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“Fire & Water is simply a wonderful read. From the very first page, story and characters urge the reader forward. Yet even as the plot rises and tangles, vital issues are examined: Can a surgeon, who thinks she can fix anything, fix a broken heart? A broken mind? Art, like life, is transient. With a discerning eye for detail, and some truly beautiful love scenes, Fasbinder takes the reader on a most compelling and satisfying ride, all the way to the final four words.” —Sands Hall, author of Catching Heaven and Tools of the Writer’s Craft Only in the glaring light of hindsight does aspiring surgeon Kate Murphy understand that she was groomed for the path she’s taken. Raised by a widowed dad and a misshapen, sometimes comical trio of parental surrogates from Murphy’s Pub, her father’s Irish bar in San Francisco, Kate has never understood how protected she is—but when she learns that her well-meaning family has hidden bitter truths about her mother’s mental illness and death, the rest of her family history unravels. Author: Betsy Graziani Fasbinder Publication Date: February 14, 2013 -
On the advice of a five-dollar psychic, Tina Martin, a zany, overworked mother of two, quits her high-powered job and moves her family to Shanghai. Tina yearns for this new setting to bring her the zen-like inner peace she’s always heard about on infomercials. Instead, she becomes a totally exasperated fish out of water, doing wacky things like stealing the shoes of a shifty delivery man, spraying local women with a bidet hose, and contemplating the murder of her new pet cricket. It takes the friendship of an elderly tai chi instructor, a hot Mandarin tutor, and several mah-jongg-tile-slinging expats to bring Tina closer to a culture she doesn’t understand, the dream job she never knew existed, and the self she has always sought. Fish Heads and Duck Skin will resonate with anyone who has ever wondered who they are, why they were put here, and how they ever lived before eating pan-fried pork buns. Publication Date: July 20, 2021 Author: Lindsey Salatka -
Fans of Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan, The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate, and Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson will enjoy Folly Park. Are we ever able to escape the past? Should we be allowed to? Though deeply ashamed of her slaveholding heritage, Temple Preston’s sense of duty and bittersweet memories tie her to Folly Park, her family’s crumbling ancestral plantation in Virginia. Now a cash-strapped tourist attraction, Folly Park was once the home of Confederate General Thomas Temple Smith, a southern war hero who died under mysterious circumstances. Temple is pursuing a plan to secure the house museum’s future when her summer research assistant, a Black PhD student, uncovers a remarkable secret: the general’s wife gave birth to a biracial baby while he was away fighting in the Civil War. This discovery turns Temple’s quiet, insulated life upside down, and—along with further revelations about the past that come to light in the ensuing weeks—fuels the growing tension in her hometown as a Black activist and Temple’s own race-baiting brother square off in a local campaign for mayor. Faced with threats and betrayal, Temple discovers who she really is—and how much she’s willing to lose to tell the truth. Author: Heidi Hackford Publication Date: November 15, 2022 -
Told alternately, by Colleen, an idealistic young white teacher; Frank, a black high school football player; and Evelyn, an experienced black teacher, Freedom Lessons is the story of how the lives of these three very different people intersect in a rural Louisiana town in 1969. Colleen enters into the culture of the rural Louisiana town with little knowledge of the customs and practices. She is compelled to take sides after the school is integrated―an overnight event for which the town’s residents are unprepared, and which leads to confusion and anxiety in the community―and her values are tested as she seeks to understand her black colleagues, particularly Evelyn. Why doesn’t she want to integrate the public schools? Frank, meanwhile, is determined to protect his mother and siblings after his father’s suspicious death―which means keeping a secret from everyone around him. Based on the author’s experience teaching in Louisiana in the late sixties, this heartfelt, unflinching novel about the unexpected effects of school integration during that time takes on the issues our nation currently faces regarding race, unity, and identity. Author: Eileen Harrison Sanchez Publication Date: November 12, 2019 -
