In Rooms for Vanishing, the violence of war has fractured the universe for the Altermans, a Jewish family from Vienna. Moving across decades, and across the world, the novel finds the Altermans alone in their separate futures, haunted by the loss of their loved ones, each certain that they are the sole survivor of their family.

1926. On the cliffs of Yorkshire, men are lowered on ropes to steal the eggs of the sea birds who nest there. The most beautiful are sold for large sums. A small girl—penniless and neglected by her family—retrieves one such treasure. Its discovery will forever alter the course of her life. A century later. In a remote cottage in Wales, Patrick Fort finds his friend, Nick, and his mother tied up and robbed. The only thing missing: a carved case containing an incredible scarlet egg.

Morocco, 1928. Marie-Madeleine Méric is not the kind of woman who stays quietly at her husband’s side. Polyglot, pianist, and pilot, she is a woman of many skills, with unconventional interests—like driving in car rallies—that earn her a daredevil reputation. But dabbling in intelligence work to assist her military officer husband and the French government helps her recognize who she is at heart: an adventurer.

The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.

Jessamyn St. Germain is meant to be a star. Not an actor who occasionally books yogurt commercials and certainly not a lowly usher at one of Vancouver’s smallest regional theaters. No, she is bound for greatness, and that’s why the part of Maria in the theater’s upcoming production of The Sound of Music is hers. Or it’s going to be.

Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.

What to Expect When You're Dead chronicles the ways ancient peoples answered questions such as: How to achieve a good death and afterlife? What's the best way to dispose of a body? Do the dead face a postmortem judgement—and where do they end up? Do the dead have bodies in the afterlife—and can they eat, drink, and have sex? And what can the living do to stay on good terms with the nonliving?

Informed by real-life events, from Japanese incarceration to the Vietnam War and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen’s novel gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to one another, and to ourselves, after tragedy.

Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC-Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans. The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing?

Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century’s worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. She loves the calm and order in the shelves of books and walls of art. But Tildy’s life takes an unexpected turn when she, first, learns the library is on the verge of bankruptcy and, second, discovers two exquisite never-before-seen dollhouses.

For nearly thirty years, Nell has kept a childhood promise to never reveal what she and Evie found tucked inside a copy of Jane Eyre in their mother's bookcase—a record of Evie's birth naming a stranger as her mother. But lately, Nell has been haunted by hazy memories of their early life in Mississippi, years their reclusive mother, Hazel, has kept shrouded in secrecy.

The Summer of Love has been replaced by the Summer of Fear as a sadistic killer prowls the streets of San Francisco. Known only as 'The Gemini,' his brutal murders have the city paralyzed in a merciless grip of terror as he taunts police with a series of cryptic puzzles and the body count rises. As detectives work to unravel the Gemini's chilling clues, the line between nightmare and reality begins to blur when Cassie Kennedy—a newly separated young mother and part-time psychic—discovers that her dreams are foretelling the gruesome deaths of three women.

Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1983. This wry, propulsive story about a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them, is a glorious debut novel from a seasoned playwright with immense empathy and a flair for dialogue.

When renowned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that's where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira's stories of her travels and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she's left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she's living with her mother.

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.