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2017-18 Reader Views Literary Award, Adult Fiction: Finalist 2017 Winner of the National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Fiction: Northeast 2017 Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction by Independent Press Awards 2017 International Book Awards Finalist for Literary Fiction Have you ever wondered what the impetus was to start a certain painting? Why the artist chose to immortalize a particular subject? What if you suddenly discovered that the painting in question, your painting, was valuable? In Peregrine Island, the Peregrine family’s lives are turned upside-down one summer when so-called “art experts” appear on the doorstep of their Connecticut island home to appraise a favorite heirloom painting. When incriminating papers—and other paintings—are discovered behind the painting in question, the appraisal turns into a full-fledged investigation. Flattered at first by the art museum’s unanticipated interest, the family members quickly change their attitudes with the arrival of detectives on their terrace and the illusory but repeated appearance of a stranger reported to be concealed in a cove. The now-antagonistic family—grandmother, mother, and child—consequently begin to suspect one another, as well as the shady newcomers in their midst. As the summer progresses and the investigation reveals facts about the Peregrines’ past that even they didn’t know, they learn that people are not always who they appear to be—themselves not excluded—and art is often a reflection of their own lives. More important, in uncovering the secret of the painting they come to realize that the love each unconsciously sought has been right in front of them all along. Though Peregrine Island is driven by a mystery, it is as much characterized by its ever-present sense of spiritualism, accentuated by the symbolism of the Sound, the soul of relationships, and the wisdom of the very young and the very old. Author: Diane B. Saxton Publication Date: August 2, 2016 -
2015 Indie Excellence Awards Finalist in General Fiction 2015 USA Book Awards Finalist in Women’s Fiction 2016 International Book Award Finalist in Fiction: Literary It happens without warning: At a folk-rock show at her son’s college, Lily becomes transfixed by the guitarist’s unassuming onstage presence and beautiful playing—and with his final note, something within her breaks loose. After the concert, Lily returns to her comfortable life—an Upper West Side apartment, a job as a videographer, and a kind if distracted husband—but she can’t stop thinking about the music, or about the duo’s guitarist, JJ. Unable to resist the pull of either one, she rashly offers to make a film about the band in order to gain a place with them on tour. But when Lily dares to step out from behind her camera, she falls deep into JJ’s world—upsetting the tenuous balance between him and his bandmate, and filling a chasm of need she didn’t know she had. Captivating and provocative, Play for Me captures the thrill and heartbreak of deciding to leave behind what you love to follow what you desire. Author: Céline Keating Publication Date: April 21, 2015 -
It’s the season of siren songs and loosened bonds―as well as war, campaign slogans, and assassination. At the height of the Vietnam War protests, Washington lawyer Tom Rayson uproots his family for the freewheeling city of Berkeley. While Tom pursues a romance with a sexy colleague in the Marin County woods, Marian joins a peace party that’s running a Black Panther for president and meets the Berkeley revolution. But for young Alice, her parents’ liberating forays become a blind leap in a city marked by beauty and social change―and for a girl, that’s no Summer of Love. Feeling estranged from her family, Alice embraces the moment and falls in with Jim and Valerie Dupres. Jim and Valerie have been learning the ropes on Telegraph Avenue, cadging meals at a nearby communal house and camping out in People’s Park. Soon they’re confronting National Guardsmen. As family and school fade away in a tear-gas fog, Alice feels an ambiguous freedom. Caught up in a rebellion that feels equally compelling, scary, and absurd, Alice could become a casualty—or she could defy the odds and become her own person. One thing is sure: there’s no going back. Author: Sarah Relyea Publication Date: June 9, 2020 -