Boston, 1984. Even in a world without cell phones, messages come through loud and clear if one is listening. When thirty-something Nora Forrest travels to Manhattan to see a Broadway play starring her idol, an aging Irish actor named Hugh Sheenan, she doesn’t know whether what happens in the theater that night should be credited to witchcraft, extrasensory perception, synchronicity, or simple accident—and she knows that many people would tell her nothing had happened at all. Told through the voices of four people, Gillyflower is a story about intersections and connections—real, imaginary, seized, and eluded. It’s a book about everyday magic, crystalline memory, and the details that flow through time and space like an electrified mist. It’s a detective story, a love story, and a coming-of-age story—for the never really young and for the almost old. Author: Diane Wald Publication Date: April 16, 2019 -
A bank internship in Japan’s booming 1981 economy is supposed to be twenty-three-year-old Dorothy Falwell’s ticket into a prestigious international MBA program. But the internship is unpaid―so, to make ends meet, she accepts an evening job as a hostess in a rundown suburban bar, a far cry from the sensuous woodblock prints she’s seen of old Tokyo’s “floating world.” Like her namesake, Dorothy hasn't planned on the detours she encounters in her own twisted version of Oz. Renamed Gina by her boss, she struggles with nightly indignities from customers and confusing advice from new friends. Then her internship crumbles and the suave but mysterious Mr. Tambuki offers help. How can she resist? With patience and the utmost respect for her opinions, Mr. Tambuki lures her into his exotic world of unorthodox Zen instruction, erotic art, and high-octane sex. Soon, bizarre sexual escapades with monks, salarymen, and gangsters begin to feel normal until one of her clients goes too far, and Dorothy realizes she’s in over her head. But can she find her way back from this point of no return? Author: Belle Brett Publication Date: September 25, 2018 -
At an early age, Gitel questions the expected roles of women in society and in Judaism. Born in Belorussia and brought to the US in 1911 as a child, she leads a life constrained by her religious Jewish parents. Forbidden from going to college and pushed into finding a husband, she marries Shmuel, an Orthodox Jewish pharmacist whose left-wing politics she admires. They plan to work together in a neighborhood pharmacy in Chicago—but when the Great Depression hits and their bank closes, their hopes are shattered. In the years that follow, Shmuel’s questionable decisions, his poor health, and his bad luck plague their marriage and leave them constantly in financial distress. Gitel dreams of going back to school to become a teacher once their one daughter reaches high school, but an unexpected pregnancy quashes that aspiration as well. And when, later, a massive stroke leaves Shmuel disabled, Gitel is challenged to combine caring for him, being the breadwinner at a time when women face salary discrimination, and being present for their second daughter. Offering an illuminating look at Jewish immigrant life in early-1900s America, Gitel’s Freedom is a compelling tale of women’s resourcefulness and resilience in the face of limiting and often oppressive expectations. Author: Iris Mitlin Lav Publication Date: March 25, 2025 -
2016 USA Best Book Awards: Literary Fiction, Finalist “[Meyers] weaves a strange pattern of beautifully detailed memories, tragic events, and science into an unforgettable tale of loss, longing, and the reality that one tries to escape in order to move on.” ―Booklist Charles Lang is a renowned scientist whose wife Julie and daughter Jess vanished mysteriously several years ago. Yet Charles remembers none of this, not even his own name. All that he has left of his identity are the accidental remnants scattered throughout the house, and the only clue Charles has regarding what happened to him is a thick cap of bandages wrapped around his head. As Charles starts to have memories of the past, memories that may or may not be his own, he realizes that only by uncovering the details of his former life will he have any hope of being reunited with Julie and Jess. A haunting tale of love and longing, of fate and free will, of the blurring lines between fiction and reality, Glass Shatters explores the dangers of trying to reinvent oneself. With the lyricism of Nicole Krauss, the exhilarating suspense of Kazuo Ishiguro, and the Gothic sensibility of Mary Shelley, Michelle Meyers’s debut novel showcases a daring new voice in the contemporary literary landscape. Author: Michelle Meyers Publication Date: April 12, 2017 -
