Arcs

Autumn Landers, a beautiful, successful business owner, thought she had life figured out until one little word, cancer, changed everything. When Caroline Cross answers Autumn's ad for a live-in caregiver, Autumn is instantly drawn to her. But Caroline has suffered her own losses and isn't about to risk her heart. Autumn knows the odds are against her. But for the first time in her life she is going to do things her way. The first thing on her bucket list? Falling in love. Autumn and Caroline question the fairness of life, the cruelty of loss, and what it means to love as they navigate the complicated minefield of relationships, grief, and life-altering illness.

Riley Dawson is a psychotherapist with a lycanthropic affliction. She’s a werecoyote, to be precise. A foundling adopted by wealthy parents, Riley led a privileged life until she fell in love with Fiona Bell, an evangelical preacher’s daughter. Raging hormones, the full moon, and the pull of Fiona Bell on her teenage heartstrings triggered her first transformation. Unfortunately, her parents witnessed the change and sent her off to college with a trust fund and an agreement never to return home. Twenty years later, Riley shares a lucrative therapy practice with Dr. Margaret Spencer. Margaret, her wife, and her gay brother-in-law are the only ones who know Riley’s secret. Afraid of risking exposure, Riley restricts her love life to online hookups. But when a family is referred for treatment and Fiona Bell comes back into her life, all the rules of the client-therapist relationship are tested and Riley’s world is turned upside down. Cover Artist: Tammy Seidick Genres: Paranormal & Urban Fantasy / Romance Tags: Financial gap/Class disparity, Marriage of Convenience/Fake Relationship, New York City, Psychological Thriller, Second Chance at Love, Shifters, Children / Families, Virgins/First Love, Small Town Romances, Animals Words: 65,000

What Does It Mean to Be a Gay Man Today? It’s just weeks after the historic Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame. So when he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can’t help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men haven’t seen each other in a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history. Instead, he’s outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties; friends getting married, having babies. While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Sebastian with one of his students and Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again, both men must come reckon not just with one another, but with themselves. Rich with sharply drawn characters and contemporary detail, provocative, and emotionally profound, Let’s Get Back to the Party is sure to appeal to readers of Garth Greenwell, Alan Hollinghurst, Claire Messud, and Rebecca Makkai.

From the bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past comes a compulsive new novel about one woman’s sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London. 1967. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the twenty-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one hot summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them. With scalpel-sharp insight, Tessa Hadley explores her characters’ inner worlds, laying bare their fears and longings. Daring and sensual, Free Love is an irresistible exploration of romantic love, sexual freedom and living out the truest and most meaningful version of our selves – a novel that showcases Hadley’s unrivaled ability to “put on paper a consciousness so visceral, so fully realized, it heightens and expands your own” (Lily King, author of Euphoria ).

From the author of Thin Girls, a page-turning feminist novel that tells the story of how a poor girl coming of age in rural New Zealand grows to be a sex icon, the face of a movement, and a mother, all at the same time. Kate Burns grows up wanting attention from her Ma, but her Ma wants only money and Kate learns how to get both. She and her childhood friend, Lacey, run kissing lessons for cash in the janitor’s closet of Fenbrook High, and, just like that, they find themselves in the sex work industry. When Ma dies, Kate discovers that the men her Ma was always inviting over to their home were, in fact, clients. Ma was no stranger to sex work either. Following in Ma’s footsteps, Kate heads to Nevada where she picks up a job at America’s largest and most successful brothel: The Hop. In her new life as a Bunny, Kate searches for an identity she can perform—the other Bunnies include a goth, a housewife, a hippy, a rebel, all of them acting their archetype flawlessly. She befriends Betty, a trans woman who is a Bunny for kicks rather than cash; Mia, who is marketed as The Asian Persuasion; Dakota and Rain, who are ex-dominatrixes and newly in love. Kate becomes Lady Lane. Lady quickly becomes a bestselling Bunny and the owner Daddy’s favorite at this high-class establishment. But when ten street workers are killed in a nearby city, just bodies with no names, Lady joins her sister Bunnies in mourning and begins to see things in a new light. Lady’s success breeds scandal and unwanted fame, deeply affecting her, transforming her life and The Hop forever. Diana Clarke’s provocative second novel is subversive in the very best way, an unforgettable work of fiction with a feminist message that couldn’t be more important.