The Red Barn, a pole dancing venue on the outskirts of Easton, Pennsylvania, is co-owned by Eddie and Victoria. Like the other dancers—GB, who is courageous and nonbinary; Marie, who struggles with depression; Violet, who is manifesting her dream; and Celeste, who grapples with religion and body image—Eddie and Victoria have been shaped by their mothers’ secrets and fears. These mothers suffered from domestic abuse, mental illness, and addiction, yet their only concern was to create a safe, stable home life for their children. Spanning the 1940s through the 1980s, these fourteen interconnected stories about these mothers and their children explore how intergenerational conflicts are confronted and resolved. Each story features the emotional and embodied journey of one character, and together they form a larger narrative about how individual identity and community intersect in the aftermath of trauma and betrayal. Ultimately, the Red Barn family realizes that risk-taking is not only possible but necessary, and that obstacles, no matter how heavy, don’t have to bury us. Struggle is part of life, but it doesn’t define us. What matters is trusting our own organic process of becoming who we truly are, at any age. Author: Susan L. Katz Publication Date: October 13, 2026 -
NOMINATED for Library of Virginia Literary Awards in the ART in LITERATURE: Mary Lynn Kotz Award category. “Two cultured French families lose everything in the Second World War, even each other. Winkler spins from this tragic tale a thing of beauty, as delicately radiant as the imagined painting at its core, even as she keeps the pages turning until the end.” ―Nicole Mones, author of Night in Shanghai France, 1940. Nazi forces march towards Paris. Lili Rosenswig’s wealthy and eccentric family is ensconced in their country chateau with their sumptuous collection of arts and antiques. The beloved Matisse portrait of Lili’s mother has been brought from their Paris salon for safety. It is the day before young lovers Lili and Paul are to be married that they are forced to flee and their fortunes change irrevocably. Lili and her family escape but Paul must stay behind to defend his country. In their struggle to adapt to changing circumstances in an unpredictable world, all are pushed to reinvent themselves. When top Nazi Herman Goring loots their Matisse portrait, their story is intertwined with the fate of the painting. Portrait of a Woman in White is a moving family saga, an obsessive search for lost love and lost art and how far we will go to survive. Author: Susan Winkler Publication Date: September 2, 2014 -
Cynical young gossip columnist Jane Benjamin joins FDR’s Office of War Information, a propaganda unit, to find a Wendy-the-Welder poster girl to urge more women to the shipyard work essential to America’s winning World War II—and, incidentally, to make herself into the new Hedda Hopper. But somebody doesn’t want those women at work. During a five-day contest to beat the world speed record for building a liberty ship, Jane investigates the lives of the first women welders and learns more about her flyboy former lover’s secret post–Pearl Harbor mission—and her cynicism begins to melt. But when inspectors find and publicize a series of flaws in the contest-week welding, the women welders are blamed. Worse, two poster girl candidates are killed. Are they being sabotaged by a belligerent male shipyard supervisor? The industrialist shipyard owner with a history of controlling women? Or someone else trying to diminish the success of the US liberty ship program? To find out, Jane must choose between her professional ambition and service to the women welders—before the murderer harms another girl and America’s best chance of winning the war. Author: Shelley Blanton-Stroud Pub Date: November 14, 2023 -
Some truths can do more harm than good. This is what Isa comes to believe at the tender age of nine when she first has a dream about kissing a girl—an act that would never be acceptable to her family. By her late twenties, Isa has left her hometown in South Texas, so her conservative family won't discover that she’s gay, and immersed herself in the workaholic routine of law school. One fateful night, she experiments with a man, and subsequently ended up with an unwanted pregnancy. Meanwhile, Isa’s only sister, Cristina, loses the infant she spent years trying to conceive. Moving forward with her own pregnancy and giving the baby to Cristina seems like the perfect solution—until Isa bonds with the newborn. Still, the sisters move forward with the family adoption. Now everyone in the family has a secret. Twelve years later, after much deceit and loss has passed between the sisters, Isa decides to reveal both her sexuality and her niece’s true parentage to their family, against Cristina’s wishes—but before all can be exposed, tragedy strikes. Timely and gripping, Profound and Perfect Things is a story of two first-generation Mexican-American sisters striving to build a meaningful existence outside their traditional parent’s approval and ways of life—and an exploration of the boundaries of our responsibilities to those we love. Author: Maribel Garcia Publication Date: May 14, 2019 -
