Contemporary

Dorothy is wrestling with a dilemma. Like a lot of sleepy towns across America, Partonville is decidedly behind the times. The old clock in the square has been stuck at 1:14 since anyone can remember, and everyone, it seems, is over the hill. What could Partonville possibly offer a young person? Over in Hethrow, though, progress is in the air. And the only thing standing between Hethrow's sprawl and the sleepy town of Partonville is Dorothy's ancestral home, Crooked Creek Farm. A developer is breathing down her neck and needs a decision soon. Should she sell the home she inherited from her mother: the home where Dorothy was conceived and born, where her three children were conceived and born, and where her precious daughter took her last breath? With no clear answer in sight, Dorothy does what she does every single day --- talks to her Lord and asks for guidance.

Gladys, acting mayor of Partonville, is on a tear. The fall celebration is just around the corner and there's more to do than can possibly be done --- especially since Dorothy is conspicuously absent from the inaugural committee meeting. She has enough on her plate, with band practice and getting the talent show up and running. Besides, Arthur's presence at the meeting --- due primarily to his being duped into attending by his wife, Jessie --- draws attention away from Dorothy's absence. Not only is the festival in the works, but Gladys has decided to inject even more life into the town by announcing that a Centennial Plus 30 will coincide with the annual revelry.

So much to do. Dorothy has a house filled with almost nine decades' worth of memories to either get rid of or pack up and move into town. Saying good-bye to Crooked Creek Farm will be difficult. But that can come later; it's summer in Partonville and she doesn't move (at least officially) until the fall.

In Los Angeles, during the year 1948, Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs....

Two girls and three boys, all with strikingly different, meet at the Atwood School as young children. Together, they become an inseparable group-known to outsiders as “The Big Five,” but when the group graduates and scatters to different colleges some friends are lost forever, and the ones that remain struggle to understand that even the unbreakable bonds are not proof against tragedy.                                                                                                                                                                                       

The passing of a new state law makes it a felony to harbor an undocumented immigrant in Oklahoma. Robert John Brown, a churchgoing family man and respected community member, is caught hiding migrant workers with no papers in his barn and is arrested and sent to prison. His grandson Dustin tries to help the sole escapee reunite with his family, his granddaughter, Misty, struggles to raise her daughter after her husband has been deported, and his daughter Sweet finds her life unraveling from the stress of the incident.

During a routine tasting in advance of his eponymous publication’s new issue, wine critic Clyde Craven-Jones blindly samples a selection of Cabernets. To his confounded delight, he discovers one bottle worthy of his highest score, an accolade he’s never before awarded. But no one seems to know how it appeared on his doorstep, which is a problem for a critic who’s supposed to know everything. Thus an investigation into the mystery Cabernet commences.

Dave Bry is sorry for many things in his life. But he’s especially sorry that he didn't hear his cancer-ridden father call out for help one fateful afternoon. Things are different now. Dave himself has become a dad, and has discovered a new compassion for the complicated man who raised him. And maybe if his 17-year-old self could meet his current self, he'd think twice before throwing beer cans on Jon Bon Jovi's lawn.

On a warm spring day after a long New England winter, Hazel and Remy spot each other for the first time in years. Under ordinary circumstances, this meeting might seem insignificant. But Remy, a gifted violinist, is married to the Scottish composer Nicholas Elk --- once the love of Hazel's life, now struggling with a masterwork he cannot realize. In the 20 years since Hazel's world was tipped on its axis, these three artists have faced unexpected joys, mysterious afflictions and other puzzles of life, their fates irrevocably interlaced.

Anna is a forty-something single mother trying to hold her life together during a bitter divorce and wishing to return to her younger free spirited days. When she meets her twenty-year-old neighbor she finds herself transported back to her youth by his easy grace and freedom. Is he the kind of person she sould associate with?

Childhood pals Cal, Harlan, and Buddy were known in Mt. Jefferson for their troublemaking. But when World War II tears them apart, they wonder if their friendship will survive. In 1959, Harlan is shot---and Buddy and Cal are the first to arrive at his bedside. Can they discover who put Cal in the hospital---and why?

Back in 1984, a rebellious,17-year-old, punked-out Ulli Lust set out for a wild hitchhiking trip across Italy, from Naples through Verona and Rome and ending up in Sicily. Twenty-five years later, this talented Austrian cartoonist has looked back at that tumultuous summer and delivered a long, dense, sensitive,and minutely observed autobiographical masterpiece.