Answered Prayers

The book is a somewhat sordid tale of the mixing of high and low social classes, drawn from his experiences as best friend and confidant to the most prominent female socialites of the era and their husbands. The first chapter of Answered Prayers, Unspoiled Monsters, which was published in Esquire, is largely based on Capote's friend, the real-life male prostitute Denham Fouts. Capote first envisioned it as an American analog to Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past that would come to be regarded as his masterwork in the late 1950s.

Ireland

BBC reporter Delaney's fictionalized history of his native country, an Irish bestseller, is a sprawling, riveting read, a book of stories melding into a novel wrapped up in an Irish history text. In 1951, when Ronan O'Mara is nine, he meets the aging itinerant Storyteller, who emerges out a "silver veil" of Irish mist, hoping to trade a yarn for a hot meal. Welcomed inside, the Storyteller lights his pipe and begins, telling of the architect of Newgrange, who built "a marvelous, immortal structure... before Stonehenge in England, before the pyramids of Egypt," and the dentally challenged King Conor of Ulster, who tried, and failed, to outsmart his wife.

Honor Thyself

Carole Barber has come to Paris to work on her novel and to find herself. A legend of film and stage, Carole has set a standard of grace, devoting herself to her family and causes around the world. But one fiery instant of terror shatters hundreds of lives—and leaves Carole alone, unconscious and unidentified.
A tale of survival and dignity, of small miracles and big surprises, Honor Thyself creates an unforgettable portrait of a public figure whose hopes, fears, and heartbreaks are as real as our own. Her courageous journey inspires us all.

The House on Hope Street

Married legal team Liz and Jack Sutherland have a successful family law practice and a house on Hope Street near San Francisco, where they live with their five happy children (one with special needs). Liz and her children's lives are changed forever when Jack is murdered on Christmas Day. In the year following the murder, Liz struggles to come to terms with the loss of her husband, both personally and professionally, and is dealt another devastating blow when her eldest son has a near-fatal accident.

The House

Sarah Anderson, a beautiful, successful thirtysomething attorney, is having a midlife crisis. She's become a workaholic, spending 60- to 70-hour weeks at the office, and she is involved in an unhappy relationship with a man she only sees on weekends, who refuses to involve her in any other aspect of his life. She lives in a dumpy apartment, which contains the same furniture she used in college, and she has no outside interests other than the sometime boyfriend and her job.