As bold as her signature color Alice Blue, the gum-chewing, cigarette-smoking, poker-playing First Daughter discovers that the only way for a woman to stand out in Washington is to make waves--oceans of them. With the canny sophistication of the savviest politician on the Hill, Alice uses her celebrity to her advantage, testing the limits of her power and the seductive thrill of political entanglements.But Washington, DC is rife with heartaches and betrayals, and when Alice falls hard for a smooth-talking congressman it will take everything this rebel has to emerge triumphant and claim her place as an American icon. As Alice soldiers through the devastation of two world wars and brazens out a cutting feud with her famous Roosevelt cousins, it's no wonder everyone in the capital refers to her as the Other Washington Monument--and Alice intends to outlast them all.

    costume ball--a coup for the former Alva Smith, who not long before was destitute, her family's good name useless on its own. Marrying into the newly rich but socially scorned Vanderbilt clan, a union contrived by Alva's bestfriend and now-Duchess of Manchester, saved the Smiths--and elevated the Vanderbilts.From outside, Alva seems to have it all and want more. She does have a knack for getting all she tries for: the costume ball--no mere amusement--wrests acceptance from doyenne Caroline Astor. Denied abox at the Academy of Music, Alva founds The Met. No obstacle puts her off for long.But how much of ambition arises from insecurity? From despair? From refusal to play insipid games by absurd rules? --There are, however, consequences to breaking those rules. One must tread carefully.And what of her maddening sister-in-law, Alice? Her husband William, who's hiding a terrible betrayal? The not-entirely-unwelcome attentions of his friend Oliver Belmont, who is everything William is not? What of her own best friend, whose troubles cast a wide net?Alva will build mansions, push boundaries, test friendships, and marry her daughter to England's most eligible duke or die trying. She means to do right by all, but good behavior will only get a woman so far. What is the price of going further? What might be the rewards? There's only one way to know for certain...

    A train carrying exiled German prisoners from a labor camp arrives in southern France. Within moments, word spreads that Nazi capture is imminent, and the men flee for the woods, desperate to disappear across the Spanish border. One stays behind, determined to ride the train until he reaches home, to find a woman he refers to simply as “her.” 1937. Leonora Carrington is a twenty-year-old British socialite and painter when she meets Max Ernst, an older, married artist whose work has captivated Europe. She follows him to Paris, into the vibrant world of studios and cafes where rising visionaries of the Surrealist movement like Andre Breton, Pablo Picasso, Lee Miller, Man Ray, and Salvador Dali are challenging conventional approaches to art and life. Inspired by their freedom, Leonora begins to experiment with her own work, translating vivid stories of her youth onto canvas and gaining recognition under her own name. It is a bright and glorious age of enlightenment—until war looms over Europe and headlines emerge denouncing Max and his circle as “degenerates,” leading to his arrest and imprisonment. Left along as occupation spreads throughout the countryside, Leonora battles terrifying circumstances to survive, reawakening past demons that threaten to consume her. As Leonora and Max embark on remarkable journeys together and apart, the full story of their tumultuous and passionate love affair unfolds, spanning time and borders as they seek to reunite and reclaim their creative power in a world shattered by war. When their paths cross with Peggy Guggenheim, an art collector and socialite working to help artists escape to America, nothing will be the same.

    When he quits his job in the Chicago stockyards to join other homesteaders settling the Great Plains, Nona finds herself torn between supporting her father's vision for their future and her mother's struggle to adjust to life on a desolate prairie.Initially, things look up for the family as they settle into life in Dalhart, Texas. The wheat boom is in full swing, and it appears her father's dream of providing his family with a home of their own is coming true. Too soon the effects of the depression impact her family. Then the rains stop. Before long, Dalhart is the epicenter of the Dust Bowl.Like Dust, I Rise transforms poverty into pride and reflects the heroism of endurance.

