From the author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls comes a story of the 1950s Houston social scene and the irresistible, controversial woman at the bright, hot center of it all -- a story of friendship as obsessive, euphoric, consuming, and complicated as any romance. "Joan Fortier is the epitome of Texas glamour and the center of the 1950s Houston social scene. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and strong, she dominates the room and the gossip columns....

"From the award-winning author of No One Is Here Except All of Us, an imaginative novel about a wealthy New England family in the 1960s and '70s that suddenly loses its fortune--and its bearings. Labor Day, 1976, Martha's Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house along this moneyed coast of New England, Fern and Edgar--married with three children--are happily preparing for a family birthday celebration when they learn that the unimaginable has...

"Ariana Osgood rules exclusive Easton Academy--until she was arrested for murdering Thomas Pearson. She's spent the past two years at the Brenda T. Trumbull Correctional Facility for Women plotting her escape and is determined to get a second chance at the flamorous life she left behind. And Ariana will do anything to get her way...."--p. [4] of cover.

"Truth: Sherri Griffin and her daughter, Katie, have recently moved to the idyllic beach town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Rebecca Coleman, widely acknowledged former leader of the Newburyport Mom Squad (having taken a step back since her husband's shocking and tragic death eighteen months ago), has made a surprising effort to include these newcomers in typically closed-group activities. Rebecca's teenage daughter Alexa has even been spotted babysitting...

"Edwer Thissell is having trouble adjusting to life on the planet Sirene. The Sirenese all wear masks to indicate their social status. They also communicate by playing instruments that are carefully selected for any social situation. (To make matters worse, errors of musical etiquette often prove fatal.) Shortly after Thissell arrives on Sirene, he finds himself embroiled in an unsolved murder made all the more mysterious by the fact that since everyone...

"In 1962, coed Heddy Winsome leaves her hardscrabble Irish Brooklyn neighborhood behind and ferries to glamorous Martha's Vineyard to nanny for one of the wealthiest families on the island. But as she grows enamored with the alluring and seemingly perfect young couple and chases after their two mischievous children, Heddy discovers that her academic scholarship at Wellesley has been revoked, putting her entire future at risk. Determined to find her...

"The Bronx, 1891. Virginia Loftin, the boldest of four artistic sisters in a family living in genteel poverty, knows what she wants most: to become a celebrated novelist despite her gender, and to marry Charlie, the boy next door and her first love. When Charlie proposes instead to a woman from a wealthy family, Ginny is devastated; shutting out her family, she holes up and turns their story into fiction, obsessively rewriting a better ending. Though...

"Cutting Teeth takes place one late-summer weekend as a group of thirty-something couples gather at a shabby beach house on Long Island, their young children in tow. Nicole, the hostess, struggles to keep her OCD behaviors unnoticed. Stay-at-home dad Rip grapples with the reality that his careerist wife will likely deny him a second child, forcing him to disrupt the life he loves. Allie, one half of a two-mom family, can't stop imagining ditching...

Gwynplaine and his surrogate family--father Ursus and sister and fellow foundling Dea--travel southern England as Gwynplaine performs at carnivals, using his grotesque facial expression as a punch line, only for Gwynplaine's lineage to be discovered in the midst of court intrigues and arranged marriages.