In Conversation

IN SHAKEN TO THE CORE, Joy is a Miami photographer whose “carefully curated life” is interrupted by loss, and soon after, by circumstances that change the future she thought she had chosen. In conv...

Finding Magic in What Lasts with Tom Lin

IN BABYLON, SOUTH DAKOTA, Saul and Mei Hsiu are Chinese immigrants trying to make a life for their family on a South Dakota homestead they’ve inherited. The seasons change, and the family grows old...

Leaving the Clock Behind with Jamie Brenner

When reading The Weekend Crashers, we find ourselves in autumn, at an inn in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where a knitting retreat and a bachelor party have accidentally been booked for the same weekend...

Telling Ghost Stories with Emily Franklin

As the story goes, four people were trapped at Lake Geneva during the summer of 1816: Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron’s personal physician. When writing about that season, Mary S...

Interrupting the Present with Brian Platzer

Brian Platzer’s The Optimists is narrated by Rod Keating, a man who has suffered a stroke, telling the story of an extraordinary student named Clara, despite his limitations of speech and movement....

Remembering the World Outside with Susan Wiggs

Wayward Girls opens in Buffalo, New York, in the 1960s. Mairin O’Hara is working in an apple orchard with the sun overhead and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson” playing on the radio. The...