Elisabeth Goodwin comes to California from Massachusetts in 1849 with her new husband, Nate, to reunite with her father, who’s struck gold on the American River. But she soon realizes her husband is not the man she thought—and neither is her father, who abandons them shortly after they arrive. As Nate struggles with his sexuality, Elisabeth is forced to confront her preconceived notions of family, love, and opportunity. She finds comfort in corresponding with her childhood friend back home, writer Louisa May Alcott, and spending time in the company of a mysterious Californio. Armed with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance, she sets out to determine her role in building the West, even as she comes to terms with the sacrifices she must make to achieve independence and happiness. A gripping and illuminating window into life in the Old West, Prospects of a Woman is the story of one woman’s passionate quest to carve out a place for herself in the liberal and bewildering society that emerged during the California gold rush frenzy. Author: Wendy Voorsanger Publication Date: October 20, 2020 -
David Mariani is a successful doctor in Beverly Hills. Just as he begins to suspect a big-pharma conspiracy related to a number of his young patients, a mysterious and beautiful woman sweeps into his life, turning it upside down—but then, just as quickly as she appeared, she disappears with her young daughter, and the mild-mannered doctor finds himself pulled into the adventure of his life . . . unraveling a world of international intrigue and government conspiracies, and immersed in a genetic code mystery that could affect the future of the entire human race. Author: M. L. Stover Publication Date: October 4, 2016 -
Tara moves to the American South three years after her arranged marriage to tech executive Sanjay. Ignored and lonely, Tara finds herself regressing back to childhood memories that have scarred her for life. When she was eight, her parents had left her behind with her aging grandparents and a schizophrenic uncle in Mangalore, while taking her baby brother with them to make a new life for the family in Dubai. Tara’s memories of abandonment and isolation mirror her present life of loneliness and escalating abuse at the hands of her husband. She accepts the help of kind-hearted American strangers to fight Sanjay, only to be pressured by her patriarchal family to make peace with her circumstances. Then, in a moment of truth, she discovers the importance of self-worth—a revelation that gives her the courage to break free, gently rebuild her life, and even risk being shunned by her community when she marries her childhood love, Cyrus Saldanha. Life with Cyrus is beautiful, until old fears come knocking. Ultimately, Tara must face these fears to save her relationship with Cyrus—and to confront the victim-shaming society she was raised within. Intimate and deeply moving, Purple Lotus is the story of one woman’s ascension from the dark depths of desolation toward the light of freedom. Author: Veena Rao Publication Date: September 29, 2020 -
A chance meeting with a charismatic photographer will forever change Elizabeth’s life. Until she met Richard, Elizabeth's relationship with Georgia O’Keeffe and her little-known Hawaii paintings was purely academic. Now it’s personal. Richard tells Elizabeth that the only way she can truly understand O’Keeffe isn’t with her mind—it’s by getting into O’Keeffe’s skin and reenacting her famous nude photos. In the intimacy of Richard’s studio, Elizabeth experiences a new, intoxicating abandon and fullness. It never occurs to her that the photographs might be made public, especially without her consent. Desperate to avoid exposure—she’s a rising star in the academic world and the mother of young children—Elizabeth demands that Richard dismantle the exhibit. But he refuses. The pictures are his art. His property, not hers. As word of the photos spreads, Elizabeth unwittingly becomes a feminist heroine to her students, who misunderstand her motives in posing. To the university, however, her actions are a public scandal. To her husband, they’re a public humiliation. Yet Richard has reawakened an awareness that’s haunted Elizabeth since she was a child—the truth that cerebral knowledge will never be enough. Now she must face the question: How much is she willing to risk to be truly seen and known? Author: Barbara Linn Probst Publication Date: April 7, 2020 -
In present-day Los Angeles, Caroline Martin has everything but the thing her soul craves most: a daughter. When she undergoes what is supposed to be a routine hysterectomy, she unwittingly aborts the little girl she’s always longed for, leaving the unborn baby’s soul in limbo. Sharing a hospital room with Caroline is a pregnant woman who’s just been shot by her boyfriend. Her unborn child is barely hanging on—and the soul of Caroline’s hovering baby cannot resist the overwhelming urge to rebirth via this unclaimed fetus. In the aftermath of these events, two engaging heavenly guides, working together through sensitive humans, struggle to find an alternate way to help Caroline and her would-be daughter forge the link that was always meant to be between them—before the child’s brutal father makes good on his vow to steal the girl and disappear with her forever. By turns comic and tragic, Rachael’s Return explores the concept of soul mates, the afterlife, reincarnation, and relationships that never die, even as it offers readers a glimpse of the mysteries that exist within the ordinary and challenges assumptions about the true nature of reality. Author: Janet Rebhan Publication Date: June 16, 2020 -
