By the lake in Beartown is an old ice rink, and in that ice rink Kevin, Amat, Benji, and the rest of the town’s junior ice hockey team are about to compete in the national semi-finals—and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a...

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, not knowing when she will return home. In the strangers’ house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. But in a house where there are meant to be...

Esther Larson has been cooking for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for seventy years. Known locally as the “funeral ladies,” she and her cohort have worked hard to keep the mourners of Ellerie County fed—it is her firm belief that there is very little a warm casserole and a piece of cherry...

Full of the great joy in storytelling that characterizes Roddy Doyle’s novels, The Guts catches up with Jimmy Rabbitte—the man who in the 1980s formed the Commitments, a band composed of working-class Irish youths whose mission was to bring soul music to Dublin. Jimmy is now forty-seven, with a...

Al Ward lives on an isolated mining claim in the high desert of central Nevada fifty miles from the nearest town. A grizzled man in his sixties, he survives on canned soup, instant coffee, and memories of his ex-wife, friends and family he’s lost, and his life as a touring musician. Hampered by...

When a young librarian discovers hidden historic dollhouses in her library, she embarks on an unexpected journey that reveals surprising secrets about the lost miniatures. Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century’s worth...

Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three-year-old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man―the antithesis of Rei―has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into...

Foley and Moss are partners in a successful small business, making plaster pixies for the tourist trade. Foley is the artistic member of the partnership; he thinks up the ideas and designs and has pretensions to even greater artistry in his cherub lamps and fixtures. Moss, the seemingly quiet one...

Over the course of two weeks, everything in Beartown will change. Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there’s something about this place that prevents it. The destruction caused by a ferocious late-summer storm reignites the...