Tera Jackson

Fresh from finishing school, Violet receives a double shock. Her dad announces his upcoming wedding and then confesses an old lie - her mom didn't really leave for a sanitarium 11 years ago. But why then did she leave? Under cover of visiting the World's Fair, Violet travels to the stately Chicago home of her saintly grandmother and three eccentric great aunts.

Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family - a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard- drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective.

Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.

Gene Wilder is one of the great comic actors who defined the 1970s and 1980s in movies. From his work with Woody Allen, to the rich group of movies he made with Mel Brooks, to his partnership on screen with Richard Pryor, Wilder's performances are still discussed and celebrated today.

Abigail was the last keeper of the house, the last to know the Howland family's secrets. Now, in the name of all her brothers and sisters, she must take her bitter revenge on the small-minded Southern town that shamed them, persecuted them, but could never destroy them.

The beloved actor and screenwriter's first novel, set during World War I, delicately and elegantly explores a most unusual romance. It's almost the end of the war, and Paul Peachy, a young railway employee and amateur actor, enlists and ships off to France. Peachy instantly realizes how out of his depth he is, and never more so than when he is captured. Risking everything, Peachy, who as a child of immigrants speaks German, makes the reckless decision to impersonate one of the enemy's most famous spies.