This book continues the story of Rebecca from Walter Scott’s 1820 novel Ivanhoe. The Ivanhoe backstory: Jewish women in medieval England do not fall in love with Christian knights like Ivanhoe. Neither do they heal knights from battle wounds. But Rebecca does both—and nearly pays with her life. Rescued by Ivanhoe from being burnt at the stake as a sorceress, she flees from England and the man she loves. Rebecca of Salerno: In Salerno, Kingdom of Sicily, Rebecca pursues her dreams by attending medical school. Practicing her profession, she defies family pressure to marry Rafael, the man who loves her. But more pressing is the conquest of Sicily by the Hohenstaufens and the arrival of rogue crusaders, both of which threaten Salerno’s long-standing atmosphere of tolerance. When a rabbi is falsely accused of murdering a crusader, Rebecca and Rafael commit to pursuing justice and protecting the Jewish community. This story provides fascinating history, as of the medical school in Salerno, where women and men—Christians, Muslims, and Jews—studied together. It also exemplifies the recurring Jewish experience of persecution, search for refuge, and resilience to remake lives. Rebecca struggles to balance community expectations and traditions with her desire for fulfillment—one of the great challenges facing women throughout the ages. Author: Esther Erman Publication Date: August 2, 2022 -
Social workers often reminisce about their first time “freezing”―the dreaded stillness from emotions so strong that they take the body hostage. Angela Lovelace is a well-trained social worker: she has been working for Child Protective Services in San Francisco for nearly five years and has never frozen, never had a sleepless night. But after she sees her father’s tattered picture on the apartment wall of a little boy whose addict mother just died, she must learn how to overcome the numbness―and sets out to uncover the truth. While Angela conducts her investigation, she finds her family and personal life spiraling down into brokenness; as she peels away layer after layer of secrets, her brother navigates the ravages of substance abuse, and her sister struggles with infertility. The Lovelace family must look to their faith in God and each other to discover their own resilience and put the pieces of their splintered lives back together again. Told from multiple perspectives across generations, Revelation explores how untreated mental illness and family secrets ricochet and can impact each and every family member―and the importance of perseverance, love, and hope. Author: Bobi Gentry Goodwin Publication Date: November 5, 2019 -
Clare Rainbow-Dashell, the only child of delightfully eccentric, wealthy hippies, has just taken a hiatus from her career as an acclaimed wildlife photographer and returned to California to pursue her academic dreams when a disastrous affair with a professor catapults her to another continent: Africa. There, she immerses herself in well-paid commercial work for a luxury safari lodge as she seeks to regain her emotional and financial self-reliance. All this, however, is complicated by her relationship with her charismatic, imperious employer and her undeniable attraction to a leading black rhino specialist two men who are at war over both environmental politics and Clare herself. Set against the formidable backdrop of the Namib Desert, Rhino Dreams dramatizes the crisis of endangered species preservation and the horrors of poaching, interweaving this very real ecological darkness with the internal and external battles of three characters driven by fierce passions and divided notions of duty, ambition, and desire. It is a sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant ride and, in the end, a testimony to how tenuous and precious both life and love can be. Author: Carolyn Waggoner and Kathryn Williams Pub Date: April 19, 2022 -
