"Jeth Seagrave and his crew of mercenaries are pulled into one last high-stakes mission"--

On the Mississippi River, indentured servant Fanny Beck has been forced to sing for riverboat passengers since she was a girl. As her contract comes to an end, she discovers that the captain has no intention of releasing her. An impulse leads Fanny to a group of enslaved people who are on their own dangerous quest for liberty. When Fanny is presumed drowned, Sloan Kirkpatrick, the riverboat's captain, sets off to find her replacement. His journey...

""In villages where women bore most of the weight of a constricted life, witches flew by night on broomsticks," said Italo Calvino of the way imagination bridges the gap between everyday existence and an idealized alternative. The fifteen stories of Animal Wife are unified by girls and women who cross this threshold seeking liberation from family responsibilities, from societal expectations, from their own minds. A girl born with feathers undertakes...

"It's December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless -- unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem's sister, Becky, long the social...