In this thoroughly propulsive (Kimberly McCreight) debut thriller, a young woman questions everything she thought she knew about the shocking murder that changed her life when she was in high school. Ten years ago, my boyfriend killed my best friend. When Micah Wilkes was a senior in high school, her boyfriend was convicted of murdering her best friend, Emily. A decade later, Micah has finally moved on from the unforgivable betrayal and loss. Now the owner of a bustling coffee shop in her small hometown in Pennsylvania, she's happily coupled up with another old high school friend, the two having bonded over their shared sorrow. But when reminders of her past begin appearing at her work and home, Micah begins to doubt what she knows about Emily's death. Questions raised on a true crime blog and in an online web sleuthing forum force her to reexamine her memories of that fateful night. She told the truth to the investigators on the case, but was there another explanation for Emily's murder? A stranger in the woods. An obsessive former classmate. Or the internet's favorite suspect: Joshua, Emily's outcast younger brother who hasn't been seen since his sister's death. As Micah delves deeper into the case, she feels her grip on reality loosening, her behavior growing more and more secretive and unhinged. As she races to piece together the truth about that night ten years ago, Micah grapples with how things could have gone so wrong and wonders whether she, too, might be next to disappear.

The perfect read for fans of The White Lotus or Succession “As a novelist, Tarkington is the real deal. I can’t wait to see this story reach a wide audience.” —Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife When Charlie Boykin was young, he thought his life with his single mother on the working-class side of Nashville was perfectly fine. But when his mother arranges for him to be admitted as a scholarship student to an elite private school, he is suddenly introduced to what the world can feel like to someone cushioned by money. That world, he discovers, is an almost irresistible place where one can bend—and break—rules and still end up untarnished. As he gets drawn into a friendship with a charismatic upperclassman, Archer Creigh, and an affluent family that treats him like an adopted son, Charlie quickly adapts to life in the upper echelons of Nashville society. Under their charming and alcohol-soaked spell, how can he not relax and enjoy it all—the lack of anxiety over money, the easy summers spent poolside at perfectly appointed mansions, the lavish parties, the freedom to make mistakes knowing that everything can be glossed over or fixed? But over time, Charlie is increasingly pulled into covering for Archer’s constant deceits and his casual bigotry. At what point will the attraction of wealth and prestige wear off enough for Charlie to take a stand—and will he? For readers of Wiley Cash, Ann Patchett, and Pat Conroy, The Fortunate Ones is an immersive, elegantly written story that conveys both the seductiveness of this world and the corruption of the people who see their ascent to the top as their birthright.

From the critically acclaimed author of Something To Talk About comes a sharp and sexy rom-com about a college senior who accidentally hooks up with her best friend’s mom. When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup—it just happens. Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around and her friend drags her along to meet her mom—the hot, older woman Cassie slept with. Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior. In her defense, she hadn’t known Cassie was a student when they'd met. To make things worse, Erin’s daughter brings Cassie to breakfast the next morning. And despite Erin's better judgement—how could sleeping with your daughter’s friend be anything but bad?—she and Cassie get along in the day just as well as they did last night. What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost?

“Lovers of the short story, rejoice! There’s something for everyone in this anniversary collection . . . The collection makes the argument that time and again, it is stories that save us.” —Booklist Thirty-five literary luminaries come together in this stunning collection of all-new works. A must-have for any lover of literature, Small Odysseys sweeps the reader into the landscape of the contemporary short story, featuring never-before-published works by many of our most preeminent authors as well as up-and-coming superstars. On their journey through the book, readers will encounter long-ago movie stars, a town full of dandelions, and math lessons from Siri. They will attend karaoke night, hear a twenty-something slacker’s breathless report of his failed recruiting by the FBI, and travel with a father and son as they channel grief into running a neigh­borhood bakery truck. They will watch the Greek goddess Persephone encounter the end of the world, and witness another apocalypse through a series of advertise­ments for a touchless bidet. And finally, they will meet an aging loner who finds courage and resilience hidden in the most unexpected of places—the next generation. Published in partnership with beloved literary radio program and live show Selected Shorts in honor of its thirty-fifth anniversary, this collection of thirty-five stories captures its spirit in print for the first time. FEATURING Rabih Alameddine \ Jenny Allen \ Lesley Nneka Arimah \ Aimee Bender \ Marie-Helene Bertino \ Jai Chakrabarti \ Patrick Cottrell \ Elizabeth Crane \ Michael Cunningham \ Patrick Dacey \ Edwidge Danticat \ Dave Eggers \ Omar El Akkad \ Lauren Groff \ Jacob Guajardo \ A.M. Homes \ Mira Jacob \ Jac Jemc \ Etgar Keret \ Lisa Ko \ Victor LaValle \ J. Robert Lennon \ Ben Loory \ Carmen Maria Machado \ Juan Martinez \ Maile Meloy \ Joe Meno \ Susan Perabo \ Helen Phillips \ Namwali Serpell \ Rivers Solomon \ Elizabeth Strout \ Luis Alberto Urrea \ Jess Walter \ Weike Wang

