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Featured Guide

Sophfronia Scott, author of Unforgivable Love: A Retelling of Dangerous Liaisons

Heiress Mae Malveaux made up her mind long ago that nobody would decide her fate. To have the pleasure she craves, control is paramount, especially control of the men Mae attracts. Valiant Jackson always gets what he wants --- and he’s wanted Mae for years. The door finally opens for him when Mae strikes a bargain: seduce her virginal young cousin, Cecily, who is engaged to Frank Washington. Frank values her innocence above all else. If successful, Val’s reward will be a night with Mae. But Val secretly seeks another prize.

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Teresa Messineo, author of The Fire by Night

In war-torn France, Jo McMahon tends to six seriously wounded soldiers in a makeshift medical unit. There is a growing tenderness between her and one of her patients, a Scottish officer, but Jo’s heart is seared by the pain of all she has lost and seen. Nearing her breaking point, she fights to hold on to joyful memories of the past, to the times she shared with her best friend, Kay, whom she met in nursing school. At the same time, Kay is trapped in a squalid Japanese POW camp in Manila.

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Lisi Harrison, author of The Dirty Book Club

M.J. Stark’s life is picture-perfect, but there is a debilitating sense of loneliness behind her success. So when her boss betrays her and her boyfriend offers her a completely new life in California, she decides to give it a try. Once there, M.J. is left to fend for herself in a small beach town, with only the company of her elderly neighbor, Gloria. One afternoon, M.J. discovers that Gloria has suddenly moved to Paris. In lieu of a goodbye, she’s left a mysterious invitation to a secret club --- one that only reads erotic books. Curious, M.J.

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Hillary Jordan, author of Mudbound

It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm --- a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not --- charming, handsome and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero.

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Alix Rickloff, author of The Way to London: A Novel of World War II

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Lucy Stanhope, the granddaughter of an earl, is living a life of pampered luxury in Singapore until one reckless act will change her life forever. Exiled to England to stay with an aunt she barely remembers, Lucy never dreamed that she would be one of the last people to escape Singapore before war engulfs the entire island. Then she meets Bill, a young evacuee sent to the country to escape the Blitz, and in a moment of weakness, Lucy agrees to help him find his mother in London.

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Alice McDermott, author of The Ninth Hour

On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove --- to the subway bosses who have recently fired him and to his badgering, pregnant wife --- that “the hours of his life belonged to himself alone.” In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Saviour appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child.

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Jamie Ford, author of Love and Other Consolation Prizes

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.

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Elise Hooper, author of The Other Alcott

May Alcott grows up longing to experience the wide world beyond Concord, Massachusetts. While her sister Louisa crafts stories, May herself is a talented and dedicated artist, taking lessons in Boston, turning down a marriage proposal from a well-off suitor, and facing scorn for entering what is very much a man’s profession. Life for the Alcott family has never been easy, so when Louisa’s LITTLE WOMEN is published, its success eases the financial burdens they’d faced for so many years.

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Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man.

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Zadie Smith, author of Swing Time

Two brown girls dream of being dancers, but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend travels the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live.

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