Expect a surfeit of winsome wisdom; every chapter starts with an aphorism, and more adages are sprinkled throughout the characters’ pun-laced, cleverly entertaining conversations. After all, 52-year-old Tilda Finch is the co-owner—with her best friend, Leith—of a company creating “inspirational posters and products.” Although Tilda’s husband left her five years ago, her life in an […]
Reem lives in a bustling, tightknit urban neighborhood; the young narrator adores the community’s Eid traditions, including Mama’s delicious, buttery cookies. But Reem and Mama are moving away just before Eid, and the child is crushed. “Al harakah barakah, Reem. Movement is a blessing,” says Mama. Even with a bigger kitchen to bake in, Reem […]
Trying to forget a violent encounter with a serial killer, Arista settles into her new home in Sedona, Arizona. The New-Agey town seems like a good fit. Interested in magic, she works at a shop called Cosmic Prisms that sells items like crystals and candles. Living with her Aunt Bethie, the co-leader of a coven, […]
As soon as Daniel Brooker turns 18 years old, he heads to the Department of Designated Dates to find out when he will die of natural causes; in this peculiar alternate reality provocatively conjured by the author, anyone can procure this information (a technological instrument called a “gizmotron” makes this possible) if they so choose. […]
For playwright Ruhl, life has been a history of teachers. From her parents, through her kindergarten and school years, through college and graduate school, to professional life, Ruhl learns from everyone. She shows us how even the smallest moment can instruct, how a child can teach a parent, and how true creativity demands a willingness […]
Alex Mercer’s childhood has been far from idyllic. Orphaned as a child in southeastern Europe and eventually landing in the U.S., she endured a horrific foster family experience before ending up with a couple living in the San Francisco Bay area, who’d recently emigrated from South Korea. Now 18 and a freshman in computer engineering […]
“What does ‘the beginning’ look like?” It unfolds here as both poetry and revelation, an invitation to recognize the connection between past and present. Rather than presenting history as something distant or hidden, Smith emphasizes that our origins—our art, our inventions, our knowledge of how to cultivate land, our propensity for exploration, and more—are plainly […]
Prairie Nightingale’s business card says “Homemaker,” but the divorced, sharp-eyed mother of two has more ambitious plans for her life in Green Bay, Wisconsin. While waiting for her kids at school pickup, Prairie wonders why her former friend Amber Jenkins is carrying a very expensive handbag when her car has a broken taillight and her […]
Darby Andrews is on the brink of marrying Jackson when something in her heart makes her write a letter to the one that got away. Resigning herself to her fate, she puts the letter aside, only for her sister Dahlia to send it—setting the stage for her long-lost love Leo Graham to reappear and help […]
Ed is a cowboy poet in the desert Southwest. He’s stable and reliable (even in the ways he finesses his alcoholism), settled, a stand-up guy who emerged bloodied but upright from domestic tragedy in his youth. And he’s found a calling in late middle age as a linchpin of Local 302, the Weepers, who go […]