These people tell us the truth–not only about themselves, their relationships, and their lives, but about ourselves as well. A Perfect Stranger powerfully and affectingly examines the complex, intricate network of experiences that binds us to one another. These stories are tender, raw, lovely, fine–and they reaffirm Roxana Robinson’s place at the forefront of modern literature.

    Soon, through the family’s generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president of the United States. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth. America America is a beautiful novel about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate.

    Sandy Pressman is a nice suburban wife whose boredom is getting the best of her. She could be making friends at the club, like her husband keeps encouraging her to do.Or working on her golf game.Or getting her hair done.But for some reason, these things don't interest her as much as the naked man on the motorcycle...

    Manette Ansay re-creates a stifling world of guilt and pain, and the tormented souls who inhabit it. It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly unemployed husband, Ellen has brought her two children into the home of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill -- a loveless house suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine -- where calculated cruelty is a way of life preserved and perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting, and angry God. Behind a facade of false piety, there are sins and secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant young woman's passionate spirit. And here Ellen must find the strength to endure, change, and grow in the all-pervading darkness that threatens to destroy everything she is and everyone she loves.

    The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high.Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family's future. One by one, the siblings take turns telling the story--Robert, a doctor like their father; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; Ryan, a schoolteacher; and James, the malcontent, the problem child, the only one who hasn't settled down-their narratives interwoven with portraits of the family at crucial points in their history.

    The lives of eight women collide in this opulent, culturally vibrant city on a journey of sisterhood, friendship, love, betrayal and the heartbreaking choices of its residents. We see Jewel, a beautiful but frustrated wife to her powerful Emirati husband, and Tara, a devout Muslim torn between passion and her faith, and Liliana, a tragic dancer in the seedy clubs of Dubai.A stirring tale encompassing, tradition, identity, and faith, Dubai Wives takes the reader into the hidden world behind the walls of lavish mansions and into the back alleys of Dubai, from the hills of Morocco to the glittering lights of the Burj Al Arab. It paints a portrait of a world where no one is who they seem to be...and where everything is possible.

    Then he learns that the unthinkable has happened: she’s been kidnapped. Too much time and too many secrets have come between Andres and Marabela, but now that she’s gone, he’ll do anything to get her back. Or will he?As Marabela slips farther away, Andres must decide whether they still have something worth fighting for, and exactly what he’ll give up to bring her home. And unfortunately, the decision isn’t entirely up to him, or up to the private mediator who moves into the family home to negotiate with the terrorists holding Marabela. Andres struggles to maintain the illusion of control while simultaneously scrambling to collect his wife’s ransom, tending to the needs of his two young children, and reconnecting with an old friend who may hold the key to his past and his wife’s future.Set in Lima, Peru, in a time of civil and political unrest, this evocative page-turner is a perfect marriage of domestic drama and suspense.

    Instantly attracted to each other, they have a passionate affair, until he walks out with no explanation. It is only then that she discovers that Felipe is related to the Spanish royal family, is a brilliant rider and the lynchpin of the Spanish Eventing team.Back in London, Charlie puts her heartbreak behind her by going out on the town. Until Felipe returns and turns her life upside down again. Soon they are the golden couple of sport, followed by the press wherever they go.But not everyone is happy to see the two together: his disapproving mother for one, and the anonymous person that is waging a hate campaign against Charlie at work. And as the pressure on the couple mounts, a dark shadow from Charlie’s past comes back to haunt her.Will Charlie be able to overcome her past in the name of love?

    Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice in Albany, New York; he also moonlights at a local women’s health clinic. But Annie, his wife, has become tired of her workaholic husband’s absences, and the soccer-mom lifestyle has worn thin. She begins a passionate love affair with bad-boy, fading celebrity painter Simon Haas—an affair that quickly goes awry when Simon’s wife Lydia, who is also the model upon whom he built his career, discovers the truth.  Abortion, local evangelism, marital disenchantment, and the rifts of social class:  Brundage takes on the fault lines of our era with a deft hand.

