THE FLOATING WORLD takes readers into the heart of Hurricane Katrina with the story of the Boisdorés, whose roots stretch back nearly to the foundation of New Orleans. Though the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora, the family’s fragile elder daughter, refuses to leave the city, forcing her parents, Joe Boisdoré, an artist descended from a freed slave who became one of the city’s preeminent furniture makers, and his white “Uptown” wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic --- the victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself.

“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.” The book also examines the new voices, ideas and movements for justice that emerged over this period --- and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history.

Anna Kerrigan accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life and the reasons he might have vanished.

Constance Kopp is back --- with a badge and a taste for justice. She has finally earned her deputy sheriff’s badge and is ready to tackle a new kind of case: defending independent young women brought into the Hackensack jail on dubious charges of waywardness, incorrigibility and moral depravity. Such were the laws --- and morals --- of 1916. Constance uses her authority as deputy sheriff, and occasionally exceeds it, to investigate and support these women when no one else will. But it’s her sister Fleurette --- who runs away from their sleepy farm to join the glamorous world of vaudeville --- who puts Constance’s beliefs to the test. Is there a wayward girl in her own family?

George and Lizzie have radically different understandings of what love and marriage should be. George grew up in a warm and loving family --- his father an orthodontist, his mother a stay-at-home mom --- while Lizzie grew up as the only child of two famous psychologists, who viewed her more as an in-house experiment than a child to love. After a decade of marriage, nothing has changed --- George is happy; Lizzie remains…unfulfilled. But when George discovers that Lizzie has been searching for the whereabouts of an old boyfriend, Lizzie is forced to decide what love means to her, what George means to her, and whether her life with George is the one she wants.

Twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a half-Chinese orphan, is raffled off at the 1909 World’s Fair. The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel, famous for educating her girls. There, Ernest becomes the new houseboy and befriends Maisie, the madam’s precocious daughter, and a bold scullery maid named Fahn. But as the grande dame succumbs to an occupational hazard and their world of finery begins to crumble, all three must grapple with hope, ambition and first love. Fifty years later, in the shadow of Seattle’s second World’s Fair, Ernest struggles to help his ailing wife reconcile who she once was with who she wanted to be, while trying to keep family secrets hidden from their grown-up daughters.

Cole is a boy in high school. He runs cross country, he sketches, he jokes around with friends. But none of this quite matters next to the allure of sex. He fantasizes about whomever he's looking at. He consumes and shares pornography. And he sleeps with a lot of girls, which is beginning to earn him a not-quite-savory reputation around school. This leaves him adrift with only his best friend for company, and then something startling starts to happen between them that might be what he's been after all this time. And then he meets Grisaille.

Ilesa, Nigeria. Ever since they first met and fell in love at university, Yejide and Akin have agreed: polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage --- after consulting fertility doctors and healers, and trying strange teas and unlikely cures --- Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time --- until her in-laws arrive on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked and livid with jealousy, Yejide knows the only way to save her marriage is to get pregnant. Which, finally, she does --- but at a cost far greater than she could have dared to imagine.

Isidore Mazal is 11 years old, the youngest of six siblings living in a small French town. He doesn't quite fit in. Berenice, Aurore and Leonard are on track to have doctorates by age 24. Jeremie performs with a symphony, and Simone, older than Isidore by 18 months, expects a great career as a novelist --- she's already put Isidore to work on her biography. Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. But he notices things the others don't and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal family, Isidore is the only one to recognize how everyone is struggling with their grief, and perhaps the only one who can help them --- if he doesn't run away from home first.

The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell --- of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence. As the police search for clues, Emma comforts an increasingly distraught Lizzie, whose memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fateful day are slowly revealed.