What will the world look like in thirty years’ time? How will humanity survive the oncoming effects of climate change? Set in the near future and inspired by the world around us, Gravity Is Heartless is a romantic adventure that imagines a world on the cusp of climate catastrophe. The year is 2050: automated cities, vehicles, and homes are now standard, artificial Intelligence, CRISPR gene editing, and quantum computing have become a reality, and climate change is in full swing—sea levels are rising, clouds have disappeared, and the planet is heating up. Quinn Buyers is a climate scientist who'd rather be studying the clouds than getting ready for her wedding day. But when an unexpected tragedy causes her to lose everything, including her famous scientist mother, she embarks upon a quest for answers that takes her across the globe—and she uncovers friends, loss and love in the most unexpected of places along the way. Gravity Is Heartless is bold, speculative fiction that sheds a hard light on the treatment of our planet even as it offers a breathtaking sense of hope for the future. Author: Sarah Lahey Publication Date: June 2, 2020 -
In 1923, seventeen-year-old “Esther Grünspan arrives in Köln with a hardened heart as her sole luggage.” Thus she begins a twenty-two-year journey, woven against the backdrops of the European Holocaust and the Hindu Kali Yuga (the “Age of Darkness” when human civilization degenerates spiritually), in search of a place of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, using cunning and shrewdness, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India. Esther’s traveling companion and the novel’s narrator is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God worshipped by millions for his abilities to destroy obstacles, bestow wishes, and avenge evils. Impressed by Esther’s fortitude and relentless determination, born of her deep—though unconscious—understanding of the meaning and purpose of love, Ganesha, with compassion, insight, and poetry, chooses to highlight her story because he recognizes it is all of everyone’s stories—for truth resides at the essence of its telling. Weaving Eastern beliefs and perspectives with Western realities and pragmatism, Guesthouse for Ganesha is a tale of love, loss, and spirit reclaimed. Author: Judith Teitelman Publication Date: May 7, 2019 -
Abbie Rose Stone’s acquired wisdom runs deep, and so do her scars. She has successfully navigated the shoals of a long marriage, infertility, challenging children, and a career. Now it’s her turn to realize her dream: producing hard apple cider along the northern shores of Lake Michigan that she loves. She manages to resist new versions of the old pull of family dynamics that threaten to derail her plan―but nothing can protect her from the shock a lovely young stranger delivers when she exposes a long-held secret. In the wake of this revelation, Abbie must overcome circumstances that severely test her self-determination, her loyalties, and her understanding of what constitutes true family. Author: Barbara Stark-Nemon Publication Date: September 18, 2018 -
Arizona Territory, 1899. Ruby Fortune faces an untenable choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Once known as “Girl Wonder” on the Wild West circuit, Ruby is now a single mother of four boys in her hometown of Jericho, an end-of-the-world mining town north of Tucson. Here, Ruby opens a roadside inn to make ends meet. Drifters, grifters, con men, and prostitutes plow through the hotel’s doors, and their escapades pepper the local newspaper like buckshot. An affair with an African American miner puts Ruby’s life and livelihood at risk, but she can’t let him go. Not until a trio of disparate characters—her dead husband’s sister, a vindictive shopkeeper, and the local mine owner she once swindled—threaten to ruin her does Ruby face the consequences of her choices; but as usual, she does what she needs to in order to provide for herself and her sons. Set against the breathtaking beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and bursting with Wild West imagery, history, suspense, and adventure, Hardland serves up a tough, fast-talking, shoot-from-the-hip heroine who goes to every length to survive and carve out a life for herself and her sons in one of the harshest places in the American West. Author: Ashley E. Sweeney Publication Date: September 13, 2022 -
Sarah Golden and Jackie Larsen promised their partners they were out of the detective business. They declared “game over” after both of them almost lost their lives trying to solve their last medical mystery, and they’re happy with that decision: Sarah has finally allowed love and romance into her life, Jackie’s marriage is solid, and Jackie’s son, Wyatt, is still doing great with his year-old kidney transplant. So when they go on their dream trip to Cuba, they are not looking for trouble. But all their plans go out the window when a desperate plea from a Cuban transplant surgeon puts the duo in serious danger with the Cuban government on the same day the four most prominent immunologists in the world—doctors who were on the verge of solving the huge rejection issues that have plagued the transplant community for over fifty years—are