Kitty Miller loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. But then the dreams begin. Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life, and they have beautiful children. It’s everything Kitty once believed she wanted. Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn’s life becomes.

In 1844, shy Missouri belle Julia Dent met Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, a brilliant horseman and reluctant soldier. The two fell deeply in love, but the groom’s abolitionist family refused to attend their wedding ceremony. Despite her new husband’s objections, Julia kept as her slave another Julia, known as Jule. Both women risked certain danger as they traveled to and from the field of war. Though Julia secretly taught Jule how to read, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation inspired Jule to make a daring bid for freedom. 

OUTLINE is a novel in 10 conversations that follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing during one oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her students in storytelling exercises, meets other visiting writers for dinner and discourse, and goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her neighbor from the plane. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves. And through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast --- a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.

The year is 1853, and the Habsburgs are Europe’s most powerful ruling family. With his empire stretching from Austria to Russia, from Germany to Italy, Emperor Franz Joseph is young, rich and ready to marry. Fifteen-year-old Elisabeth, “Sisi,” Duchess of Bavaria, travels to the Habsburg Court with her older sister, who is betrothed to the young emperor. But shortly after her arrival at court, Sisi finds herself in an unexpected dilemma: she has inadvertently fallen for and won the heart of her sister’s groom.

Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and stereotypes fostered by The Godfather and “The Sopranos,” Maria Laurino reveals surprising, fascinating lives: Italian-Americans working on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana to those who were lynched in New Orleans; the banker who helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake; and families interned as “enemy aliens” in World War II. This book is both an exploration and celebration of the rich legacy of Italian-American life.

Embittered and distrusting, Vida is harassed by Delphi’s racist sheriff and haunted by the son she lost to the world. Hazel, too, has lost a son and can’t keep a grip on her fractured life. After drunkenly crashing her car into a manger scene while gunning for the baby Jesus, Hazel is sedated and bed-ridden. Hazel’s husband hires Vida to keep tabs on his unpredictable wife and to care for his sole surviving son. Forced to spend time together, the two women find they have more in common than they thought, and together they turn the town on its head.

Jonathan Sweetwater has been blessed with money, a fulfilling career and a beautiful family. But there’s one thing he never had: a relationship with his late father. On his quest for understanding --- about himself, about manhood, about marriage --- Jonathan decides to track down his father’s five ex-wives. His journey will take him from cosmopolitan cities to the mile-high mountains to a tropical island --- and ultimately back to confront the one thing Jonathan has that his father never did: home.

The Wife Project is complete, and Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are happily married and living in New York. But they’re about to face a new challenge because Rosie is pregnant. Fortunately, Don’s best friend, Gene, is on hand to offer advice: he’s left Claudia and moved in with Don and Rosie. As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, and getting Gene and Claudia to reconcile, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him the most.

When Lilian Shang, born and raised in America, discovers her father’s diary after the death of her parents, she is shocked by the secrets it contains. She knew that her father, Gary, convicted decades ago of being a mole in the CIA, was the most important Chinese spy ever caught. But his diary, an astonishing chronicle of his journey as a Communist intelligence agent, reveals the pain and longing that his double life entailed --- and point to a hidden second family that he’d left behind in China.

Book lover and Jane Austen enthusiast Sophie Collingwood has recently taken a job at an antiquarian bookshop in London when she is drawn into a mystery that will cast doubt on the true authorship of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE --- and ultimately threaten Sophie’s life. This dual narrative alternates between Sophie’s quest to uncover the truth and a young Jane Austen’s touching friendship with the aging cleric Richard Mansfield.