“The year it was, even, had a lovely ring to it. Nineteen fifty-two. The war and all, it was over. Things were going to get better and better.” In the Union Square neighborhood of southwest Baltimore, 1952 will in fact mark the beginning of what will come to be known as The Great Decline. Grand three-story row houses, old money and stature frame the setting for descendants of European immigrants and slaves who exist side-by-side. But in a community already marked by violence, alcoholism, and...
Pat Brogan is a Gambling Squad detective in 1950s Buffalo, NY. Beneath the gritty smokestacks are thousands of bright, clanging pinball machines—banned from New York City but still legal here—tempting the well-heeled as well as factory hands in bars, stores and clubs. When a single machine could take in $100 a week in nickels and factory workers made far less, there were fortunes to be made on the dark side of the law. Dealing with grasping pinball vendors, a manipulative politician, a ruthless...
Expelled from school and without a friend, young Victor Flowers is sent by a mother at her wit’s end to spend a summer with his paternal grandmother and work in a family restaurant on the North Carolina coast. As if in spite of himself, Victor finds himself unexpectedly swept up into the concerns of this barely remembered branch of his family; his flinty but welcoming grandmother, his ambitious, intelligent, and indomitable cousin Shelby, and his meek Uncle Buzz, whose health is failing fast....
Jen Johanssen is a former porn actor trying to fit into the world of academia. Her sister, Lolly Johanssen, is a cancer survivor. Nicole Parks is in prison for loving the wrong guy. And Sonya Yakowski, also in prison, is a member of a family of traveling criminals, desperately missing her young son. The lives of these four women converge in a Florida prison, where Jen and Lolly have joined forces to put on a grant-funded drama production. Despite their remarkably divergent histories, these women...
Set in the suburban shadows of New York City as the 1980s crash into the ‘90s, The Punk and the Professor brings us into the troubled world of a young introvert. Jack Tortis is an underdog branded as a punk in a place where sameness is celebrated. Destined to be a drop out laborer like his estranged father, he clings to hope and fights against a tide of dysfunction. But just as life starts to move along, obstacles spring up around him. In his way are apathetic teachers and principals, an abusive...
Matthew Brown is a rising star in the “New South” political machine. He’s also, he knows, a complete fraud. Riding a wave of accomplishments by colleagues and subordinates through various government agencies, Matthew has ascended to associate director of the Department of Corrections, and his potential has caught the eye of the party power brokers, who are priming him for even grander political office. But suddenly tasked with organizing the state’s first execution in a decade, Matthew’s...
When seven-year-old Anthony Little Eagle is found dead on the concrete patio beneath the balcony of a foster home, police and child welfare officials determine that it was a tragic accident. Sylvia Jensen, the foster care supervisor, comes to suspect that the boy's death may have involved foul play and she is launched on a journey to find the truth no matter what the cost. She forms an unlikely alliance with J.B. Harrell, an investigative reporter, to search for the killer, defying her...
Over his fourteen years of age, Alex McGregor’s world has thrived inside the borders of his rural Pennsylvania town; to an outsider, his life is as picturesque as the rolling hills and peaceful farms surrounding his home. His father, Michael, and mother, Lauren, attempt to correct the mistakes of their pasts through the auspiciousness of their son. The family’s pristine appearance is shattered, however, when Michael falls ill to a strange lung infection. The internal tension of the family,...
A married couple in California grapples with race, betrayal, love, and loss when their son comes home from a Guatemalan orphanage. Contemporary art museum curator Julie Cowan achieves her dream of motherhood through adoption, but her life is far from perfect. Her pathologist husband, Mark, is distracted by his gorgeous, young intern, while her hotshot new museum director boss doubts Julie’s curatorial chops. And Julie’s six-year-old son, Jack (born Juan), may never recover from trauma...
Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renown musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention. Trapped between the life she is expected to live...