Sometimes to be who you really are, you have to pretend you’re already who you want to be.
At two, Delores’s mother dropped her into the shallow end of a lake, trusting instinct would teach her daughter to swim. From then on, the water is where Delores Walker feels most at home. Now, nearly seventeen, she’s boarding a Greyhound bus leaving the Bronx for sunny Weeki Wachee Springs, a tacky roadside attraction in the shadow of Walt Disney’s new Florida phenomenon.
With a hundred silver dollars left behind by her runaway dad,
read more
Artist Miranda Jones wants to cause both success and love in her life, and takes a summer job at the University of Alaska to gain perspective on her life. Meanwhile, in the picturesque coastal town of Milford-Haven, the unfinished Clarke mansion draws Deputy Delmar Johnson, battered wife Stacey Chernak and rebellious environmentalist Susan Winslow, even as its builder Jack Sawyer sidesteps both building codes and a guilty conscience. Zack Calvin tries to recover from his brush with death but sinks deeper into a tangled romance with Cynthia Radcliffe. Sally O’Mally’s conscience tells her to confess an ancient sin to her old love,
read more
In his first novel since The Light of Day, the Booker Prize–winning author gives us a luminous tale about the closest of human bonds.
On a midsummer’s night Paula Hook lies awake; Mike, her husband of twenty-five years, asleep beside her; her teenage twins, Nick and Kate, sleeping in nearby rooms. The next day, she knows, will redefine all of their lives. A revelation lies in store. Her children’s future lies before them. The house holds the family’s history and fate.
Recalling the years before and after her children were born,
read more
Sue Monk Kidd’s ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted “stand-in mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the town’s fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees,
read more
At twelve, Lucy Marie McGowan already knows she’ll be a psychologist when she grows up. And her quirky and conflicted family provides plenty of opportunity for her to practice her calling. Now Lucy, her “profoundly gifted” twin brother, Milo, her commitment-phobic mother, and her New Age grandmother are leaving Chicago for Timber Falls, Wisconsin, to care for her dying grandfather—a complex and difficult man whose failure as a husband and father still painfully echoes down through the years.
Lucy believes her time in the rural town where the McGowan story began will provide a key piece to the puzzle of her family’s broken past,
read more
Charmaine Ryan knows only poverty and pain growing up. In the wake of a horrifying tragedy, she seeks a new life, and fate leads her into the private world of the wealthy Duvoisin clan. At first, it seems as if nothing terrible could touch this seemingly charmed family. But an ill wind blows through the halls and chambers of the Duvoisins’ sprawling island retreat, carrying betrayal, deceit, and ominous peril.
Quickly, Charmaine is caught up in the secrets and mystique swirling around the enigmatic family. At the center are shipping tycoon Frederic Duvoisin and his youthful wife,
read more