Commonwealth

Ann Patchett

Harper

Ann Patchett will Present her New Hardcover Novel Commonwealth on Wednesday, October 12, 2016, at 7:00 PM

One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them. When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another.

Nutshell

Ian McEwan

Nan A. Talese

Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse but John's not there. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb. Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's master storytellers.

Little Nothing

Marisa Silver

Blue Rider Press

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla. Little Nothing unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whose ultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her.

The Orphan Mother

Robert Hicks

Grand Central Publishing

In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock--the "Widow of the South"--has quietly built a new life for herself as a midwife to the women of Franklin, Tennessee. But when her ambitious, politically minded grown son, Theopolis, is murdered, Mariah--no stranger to loss--finds her world once more breaking apart. How could this happen? Who wanted him dead? Mariah's journey to uncover the truth leads her to unexpected people--including George Tole, a recent arrival to town, fleeing a difficult past of his own--and forces her to confront the truths of her own past.

The Tea Planter's Wife

Dinah Jefferies

Crown Publishing Group

Nineteen-year-old Gwen married Laurence in England and has followed him to his tea plantation. Though mesmerized by the beauty of the country, she soon struggles with the unaccustomed isolation. Her new husband is strangely distant, spending most of his time at work, and his relationship with a beautiful American businesswoman makes Gwen insecure. Verity, Laurence's spoiled younger sister, is jealous of Gwen's place as mistress of the house and will do anything to drive a wedge between the couple. The plantation itself holds undercurrents of danger with unrest brewing among the native workers. Most mysterious and troubling is that no one is willing to talk about Laurence's first wife and the circumstances of her death. Soon, Gwen is questioning her own choices and will have to make a devastating decision to save her marriage and maybe her life.

Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff

Riverhead Books

This Award-Winning and critically acclaimed Bestselling Novel is now in Softcover!  It's a Top Pick for Book Club discussions!

Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.