killed in a car accident in Chicago. Soon, Sarah and Jackie find themselves dragged into the bowels of investigating venture capitalists and corporate greed—a terrain they know nothing about. As they uncover suspect clinical trials at major US transplant centers, including Sarah’s, their usual friends Biker Bob and Officer Handsome aren’t able to help them much, but they do receive assistance from an unlikely source: Sergio, who they helped to land in prison in Florida (and who is trying to win back his girlfriend), offers his help from the inside. Sarah and Jackie are armed with smarts, humor, and enough persistence to help them face the white-collared demons of corporate America—but with dangerous players gunning for them and death threats being made against their families, will they be able to solve this mystery before someone else gets hurt? Author: Amy S. Peele Publication Date: October 4, 2022 -
What happens when a seemingly ordinary woman with a passion for the arts falls in love with a Hollywood star known for his bachelor status and quick temper with the paparazzi? Something extraordinary. Dee Schwartz is a writer and arts researcher. Ryder Field is a famous actor descended from Hollywood royalty. On the night they meet outside a bar, their connection is palpable. Ryder’s mother—legendary actress Rebecca Field, half of Hollywood’s golden couple when she died—was kidnapped and murdered by a crazed fan in a shocking event that forever tarnished Tinseltown. Dee’s mother, too, died when she was young. Bonded by this loss, the two embark on a love story that explores their search for magic—or “gold dust”—in their lives. Everything changes, however, when Dee mysteriously disappears after an awards ceremony. Is history repeating itself? Can there truly be a happily ever after in Hollywood? Set against the backdrop of contemporary Los Angeles, Hollyland is a poignant novel that moves fluidly between romance, humor, suspense, and joy. Pub Date: April 4, 2023 Author: Patricia Leavy -
A fictional diary set in interwar Germany and Spain allows us to peek into the life of Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her merchant-class, German-Jewish family.Klara’s first visit to Seville in 1925 opens her eyes and her spirit to an era in which Spain’s major religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, shared deep cultural connections. At the same time, she is made aware of the harsh injustices that persist in Spanish society. By 1930, she has landed a position with the medical school in Madrid. Though she feels compelled to hide her Jewish identity in her predominantly Christian new home, she finds that she feels less “different” in Spain than she did in Germany, especially as she learns new ways of expressing her opinions and desires. And when the Spanish Civil War erupts in 1936, Klara (now “Clara”) enlists in the Fifth Regiment, a step that transports her across the geography of the embattled peninsula and ultimately endangers a promising relationship and even Clara’s life itself. A blending of thoroughly researched history and engrossing fiction, Home So Far Away is an epic tale that will sweep readers away. Author: Judith Berlowitz Pub Date: June 21, 2022 -
2016 International Book Awards - Winner in Addiction & Recovery 2016 NIEA Awards - Winner in Addiction & Recovery 2016 Indie Excellence- Winner in Addiction and Recovery Randall Grange has been tricked into admitting herself into a treatment center and she doesn’t know why. She’s not a party hound like the others in her therapy group—but then again, she knows she can’t live without pills or booze. Raised by an abusive father, a detached mother, and a loving aunt and uncle, Randall both loves and hates her life. She’s awkward and a misfit. Her parents introduced her to alcohol and tranquilizers at a young age, ensuring that her teenage years would be full of bad choices, and by the time she’s twenty-three years old, she’s a full-blown drug addict, well acquainted with the miraculous power chemicals have to cure just about any problem she could possibly have—and she’s in more trouble than she’s ever known was possible. Author: J.A. Wright Publication Date: November 3, 2015 -
When Ida and her daughter Bessie flee a catastrophic pogrom in Ukraine for America in 1905, they believe their emigration will ensure that their children and grandchildren will be safe from harm. But choices and decisions made by one generation have ripple effects on those who come later—and in the decades that follow, family secrets, betrayals, and mistakes made in the name of love threaten the survival of the family: Bessie and Abe Weissman’s children struggle with the shattering effects of daughter Ruby’s mental illness, of Jenny’s love affair with her brother-in-law, of the disappearance of Ruby’s daughter as she flees her mother’s legacy, and of the accidental deaths of Irene’s husband and granddaughter. A sweeping saga that follows three generations from the tenements of Brooklyn through WWII, from Woodstock to India, and from Spain to Israel, How to Make a Life is the story of a family who must learn to accept each other’s differences—or risk cutting ties with the very people who anchor their place in the world. Author: Florence Reiss Kraut Publication Date: October 13, 2020 -
