Set against the turbulent backdrop of the 1960s, Noah Bly's evocative debut explores prejudice, loss, and redeeming courage through the prism of an unlikely friendship.When fifty-four-year-old Julianna Dapper slips out of a mental hospital in Bangor, Maine, on a June day in 1962, it's with one purpose in mind. Julianna knows she must go back to the tiny farming community in northern Missouri where she was born and raised. It's the place where she and her best frien...

In The Distance Between Us, Noah Bly presents a blistering portrait of a troubled family, of bonds that can be battered but never broken, and of the friendships that can make us whole again.Hester Parker resides in an elegant Victorian house in the town of Bolton, Illinois. She spends her evenings listening to the lush tones of Mahler and Chopin, drinking sub-par Merlot, and reflecting on a life that has suddenly fallen apart. At seventy-one, Hester is as brillian...

When fifty-four-year-old Julianna Dapper slips out of a mental hospital in Bangor, Maine, on a June day in 1962, it's with one purpose in mind. Julianna knows she must go back to the tiny farming community in northern Missouri where she was born and raised. It's the place where she and her best friend, Ben Taylor, roamed as children, and where her life's course shifted irrevocably one night long ago.Embarking on her journey, Julianna meets Elijah Hunter, a shy teenage African Ameri...

On a scorching August day in 1963, seven-year-old Annie Banks meets the girl who will become her best friend. Skinny, outspoken Starr Dukes and her wandering preacher father may not be accepted by polite society in Jackson, Mississippi, but Annie and Starr are too busy sharing secrets and playing elaborate games of Queen for a Day to care. Then, as suddenly as she appeared in Annie's life, Starr disappears. Annie grows up to follow the path ordained for pretty, well-to-do Jackson women--ma...

They loved. They lost. They lived.In the small Yorkshire town of Cottenly - dominated by the steel works and surrounded by beautiful countryside - Isaac Stanford lives with his wife Emily and their three lovely daughters, known locally as the Stanford lasses. Alice, the eldest, lives only for her work as a secretary and chapel on Sunday. Fair and loving Lizzie is content with her job making umbrellas - until she falls in love with George Crossman and all she desire...

Like New York Times bestseller Reconstructing Amelia, a stunning debut about a young teenager on the brink and a parent desperate to find the truth before it’s too late.Thirteen year old Callie is accused of bullying at school, but Rebecca knows the kind and gentle girl she’s raised is innocent. While Callie is eventually exonerated, threatening notes from her alleged victim, Robyn, begin to surface, and as the notes become suicidal, Rebecca is de...

An "impeccably researched and beautifully written" novel about a California marriage threatened by the Japanese internments of WWII (Karen White, New York Times–bestselling author of The Sound of Glass).Los Angeles, 1941. Violinist Maddie Kern's life seemed destined to unfold with the predictable elegance of a Bach concerto. Then she fell in love with Lane Moritomo.Her brother's best friend, Lane is the handsome, ambitious son of Japanese ...

In the bestselling tradition of The Secret Life of Bees, Liar's Bench is an atmospheric, compulsively readable tale full of heart and history, set in 1970s Kentucky and exploring civil rights and family secrets.In 1972 on Mudas Summers' seventeenth birthday, her beloved mama, Ella, is found hanging from the rafters of their home. Most people in Peckinpaw, Kentucky, assume that Ella's no-good husband did the deed. Others think Ella grew tired of his abuse and did i...

Set in the heart of Louisiana, Amy Conner's spellbinding new novel tells of a young woman yearning for a better existence-and of the secret longings that will change the lives of all those around her. Eighteen-year-old Lireinne Hooten has always been on the lowest rung of the ladder. Abandoned by her mother, Lireinne lives with her stepfather in an old trailer on Million Dollar Road. Every day she walks the long mile, through a canopy of live oaks, to her job at the world's largest alligat...

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life.The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the ide...

She was a daughter, a wife, a mother. She was my friend. But what secrets did Eloise take to her grave?After her best friend Eloise dies from breast cancer, Cathy is devastated. But then Cathy begins to have disturbing dreams that imply Eloise's death was not all it seems.With a history of depression, Cathy is only just recovering from a nervous breakdown and her husband Chris, a psychiatrist, is acutely aware of his wife's mental frailty. When Cathy tells Chris of her susp...

This national best-seller is a breakthrough book for Lee Smith, an author who fills her marvelous novels with humor, pathos, and powerful wisdom. The Last Girls are a group of coeds, inspired by Huck Finn, who traveled the Mississippi on a raft in 1965. Now four of them have reunited on a luxurious steamboat to cruise the river again. As they look back over the past 30 years, each one contemplates their shared past in light of their present lives.