Ann Patchett

Recalling the past at her daughters' request, Lara tells the story of a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance, which causes her daughters to examine their own lives and reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. "In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor...

"One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly--thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia,...

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked,...

Just before dying, magician Parsifal of Los Angeles married his assistant, Sabine, who knew nothing of his private life, veiled in mystery. Not wanting to be an ignorant widow, Sabine sets out to learn who Parsifal was outside the world of illusion.

John Nickel, an African American blues musician managing a Memphis bar, hires a white brother and sister even though he knows they mean trouble, as he pines to be reunited with his son.

Rose, a beautiful and mysterious woman living at St. Elizabeth's home for unwed mothers, has no intention of telling her mother or her husband about her pregnancy, until a healing spring near the home changes her mind.

A flock of lambs mishears the word "landslide" as "lambslide" and begins a campaign to have one built for them on the farm.

In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything...

Dana Delany (China Beach) stars as Rose, a desperate expectant woman who leaves her husband and takes refuge in a shelter for unwed pregnant women. She begins a new life, raising her daughter and marrying the shelter's handyman (Clancy Brown, The Shawshank Redemption). But when her first husband tracks her down, she is faced with the agonizing decision whether to flee her past once again.

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this "forceful, beautifully written" (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case.
On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman,...