2015 American Library Association: Winner, Over the Rainbow Book “Coffey has created a stimulating interpretation of the Freud family through Anna’s eyes.” —Kirkus Reviews “Mental health journalist Coffey’s (Unspeakable Truths and Happy Endings) effective creation of Anna’s cool, somewhat clinical voice will hold the attention of readers already curious about the Freuds or psychoanalytic theory.” —Library Journal There are several serviceable biographies about child psychoanalyst Anna Freud, who lived from 1895 to 1982. But as a fictional memoir, Hysterical is the first novel to reveal Anna’s secrets—and two are blockbusters: 1) At around the time that the young Anna began having intense “friendships” with other women, her father Sigmund began psychoanalyzing her—dissecting her dreams, memories, and, most disturbingly, her sexual fantasies, and writing about them; 2) While Anna publicly supported her father’s “wisdom” about lesbianism and remained his favorite family member, she enjoyed a monogamous relationship with Tiffany fortune heiress Dorothy Burlingham for fifty-four years. Weaving a good story out of a pile of crazy facts, Hysterical lets Anna freely examine the forces that shaped her. Author: Rebecca Coffey Publication Date: May 13, 2014 -
In the middle of a perilous drought in the Northwest, an arsonist begins setting fires all around. It gives Zoe Penney nightmares about her home—seated right next to tinder-dry woods—rising up in explosions of fire, as well as haunting dreams of a little boy deep in the forest. Winter brings the longed-for rains but also a cancer diagnosis for Zoe’s husband, Jay, which plunges the family into disbelief and fear. The children lean in close to their parents, can’t stop touching them. As Jay’s treatment begins, nature lets loose with strange and startling encounters, while a shadowy figure hovers about the corners of the house. First, Zoe’s fear turns to anger: How can I love you if I am to lose you? How can I live in joy when the sky is falling? But she gradually learns that it’s possible to love anything, even terrible things—if you can love them for what they are teaching you. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Ann Putnam -
Francesca Bodin has a near-perfect life as an accomplished music teacher and professional flautist living in the country with her husband, Ben and their four-year old daughter, Addie. This ends suddenly when a snowmobiling accident traps the three of them in a frozen lake. Ben gets out, leaving her and Addie to die. Francesca believes she sees their dog pull Addie from the lake and drag her into the nearby woods. Desperate to help her daughter, she struggles to emerge from the icy waters, and follows them. Once she enters the forest, however, she finds herself trapped in a sinister dream-like world where night never ends, where Addie’s whereabouts remain hidden from her and where she encounters a group of women who, like Francesca, have been left to die and now seek to unleash their revenge on those who have harmed them. When they have Ben in their sights, Francesca realizes that if she is ever to escape this nightmare and save her daughter, she must first save the husband who abandoned them. Author: Susan Speranza Pub Date: May 24, 2022 -
2016 Best Book Awards: Fiction: Multicultural Finalist “In a Silent Way offers a moving portrayal of a committed, young teacher-activist, Jeanna, who is determined to effect change in her urban school and community. Jeanna's culturally relevant and inclusive pedagogy, and her determination to never give up on her students, ultimately wins their respect and admiration. All the while, Hetzel makes sure to shine a much needed light on undemocratic practices and unequal gendered power dynamics in social and racial justice movements.” ―Jonathan Kozol, education activist and award-winning author of Death at an Early Age and Savage Inequalities: Children in American Schools In a Silent Way chronicles the coming of age in the late sixties of young Jeanna Kendall as she quietly facilitates a close-knit community of learners in a progressive urban school, grapples with racism and sexism within her community activist group, and experiences the extreme highs and lows of her first intimate relationship—which happens to be with a revered and powerful community leader. Jeanna encounters all the same issues we confront today: youth of color demeaned and destroyed, wise community elders discounted by leaders who “know better,” and the “sexploitation” of women in the movement. Gradually overwhelmed by the mounting challenges she faces on all fronts, and on the verge of a breakdown, a crisis emerges within her movement group that transforms everything and everyone and opens up a new world of possibilities—ones deeply relevant to us today. Author: Mary Jo Hetzel Publication Date: October 18, 2016 -
