In the city of Beirut, five shabby dwellings circle a courtyard with a pomegranate tree weeping blood red fruit. The residents hear screams in the night as a boy is beaten by his father—a punishment for masturbating in his sleep. A crime not worthy of the punishment: the neighbors gossip and decide that he must have tried to rape his sisters. The poems he writes are perhaps an even greater crime to his father, but ultimately a gift to his eldest sister, who narrates their story with a combination of brutal truth and stunning prose.
In this mesmerizing novel,
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Victory Ford is the darling of the fashion world. Single, attractive, and iconoclastic, she has worked for years to create her own signature line. As well as learning crucial lessons about what she really wants in a relationship.
Nico O’Neilly is the glamorous, brilliant editor of Bonfire Magazine— the pop-culture bible for fashion, show business, and politics. Considered one of the most powerful women in publishing, she seems to have it all. But in a mid-life crisis, she suddenly realizes this isn’t enough.
Wendy Healy’s chutzpah has propelled her to the very top of the cutthroat movie industry.
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Tzippy Goldman was born for marriage. She and her mother had always assumed she’d graduate high school, be set up with the right boy, and have a beautiful wedding. But at twenty-two, Tzippy’s fast approaching spinsterhood. She dreams of escape; instead, she leaves for a year in Jerusalem. There she meets—remeets—Baruch, the son of her mother’s college roommate. When Tzippy last saw him, his name was Bryan and he wore a Yankees-logo yarmulke. Now he has adopted the black hat of the ultra-Orthodox, the tradition in which Tzippy was raised. Twelve weeks later, they’re engaged . . . and discovering that achieving a balance between desire and tradition,
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Sara Foster has left America for the adventure of lifetime— teaching English to the sons and daughters of statesmen in Hungary—but her idyllic adventure instead reveals a dark world of pain and redemption when she ends up teaching in a refugee camp. Sara discovers that one of her students is a celebrated composer and soon finds herself crossing the border to his war-torn homeland, determined to exonerate him for the death of his brother.
In a journey that takes her to Dubrovnik, a magnificent stone city on the Croatian Riviera, Sara contemplates her own identity, struggling to understand why the region’s ancient and extraordinary beauty belies a history of grief.
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Artist Miranda Jones loves the life she’s been building in the picturesque coastal town of Milford-Haven. But while persistent dreams of a deep connection with a man haunt her, she’s unable to tell whether dashing Zack Calvin’s attentions are genuine. Sally is distracted from dishing up her home cooking by the reappearance of her high school sweetheart, Vietnam Veteran Tony Fiorentino. With the disappearance of reporter Chris Christian, Deputy Delmar Johnson digs for clues. Meanwhile the Doobie Brothers give a sold-out concert at the Central Coast Bowl against a web of complex relationships backstage, and Samantha Hugo’s private journal reveals her struggle to discover whether her long lost child is farther away than ever,
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The Days of Awe is a complex, compellingly readable and skillfully executed novel that deals with one of the most profound realizations that must come home to nearly all of us at one point or another: the real understanding that we and all of those we love are going to die.
It is August 2001 in New York City, and Artie Rubin, author of numerous illustrated books of mythology, has reached 67. His friends are beginning to deteriorate one by one – and his beloved wife of forty years Johanna has recently been diagnosed with elevated blood pressure and cholesterol and is at high risk for a heart attack.
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