Thwarted in her passionate, secret and forbidden love for a married man, Charlotte Brontë found herself living in a home suddenly imperiled by the fact that her father, the sole support of the family, was on the brink of blindness. After his hasty operation, as she nursed him in an isolated apartment kept dark to help him heal his eyes, Brontë began writing JANE EYRE, an invigorating romance that, despite her own fears and sorrows, gives voice to a powerfully rebellious and ultimately optimistic woman’s spirit. THE SECRET HISTORY OF JANE EYRE expands our understanding of both the novel and the inner life of its notoriously private author.

The summer of 1927 might be the height of the Roaring Twenties, but Bonnelyn Parker is more likely to belt out a church hymn than sling drinks at an illicit juice joint. However, when her boyfriend, Roy Thornton, springs a marriage proposal on her, and financial woes jeopardize her ambitions, Bonnelyn finds salvation in an unlikely place: Dallas's newest speakeasy, Doc's. When Roy discovers her secret life, he embraces it --- perhaps too much, especially when it comes to booze and gambling. Maybe Bonnie can have it all: the American Dream, the husband, and the intoxicating allure of jazz music. But her life --- like her country --- is headed for a crash. Bonnie Parker is about to meet Clyde Barrow.

JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he’s startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. JJ’s return --- and his plans to build a huge mansion overlooking Pinewood and woo Ava --- not only unsettles their family, but stirs up the entire town. The ostentatious wealth that JJ has attained forces everyone to consider the cards they’ve been dealt, what more they want and deserve, and how they might go about getting it.

Leah Carroll's mother, a gifted amateur photographer, was murdered by two drug dealers with Mafia connections when Leah was four years old. Her father, a charming alcoholic who hurtled between depression and mania, was dead by the time she was 18. Why did her mother have to die? Why did the man who killed her receive such a light sentence? What darkness did Leah inherit from her parents? Leah was left to put together her own future. Now, in her memoir, she explores the mystery of her parents' lives, through interviews, photos and police records.

Music was everything for Marcia Butler. Growing up in an emotionally desolate home with an abusive father and a distant mother, she devoted herself to the discipline and rigor of the oboe, and quickly became a young prodigy on the rise in New York City's competitive music scene. But haunted by troubling childhood memories while balancing the challenges of a busy life as a working musician, Marcia succumbed to dangerous men, drugs and self-destruction. In her darkest moments, she asked the hardest question of all: Could music truly save her life? THE SKIN ABOVE MY KNEE is the story of a woman finding strength in her creative gifts and artistic destiny.

When Isabelle Poole meets Dr. Preston Grind, she’s fresh out of high school, pregnant with her art teacher's baby, and totally on her own. Izzy knows she can be a good mother, but without any money or relatives to help, she’s left searching. Dr. Grind, an awkwardly charming child psychologist, has spent his life studying family, even after tragedy struck his own. Now, with the help of an eccentric billionaire, he has the chance to create a “perfect little world” --- to study what would happen when 10 children are raised collectively, without knowing who their biological parents are. He calls it The Infinite Family Project, and he wants Izzy and her son to join. This attempt at a utopian ideal starts off promising, but soon the gentle equilibrium among the families disintegrates.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO INTERRACIAL LOVE? is a never-before-published collection of stories from African-American artist and filmmaker Kathleen Collins, whose stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues --- race, gender, family and sexuality --- that shape the ordinary moments in our lives. Her work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters’ lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader’s heart and mind.

Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. WHEN WE RISE is Jones' account of his remarkable life. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and possibility, and prejudice and violence alike.

Lauren Gabriel spent many years of her childhood in foster homes, wishing her mother would come back for her. Now 20 years old, she still longs for a place that she can truly call home. When Lauren, a cashier, ends her shift one night, she finds herself driving aimlessly in order to avoid returning to her lonely apartment. And when she witnesses a car accident, she is suddenly pulled into the small town of Grandon to serve as a volunteer for the annual fundraiser for Glory’s Place, a center for single mothers and families who need assistance. Could this town and its people be the home she has always longed for?

For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers --- French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly --- exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja’s body changed, their relationship grew tense. Unwittingly, they were replaying a drama from her mother’s past, a drama Nadja sensed but had never been told. Then, after college, her mother suddenly opened up to her. Françoise recounted her turbulent adolescence caught between a volatile mother and a playboy father. The weight of the difficult stories she told her daughter shifted the balance between them.