PUBLISHING is a personal story of a writer's hunger to be published, the pursuit of that goal, and then the long haul --- for Gail Godwin, 45 years of being a published writer and all that goes with it. The book reflects on the influence of her mother's writing hopes and accomplishments, and recalls her experiences with teachers Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Coover; John Hawkins, her literary agent for five decades; John Irving and other luminaries; and her editors and publishers.

Riley MacPherson has spent her entire life believing that her older sister, Lisa, committed suicide as a teenager. Now, over 20 years later, her father has passed away and she's in New Bern, North Carolina, cleaning out his house when she finds evidence to the contrary. Lisa is alive and living under a new identity. But why exactly was she on the run all those years ago, and what secrets are being kept now?

A mysterious penitent confesses to murder, and then flees the confessional before Father John O’Malley can identify him. Two months later, attorney Vicky Holden discovers rancher Dennis Carey shot dead in his truck. It soon develops that the most sacred creature in Native American mythology, a white buffalo calf, was recently born on Carey’s ranch. Vicky and Father John try to unravel the strange events surrounding both the murder and the recent disappearances of three cowboys from the ranch.

Lost Lake is about to slip into Eby Pim’s past. All that’s left is a once-charming collection of lakeside cabins succumbing to the Southern Georgia heat and damp, and an assortment of faithful misfits drawn back to Lost Lake year after year by their own unspoken dreams and desires. It’s a lot, but not enough to keep Eby from relinquishing Lost Lake to a developer with cash in hand, and calling this her final summer at the lake. Until one last chance at family knocks on her door.

V.I. Warshawski’s closest friend in Chicago is the Viennese-born doctor Lotty Herschel, who lost most of her family in the Holocaust. Lotty escaped to London in 1939 on the Kindertransport with a childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. When Kitty’s daughter finds her life is in danger, she calls Lotty, who, in turn, summons V.I. to help. The daughter’s troubles turn out to be just the tip of an iceberg of lies, secrets and silence.

In the winter of 1920, Morrie Morgan is drawn back to Butte, Montana, from a year-long honeymoon with his bride. But the town itself, with its polyglot army of miners struggling to extricate themselves from the stranglehold of the ruthless Anaconda Copper Mining Company, seems --- like the new couple’s fast-diminishing finances --- on the verge of implosion. These twin dilemmas catapult Morrie into his new career as editorialist for the Thunder, the fledgling union newspaper that dares to play David to Anaconda’s Goliath.

Elegant, amusing and profoundly nasty tycoon Gloria Garrison is shocked that none of her three grandchildren are interested in inheriting her brilliant, booming beauty business. What’s so grand about their lives that they would reject such a kingdom? Memories have a way of intruding at the most inopportune times. Is Gloria’s tough hide as impenetrable as she has always believed?

Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When Chicago tweens hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying.

In his memoir, James Garner recalls breaking Doris Day’s ribs, having a “heart-to-heart and eyeball-to-eyeball” with Steve McQueen, being “a card-carrying liberal --- and proud of it,” and much more.

Even on their wedding day, John and Irene sensed they were about to make a mistake. Years later --- divorced and dating other people --- they are bound only by mutual love for their spirited 18-year-old daughter. When tragedy strikes, they must come together to support their daughter.