Sing, Unburied, Sing
In his wonderfully cranky Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner exhorted his fellow writers to create from the heart…Address the immortal truths, he instructed: "love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." The novelist Jesmyn Ward pinned this speech above her desk. Her memoir and three novels…feel hewn from these grand Faulknerian […]
Cave of Bones
When Tribal Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito arrives to speak at an outdoor character-building program for at-risk teens, she discovers chaos. Annie, a young participant on a solo experience due back hours before, has just returned and is traumatized. Gently questioning the girl, Bernie learns that Annie stumbled upon a human skeleton on her trek. While […]
Varina
Her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects the secure life of a Mississippi landowner. Davis instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American […]
Accidental Heroes
On a beautiful May morning at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, two planes have just departed for San Francisco—one a 757, another a smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous—perhaps ominous—message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice calls […]
The Woman In the Water
London, 1850: A young Charles Lenox struggles to make a name for himself as a detective…without a single case. Scotland Yard refuses to take him seriously and his friends deride him for attempting a profession at all. But when an anonymous writer sends a letter to the paper claiming to have committed the perfect crime¯and […]
Miss Julia Raises the Roof
With her husband Sam off on a trip to Europe, Miss Julia reckons it's about time to roll up her sleeves and be of some use to her community. It's then that she hears that the nosy do-gooder Madge Taylor and the new pastor Rucker are embarking on a mission to buy up the vacant […]
Alternate Side
Some days Nora Nolan thinks that she and her husband, Charlie, lead a charmed life—except when there’s a crisis at work, a leak in the roof at home, or a problem with their twins at college. And why not? New York City was once Nora’s dream destination, and her clannish dead-end block has become a […]
The Cloister
Father Michael Kavanagh is shocked to see a friend from his seminary days named Runner Malloy at the altar of his humble Inwood community parish. Wondering about their past, he wanders into the medieval haven of The Cloisters, and begins a conversation with a lovely and intriguing museum guide, Rachel Vedette.
I've Got My Eyes On You
When a terrible crime shocks a New Jersey community, all signs point to one suspect. But if he's innocent as he claims, it means the murderer is still out there…
Red Alert
A renowned documentary filmmaker is found dead after a sex game goes horribly wrong. Across town, a homemade bomb explodes at a charity benefit. The only cops who can work both cases are Zach Jordan and Kylie MacDonald of NYPD Red—the elite, hard-charging, investigative task force called in exclusively for New York City's most high-profile […]