When David Herron—overwhelmed and despairing, his family’s business and finances in ruin due to the bursting lending bubble of 2008—takes his own life one chilly spring morning, he has no idea the ripple effect his decision will set into motion. Two years later, his widow, Jules, is now an employee of the bakery she and David used to own—and still full of bitterness over David’s lies, perceived cowardice, and ultimate abandonment of her and their now-teenage daughter, Rennie. Rennie, meanwhile, struggles socially at school, resents her work-obsessed mother, and is convinced she’s to blame for her father’s death. When Denise, the former police detective who worked (and, due to her own personal struggles at the time, mishandled) David’s case, catches sight of Rennie at her sons’ school, she’s struck by the girl’s halo of sadness—and becomes obsessed with attempting to right the wrongs she believes she perpetrated two years ago. And as all this unfolds in Boston, Daniel, the guilt-ridden young man who, in his old life as a banker, helped create the circumstances that led to David’s suicide, continues to punish himself for his sins by living half a life, working odd jobs and bouncing from one US city to another, never staying long enough to make friends or build something lasting. Ultimately, each of these very different people—all of them tied together by one tragic event—must learn in their own way how to say good-bye to the past and move into a brighter future. Author: Jane Ward Publication Date: September 21, 2021 -
2016 Best Book Award Winner, Fiction: African American “A laugh-out-loud look at growing up at any age told with honesty and warmth.” —Books & Life “Funny, smart and compulsively readable! Ginger McKnight has a hit on her hands. And Terry McMillan fans can rejoice that they can add a new favorite writer to their list!” —Heidi W. Durrow New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky Pitched as “a poor man’s Halle Berry,” forty-one-year-old soap star Jo Randolph, has successfully avoided waiting tables since she left Midland, Texas at eighteen. But then, in the span of twenty-four hours, Jo manages to lose her job, burn her bridges in Hollywood, and accidentally burn down her lover/director’s beach house—after which she is shipped home to Texas by her agent to stay out of sight while she sorts out her situation. The more Jo reluctantly reconnects with her Texas “roots” and the family and friends she left behind, the more she regains touch with herself as an artist and with what is meaningful in life beyond the limelight. The summer of 2007 is cathartic for Jo, whose career and lifestyle have allowed her to live like a child for forty years, but who now must transition to making grown-up decisions and taking on adult responsibilities. In the Heart of Texas is a wry, humorous commentary on the complexities of race, class, relationships, politics, popular culture, and celebrity in our current society. Author: Ginger McKnight-Chavers Publication Date: October 25, 2016 -
For fans of Emma Straub and Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeny, a debut contemporary women’s fiction novel about obsession, forgiveness, and friendship between two unlikely people. Style-guru Charlotte Oakes sells beautiful lifestyles, but her mentally ill daughter is an addict, her long marriage is dead, and she is pregnant with her ex-lover’s baby. Stunned after witnessing a hit-and-run in Chicago that leaves a child dead, Charlotte thinks she sees her Prius fleeing the scene. Her troubled daughter, Libby, is the only one who could have been driving. His partner and best friend killed in a drug bust, police officer Ed Kelly learns that forensics has found that the fatal bullet came from Ed’s gun. Under internal investigation, Ed copes by filming cars at the site of the recent hit-and-run, hoping to catch the child’s killer. There, he notices Charlotte’s pilgrimages to the makeshift memorial, and over the weeks, the two become unlikely friends sharing intimate stories. But Charlotte won’t trust him with her most vulnerable secret of all: her suspicions about her daughter’s involvement in the accident. When Ed finally learns the truth about the accident, he struggles with his beliefs and duties. If he keeps quiet, he has breached his commitment to the law. But if he does the right thing as an officer, he may send Libby to jail—and lose Charlotte. Author: Karen F. Uhlmann Publication Date: May 6, 2025
