Since she left home, Sonya has lived on the run, free of any ties, while her soft-spoken sister, Trisha, has created a perfect suburban life, and her ambitious sister, Marin, has built her own successful career. But as these women come together, their various methods of coping with a terrifying history can no longer hold their memories at bay.Buried secrets rise to the surface as their father—the victim of humiliating racism and perpetrator of horrible violence—remains unconscious. As his condition worsens, the daughters and their mother wrestle with private hopes for his survival or death, as well as their own demons and buried secrets. Told with forceful honesty, Trail of Broken Wings reveals the burden of shame and secrets, the toxicity of cruelty and aggression, and the exquisite, liberating power of speaking and owning truth.

    wants what Jackie O had ...Unhappy with her looks, her life, and her empty marriage, Louise Canova needs help -- and she finds it in a secondhand bookstore. A forty-year-old encyclopedia of style titled Elegance, this slim volume by formidable French fashion expert Madame Dariaux promises to transform even the plainest of women into creatures of poise and grace. It is a fairy godmother in print, an A-to-Z manual with essential advice that Louise vows to take to heart. But within its pages lie not only clues from her past, but also powerful lessons for the future. And as the old Louise gives way to the stunning new, she's about to find out that there's more to every life than what appears on the surface ... and that everything, even elegance, has its price.

    She's the strong one. The one who escaped Herne Bay and the memories it holds. Her sister Sally didn't. Instead, she drinks. But when their mother dies, Kate is forced to return to the old family home. And on her first night she is woken by a terrifying scream.What secret has Kate stumbled upon?And is she strong enough to uncover the truth . . . and make it out alive?

    And it does, once again, in the lawless Bihar of the 1990s...When journalist Shruti Ranjan, newly-wed wife of the Deputy Commissioner of Kishanganj in the lawless Bihar of the 1990s, is brutally raped by a ‘politically sheltered local goon’ all of her attempts at getting justice are crushed by a corrupt and complicit state government. That’s when the charismatic Sharad Malviya, a leading member of the Opposition party, offers her an unlikely solution: his party’s ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections. Left with little to choose from, Shruti agrees, only to realize that being catapulted to an enviable position of power in an all-man’s world comes at a price. Caught between her mentor and her spouse – both upright but ultimately flawed men – and a host of envious others who continue to cast aspersions on her character, she struggles to address the larger problems of the country.Taunted for being a 'Draupadi' she makes the curse her identity and resolutely fights her fate...

    In fact, Panning’s last collection of short stories, Super America, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Enter this exciting new novel, the best work yet from a writer whose astute observations of American life are as honest as they are engaging.Butter is a coming of age tale set against the backdrop of small-town Minnesota during the 1970s and told from the perspective of an eleven-year-old girl, Iris, who learns from her parents that she is adopted. The story of Iris’s childhood is at first beguiling and innocent: hers is a world filled with bell-bottoms and Barbie dolls, Shrinky Dinks and Shaun Cassidy records, TV dinners and trips to grandma’s. But as her parents’ marriage starts to unravel, Iris grows more and more observant of disintegration all around her, and the simple cadences of her story quickly attain an unnerving tension as she wavers precariously between girlhood and adolescence. In the end, Iris’s story represents a profound meditation on growing up estranged in small town America—on being an outsider in a world increasingly averse to them. Passionate, lyrical, and disquieting, this intensely moving novel is a rich exploration of a crucial theme in American literature that will confirm Anne Panning’s place as a major figure in the world of contemporary fiction.

     Married and the father of a young daughter, John Bevan had finally found the traditional family he lacked as an orphaned child. But all that disappears when a fatal car accident steals away his wife-and the unborn child she carried. Filled with sorrow, John withdraws from life and love. He erects a small cross at the scene of his wife's accident and visits daily, grieving. Then one morning he encounters a young man kneeling before the cross, touching it up with white paint. John's conversations and travels with this mysterious man-known to him only as the Cross Gardener-will forever change his world. From Jason F. Wright comes a timeless tale that explores the questions we ask when our lives are touched by loss: How do we carry on? And who will show us the way? The answers John Bevan finds illuminate the hope that even in our darkest hours we are not alone.

