Literary Life

After soldiers vacate the Sicilian hillside town of Melilli in the summer of 1943, the locals celebrate, giving thanks to their patron saint, Sebastian. Amid the revelry, all it takes is one fateful moment for the destiny of nine-year-old Salvatore Vassallo to change forever. When his twin brothers are killed playing with an unexploded mortar shell, Salvatore’s faith is destroyed. As the family unravels, and fear ignites among their neighbors that the Vassallo name is cursed, one tragedy begets another.

Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, a war widow, returns to her childhood home for a final visit before the house is sold. But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her youth and someone has been there before her. As Kate uncovers an old secret that haunts the home she thought she knew, she is forced to confront a dark truth from her own past.... Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. And someone was crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate. Someone I knew well....

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK “[A] richly textured and deeply moving debut” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s. “A triumph . . . Redwood Court is storytelling at its best...

When Lilia Swallow's husband, Graham, goes into remission after a challenging year of treatment for lymphoma, the home and lifestyle blogger throws a party. Their best friends and colleagues attend to celebrate his recovery, but just as the party is in full swing, a new guest arrives. She presents Lilia with a beautiful baby boy and vanishes. Toby is Graham's darkest secret - his son, conceived in a moment of despair. Lilia is utterly unprepared for the betrayal the baby represents, and perhaps more so for the love she begins to feel once her shock subsides.

Laura Brandon's promise to her dying father was simple: to visit an elderly woman she'd never heard of before. A woman who remembers nothing-except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make. But Laura's promise results in another death: her husband's. And after their five-year-old daughter, Emma, witnesses her father's suicide, Emma refuses to talk about it - to talk at all.Frantic and guilt ridden, Laura contacts the only person who may be able to help.

“A perfect summer read [that] brims with heart . . . Don’t be surprised if you keep turning the pages long into the night, spellbound by its magic.”—The Denver Post A sweeping saga about four generations of a family who live and love on an enchanting island off the coast of...

The end of World War II should have brought joy to Gwen Mullen. But on V-J Day, her worst fear is realized. As celebrating crowds gather in Times Square, a soldier appears on her doorstep to claim Mary, the baby abandoned to Gwen one year earlier. Suddenly Gwen is on the verge of losing the child she has nurtured and loves dearly.

In this robust, elegantly plotted, and ultimately life-affirming novel, Zoe Whittall presents a dazzling portrait of the Millennial Generation - the 25-year-olds who grew up on anti-anxiety meds, text-messaging each other truncated emotional reactions, unsure of what's public and what's private. Holding Still explores an unusual love triangle involving Billy, a former teen idol, now an anxiety-ridden agoraphobic; Josh, a shy transgendered paramedic who travels the city patching up damaged bodies; and Amy, a fashionable filmmaker coping with her first broken heart.

The story begins from nine-year-old Nate's point of view, etching the details of an unbalanced mind struggling to make sense of rampant thought patterns and heightened paranoia. Enter Ashley, Nate's mother and a hardworking advertising executive concerned that she's not giving her family enough of her time - especially now that she senses something might be wrong with her son. As the story moves deftly back and forth between the two perspectives, the narrative converges to reveal one family's journey of discovery as they strive to find balance in their lives.

A high school history teacher in a small Colorado town, Guthrie is raising his two young sons alone. Thoughtful and honest, he is guiding them through a world that is not always kind. Victoria, one of his students, is pregnant, homeless, and vulnerable to the scorn of the town. When Guthrie helps two elderly ranchers take the young woman into their home, an unlikely extended family is born.

Sarah and Warren's college love story ended in a single moment. Decades later, when a chance meeting brings them together, a passion ignites—threatening the foundations of the lives they've built apart. Since they parted in college, each has married, raised a family, and made a career. When they meet again, Sarah is divorced and living outside New York, while Warren is still married and living in Boston.

Meet Hickey, an American school teacher in his late 30s, an American school teacher who burns his bridges with the school board and goes to Africa as an aid worker. Working for an agency in Nairobi, one of his jobs is to drive food and medical supplies to Southern Sudan to an aid station run by Ruth, a middle-aged woman, who acts as nurse, doctor, hospice worker, feeder of starving children, and witness. Ruth is gruff but efficient, and Hickey, who is usually drawn to youth and beauty, is struck by her devotion. Returning to Nairobi, he can’t forget what he has seen.

In Hysteria, we meet a young woman an hour into yet another alcohol-fueled, masochistic, sexual bender at her local bar. There is a new bartender working this time, one she hasn't seen before, but who can properly make a drink. He looks familiar, and as she is consumed by shame from her behavior the previous week - hooking up with her parents' colleague and her roommate's brother - she also becomes convinced that her Brooklyn bartender is actually Sigmund Freud. They embark on a relationship, and she is forced to confront her past.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A vibrant portrait of four college friends—Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley—who formed a new philosophical tradition while Oxford's men were away fighting World War II. The history of European philosophy...

Ésta es la historia de Gregory Reeves, un gringo que sobrevive en el difícil mundo de los hispanos de California. Gregory quiere llevar a la práctica el peculiar «plan infinito» que se trazó a sí mismo en su infancia. Sin embargo, para conseguirlo debe recorrer un duro camino lleno de obstáculos: la marginación social, el racismo, el brutal contraste entre pobreza y riqueza o la guerra de Vietnam.

As a small boy hunting in the deep Florida swamps, C.E. “Kid” Miller had to become a crack shot, or his five sisters would go hungry. Now, in the summer of 1946, Miller hunts Georgia moonshiners instead of game, and packs a Smith and Wesson instead of a double barrel.

This richly textured novel tells a story of love and loss, sex and longing, and of the deceit that can lie at the heart of family relationships. Set in California, Liars and Saints follows four generations of the Catholic Santerre family from World War II to the present. In a family driven as much by jealousy and propriety as by love, an unspoken tradition of deceit is passed from generation to generation.

Hace treinta años, en un terreno baldío de un barrio tranquilo, apareció descuartizado y quemado el cadáver de una adolescente. La investigación se cerró sin culpables y su familia -de clase media educada, formal y católica- silenciosamente se fue resquebrajando Pero, pasado ese largo tiempo, la verdad oculta saldrá a la luz gracias al persistente amor del padre de la víctima. Esa verdad mostrará con crudeza lo que se esconde detrás de las apariencias; la crueldad a la que pueden llevar la obediencia y el fanatismo religioso.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this “compulsively readable” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton “This book, this writer, are...

This story, set in Texas, is about a mother, her troubled son, and the redemptive powers of love. When gentle-natured Margie Clammor meets motherhood, she's in for the fight of her life. Her charming, manipulative son Tommy has a genius for trouble, and Margie battles year after year to remain his advocate and convince the world to see the good in him. That is, until grown-up Tommy is accused of committing an act so horrific that Margie must either face the facts or surrender everything she holds dear.