Devils in the Sugar Shop is the story of a group of women friends in Omaha who are struggling with various romantic troubles and who are all about to convene for a pre-Valentine’s Tupperware-like home party for “marital aids.” The evening, meant to be a lark, changes how they each view their lives and relationships—and not just their romances but also their friendships and relationships with their children. With his characteristic touch, Schaffert places an unusual cast in unusual circumstances and creates a comic tale that is similar to Tales of the City, or even a cross between “Sex and the City”
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When figurative painter Jeffrey Finelli is run over by a cab in front of the Simon Pryce Gallery on the night of his first opening, the art world falls all over itself for a piece of the instantly in-demand work by the late “emerging artist.” At the center of the show is an enormous painting called Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him that becomes the object of most desire. As the artist philosophically muses before meeting his untimely end, “It represents the creative endeavor.”
After Finelli’s death, the gallery receptionist, aspiring artist and protagonist Mia McMurray,
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Far from her family, her country, and her home and thrust into the role of woman, wife, and queen at the age of 14, Marie Antoinette lived a brief but astonishing existence. With searing insight and wondrous narrative skill, Sena Jeter Naslund offers a fresh, vivid picture of this compelling woman that goes beyond popular myth. Based on impeccable historical research, Abundance reveals a young woman very different from the one who supposedly said of the starving French peasants, “Let them eat cake.”
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In this enchanting story of love, marriage, and mutual understanding, few readers have failed to be charmed by the witty and independent spirit of Elizabeth Bennet. Her early determination to dislike Mr. Darcy—who is quite the most handsome and eligible bachelor in the whole of English literature—is a misjudgment only matched in folly by Darcy’s arrogant pride. In Pride and Prejudice, first impressions give way to truer feelings in a comedy profoundly concerned with happiness and how it might be achieved.
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Six years ago, Polly Birdswell—drinking and deeply unhappy—made a decision that changed her life forever. Believing she could spare her young daughter a legacy of self-destruction, she left her husband and child and moved north to a coastal town in Maine. There, close to Bride Island, the beloved family retreat she considers her true home, she set about getting sober and rebuilding her life. Now Polly desperately wants seven-year-old Monroe back, and is determined to prove—to herself especially—that she’s a stable and loving mother. But can she move forward when her family and friends won’t let her forget the past?
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In the tradition of Philippa Gregory’s smart, transporting fiction comes this tale of dark suspense, love, and betrayal, featuring two star-crossed sisters, one lost and the other searching.
Bright and inquisitive, Hannah Powers was raised by a father who treated her as if she were his son by giving her a forbidden education. Her beautiful and reckless sister, May, pushes the limits of propriety in their small English town, Hannah harbors her own secret: their father has given her an education forbidden to women. But Hannah’s secret serves her well when she journeys to colonial Maryland to reunite with May,
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