Wild Plums follows Maya, a young city dweller grieving the death of her mother. Maya’s future after college is unclear—until her much older partner invites her to relocate with him to Marionberry, Oregon. When Maya is exposed, it becomes impossible to continue underestimating the women in her life, and where she fits among them.
When two London widows arrive at Scotland’s eerie Fairloch Hotel, Muriel’s unsettling visions of a shape-shifting angel force the friends to flee—only to uncover the hotel’s dark wartime secrets and a mysterious secret: elderly guests check-in, but no one ever checks out.
When a ne’er-do-well cousin dies unexpectedly, Mary Ellen and Charles Hawley agree to take his young son Steven into their home. The boy’s birth mother, who is mentally ill, has already inflicted some psychological damage, but Mary Ellen is determined to help Steven start over. This act of charity soon takes its toll on a marriage that is already quietly fading. As Mary Ellen struggles to adapt to new parenting challenges, she begins to withdraw from her husband and cling to their two-year-old daughter. Finally, in a fit of longing for her former life, Mary Ellen indulges herself in a shopping trip and misses an afternoon pickup from school. And Charles, who must take up the slack, discovers a secret.
Possibility takes root in unexpected places, often in the seemingly inconsequential, and thus the chance meeting of Vicki and Jacob in a Seattle dive bar brings with it books and bus rides and bangs. It brings foot rubs and literature adapted for film and tears for the sake of a fictional loss. It also brings a proposition. Vicki takes the lead, and Jacob can’t help but follow even though he’s unsure of where it’s all going. There is talk of sex, the expectation of it, and of the fear of what it might cost. A date is set for Valentine’s Day, but will they find it? Will the now of the date transform into a beginning? Or will their connection be a brief moment that leads only to half-remembered memories?
In this poignant tale of transitions, Chris moves to New York and his path soon intertwines with that of Jane’s, a young woman looking for a missing cat. The Reasons We Had to Meet is a magical story that weaves itself around themes of mortality, affliction, and the profound impact of lending a helping hand.
When the apocalypse comes a brother and sister flee deeper into an America that was dying before the firestorms started. Grappling with meaning they abandon their names and fall in with a group of survivors led by Bradley Cooper and come to find that life has changed, but also not as much as they would’ve thought.
Takeshi Furuya is an alien who has adopted contemporary Kobe, Japan as his new home. While fully assimilating, he defends the nation against other more dangerous extraterrestrial visitors—often with lethal force. When he meets a Japanese man who unsettles him even more than these hostile outsiders, he begins to question the simple morality of his mission. Could he ever truly belong to a place so far removed from his birth? And to secure his place there, what must he sacrifice?
When the 2008 financial crash forces Cassie and her high-achieving friends back to their conservative hometown, they confront an unexpected truth—the dreams they ran from might hold the key to rebuilding their futures.
Kathleen Mazzetti has transferred to a small Catholic high school in the North Bronx to escape years of harassment from an older boy at Teddy Roosevelt High. It is the 1970s and neither the courts nor the police will protect her from John Rovazzi. At St. Finbarr’s, she keeps her head down, eager to avoid attention. Her classmate Paul Hanlon is sympathetic to the shy newcomer but busy with his own life of sports and friends. Then, thanks to a well-meaning priest, he learns that Rovazzi has followed Kathleen to her new school and threatened not only her but also her family. When it becomes clear that her life is truly in danger, Kathleen and Paul come up with a risky plan to stop the stalker once and for all, a plan that involves a carefully written script, the Rocky Horror Picture Show and the New York City subway system.
After spending her childhood traversing the country with her free-spirited mother, Emily Gates has done a good job of giving her son a stable, rooted childhood on the Southside of Chicago. But as much as she tries to be “normal,” Emily has one secret: she can see the souls of the recently dead, and even helps them cross to the other side in a place she refers to as the Tunnel of Souls. When she’s called to help the dying soul of the father she never met, she realizes that maybe her definition of home has been wrong all along.