the traditions of her ancestors and the lure of her own modern world. But when she is summoned to Toronto to help care for her dying uncle, Kumaran, a former member of the militant Tamil Tigers, Yalini is forced to see that violence is not a relic of the Sri Lankan past, but very much a part of her Western present.While Kumaran's loved ones gather around him to say goodbye, Yalini traces her family's roots–and the conflicts facing them as ethnic Tamils–through a series of marriages. Now, as Kumaran's death and his daughter's politically motivated nuptials edge closer, Yalini must decide where she stands. Lyrical and innovative, V. V. Ganeshananthan's novel brilliantly unfolds how generations of struggle both form and fractures families. Praise for Love Marriage“A beautiful first novel. This intricately woven tale, with its universal themes of love and estrangement, presents an exciting new voice in American literature.” –Yiyun Li, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers“Complex and moving... an impressive debut.”–Daniel Alarcón, author of Lost City Radio “V. V. Ganeshananthan has given us a riveting picture of the intersections of love and war that shape us all. A debut of incredible passion and wisdom.” –Rebecca Johns, author of Icebergs“At its best and simplest, Ganeshananthan can be profoundly moving. She captures the pain of exile poignantly.” --The San Francisco Chronicle“Ganeshananthan has created a slow-burning and beautifully written debut in Love Marriage. It is an evocative examination of Sri Lankan cultural mores, and the way one family is affected by love and war” — The Financial Times“Poignant and authentic…. Insight gained into Toronto's Tamil community is a welcome bonus in this gem of a book by a young writer who is sure to present more thought-provoking, entertaining prose in the future.” --The Toronto Star“The book is at times witty and always beautifully written” — The Irish Times'Innovative….this is an ambitious family drama about an underreported part of the world, filled with well-shaded characters [and] gorgeous flourish…Buy it.'-- New York Magazine'As if she were stringing a necklace of bright beads, the author relates the stories of Yalini's Sri Lankan forebears in lapidary folkloric narratives…What she does here, she does quite affectingly.'-- The Boston Globe'In spare, lyrical prose, V.V. Ganeshananthan's debut novel tells the story of two Sri Lankan Tamil families over four generations who, despite civil war and displacement, are irrevocably joined by marriage and tradition….Powerful.'-- Ms. Magazine

“A masterpiece... seamlessly mixes psychological disintegration, the dissolution of a marriage and... a classic ghost story.”—USA Today NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER “Angelica impresses first as a clever send-up of the late Victorian novel, and then becomes its own very original thing. It is engrossing, deeply moving, and—precisely because it is moving—very frightening.”—Stephen King London, the 1880s. In the dark of night, a chilling spectre is making its way through the Barton household, hovering over the sleeping daughter and terrorizing her fragile mother. Are these visions real, or is there something more sinister, and more human, to fear? As the family's story is told several times from different perspectives, events are recast, sym- pathies shift, and nothing is as it seems. Set at the dawn of psychoanalysis and the peak of spiritualism's acceptance, Angelica is a spellbinding Victorian ghost story, an intriguing literary and psychological puzzle, and a thoroughly modern exploration of identity, reality, and love. Praise for Angelica “Starts as a ghost story... turns into a spectacular, ever-proliferating tale of mingled motives, psychological menace, and delicately told crises of appetite and loneliness.”—The New Yorker “Spellbinding... cements this young novelist's reputation as one of the best writers in America.”—The Washington Post Book WorldBONUS: This edition contains excerpts from Arthur Phillips's The Tragedy of Arthur, The Song Is You, Prague, and The Egyptologist.

Acclaimed short-story writer and winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award, Robert Anderson has written a brilliantly inventive first novel–a book that blends the facts of a famous writer's life with the profound effect of her death on an entire generation.Sylvia Plath's legacy inspires, harrows, and haunts the three people at the center of Little Fugue: her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, freed by her death and then imprisoned by her myth; Assia Gutmann Wevill, Plath's rival and Hughes's mistress, who kills herself only six years after Plath; and Robert Anderson, a young New York writer, who is obsessed with Plath's poems and her suicide, which “forged my identity and, incidentally, ruined my life.”Their lives intersect, transiently and directly, through some of the more dramatic social upheavals of the past decades: the'68 student riots, the drug-addled seventies, the AIDS crisis of the eighties, the cataclysm of 9/11.Little Fugue crackles with wit and verbal dexterity. There have been many accounts of the Plath/Hughes drama, but author Robert Anderson provides a fresh, utterly convincing interpretation of events. This is a brilliant novel of artists caught between the erotic allure of extinction and the eternal power of poetry.