    Ruminate the searing to the sultry as you absorb this haunting lilt of burning carnality. The poems ignite rapid and surprising shifts in focus and perspective as they twist and turn your preconceptions, allowing the implications to linger in your thoughts.Vignette verses explore the workings of love, nature, spirituality, and dreams with sprinklings of tarot symbolism and jazzy blues. Together these verses contemplate the subtle underpinnings of a soft earth.Hear what readers and reviewers have said about Frank Watson’s poetry:"This collection is truly captivating and beautifully written." —Lenore Jordan, NetGalley (In the Dark, Soft Earth)“Compact poems replete with stunning and visually arresting images.” —Kirkus Reviews (The Dollhouse Mirror)“Watson left me wanting more. More poems. More imagery. More blue nights and haunted dreams. More weeping wood and moonlit ecstasy.” —The Portsmouth Review (The Dollhouse Mirror)“This book was HAUNTING. There is no other word for it. Fantasy, romance, contemporary, mystery, and historical all rolled into one; each poem brought all of my emotions bubbling to the surface. It’s not something I will soon forget.” —Shawna Brooks, Goodreads (The Dollhouse Mirror)“A collection that is both sensuous and graceful; I found myself drifting into a tranquil garden of dancing words and imagery. The eloquence is revealed in the rhythm as each page prances past the reader. A highly recommended compilation of words become art.” —Patricia Zarounas Murphy (Seas to Mulberries)

    When a car bomb explodes, taking with it the wife of a prominent heart surgeon, NYPD detective Maxine Turner is sure she has arrested the right suspect—until Cory Rossini, a private investigator, begins muddying the waters. Max already has enough to deal with: her longtime partner is retiring, her latest case is suddenly anything but simple, and she now has a troubling attraction to a man who is proving to be annoyingly persistent.Having taken on the task of proving his friend’s innocence, Cory isn’t about to drop the ball—no matter how distractingly beautiful he finds the detective assigned to the investigation. When his sleuthing turns up other homicides connected to the cardiology department, including a young woman whose throat has been slit, he convinces Max that they should work together. And as they delve further into the vicious murders, they search for the one lead that will steer them straight to a killer…

    After the Jews in their town are rounded up, Roza and her five-year-old daughter, Shira, spend day and night hidden in a farmer's barn. Forbidden from making a sound, only the yellow bird from her mother's stories can sing the melodies Shira composes in her head.Roza does all she can to take care of Shira and shield her from the horrors of the outside world. They play silent games and invent their own sign language. But then the day comes when their haven is no longer safe, and Roza must face an impossible choice: whether to keep her daughter close by her side, or give her the chance to survive by letting her go . . . The Yellow Bird Sings is a powerfully gripping and deeply moving novel about the unbreakable bond between parent and child and the triumph of humanity and hope in even the darkest circumstances.

    Set against the turbulent backdrop of American Vaudeville, four sisters embark on an unexpected adventure—and a last-ditch effort to save their family.In 1919, the Turner sisters and their parents are barely scraping by. Their father is a low-paid boot-stitcher in Johnson City, New York, and the family is always one paycheck away from eviction. When their father’s hand is crushed and he can no longer work, their irrepressible mother decides that the vaudeville stage is their best—and only—chance for survival. Traveling by train from town to town, teenagers Gert, Winnie, and Kit, and recent widow Nell soon find a new kind of freedom in the company of performers who are as diverse as their acts. There is a seamier side to the business, however, and the young women face dangers and turns of fate they never could have anticipated. Heartwarming and surprising, The Tumbling Turner Sisters is ultimately a story of awakening—to unexpected possibilities, to love and heartbreak, and to the dawn of a new American era.

    All she has left is a yard brimming with plants that are wilting in the scorching Iowa summer—and a bone-deep feeling that she’s through with living. Meg has something else too: a bottle of mysterious pills, given to her years ago by an empathetic doctor. He promised that they would offer her dying mother a quick, painless end in exactly twenty days. Though her mother never needed them, Meg does. But a strange thing happens after Meg swallows the little green pearls . . . Now that she’s decided to leave this world, Meg is rediscovering the joy in it. She sheds everything she no longer needs—possessions, regrets, guilt—and reconnects with those she cares for. Finally confronting the depth of her grief, she’s learning that love runs deeper still. But is it too late to choose to stay?

    The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, the staff sees a healthy baby boy — with pitch-black skin — born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. "A childbirth is an explosion," the ancient physician says by way of explanation. "Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn't it?" I Am Radar begins with Radar's perplexing birth but rapidly explodes outward, carrying readers across the globe and throughout history, as well as to unknown regions where radio waves and subatomic particles dance to their own design, where a century of conflict and art unite in a mesmerizing narrative whole.Deep in arctic Norway, a cadre of Norwegian schoolteachers is imprisoned during the Second World War. Founding a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of recorded history for decades to come, these schoolteachers steal radioactive material from a hidden Nazi nuclear reactor and use it to stage a surreal art performance on a frozen coastline. This strange society appears again in the aftermath of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime, when another secret performance takes place but goes horrifically wrong. Echoes of this disaster can be heard during the Yugoslavian wars, when an avant-garde puppeteer finds himself trapped inside Belgrade while his brother serves in the genocidal militia that attacks Srebrenica. Decades later, in the war-torn Congo, a disfigured literature professor assembles the largest library in the world even as the country around him collapses. All of these stories are linked by Radar — now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands — who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents,and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend.

