Tavia Gilbert

What is the true nature of Nature? Is it a harmonious, interconnected system, operating according to the principles of co-dependence and benevolence? Or is it red in tooth and claw -- an unfeeling, unthinking force, in which the individual is overwhelmed and subsumed to serve a larger purpose, one mysterious and obscure? This is what Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is all about: an exploration into the nature of Nature, an attempt to discover...

"It is 1914 and the world has been on the brink of war so many times, many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest. Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. The two met years ago one summer in Paris and became close confidantes. Now Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime, home with Sofya to see the splendors of Russia. But when Austria declares war on Serbia and...

On the day John F. Kennedy is inaugurated, Claire, a young wife and mother obsessed with the glamour of Jackie, struggles over the decision of whether to stay in a loveless but secure marriage or to follow the man she loves and whose baby she may be carrying. Decades earlier in 1919, Vivien Lowe, an obituary writer, is searching for her lover who disappeared in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. By telling the stories of the dead, Vivien...

Just as Alix Madsen is finishing up architectural school, Adelaide Kingsley dies and wills her, for one year, the use of a charming nineteenth-century Nantucket house. The elderly woman's relationship to the Madsen family is a mystery to the spirited Alix, fresh from a romantic breakup, but for reasons of her own Alix accepts the quirky bequest, in part because it gives her time to plan her best friend's storybook wedding.

Reclusive literary legend M. M. 'Mimi' Banning has been holed up in her Bel Air mansion for years. But after falling prey to a Bernie Madoff-style ponzi scheme, she's flat broke. Now Mimi must write a new book for the first time in decades, and to ensure the timely delivery of her manuscript, her New York publisher sends an assistant to monitor her progress. The prickly Mimi reluctantly complies, with a few stipulations: No Ivy-Leaguers or English...

When a single mom becomes an "empty nester," she spreads her wings to rediscover herself -- and her passions -- in this heartwarming novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber. Jenna Boltz's life is at a crossroads. After a messy divorce nearly twenty years ago, she raised her two children on her own, juggling motherhood with her beloved job as a Seattle intensive care nurse. Now that Paul and Allie have gone to college and moved...

One rainy morning in June, two years after the end of World War II, a minor traffic accident brings together Eleanor Moskowitz and Patricia Bellamy. Their encounter seems fated: Eleanor, a teacher and recent Vassar graduate, needs a job. Patricia's difficult thirteen-year-old daughter Margaux, recovering from polio, needs a private tutor. Though she feels out of place in the Bellamys' rarefied and elegant Park Avenue milieu, Eleanor forms an instant...

Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He's said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He's condemned on the walls of the women's restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty, or his charismatic, volatile wife.

When rebellious seventeen-year-old Katherine McCall awakened one morning to find her sister, Sara, viciously murdered, her whole life changed in the blink of an eye. Kat was named the prime suspect, charged and tried -- and found innocent. But not everyone agreed with the verdict, and Kat's only choice was to go into hiding. She left her hometown behind, but she carried a dark secret with her, one that made her worry she might actually have had something...

Officer Miranda Rader of the Harmony, Louisiana PD is known for her honesty, integrity, and steady hand in a crisis - but that wasn't always so. Miranda comes from the town of Jasper, a place about the size of a good spit on a hot day, and her side of the tracks was the wrong one. She's worked hard to earn the respect of her coworkers and the community. When Miranda and her partner are called to investigate the murder of one of the town's most beloved...