A vivid and revelatory novel based on actual events of the 1847 Oregon migration, A Sudden Country follows two characters of remarkable complexity and strength in a journey of survival and redemption.James MacLaren, once a resourceful and ambitious Hudson's Bay Company trader, has renounced his aspirations for a quiet family life in the Bitterroot wilderness. Yet his life is overturned in the winter of 1846, when his Nez Perce wife deserts him and his children die of smallpox. In the grip of a profound sorrow, MacLaren, whose home once spanned a continent, sets out to find his wife. But an act of secret vengeance changes his course, introducing him to a different wife and mother: Lucy Mitchell, journeying westward with her family.Lucy, a remarried widow, careful mother, and reluctant emigrant, is drawn at once to the self-possessed MacLaren. Convinced that he is the key to her family's safe passage, she persuades her husband to employ him. As their hidden stories and obsessions unfold, and pasts and cultures collide, both Lucy and MacLaren must confront the people they have truly been, are, and may become.Alive with incident and insight, presenting with rare scope and intimacy the complex relations among nineteenth-century traders, immigrants, and Native Americans, A Sudden Country is, above all, a heroic and unforgettable story of love and loss, sacrifice and understanding.

My lady, Fiammetta Bianchini, was plucking her eyebrows and biting color into her lips when the unthinkable happened and the Holy Roman Emperor's army blew a hole in the wall of God's eternal city, letting in a flood of half-starved, half-crazed troops bent on pillage and punishment.Thus begins In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant's epic novel of life in Renaissance Italy. Escaping the sack of Rome in 1527, with their stomachs churning on the jewels they have swallowed, the courtesan Fiammetta and her dwarf companion, Bucino, head for Venice, the shimmering city born out of water to become a miracle of east-west trade: rich and rancid, pious and profitable, beautiful and squalid. With a mix of courage and cunning they infiltrate Venetian society. Together they make the perfect partnership: the sharp-tongued, sharp-witted dwarf, and his vibrant mistress, trained from birth to charm, entertain, and satisfy men who have the money to support her. Yet as their fortunes rise, this perfect partnership comes under threat, from the searing passion of a lover who wants more than his allotted nights to the attentions of an admiring Turk in search of human novelties for his sultan's court. But Fiammetta and Bucino's greatest challenge comes from a young crippled woman, a blind healer who insinuates herself into their lives and hearts with devastating consequences for them all.A story of desire and deception, sin and religion, loyalty and friendship, In the Company of the Courtesan paints a portrait of one of the world's greatest cities at its most potent moment in history: It is a picture that remains vivid long after the final page.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A modern classic of adolescent angst and ambition set in the world of prep school, from the author of Romantic Comedy and Eligible—“a tart and complex tale of social class, race, and gender politics” (The Boston Globe) One of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of—and, ultimately, a participant in—their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she's a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.Ultimately, Lee's experiences—complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant—coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.

With a sophistication and mischievousness remarkable for a first-time novelist, Katharine Davies takes inspiration from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and raises the curtain on the interconnecting lives and loves of an unforgettable cast of characters. By turns comic and moving, The Madness of Love is a deftly woven tale of mistaken identity, bold moves, and unrequited desires.Valentina, a clerk in a London bookstore, is still reeling after her twin brother broke a childhood promise and ran off without her to exotic lands. When she cuts her hair, masquerades as a gardener to the melancholic Leo, and moves to the remote seaside town of Illerwick, she perplexes even herself.Leo dreams of restoring his estate's gardens to their former glory as a romantically naïve gesture toward the woman he's loved all his life: Melody, an English teacher whose beauty bewitches many others. Melody rejects any attempt at capture; she is locked in a state of mourning over the suicide of her dear brother.As Valentina struggles with the decades-old neglect of flowers, plants, and weeds, her affection for her eccentric employer grows, even as she helps him plot his overture to Melody. The gardens must be made ready for a grand late-summer party. But between now and then, Illerwick will stir with old longings and new desires. As people fall dangerously for those incapable of reciprocating, we see, enchantingly, how our misguided pursuit of passion often distracts us from finding real love.

