January 12, 2012
Plot summary (from the publisher): A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science [...]
October 20, 2011
Plot summary (from the publisher): When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is [...]
September 13, 2011
Plot summary (from the publisher): Half-sisters Cassie and Peck could not be more different. Cassie is a newly divorced journalist with her feet firmly planted on the ground; Peck is a vintage-obsessed actress with her head in the clouds. In fact, the only thing they seem to have in common is their inheritance of Fool’s [...]
July 20, 2011
Plot summary (from the publisher): Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure-a year living in Kenya. Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn’t know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own [...]
July 5, 2011
Plot summary (from the publisher): In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto–pursued by the implacable [...]
June 28, 2011
Plot summary (from the publisher): The last two years have been monstrously unpleasant for high-society journalist Gus Bailey. His propensity for gossip has finally gotten him into trouble — $11 million worth. His problems begin when he falls hook, line, and sinker for a fake story from an unreliable source and repeats it on a [...]
May 14, 2011
Plot summary (from the publisher): As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and [...]
March 19, 2011
Plot summary (with spoilers): Joshua and Natalie Sandler seem to lead an ideal life. Joshua is a successful New York-based business owner, while Natalie is a professional cellist. Their 13-year-old son Dan is an easygoing, well-liked boy who is respectful of his parents and does not at all fit the brooding, moody teen stereotype. But [...]
February 26, 2011
Plot summary (with spoilers): Faced with mounting debt, Recently widowed Meg Rosenthal takes a low-paying teaching job at a private boarding school in Arcadia Falls (in upstate New York). This seemed like the perfect position for her because her 16-year-old daughter Sally would be able to attend this special school for artistically inclined students free [...]
February 11, 2011
Plot summary (with spoilers): Rescue tells the story of Pete Webster, an up-and-coming EMT in rural Vermont. Life changes for 21-year-old Pete when he’s called out to the scene of a one-car accident. The injured party is a young woman named Sheila Arsenault, who had been driving drunk, without auto insurance or any kind of [...]