Featured Guide

Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

In THE COMFORT OF CROWS, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: 52 chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons --- from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring --- what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer. Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life.

Read more »

Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters

The three Blue sisters are exceptional --- and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment in which they were raised. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.

Read more »

Liane Moriarty, author of Here One Moment

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future --- age 103! --- and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all. If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Read more »

Elizabeth Strout, author of Tell Me Everything

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He also has fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known --- “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them --- reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Read more »

Janis Robinson Daly, author of The Path Beneath Her Feet

Read more »

Matt Haig, author of The Life Impossible

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she ever could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Read more »

Amy Neff, author of The Days I Loved You Most

In the summer of 1941, on the New England shores where they were raised, Evelyn and Joseph fell in love. Now, more than 60 years later, with a lifetime between them, they have gathered their three grown children to share the staggering news: she has received a tragic diagnosis, and he cannot live without her. So in one year’s time, they will end their lives on their own terms. As the couple comes to grips with their fate, they retrace their past --- the joys and regrets, the laughter and the sorrow --- that brought them to this moment. They embark on a journey to live out their greatest dreams and to comfort and connect with each of their children before they're gone. But as their final days draw closer, they must confront the stark reality of what they are about to do, and make peace with the legacy they will leave behind for their family.

Read more »

Rainbow Rowell, author of Slow Dance

Shiloh and Carey were best friends. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha --- Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change. Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed. Now Shiloh is 33, and it’s been 14 years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house in which she grew up. When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is if Cary will be there --- and if she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything? The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Read more »

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of Long Island Compromise

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, and the family moves on with their lives. But now, nearly 40 years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.

Read more »

Alison Espach, author of The Wedding People

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years. She hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband. But she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield…except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan --- which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

Read more »