Stunning, hypnotic, spare, The Seal Wife is the masterly new novel by Kathryn Harrison, “a writer of extraordinary gifts” (Tobias Wolff). Set in Alaska in 1915, it tells the story of a young scientist's consuming love for a woman known as the Aleut, a woman who never speaks, who refuses to reveal so much as her name.Born and educated in midwestern cities, Bigelow is sent north by the United States government to establish a weather observatory in Anchorage. But what could have prepared him for the loneliness of a railroad town with more than two thousand men and only a handful of women, or for winter nights twenty hours long? And what can protect him from obsession—obsession with a woman who seems in her silence and mystery to possess the power to destroy his life forever, and obsession with the weather kite he invents, a kite he hopes will fly higher than any has ever flown before and will penetrate the secrets of the heavens? A novel of passions both dangerous and generative, The Seal Wife explores the nature of desire and its ability to propel an individual beyond himself and convention. As she brilliantly reimagines the terrain of the Alaskan frontier during the period of the First World War, Harrison, a “master of her material” (Mary Gordon), also evokes early efforts to chart the weather and reveals the interior realm of the psyche and emotions—a human landscape that, in its splendor and terror, is profoundly and eerily reminiscent of the frozen frontier and the storms that scour its face.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Elizabeth Berg's Once Upon a Time, There Was You.In this superb novel by the beloved author of Talk Before Sleep, The Pull of the Moon, and Until the Real Thing Comes Along, a woman re-creates her life after divorce by opening up her house and her heart. Samantha's husband has left her, and after a spree of overcharging at Tiffany's, she settles down to reconstruct a life for herself and her eleven-year-old son. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. A new friend, King, an untraditional man, suggests that Samantha get out, get going, get work. But her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember—and reclaim—the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage. Open House is a love story about what can blossom between a man and a woman, and within a woman herself.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER With brilliant and audacious strokes, E. L. Doctorow creates a breathtaking collage of memories, events, visions, and provocative thought, all centered on an idea of the modern reality of God. At the heart of this stylistically daring tour de force is a detective story about a cross that vanishes from a rundown Episcopal church in lower Manhattan only to reappear on the roof of an Upper West Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery—and by the maverick rector and the young rabbi investigating the strange act of desecration—is a well-known novelist, whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age. Daringly poised at the junction of the sacred and the profane, filled with the sights and sounds of New York, and encompassing a large cast of vividly drawn characters including theologians, scientists, Holocaust survivors, and war veterans, City of God is a monumental work of spiritual reflection, philosophy, and history by America's preeminent novelist and chronicler of our time. Praise for City of God “A grander perspective on the universe... a novel that sets its sights on God.”—The Wall Street Journal “Dazzling... The true miracle of City of God is the way its disparate parts fuse into a consistently enthralling and suspenseful whole.”—Time “Blooms with humor, and a humanity that carries triumphant as intelligent a novel as one might hope to find these days.”—Los Angeles Times “Radiates [with] panoramic ambition and spiritual incandescence.”—Chicago Tribune “One of the greatest American novels of the past fifty years... Reading City of God restores one's faith in literature.”—The Houston Chronicle

In poised and elegant prose, Kathryn Harrison weaves in The Binding Chair; or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society a stunning story of women, travel, and flight; of love, revenge, and fear; of the search for home and the need to escape it. Set in alluring Shanghai at the turn of the century, The Binding Chair intertwines the destinies of a Chinese woman determined to forget her past and a Western girl focused on the promises of the future.Beautiful, charismatic, destructive, May escapes an ar-ranged marriage in rural nineteenth-century China for life in a Shanghai brothel, where she meets Arthur, an Australian whose philanthropic pursuits lead him into one scrape after another. As a member of the Foot Emancipation Society, Arthur calls on May not for his pleasure but for her rehabilitation, only to find himself immediately and helplessly seduced by the sight of her bound feet. Reforming May is out of the question, so love-struck Arthur marries her instead and brings her home to live with him, his sister and brother-in-law, and their two girls, Alice and Cecily. In Alice, May sees the possibility of redemption: a surrogate for a child she has lost. And it is to May that Alice turns for the love her own mother withholds. But when the twelve-year-old is caught preparing her aunt's opium pipe, she is shipped off to a London boarding school, far from the dangerous influence of the woman who will come to reclaim her and to control the whole family. The Binding Chair unfolds among scenes of astonishing beauty and cruelty, in a lawless place where traditions and cultures clash, and where tragedy threatens a world built on the banks of unsettled waters--from the bustling Whangpoo River to the lake of blood in the Chinese afterworld. By turns shocking, exquisite, and hilarious, The Binding Chair is another spellbinding literary triumph by the writer whose work Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times has called'powerful and hypnotic.'