2017 Aurora Awards Best of Decade Finalist
In novel after novel, and story after story, Charles de Lint has brought an entire imaginary North American city to vivid life. Newford: where magic lights dark streets; where myths walk clothed in modern shapes; where a broad cast of extraordinary and affecting people work to keep the whole world turning.
At the center of all the entwined lives in Newford stands a young artist named Jilly

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Nora Eldridge, an elementary school teacher in Cambridge, Massachusetts, long ago abandoned her dream to be a successful artist. Instead she has become the "woman upstairs," a reliable friend and tidy neighbor always on the fringe of others' achievements. Then into her classroom walks Reza Shahid, a child who enchants as if from a fairy tale, and Nora is drawn into the complex world of his glamorous and cosmopolitan family. As happiness explodes her...

"Annie Zook--the preacher's eldest daughter--is expected to join the Amish church, but at 20 she is 'still deciding.' Because of the strict rules that guide the Plain community, she must continually squelch her artistic passion, although it has become her solace"--Provided by publisher.

With the People forbidding her to see Ben, will Annie willfully return to her art or relent and join the church?

"Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties--sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage--with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting...

A woman in desperate straits... A fearless man... A marriage of convenience on turbulent waters... Cerynise Kendall has been left destitute and in dire need following the death of her doting patron and protectress. A brilliant young artist tossed from her home with only the clothes on her back, Cerynise must now turn to a childhood companion for assistance - the dashing sea captain Beauregard Birmingham - and beg him to provide her with passage to...