"A dazzlingly original new novel from the acclaimed author of The Borrower. Now, Makkai returns with an ingenious novel set on an historic estate that once housed an arts colony. Doug, the husband of the estate's heir, desperately needs the colony files to get his stalled academic career back on track. But what he discovers when he finally gets his hands on them is more than he bargained for. Doug may never learn the house's secrets, but the reader...

In upstate New York, an aging mother wonders why someone would murder her daughter, killed as a little girl fifty years earlier. So a friend with money hires novelist Paul Graves to write, not necessarily the truth since the crime was never solved, just something to put the mother's mind at rest. Who knows, in the process he might even discover the truth.

"Juniper Wiles once starred as a plucky teen detective in the popular TV show, Nora Constantine. When the series ended seven years ago, Juniper decided to leave L.A., return to Newford, and join friends at Bramleyhaugh artists' collective, the center of which is her pal, faerie artist Jilly Coppercorn. Now, with the strange murder of a young man, the fictional world of Nora Constantine starts to bleed into Newford. Juniper wanted to leave her role...

"Martha Sinnott returns with her second husband to the New England artists' colony she left behind seven years earlier when she divorced her first husband. The townfolk have remained much the same, including Martha's former husband, who has relocated nearby. Martha is in touch with her former friends, who are in touch with her former husband, so Martha should be able to see him as well, shouldn't she? This logic ultimately carries Martha to a devastating...

"Frances flees a painful breakup and her claustrophobic childhood home in Manhattan, which has become more airless in the aftermath of two family announcements ... She seeks refuge at a Norwegian artist colony that's offered her a painting apprenticeship ... Yasha, an eighteen-year-old Russian immigrant raised in a bakery in Brighton Beach, is kneading bread in the shop's window when he sees his mother for the first time in a decade. As he gains a...

"Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn't imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite post-grad arts program; Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that...

After her mother dies, a middle-aged Englishwoman tries to learn about her father, a secret the mother kept from her. The search takes her to a fishing port and artists' colony in Cornwall where she learns of her father's involvement in a lifeboat disaster.

Simon is not a particularly successful novelist. Truth be told, he is decidedly second rate. And so it seems absolutely appropriate that he is invited to the Greek Isle of Skagathos to teach overly enthusiastic would-be writers who have about as much chance of publishing a book as Simon has of winning the Booker Prize. The summer colony, of which the writers are a part, has taken the tenets of the new age to heart, whether in pursuit of the ever-elusive...