    I live in a maze of unknowing - Maisie's maze - and I hate it. I need to be informed ...' The summer of 1967, at a decaying house in the heart of Suffolk: an artist is painting a portrait of thirteen-year-old Maisie and her elder sisters, beautiful Julia and bookish Finn. Maisie embarks on a portrait of her own: she begins an account of her family and of her village friend Daniel Nunn, a young man she idolises, whom she watches over the chasm of a class divide. But is Maisie's description of a summer idyll all it seems? This is the summer when the three sisters' lives will irrevocably, and terribly, change. features in a major retrospective. Daniel Nunn, haunted by the vanished England of his childhood, obsessed by the three sisters and newly determined to understand what happened that last summer, pursues the ghosts of his past.

    This edition features an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst.

    She also introduces us to specific characters as well as 'types' who will appear and reappear in changing relationships as the years go by. There is the middle-aged woman centrally involved in the events and activities around her; here, Laura Morland, a happily widowed author of very successful 'good bad books' (Thirkell herself?). A disappointed suitor and/or a brief, ill-conceived infatuation of younger man with older woman. At least two romances to work out—an older couple and a younger one—with mild crises along the way. A closing of ranks among the women vs the intruder nicknamed 'the Incubus' resolves both affairs to the satisfaction of all. Especially delightful are the children, servants and other retainers; well defined characters in their own right; from motor-mouthed young Tony Morland and his model railways to housekeeper Stoker and her grapevine among the servants of the neighbourhood.

    This haunting story explores the seedy past of Victorian asylums, the oppression of family secrets, and the way truth can change everything.In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital - where she has been locked away for over sixty years. Iris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. Esme has been labeled harmless - sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. But Esme’s still basically a stranger, a family member never mentioned by the family, and one who is sure to bring life-altering secrets with her when she leaves the ward. If Iris takes her in, what dangerous truths might she inherit? Maggie O’Farrell’s intricate tale of family secrets, lost lives, and the freedom brought by truth will haunt readers long past its final page.

    For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer.Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tom become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back?

    covers partition and then life in East Punjab.

    He's 31, but he still feels young. He's playing guitar with the Wishbones, a New Jersey wedding band, and while it isn't exactly the Big Time, it is music. He has a roof over his head...well, it's his parents' roof, but they don't hassle him much. Life isn't perfect, but it isn't bad. Not bad at all. But then he has to blow it all by proposing to his girlfriend.

    Now it's time to do it again.Kate has a secret, something tucked away in her past. And she's getting on with her life. Her business is thriving. She has a strong relationship with her family, and a devoted boyfriend whom she wants to love with all her heart. If Kate had ever made a list, Rowan would fill the imagined boxes of a perfect mate. But she wants more than the perfect on paper relationship; she wants a real and imperfect love. That's why, when Kate discovers the small velvet box hidden in Rowan's drawer, she panics.It always happens this way. Just when Kate thinks she can love, just when she believes she can conquer the fear, she's filled with dread. And she wants more than anything to make this feeling go away. But how?When the mistakes have been made and the running is over, it's time to face the truth. Kate knows this. She understands that a woman can never undo what can never be undone. Yet, for the first time in her life she also knows that she won't fully love until she confronts those from her past. It's time to act.Can she do it? Can she travel to the place where it all began, to the one who shares her secret? Can the lost ever become found?And Then I Found You gives new life to the phrase "inspired by a true story." By travelling back to a painful time in her own family's history, author Patti Callahan Henry explores the limits of courage, and the price of a selfless act.

    But, when the storm clouds of WW2 gather, the family must flee, accompanied by Viktor's lover and her child. But the house's story is far from over, as it passes from hand to hand, from Czech to Russian.