When Jane Alison was a child, her family met another that seemed like its mirror: a father in the Foreign Service, a beautiful mother, and two little girls, the younger two—one of them Jane—sharing a birthday. With so much in common, the two families became almost instantly inseparable. Within months, affairs had ignited between the adults, and before long the pairs had exchanged partners—divorced, remarried, and moved on. As if in a cataclysm of nature, two families were ripped asunder, and two new ones were formed. Two pairs of girls were left in shock, a “silent, numb shock, like a crack inside stone,
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Now a Major Film, Leave No Trace, Directed by Debra Granik and Starring Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie
A thirteen-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, an enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. They inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, wash in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water’s edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once a week they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them,
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From the author of the runaway bestseller Best Friends comes an engaging new novel of love, loss, and enduring friendship.
Forty-something Genie Toledo has compensated for the mistakes she’s made by throwing herself into her work as a top cardiologist in Columbus, Ohio, and holding everyone-including her college-age daughter-at arms’ length. Only Mick Crabbe-the charming, famous, married college basketball coach with whom she’s had a decade-long affair-can penetrate her shell. That is, until an unexpected turn of events forces Genie to realize just how dependent she is on him and the other people in her life.
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A photo of her sons. A doormat from Target. Twenty-three tubs of fabric. Somehow it comforts Lauren to list the things she lost when a wildfire engulfed the Santa Barbara avocado ranch she shared with her husband, Tom. He, too, didn’t survive the devastating fire. His last act was to save her grandmother’s lace from the flames-an heirloom she has never been able to take scissors to, that she was saving for someday.
As she negotiates her way through grief, mourning both the tangible and intangible, Lauren wonders about her long marriage. Was it worth all the work,
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To most people, Folly Beach, South Carolina, is simply the last barrier island before the Atlantic. To some, it’s a sanctuary, which is why Janie Hamilton’s mother encourages her to buy the local book store, Folly’s Finds, hoping it will distract Janie from the loss of her husband in Afghanistan.
Janie is at first resistant, but intrigued after finding love letters and an image of a beautiful bottle tree in a box of used books from Folly’s Finds, and decides to take the plunge. The store’s seller insists on one condition: Janie must allow Lulu,
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“D’Erasmo moves to the top of her craft with The Sky Below,” said Town and Country, and many others have joined the chorus of critical acclaim for her newest novel, in part inspired by Ovid, which illuminates the myths that underlie our everyday lives.
At thirty-seven, Gabriel Collins works halfheartedly as an obituary writer at a fading newspaper in lower Manhattan, which, since 9/11, feels like a city of the dead. This once dreamy and appealing boy has turned from a rebellious adolescent to an adult who trades in petty crimes.
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