In 1950s Quebec, French and English tolerate each other with precarious civility -- much like Maggie Hughes' parents. Maggie's English-speaking father has ambitions for his daughter that don't include marriage to the poor French boy the next farm over. But Maggie's heart is captured by Gabriel Phénix. When she becomes pregnant at fifteen, her parents send the baby Elodie to an orphanage where she receives horrible treatment. Seventeen years later,...

Aviva Rosner is at a crossroads. Her fourth album is about to be released -- and her manager says it's going to be big. But Aviva is focused on getting pregnant, which she can't seem to do. How far will she go to have a child? Is that what she really wants? And what about her music, and her growing obsession with Amy Winehouse? On the eve of her fourth album, singer-songwriter Aviva Rosner is plagued by infertility. The twist: as much as Aviva wants...

This sixth Jane Whitefield novel finds Jane, a Native American guide who helps people assume new identities, living quietly in upstate New York, married to a local doctor. Shortly after pregnant Christine Monahan arrives at the hospital where Jane's husband works looking desperately for Jane, a bomb explodes at a hospital fundraiser, and the two women flee cross-country with a team of hired hunters on their trail. After years of a happy, quiet life...

The women in Polly Rosenwaike's Look How Happy I'm Making You want to be mothers, or aren't sure they want to be mothers, or - having recently given birth - are overwhelmed by what they've wrought. Sharp and unsettling, wry and moving in its depiction of love, friendship, and family, this collection expands the coversation about what having a baby looks like. One woman struggling with infertility deals with the news that her sister is pregnant. Another,...

"Darius, son of Marklon, isn't looking for love the night destiny comes to claim him. He's also not interested in crashing his new car. But when a human woman runs out into the road and he must swerve to avoid killing her ... everything goes off course. Disillusioned by his King's lack of leadership and the losses in the war against the Lessening Society, Darius finds purpose in protecting a woman he cannot make his own. Love finds a way, however...

"There's a box in the back of Audrey's closet that she rarely thinks about. Inside is a letter, seventeen years old, from a mother she's never met, handed to her by the woman she's called Mom her whole life. Being adopted, though, is just one piece in the puzzle of Audrey's life--the picture painstakingly put together by Audrey herself, consisting not only of the greatest family ever but of a snarky, loyal, sometimes infuriating best friend Rose,...

"In 1726 in the small town of Godalming, England, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving birth to dead rabbits. Surgeon John Howard is a rational man. His apprentice Zachary knows John is reluctant to believe anything that purports to exist outside the realm of logic. But even John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local farmer, manages to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event becomes a regular occurrence,...

"In one impulsive moment the summer before they leave for college, overachievers Scarlett and David plunge into an irresistible swirl of romance, particle physics, and questionable decisions. Scarlett and David have known each other all their lives in small-town Graceville, Colorado, where David is just another mountain in the background, until, one day, he is suddenly so much more than part of the landscape. Magnetic, spontaneous, David is a gravitational...

"A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community -- and the things that ultimately haunt us most. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd...

"It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path. Vivid, tender, darkly funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the...