Alan Anderson is a powerful advertising executive who is up for the biggest pitch of his career and the account everyone wants: US Dairy. Cow’s milk sales are plummeting, and the C-Suite wants to see trendy oat milk kicked to the curb. When an anarchist farmer tanks Alan’s presentation, Alan bombs the pitch but ends the day with an epiphany. No longer will he exploit the insecurities of others in the service of capitalism. Alan is opting out. This development is anathema to his wife, Vivian, who can only watch as Alan moves into their backyard playhouse to live off the land and --- worse --- spend time with the family. But instead of shocking the neighbors, Alan’s commitment to a less-is-more lifestyle seems to be catching on. Could everyone want what Alan is not selling? 

It’s December 24, 1979, just before closing at Baker-Taylor’s discount department store, and Fran (née Baker) is surveying her domain. Her husband, Fred, is charming customers in the front of the store. The older Taylor kids are on register, while the younger ones’ chaos is contained to the stockroom. All is right in the world as the new decade approaches. With four healthy children and financial stability their own parents could have only dreamed of, Fred and Fran are the picture of the American Dream --- with a successful chain of family-owned stores built on years of hard work and long hours. Underneath the surface, however, the business is changing at a breakneck pace, and each member of the family is struggling to keep up.

It all starts when Petra and her little sister, Patch, hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. Is it imaginary? Is it real? Then it all starts again 30 years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. What to do? She phones her sister. In a chiarascuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, GLYPH asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making.

At 26, Linli Feng is still trying to escape her mother Fanny’s orbit. But after three years of estrangement, she is dragged back by Fanny’s latest medical catastrophe and forced to return home. For decades, Fanny has been addicted to plastic surgery. Now her disfigured face is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black-market injectables. But Fanny has another secret in store. She has won a spot on “America’s Beauty Extreme,” a reality television competition in which botched plastic surgery addicts compete for reconstructive surgery as riveted audiences tune in. When Linli attempts to rescue Fanny from the sinister subculture that already has claimed her mother’s face, she must confront the corrosive reality of the American Dream that is at the fraught heart of their relationship. 

Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family --- to belong to someone. That's why she's going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost. Celia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef, she will find herself. She’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed. She's ready to believe.

Sara Nović’s early years were steeped in music, Bible study, and a strong desire to fit in. But when she failed her school’s mandated hearing test, her worldview was thrown into chaos. Desperate not to be marked as different, she told no one, staying in the hearing world for as long as she could by brute force. Eventually unable to ignore the fact that she was deaf, Nović sought out other deaf people and was welcomed into a tight-knit community rooted in the beauty and joy of American Sign Language. Now the mother of two young sons --- one, biological and hearing; the other, adopted and deaf --- Nović reflects on her life both before and after parenthood. Interwoven with Nović's personal story is a remarkable portrait of America through reflections on some of its most complex histories.

An unsuspecting couple is treated to a luxury vacation by their deceased neighbor. After begrudgingly agreeing to volunteer at a nursing home, a middle-school girl gambles over games of bridge with elderly residents. A single mother struggles to understand the unique bond between her autistic son and his dying grandmother. Four friends experience decades of highs and lows as pawns in The Game of Life. A professional gynecology patient runs into a high school flame while at work, undressed, on the job. In this irreverent collection, celebrated novelist Julie Schumacher balances sorrow against laughter. Here, we experience story not only as narrative, but as syllabus and as board game.

Los Angeles, right now. America with its back up against the wall. This Frankenstein's monster of crimes and lurid dreams sewn together into something like a city. A city ready to explode: A Hollywood pedophile is arrested, and he is ready to tear down the city to get his freedom. A young woman goes missing --- and men in black rubber gloves who look like cops clean out her apartment in the middle of the night. And the serial killer known as the LA Ripper is on the loose, leaving tragic/graphic/brutal crime scenes in his wake. Three people trying to keep their heads above the dirty water will find themselves coming together to unite these strands into one enormous, unspeakable crime.

All Cleo Dang has ever wanted is to be a mother. The day she discovers she’s pregnant is the happiest of her life, especially when she learns that her best friend, Paloma, is also expecting. It’s a wonderful surprise, and together, they enjoy their pregnancies. But when they both go to the hospital in labor, something goes very, very wrong. Paloma comes home with a baby. Cleo does not. Ravaged by grief, Cleo must now navigate life after losing her baby. She alienates herself from the world, particularly her best friend, who is living the life she so desperately wanted. Forced to take leave from her demanding job as an actuary, Cleo manages to find work at a funeral home, where she meets a revolving cast of bereaved locals and discovers the power of confronting grief.

Jean Dornan cannot escape the summer of 1998, when, as a college student studying abroad in France, she embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Now, decades later, when that professor contacts her out of the blue with an invitation to his retirement ceremony, Jean’s long-standing malaise becomes an emotional crisis. Desperate to understand why this relationship derailed her life so completely, she begins rereading her old diaries and is shocked to realize that her own disastrous affair occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal. In a frenzy of guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness as if she were a secular saint. To Jean’s shock, Saint Monica appears and guides Jean like the Ghost of Christmas Past back to the summer of 1998.