    Rich, talented, confident he will become the world's most famous movie star. Jane is delightfully funny, a dark-skinned, dark-haired, half-Jewish, half-German daughter of the Midwest. Smart, gifted, loving, she will become famous in her own right as well.From the time they first meet in their Social and Intellectual History of the U.S. course at Brown University, it's love at first sight. Coming together from two very different worlds, they will cast off adversity and disapproval to forge a life filled with work, love, and children.But fame and success come at a high price—their marriage. Just when it seems the promise of their love might be renewed, an accident leaves Jane hovering between life and death. Now, it's not only their union that might not survive, but Jane, too...Almost Paradise is vintage Susan Isaacs, a witty, poignant, and engrossing tale of a man, a woman, and a passion wondrous, heartbreaking, and unforgettable.

    Surrounded by empty gin bottles, with her past life safely taped up in stacked cardboard boxes, she proceeds to turn her back on a 'real world' that seems meaningless and absurd. Instead she lives in her own head. Then she meets Newton, a care-worn American wanderer with a drinker's face and an angel's smile. Newton changes everything. But for how long?

    Yet one summer day Joe breaks his own rule--never turn your back on the ocean--and a sleeper wave strikes him down, drowning not only the man but his many secrets.For three years, Ella has been the only mother the kids have known and has believed that their biological mother, Paige, abandoned them. But when Paige shows up at the funeral, intent on reclaiming the children, Ella soon realizes there may be more to Paige and Joe's story. "Ella's the best thing that's happened to this family," say her Italian-American in-laws, for generations the proprietors of a local market. But their devotion quickly falters when the custody fight between mother and stepmother urgently and powerfully collides with Ella's quest for truth.The Underside of Joy is not a fairy-tale version of stepmotherhood pitting good Ella against evil Paige, but an exploration of the complex relationship of two mothers. Their conflict uncovers a map of scars--both physical and emotional--to the families' deeply buried tragedies, including Italian internment camps during World War II and postpartum psychosis.Weaving a rich fictional tapestry abundantly alive with the natural beauty of the novel's setting, Halverson is a captivating guide through the flora and fauna of human emotions.

    Mother. Breadwinner. Penelope Ruiz-Kar is doing it all—and barely keeping it together. Meanwhile, her best friend, Jenny Sweet, appears to be sailing through life. As close as the two women are, Jenny’s passionate marriage, pristine house, and ultra-polite child stand in stark contrast to Penelope’s underemployed husband, Sanjay, their unruly brood, and the daily grind she calls a career.Then a shocking tragedy reveals that Jenny’s life is far from perfect. Reeling, Penelope vows to stop keeping the peace and finally deal with the issues in her relationship. So she and Sanjay agree to a radical proposal: both will write a list of changes they want each other to make—then commit to complete and total honesty.What seems like a smart idea quickly spirals out of control, revealing new rifts and even deeper secrets. As Penelope stares down the possible implosion of her marriage, she must ask herself: When it comes to love, is honesty really the best policy?

    . . . A muscular narrative that humanizes all sides of that bloody conflict—North and South, Black and white, male and female. . . a robust novel that deserves to be set on the shelf alongside Cold Mountain.”  — Orlando SentinelEmma Garnet Tate Lowell, a plantation owner's daughter, grows up in a privileged lifestyle, but it's not all roses. Her family's prosperity is linked to the institution of slavery, and Clarice, a close and trusted family servant, exposes Emma to the truth and history of their plantation and how it brutally affected the slave population.Her father, Samuel P. Tate, has an aggressive and overpowering persona that intimidates many people—including Emma. But she refuses to conform to his ideals and marries a prominent young doctor. Together they face the horrors of the Civil War, nursing wounded soldiers, as Emma begins the long journey toward her own recovery from the terrible forces that shaped her father's life.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

    Meet Mona Jamborski, who hasn’t left her home in years and is slowly eating herself to death, with one foot in her past memories and another foot in her grave. Mona sees no future for herself until one day, someone knocks on her door and unwittingly leads her into a life-changing decision. Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski is a book filled with the wonders and heartbreaks of human relationships.