For fans of Geraldine Brooks’s Year of Wonders, a story set in 1400s Provence about a young, passionate doctor who falls in love with a mentally ill young woman—and soon finds himself immersed in a web of danger, deceit, and mystery. Roland, a young man from Barcelona who inherited a passion for healing others from his deceased mother, has rebelled against his family’s wishes and chosen to attend medical school in France. The university in Montpellier is the most prestigious medical school in all of Europe, and yet Roland is quickly disillusioned by his professors’ false teachings. Seeking more accurate knowledge of the body, he leaves Montpellier and apprentices himself to a surgeon in nearby Arles for the summer. Roland soon finds himself with two mentors in Arles—Hubert, a master surgeon, and Isaac, a Jewish doctor who advocates searching for remedies in ancient texts and testing them on patients—both of whose lessons he absorbs readily. But when he falls in love with Magali, a young woman suffering from a mental illness, he extends his quest for the truth about the body to include the truth about the mind. Readers who loved Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink will be drawn to Roland’s story as he follows the woman he loves into her “labyrinth of the spirit”—one filled with wonder, mystery, betrayal, and love—and find themselves enthralled by this finely wrought depiction of the beauty and danger of life in early Renaissance Provence. Author: Anne Echols Publication Date: September 2, 2025 -
For fans of dual-timeline, mother-daughter novels like The Paper Palace and Tom Lake, a compelling contemporary novel about a woman’s struggle to face her reckless history, with its trail of damage and deception, and her quest for the redemption that might still be possible. From the ruins of Egypt to the privileged life of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the story of a woman’s odyssey through the maze of love, loyalty, recklessness, and remorse, as the consequences of her acts ripple through the generations. Approaching a milestone birthday, Arden Rice has seen it all: three marriages, hardship and wealth, choices she both regrets and defends, all fueled by the same fierce desire—to give her daughter the best possible life. At least, that’s what Arden tells herself. But nothing is simple. Arden is haunted by her impetuous history, with its trail of damage and deception. Yet she’s finally made a life where she can be her best self—until the unthinkable happens, and a train engineer’s lapse in attention throws that life into chaos. Secrets begin to unravel, and Arden finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew—along with her own role in shaping the disturbing person her daughter has become. As the stakes increase, especially for the vulnerable granddaughter who’s now in her care, Arden must face questions she’s spent a lifetime avoiding: Which acts define a person? Can someone be better than her worst acts? Author: Barbara Linn Probst Publication Date: May 13, 2025 -
In a fine Brooklyn brownstone in the mid–20th century, Ruth and her brothers are raised by their Eastern-European Jewish father, along with a spinster aunt and bachelor uncle. Her father, a widower and respected physician, is proud to have risen from Ellis Island newcomer to a prominent figure within his close-knit immigrant community. But family tensions mount: Ruth’s younger brother rebels against everything their father represents, while her older brother is killed in action in World War II. Not long after, the sudden deaths of her father, aunt, and uncle leave Ruth to inherit a legacy she cannot ignore. With half-remembered childhood moments, hidden documents, and clues appearing around every corner, she’s compelled to embark on a journey to piece together the truth about her mother’s life and death. Along the way, Ruth struggles to imagine her future as she works to hold her fracturing life together—including her relationship with her betrothed, Shimon—but discovers that her own sense of purpose and a sincere life partner can come from reckoning with what it truly means to love. Author: Sally F. Cutler Publication Date: December 15, 2026 -
In the tradition of The Paris Bookseller and Her Hidden Genius, the story of a real woman overshadowed in history by the giant talent she saved, Vincent van Gogh. How did a failed belligerent Dutch painter become one of the greatest artists of our time? In 1891, timid Jo van Gogh Bonger lives safely in the background of her art dealer husband Theo’s passionate work to sell unknown artists, especially his ill-fated dead brother Vincent. When Theo dies unexpectedly, Jo’s brief happiness is shattered. Her inheritance—hundreds of unsold paintings by Vincent—is worthless. Pressured to move to her parents’ home, Jo defies tradition, opening a boarding house to raise her infant son alone, and choosing to promote Vincent’s art herself. But her ingenuity and persistence draw the powerful opposition of a Parisian art dealer who vows to stop her once and for all, and so sink Vincent into obscurity. Saving Vincent reveals there was more than one genius in the Van Gogh family. Author: Joan Fernandez Publication Date: April 15, 2025 -
