Blanche Auzello and her husband, Claude, the mistress and master of the Ritz, allow the glamour and glitz of the hotel to take their minds off their troubled marriage, and off the secrets that they keep from their guests --- and each other. Until June 1940, when the German army sweeps into Paris, setting up headquarters at the Ritz. Suddenly, Blanche and Claude must navigate a terrifying new reality. In order to survive, and strike a blow against their Nazi “guests,” they must spin a web of deceit that ensnares everything and everyone they cherish. But one secret is shared between Blanche and Claude alone --- the secret that, in the end, threatens to imperil both of their lives, and to bring down the legendary Ritz itself.

New York City is filled with opportunities for single girls like Alice Weiss, who leaves her small midwestern town to chase her big-city dreams and unexpectedly lands the job of a lifetime working for the first female editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Helen Gurley Brown. Nothing could have prepared Alice for the world she enters as editors and writers resign on the spot, refusing to work for the woman who wrote the scandalous bestseller SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, and confidential memos, article ideas and cover designs keep finding their way into the wrong hands. When someone tries to pull Alice into a scheme to sabotage her boss, she is more determined than ever to help Helen succeed.

Never before published, this newly discovered story by literary legend Sylvia Plath stands on its own and is remarkable for its symbolic, allegorical approach to a young woman’s rebellion against convention and forceful taking control of her own life. Written while Plath was a student at Smith College in 1952, MARY VENTURA AND THE NINTH KINGDOM tells the story of a young woman’s fateful train journey. Lips the color of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like “guilt, and guilt, and guilt”: these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom. “But what is the ninth kingdom?” she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. “It is the kingdom of the frozen will,” comes the reply. “There is no going back.”

Spanning from World War II to the present, A CLOUD IN THE SHAPE OF A GIRL is about three generations of the Wise family --- Evelyn, Laura and Grace --- as they hunt for contentment amid chaos of their own making. We see these women and their trials, small and large: social slights and heartbreaks; marital disappointments and infidelities; familial dysfunction; mortality. One of the burning questions Jean Thompson asks is: By serving her family, is a woman destined to repeat the mistakes of previous generations, or can she transcend the expectations of a place, and a time? Can she truly be free?

When 64-year-old Jackie Kennedy Onassis died in her Fifth Avenue apartment, her younger sister Lee wept inconsolably. Then Jackie’s 38-page will was read. Lee discovered that substantial cash bequests were left to family members, friends and employees --- but nothing to her. "I have made no provision in this my Will for my sister, Lee B. Radziwill, for whom I have great affection, because I have already done so during my lifetime," read Jackie’s final testament. Drawing on the authors’ candid interviews with Lee Radziwill, THE FABULOUS BOUVIER SISTERS explores their complicated relationship, placing them at the center of 20th-century fashion, design and style.

Rogers Stout has the gambler’s gifts --- a titanic brain, an uncanny ability to read people, and a risk-taker’s daring. As an apathetic high school student who loves baseball but lacks a 90-mph fastball, he knows that the game does not begin until the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. But his life needs direction. Everything changes the summer he is invited into the boisterous environment of an investment bank’s trading room, and to a gambling hall dive where he immediately wins big at poker, capturing the attention of his co-workers with his card-playing skills.

In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, Miranda is catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda’s new stepsister, is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society. Uneasy among Isobel’s privileged friends, she finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, who has enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel. As the summer winds to its end, Miranda is caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop’s hard-won tranquility and banish her from the island for nearly two decades.

Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric uncle Billy’s bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda’s 12th birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda’s life. She doesn’t hear about him again until 16 years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy, and one final scavenger hunt. Miranda soon finds herself drawn into a journey where she meets people from Billy’s past, people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda’s mother has kept hidden --- and the terrible secret that tore her family apart.

Lauren Groff brings readers into a physical world that is at once domestic and wild --- a place where the hazards of the natural world lie waiting to pounce, yet the greatest threats and mysteries are still of an emotional, psychological nature. Among those navigating this place are a resourceful pair of abandoned sisters; a lonely boy, grown up; a restless, childless couple; a searching, homeless woman; and an unforgettable, recurring character --- a steely and conflicted wife and mother. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence.

When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, David Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself. With CALYPSO, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality.