At the heart of Meg Mullins’s debut novel is one of the most touchingly believable characters in recent fiction, a gentle soul in the body of an Iranian exile in New York. Ushman Khan sells exquisite hand-woven rugs to a wealthy clientele that he treats with perfect rectitude. He is lonely, and his loneliness becomes unbearable when he learns that his wife in Iran is leaving him. But when a young woman named Stella comes into his store, what ensues is a love story that is all the more moving because its protagonists understand tragedy. The Rug Merchant will sweep readers away with its inspiring,
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The Birthdays tells the story of a unique family on the brink of a new generation, and examines modern-day marriage, pregnancy, and parenthood.
On an island off the coast of Maine, the Miller family reunites to celebrate the father’s seventy-fifth birthday. Each of the adult children is expecting his or her own first child. The eldest, Daniel, grapples with the fact that his wife had to be artificially inseminated. Jake, the middle child, discovers that his wife is carrying twins after many years of infertility treatments. Hilary—the free-spirited youngest daughter—arrives in Maine five months pregnant with no identifiable father in sight.
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When the curtains are drawn back on the cabinet of wonders, every individual you meet is an original, the indelible mark of their uniqueness shaped in their flesh. Molly and Faye are spirited teenagers—and conjoined twins. Saffron is the Wolf Girl, her female form covered head to toe in fur. Alex/Alexandra is a seductive morphodite, her male/female parts irresistible to many.
To the rubes that pay good coin to see them, they are Freaks. To the other carnies—those who run the Ferris Wheel, the Girl Show, and more—they are the Starlight Carnival Royale’s most lucrative source of income,
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Sixteen-year-Amy lies in a coma. Her elder sister, Moira, sits beside her in the evenings and tells this story seeking forgiveness and retribution. She tells of her own life—her secrets, her shameful actions, and her link to the accident that has brought her sister to this bed.
An only child until the age of eleven, Moira perceived the arrival of Amy as a betrayal. Sent away to boarding school, she became untrusting, inward, lonely. Even after marriage, she continued to doubt herself and that anyone could love her and be faithful. It is only Amy’s accident that brings her back to her family,
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One of her wilder books, The View from Mount Joy begins as the narrator (and hero) Joe Andreson and his mother have moved down to Minneapolis from a small town in Northern Minnesota. He joins the Class of ’72 at Ole Bull High School and two of the girls he meets — Kristi Casey, the cheerleading captain who assumes the earth’s orbit is for her benefit, and Darva Pratt, who cares more about art and politics than her ranking on the popularity chart – will impact the rest of his life.
We follow Joe’s story as he graduates high school and college and tumbles into a life that includes an unchosen,
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The End of the Alphabet is a tender, intimate story of an ordinary life defined by an extraordinary love. Ambrose Zephyr is a contented man. He shares a book-laden Victorian house with his loving wife, Zipper. He owns two suits, one of which he was married in. He is a courageous eater, save brussels sprouts. His knowledge of wine is vague and best defined as Napa, good; Australian, better; French, better still. Kir royale is his drink of occasion. For an Englishman he makes a poor cup of tea. He believes women are quantifiably wiser than men, and would never give Zipper the slightest reason to mistrust him or question his love.
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