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THE ILLUSION OF SEPARATENESS

The characters in Simon Van Booy’s The Illusion of Separateness discover at their darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were never alone, that every human being is a link in a chain we cannot see. This gripping novel—inspired by true events—tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until,

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DURING THE REIGN OF THE QUEEN OF PERSIA

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction by an American Author

Joan Chase’s subtle story of three generations of women negotiating lifetimes of “joy and ruin” deserves its place alongside such achievements as Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women.

The Queen of Persia is not an exotic figure but a fierce Ohio farmwife who presides over a household of daughters and granddaughters. The novel tells their stories through the eyes of the youngest members of the family, four cousins who spend summers on the farm,

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THE GODDESS OF SMALL VICTORIES

Princeton, 1980. Kurt Gödel, the most fascinating, though hermetic, mathematician of the twentieth century, has just died of anorexia. His widow, Adele, a fierce woman shunned by her husband’s colleagues because she had been a cabaret dancer, is now consigned to a nursing home. To the great annoyance of the Institute for Advanced Study, she refuses to hand over Gödel’s precious records. Anna Roth, the timid daughter of two mathematicians who are part of the Princeton clique, is given the difficult task of befriending Adele and retrieving the documents from her. As Adele begins to notice Anna’s own estrangement from her milieu and starts to trust her,

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FALLING FROM HORSES

In 1938, nineteen-year-old ranch hand Bud Frazer sets out for Hollywood. His little sister has been gone a couple of years now, his parents are finding ranch work and comfort for their loss where they can, but for Bud, Echol Creek, where he grew up and first learned to ride, is a place he can no longer call home. So he sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies — and rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth.

On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies,

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BEFORE WE MET

If you loved Gone Girl and The Husband’s Secret, Before We Met should be your next read.

Hannah has always been wary of commitment, but when she meets Mark, a fellow Brit, one hot New York summer, her ideas change. Within months, they are married, and she has moved back to London to be with him, leaving her life in New York behind. But when Mark fails to return from a business trip, her certainty about their marriage starts to crack. Why don’t his colleagues know about the trip? Who is the woman who keeps calling his office?

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THE FRAGILE WORLD

From the author of the publishing sensation The Mourning Hours comes a powerful new novel that explores every parent’s worst nightmare.

The Kaufmans always considered themselves a normal, happy family. Curtis is a physics teacher at the local high school. His wife, Kathleen, restores furniture for upscale boutiques. Daniel is away at college on a prestigious music scholarship, and twelve year-old Olivia is a happy-go-lucky kid whose biggest concern is passing her next math test.

And then comes the middle-of-the-night phone call that changes everything. Daniel has been killed in what the police are calling a “freak”

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