“Another virtuoso blend of horror, action, and humor... Fans will find this a worthy sequel.”— Publishers Weekly In this thrilling adventure, a blend of enthralling historical fiction and fantastical horror, Matt Ruff returns to the world of Lovecraft Country and explores the meaning of death, the hold of the past on the present, and the power of hope in the face of uncertainty. Summer, 1957. Atticus Turner and his father, Montrose, travel to North Carolina to mark the centennial of their ancestor’s escape from slavery, but an encounter with an old nemesis leads to a life-and-death pursuit. Back in Chicago, George Berry is diagnosed with cancer and strikes a devil’s bargain with the ghost of Hiram Winthrop, who promises a miracle cure—but only if George brings Winthrop back from the dead. Fifteen-year-old Horace Berry, reeling from the killing of a close friend, joins his mother, Hippolyta, and her friend Letitia Dandridge on a trip to Nevada for The Safe Negro Travel Guide. But Hippolyta has a secret—and far more dangerous—agenda that will take her and Horace to the far end of the universe and bring a new threat home to Letitia’s doorstep. Hippolyta isn’t the only one keeping secrets. Letitia’s sister, Ruby, has been leading a double life as her white alter ego, Hillary Hyde. Now, the supply of magic potion she needs to transform herself is nearly gone, and a surprise visitor throws her already tenuous situation into complete chaos. Yet these troubles are soon eclipsed by the return of Caleb Braithwhite. Stripped of his magic and banished from Chicago at the end of Lovecraft Country, he’s found a way back into power and is ready to pick up where he left off. But first he has a score to settle . . .

A fresh take on the story of Medusa, the original monstered woman. They will fear you and flee you and call you a monster. The only mortal in a family of gods, Medusa is the youngest of the Gorgon sisters. Unlike her siblings, Medusa grows older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know. When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene's temple, the goddess is enraged. Furious by the violation of her sacred space, Athene takes revenge—on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon's actions, Medusa is forever transformed. Writhing snakes replace her hair and her gaze will turn any living creature to stone. Cursed with the power to destroy all she loves with one look, Medusa condemns herself to a life of solitude. Until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon... In Stone Blind, classicist and comedian Natalie Haynes turns our understanding of this legendary myth on its head, bringing empathy and nuance to one of the earliest stories in which a woman—injured by a powerful man—is blamed, punished, and monstered for the assault. Delving into the origins of this mythic tale, Haynes revitalizes and reconstructs Medusa's story with her passion and fierce wit, offering a timely retelling of this classic myth that speaks to us today.

In a book that is part thrilling adventure, part exploration of some of the darkest secrets of the Holocaust, award-winning journalist and best-selling novelist Jonathan Freedland uncovers the extraordinary story of the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz, a man who was determined to warn the world—and pass on a truth too few were willing to hear. In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz—one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them at the end of the railway line. Against all odds, he and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen—a forensically detailed report that would eventually reach Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba—then just nineteen years old—had risked everything to deliver. Some could not believe it. Others thought it easier to keep quiet. Vrba helped save 200,000 Jewish lives—but he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man—a gifted “escape artist” who even as a teenager understand that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death, a man who deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Everybody Rise, a “shimmering” ( New York Times Book Review ) novel with the exquisite historical detail and evocative settings of The Cold Millions and Great Circle that tells the story of one unforgettable woman’s rise in country and western music. It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time. Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. She yearns to feel the rush of making live music one more time and bask in the glow of a packed house before she makes the last, and most important, stop on the the farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood. As the novel crisscrosses eras, moving between Lillian’s youth—the Depression, the Second World War, the rise of Nashville—and her middle-aged life in 1980, we see her striving to build a career in the male-dominated world of country music, including the hard choices she makes as she tries to redefine music, love, aging, and womanhood on her own terms. Nearing her final tour stop, Lil is forced to confront those choices and how they shaped her life. Would a different version of herself have found the happiness and success that has eluded her? When she reaches her Washington hometown for her very last show, though, she’ll undergo a reckoning with the past that forces her to reconsider her entire life story. Exploring one unforgettable woman’s creativity, ambition, and sacrifices in a world—and an art form—made for men, The Farewell Tour asks us to consider how much of our past we can ever leave behind.

“Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an eminent Dean of American journalism, a vital voice whose work chronicled the civil rights movement and so much of what has transpired since then. My People is the definitive collection of her reportage and commentary. Spanning datelines in the American South, South Africa and points scattered in between, her work constitutes a history of our time as rendered by the pen of a singular and indispensable black woman journalist.”-Jelani Cobb From the legendary Emmy Award-winning journalist, a collection of ground-breaking reportage from across five decades which vividly chronicles the experience of Black life in America today. At just eighteen years old,Charlayne Hunter-Gault made national news when she mounted a successful legal challenge that culminated in her admission to the University of Georgia in January 1961—making her one of the first two Black students to integrate the institution. As an adult, Charlayne switched from being the subject of news to covering it, becoming one of its most recognized and acclaimed interpreters. Over more than five decades, this dedicated reporter charted a course through some of the world’s most respected journalistic institutions, including The New Yorker and the New York Times, where she was often the only Black woman in the newsroom. Throughout her storied career, Charlayne has chronicled the lives of Black people in America—shining a light on their experiences and giving a glimpse into their community as never before. Though she has covered numerous topics and events, observed as a whole, her work reveals the evolving issues at the forefront of Black Americans lives and how many of the same issues continue to persist today. My People showcases Charlayne’s lifelong commitment to reporting on Black people in their totality, “in ways that are recognizable to themselves.” Spanning from the Civil Rights Movement through the election and inauguration of America’s first Black president and beyond, this invaluable collection shows the breadth and nuance of the Black experience through trials, tragedies, and triumphs of everyday lives.

Detective Eira Sjodin, introduced in the electrifying Swedish crime thriller We Know You Remember, races to solve a disappearance that hits chillingly close to home in the second book in the High Coast series, hailed by People as “Nordic noir at its best.” In the small mining town of Malmberget, north of the Arctic Circle, residents and their houses are being relocated. As the mine that built the town slowly swallows it street by street, building by building, the memories of the community have collapsed into the huge pit they call “the hole.” Only a few stubborn souls cling to their homes, refusing to leave. When two workers making their final preparations hear a sound coming from a basement, they break a cellar window and find a terrified man curled up in a corner. In Ådalen, 700 kilometers away, police officer Eira Sjödin is investigating the disappearance of a man reported missing by his ex-wife. Eira and her colleagues search his apartment, contact his friends and relatives, and query local hospitals, but the man has vanished without a trace. Eira knows the pain of loss—she mourns for her mother, whose mind has been stolen by dementia. To escape her loneliness and her memories, Eira loses herself in a casual affair. But she’s wholly unprepared when her feelings deepen for GG, who is twenty years her senior–and her boss. When the diligent GG doesn’t show up for work two days in a row, Eira and her colleagues quickly realize that something is wrong—their boss has gone missing. In the dramatic second installment of the High Coast Series, Eira Sjödin finds herself at the mercy of an elusive perpetrator—and of a love she can no longer deny.

What happens when your partner of twenty years suddenly believes you’re nothing but a stranger? What do you do when your history together is gone? How do you prove you’re not an imposter in your own life? When the partner of Emmy Award–winning screenwriter Abi Morgan abruptly collapsed from a mysterious illness, doctors were concerned that he would not survive. Then, six months later, Jacob woke from his coma, to the delight and relief of his family and friends—except this proved to be anything but a Hollywood ending. Because to Jacob, the woman standing at his bedside, who had cared for him all these months, was not his partner. Not his children’s mother. Not the woman he loved. Sure, she looked like his Abi, but this was an imposter, living someone else’s life. Finding herself dropped into a real-life night-mare seemingly ripped from the pages of a thriller, Abi must find a way to hang on to not only their past but also their future together, before it slips away from them both. With grace, an irresistible sense of humor and refreshingly raw honesty, This Is Not a Pity Memoir grapples with a journey through fear and redemption few should have to face. What do you do when you are losing your love? You don’t write a pity memoir. You write a love story.

It's hard to move on from a broken heart—and harder to move on from a broken friendship. Mikaela Marchand is living the polished life she always planned for: a successful New York lawyer, with a promotion in her sights and a devoted boyfriend by her side. She’s come a long way from the meek teen she was growing up in small town Georgia, but the memory of her adolescence isn’t far—in fact, it’s splashed across a massive billboard in Times Square. An old photograph of Mikaela and her former best friend, Julie, has landed on the cover of a high-profile fashion magazine advertised all over the city. And when Julie files a lawsuit, Mikaela is caught in the middle as defense lawyer for the magazine. Not only will she have to face Julie for the first time in years, Mikaela’s forced to work closely with the photographer in question: the former love of her life—and Julie’s ex-husband—Cameron Murphy. Mikaela needs to win the case to get her promotion—and as a junior partner, she has no margin for error. But unresolved feelings still exist between Cam and Mikaela, and jealousy always made Julie play dirty… With flashbacks to summers of first loves and fragile friendships, Long Past Summer looks at the delicate and powerful thread that binds and breaks friends and flames.