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World War II is raging overseas, but life remains painfully quiet on the rugged New England fishing island of Fourth Cliff. With most of its able-bodied male inhabitants away in the service, the island is now home only to aged fishermen, concerned women and children, and second-rate soldiers guarding a low-priority military emplacement and camp for Italian POWs.

In Great Uncle Edward, a family gathers for dinner. At ninety-three, Great Uncle Edward commands the table in his three-piece suit; Cousin Russell attended both Harvard and Yale but is now reduced to selling off the family books; sisters Betty and Molly are caught between ghosts of a storied past and creeping destitution. These lives are signposts along the downward spiral of an old aristocracy.

After the woman is identified as the missing daughter of a yacht designer, the police—with the exception of Emma's friend Detective Jesse Whyte—hastily conclude she is a suicide, perhaps to quiet any scandal for the Morgans, since her body was found floating near their property. But Emma suspects the woman was murdered and begins to sort through a who's who of sportsmen, boat crews, and the Newport elite in search of a stone-cold killer . . .

Eve has a carefully curated online life, works occasionally, and texts constantly with her best friend, Ezra. Basically, she is an archetypal LA millennial. She has also been carrying on a year-long conversation with her deceased friend Miggy over text. But when Ezra goes missing on the anniversary weekend of Miggy's death, Eve feels like her world is shattering. Over a frantic weekend Eve investigates Ezra's disappearance, scouring social media for clues, while drowning her anger and anxiety in drinks, drugs, and spiritual cleansing.

In the novel Who's Who When Everyone Is Someone Else, the character "C. D. Rose" searches an unnamed middle-European city for the long-lost manuscript of a little-known writer named Maxim Guyavitch. That search was fruitless, but in The Blind Accordionist, "C. D. Rose" has found the manuscript—nine sparkling, fable-like short stories—and he presents them here with an (hilarious) introduction explaining the discovery, and an afterword providing (hilarious) critical commentary on the stories, and what they might reveal about the mysterious Guyavitch.

As a writer lies dying, he has one last story to tell: a tale of faith and devotion, a meditation on what lies beyond this life, and a prayer of gratitude that may lead to rebirth.

The six exquisite stories in Natural History are set largely in a small community in central New York state and portray some of her most beloved characters, spanning the decades between the Civil War to the present day. Told with Andrea Barrett's characteristic elegance, passion for science, and wonderful eye for the natural world, the psychologically astute and moving stories gathered in this collection evoke the ways women's lives and expectations—in families, in work, and in love—have shifted across a century and more.

Since he first appeared on the American literary scene, Jerome Charyn has dazzled audiences. Yet Charyn, a beloved comedic novelist, also possesses an extraordinary knowledge of Golden Age Hollywood, having taught film history both in the United States and France. With Big Red, Charyn reimagines the life of one of America's most enduring icons, "Gilda" herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red tresses and hypnotic dancing graced the silver screen over sixty times in her nearly forty-year career.

Growing up in a rapidly changing Harlem, eight-year-old Malaya hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings. The pressures of her predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are relentless, as are the expectations passed down from her painfully proper mother and sharp-tongued grandmother. As she comes of age in the 1990s, she finds solace in the music of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, but her weight continues to climb—until a family tragedy forces her to face the source of her hunger, ultimately shattering her inherited stigmas and embracing her own desire. 

Hostage rescue expert Jonathan Grave and his fellow special-ops veteran, Boxers, are hunting in Montana when shots ring out, and they realize they've become the prey for assassins. In the crosshairs of unseen shooters, cut off from all communication, with the wind at a blood-freezing chill, the nightmare is just beginning. Because Jonathan and Boxers aren't the only ones under fire.

A darkly funny meditation on creativity and family, Be Brief and Tell Them Everything tracks the life of a middle-aged author who is struggling to write his next novel while trying to come to grips with his son's disabilities, set against a backdrop of ecological catastrophe and escalating human insanity in contemporary Los Angeles. A beautiful, powerful, concise work of autofiction, Be Brief documents the stops and starts of adulthood and marriage, and the joys and challenges of parenting, while defining what it means to be a good man, and a good writer.

A novel that imagines a future in which sweeping civil conflict has forced America's young people to flee its borders into an unwelcoming world. One such American is Ron Patterson, who finds himself on distant shores, working as a repairman and sharing a room with other refugees. In an unnamed city wedged between ocean and lush mountainous forest, Ron can almost imagine a stable life for himself. Especially when he makes the first friend he has had in years—a mysterious migrant named Marlise, who bears a striking resemblance to a onetime classmate.

Fourteenth-century Europe. The Black Death has killed half the known world, and in an isolated convent, a small group of nuns spends their days in work, austerity, and devotion, chanting the Liturgy of the Hours. But their community is threatened. Rumors of heresy and a scandalous Book of Ursula, based on the teachings of the charismatic former abbess and founder of the order, have prompted the male church hierarchy to launch an investigation. Disrespect and rebellion infect some novices, and the youngest among them pines for the bishop's chief inquisitor.

A French invasion fleet is poised to cross the Channel and storm the beaches of southern England. A member of Napoleon's inner circle contacts the British naval intelligence service in hopes of defecting to London. His escape plan calls for a rendezvous at an international chess tournament in Frankfurt. Naval intelligence sends its top man and best chess player, Captain Thomas Grey, to orchestrate the Frenchman's escape to England. But Grey's mission changes dramatically when the defector demands that his pro-Napoleon daughter come with him—expecting Grey to act as kidnapper.

Lil Chris is just nineteen when he arrives at Angola as an AU—an admitting unit, a fresh fish, a new 'vict. He's got a life sentence with no chance of parole, but he's also got a clear mind and sharp awareness—one that picks up quickly on the details of the system, his fellow inmates, and what he can do to claim a place at the top. When he meets Rise, a mature inmate who's already spent years in the system, Lil Chris learns to find his way in a system bent on repressing every means he has to express himself. 

At age eleven, Helen disappeared in the wilderness of Mount Rainier National Park while camping with her father, Benjamin. She was gone for almost a week before being discovered and returned to her family. It is now twenty-five years later, and after more than two decades of estrangement, Helen and Benjamin reconnect at his home in Portland, Oregon, to try to understand what happened during the days she was gone. Meanwhile, Benjamin meets an odd pair, a woman and boy who seem driven to help him learn more about Helen's disappearance.

While in the hospital recuperating from a gunshot wound, Chicago PI Sam Kelson is approached by a nurse who's troubled by three recent deaths. No pattern, no connection—except that three patients died when they shouldn't have. Initially skeptical, Kelson starts asking questions—and the more he uncovers, the clearer it becomes that something isn't right. What exactly has been going on at Clement Memorial Hospital? Has someone been killing patients? If so, why? As Kelson digs deeper, he comes to realize that someone is determined to prevent him finding out the truth. Whatever it takes.

In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.

It is every mama's dearest wish that her daughter marries well. But how to ensure that a seemingly earnest suitor is not merely a fortune hunter? Rosalind is involved in just such a case, discreetly investigating a client's prospective son-in-law, when she is drawn into another predicament shockingly close to home.

Dying again is not enough. Now Rueben must go to another universe with his greatest enemy. Earth-Z is ground zero for the world destroying virus. Too bad Rueben lives on Earth-A.