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Featured Guide

Beatriz Williams, author of The Wicked City

When she discovers that her banker husband has been harboring a secret life, Ella Gilbert escapes their sleek SoHo loft for a studio in a quaint building in Greenwich Village. Her charismatic musician neighbor, Hector, warns her to stay out of the basement after midnight, when a symphony of mysterious noise strikes up, even though it's stood empty for decades. Back in the Roaring Twenties, the building hosted one of the city’s most notorious speakeasies.

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Anne Valente, author of Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

As members of the yearbook committee, Nick, Zola, Matt and Christina are eager to capture all the memorable moments of their junior year at Lewis and Clark High School. But how do you document a horrific tragedy --- a deadly school shooting by a classmate? Struggling to comprehend this cataclysmic event, these four survivors vow to honor the memories of those lost and the memories forgotten in the shadow of violence. But the shooting is only the first inexplicable trauma to rock their small suburban St. Louis town.

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Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things

Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects --- the things others have dropped, misplaced or accidentally left behind --- and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners.

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Ellen Umansky, author of The Fortunate Ones

As the specter of war darkens Europe in 1939, Rose Zimmer’s parents manage to secure passage for their young daughter on a kindertransport and send her to live with strangers in England. Six years later, Rose cannot help but try to search out one piece of her childhood: the Chaim Soutine painting her mother had cherished. In modern-day Los Angeles, Lizzie Goldstein has returned home for her father’s funeral. The Soutine painting that she loved and had provided lasting comfort to her after her own mother had died was stolen, and has never been recovered.

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Alice Hoffman, author of The Rules of Magic

For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man. Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the ’60s, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. From the start, she sets down rules for them, the most important of which is to never, ever, fall in love.

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Alexander McCall Smith, author of The House of Unexpected Sisters: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (18)

Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are approached by their part-time colleague, Mr. Polopetsi, with a troubling story: a woman, accused of being rude to a valued customer, has been wrongly dismissed from her job at an office furniture store. Never one to let an act of injustice go unanswered, Mma Ramotswe begins to investigate, but soon discovers unexpected information that causes her to reluctantly change her views about the case. Other surprises await our intrepid proprietress in the course of her inquiries.

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Isabel Allende, author of In the Midst of Winter

During the biggest Brooklyn snowstorm in living memory, Richard Bowmaster, a lonely university professor in his 60s, hits the car of Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. What at first seems an inconvenience takes a more serious turn when Evelyn comes to his house, seeking help. At a loss, the professor asks his tenant, Lucia Maraz, a fellow academic from Chile, for her advice. As these three lives intertwine, each will discover truths about how they have been shaped by the tragedies they witnessed, and Richard and Lucia will find unexpected, long overdue love.

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Karen Harper, author of The It Girls

Sisters Elinor and Lucy Sutherland are at once each other’s fiercest supporters and most vicious critics. Lucy transformed herself into Lucile, the daring fashion designer who revolutionized the industry with her flirtatious gowns and brazen self-promotion. And when she married Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, her life seemed to be a fairy tale. But then came the fateful night of April 14, 1912 and the scandal that followed. Elinor’s novels titillate readers.

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Dinitia Smith, author of The Honeymoon

Dinitia Smith’s novel recounts George Eliot’s honeymoon in Venice following her marriage to a handsome young man 20 years her junior. When she agreed to marry John Walter Cross, Eliot was recovering from the death of George Henry Lewes, her beloved companion of 26 years. Eliot was bereft: left at the age of 60 to contemplate profound questions about her physical decline, her fading appeal and the prospect of loneliness.

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Debbie Macomber, author of Merry and Bright

Merry Knight is taking care of her family, baking cookies, decorating for the holidays, and hoping to stay out of the crosshairs of her stressed and by-the-book boss at the consulting firm where she temps. Her own social life is the last thing she has in mind, much less a man. Without her knowledge, Merry’s well-meaning mom and brother create an online dating profile for her --- minus her photo --- and the matches start rolling in. Soon Merry finds herself chatting with a charming stranger, a man with similar interests and an unmistakably kind soul.

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