In the 1930s, New York is swarming with Europe's ousted dreamers, alien families adapting to a new world. Rose Meadows unknowingly enters the lives of one such family when she answers an ad for an "assistant" to a Herr Mitwisser, the patriarch of a large household living in an obscure little neighborhood, in a remote corner of the sparse and weedy northeast Bronx. With an uncertain future, and no clear idea of her duties, Rose-orphaned at eighteen...

As a foster kid, Jacaranda has learned the hard way that the less she talks about her mother and why she's in jail, the better. But when a video of Jacaranda singing goes viral, a mysterious benefactor offers her a life-changing opportunity: a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school for performing arts, and she eagerly accepts. Pouring her heart out to her sponsor despite having never met them, Jackie (to her new friends) tries to navigate this...

"There was always talk of a hidden secret in Esswood's past, and the Seneschal children were often so pale and sickly, but don't all English manor houses have a few ghost stories to call their own? When Professor William Standish receives the rare honor of an Esswood Fellowship, he is thrilled beyond his wildest ambitions. But something seems slightly off at Esswood House. He hears faint laughter in the halls, the pitter-pattering of small feet in...

"Almost twenty years after forbidding him to contact her, Vita receives a letter from a man who has long stalked her from a distance. Once, Royce was her benefactor and she was one of his brightest protégées. Now Royce is ailing and Vita's career as a filmmaker has stalled, and both have reasons for wanting to settle accounts. They enter into an intimate game of words, played according to shifting rules of engagement. Beyond their murky shared history,...

"Great Expectations" (1861) tells the story of Pip, whose life becomes forever linked with that of an escaped convict whom he helps to escape one fateful night. Overwhelmed by Pip's kindness the convict, unbeknownst to Pip, vows to make a fortune to finance Pip's rise to the upper classes. When, after several years, the convict returns to Pip to secure his help to escape England, their lives once again intertwine with tragic consequences. The novel...