    She also finds herself unexpectedly—and uncontrollably—falling in love with Hemingway, a man already on his way to becoming a legend. In the shadow of the impending Second World War, and set against the tumultuous backdrops of Madrid, Finland, China, Key West, and especially Cuba, where Martha and Ernest make their home, their relationship and professional careers ignite. But when Ernest publishes the biggest literary success of his career, For Whom the Bell Tolls, they are no longer equals, and Martha must make a choice: surrender to the confining demands of being a famous man's wife or risk losing Ernest by forging a path as her own woman and writer. It is a dilemma that will force her to break his heart, and her own.

    the evening of Friday, April 14, 1865, a quick-thinking young English chemist named Holmes grabs Tad Lincoln, the 12 year-old son of the dying President and races the boy out the theater and into a city convulsed by the shooting of the man known as the Great Emancipator—and soon finds himself on the hunt for John Wilkes Booth.This is the extraordinary untold story of how that young chemist and a freed slave boy named Abraham tracked Booth through backwoods Maryland and across the Potomac River to the tobacco barn where Booth died.It is the very first case of the detective we now know as Sherlock Holmes.And as we learn in One Must Tell the Bees, it is nothing like his last…

    A dazzling epic of ancestry, love and forgiveness, Return of the Bones is a very special book, inspired by a true story which should be told. In 1915, 2,067 skeletons were stolen from the ghost pueblo of Pecos and transported to Harvard University for medical researchIn present day and across the miles, the wind carries their cries to Grandfather, who hears the bones longing for home. Hollow-Woman and Grandfather are the last of the Pecos people, but Hollow-Woman is not interested in ancient family skeletons. She works at an Indian casino and is of the modern ways, while Grandfather is a shaman and values tradition. She hopes the road trip will heal their broken hearts.Grandfather fashions a magical dream catcher to help Hollow-Woman experience their ancestors' lives, to hurl her into the past, so his granddaughter may come to love the missing bones as he does. While driving a ratty, old pickup-camper, the stubborn Hollow-Woman and cantankerous Grandfather bicker from New Mexico to the Peabody Museum in Boston. The pages are filled with the comical way Grandfather looks at the world while embracing the heartbreak and spirituality of the Native American peoples. Did you know that President George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, dug up Geronimo's grave and stole his skull to be used as initiation into the Skull and Bones Society at Yale?Did you know that the desecration of the Pecos graves was the beginning of American Archaeology?Did you know that the Pecos skeletons were the research subjects for the landmark study which proves exercise prevents osteoporosis?Return of the Bones is a mystical story enhanced with video and pictures via the author's website. Visit magicprose.com if you wish to preview the videos and images.

    Pete and Jackie were high school sweethearts. Everyone expected them to marry immediately but an explosive incident tore them apart before graduation. It took years for the two to heal and finally come back together. Now, decades later, they face an uncertain future with their only child out on her own and alarming news about Jackie’s health. Determined to stay positive, the two travel to their Cape hometown for a book signing of Pete’s debut novel. But when a disastrous encounter in the bookstore with an old classmate brings their long relationship to the breaking point, they are forced to examine their marriage and explore their deepest feelings.

    Shy, quiet, and bookish, she’s glad when she lands a summer job as a nanny for the daughter of a local doctor. A respectable job, Mary Jane’s mother says. In a respectable house.The house may look respectable on the outside, but inside it’s a literal and figurative mess: clutter on every surface, IMPEACHMENT: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers on the doors, cereal and takeout for dinner. And even more troublesome (were Mary Jane’s mother to know, which she does not): The doctor is a psychiatrist who has cleared his summer for one important job—helping a famous rock star dry out. A week after Mary Jane starts, the rock star and his movie star wife move in.Over the course of the summer, Mary Jane introduces her new household to crisply ironed clothes and a family dinner schedule, and has a front-row seat to a liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll (not to mention group therapy). Caught between the lifestyle she’s always known and the future she’s only just realized is possible, Mary Jane will arrive at September with a new idea about what she wants out of life, and what kind of person she’s going to be.