For anyone interested in the intersection of feminism and politics comes this inspiring, base-on-a-true-story tale of fighting back against sexism in the labor movement, set against the backdrop of Harvard in the 1990s. As soon as courses at Harvard begin, Ana, a White female, finds herself being stalked by Aaron, a Black male classmate. Word quickly gets out to the rest of the cohort—but not wanting to get anyone kicked out, Ana refuses to name names. With their program director insisting there’s nothing she can do to intervene if no one will name the perpetrator, the class becomes engulfed in a campaign to protect Ana that splits the group into two camps. Some of the men join the women to fight the harassment; some of the women join the harassers. In short order, the conflict becomes a fight for power that divides along race, sex, LGBTQ, and class lines—mirroring the heartbreaking history of the labor movement, and serving as a precursor to our current political landscape. A galvanizing behind-the-scenes look at the labor movement of the 1990s, Scabmuggers is ultimately a triumphant tale of women’s empowerment. Ana and her friends may be outnumbered—but they won’t go down without a fight. Author: Yvonne Martinez Publication Date: September 16, 2025 -
The stories in Seven Sides of Self explore the various sides of one’s personality: the storyteller, the skeptic, the survivor, the saint (or the sinner), the scholar, the seeker, and the savior. Through the lives of central characters such as Zarce Sun De’oggo, Sister Othrosa Vella, Jarka Moosha, and Old Mims―Nancy Joie Wilkie explores themes of battling strong emotions, the lengths we might go to for self-preservation and self sacrifice, the inability to accept things different, and taking responsibility for what we create in pieces that inhabit the worlds of both sci-fi and fantasy. Original and thought provoking, these are stories that will stimulate the intellect and engage the imagination. Author: Nancy Joie Wilkie Publication Date: November 5, 2019 -
For fans of Laline Paull, a speculative young adult novel about a family of New York City crows struggling to survive the outbreak of West Nile virus during the sizzling summer of 1999. Four-year-old Duncan needs to hurry up and find a mate—or so says his sister, Cloud. But she doesn’t know about the mistake that’s preventing him from leaving their family to start another. Though he’s the eldest, Duncan doesn’t see himself as a leader. Yet that’s what he must become when both his parents die of the mysterious illness that’s killing crows across New York City. He devotes himself to caring for his siblings, including three fledglings—but he soon discovers he can’t protect them from the “blind death.” Meanwhile, a zoo pathologist’s worst fears are realized. It starts with dead flamingos. Then critically ill New Yorkers start showing up in hospital emergency rooms. Some blame the crows. Author: Pam McGaffin Publication Date: May 26, 2026 -
2016 Foreward INDIE Awards Finalist, Science Fiction 2016 Indie Fab Finalist, Science Fiction 2017 National Indie Excellence Finalist, Regional Fiction: Southeast On Memorial Day, a series of bomb explosions shuts down major cities across the US. Her apartment in ruins, Sabine flees Washington DC and begins a grueling journey on foot that brings her to West Virginia, where she finds safety at an abandoned farmhouse with other refugees. For Sabine, family is a vague memory—she can’t even remember her last name. Without an identity, she hides—although thirty-five, she pretends to be twenty-eight, even to the refugee she falls in love with. But Sabine wants to recover her identity. Despite gangs, bombings, riots, and spreading disease, she longs to return to a family she has begun to recall—a mother, a father, and brothers. Are they alive, surviving, in hiding as she is? Do they await news, and hope to reconcile? Even in harrowing times, Sabine’s desires to belong and to be loved pull her away from shelter. Author: Lenore Gay Publication Date: August 9, 2016 -
2016 Indie Excellence Winner in Literary Fiction “A sensitively told exploration of layers of loss, isolation, motherhood, and marriage. Diamond knows there are no easy answers and her portrait of Sarah is drawn by a skillful, compassionate hand.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own Since the death of her infant daughter, lawyer-turned-stay-at-home mom Sarah Shaw has struggled to keep it together for her two young sons and law professor husband. With her husband burying himself in his career and her friendships all having withered, she is lost in a private world of grief. Then one day walking in L.A., Sarah’s heart catches at the sight of a young homeless woman pushing a baby in a stroller—and saving them becomes her mission. An unlikely bond grows between Sarah and the mother, Josie, whose pride and strained relationship with her own mother prevent her from going home to Oakland. Through her friendship with Josie, Sarah slowly learns that those we love are never far, even in death—and that sometimes it is the people we set out to save who save us. Shelter Us speaks to the quiet joys and anxieties of parenthood, and illuminates the place all parents know: that shadowy space between unconditional love and fear of unbearable loss. Author: Laura Diamond Publication Date: June 8, 2015
