These Fragile Things

“A prodigiously imaginative collection.” —New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice “Dazzling tales from a master of the fantastic.” —Washington Post Book World Fragile Things is a sterling collection of exceptional tales from Neil Gaiman, multiple award-winning (the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Newberry, and Eisner Awards, to name just a few), #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Graveyard Book, Anansi Boys, Coraline, and the groundbreaking Sandman graphic novel series. A uniquely imaginative creator of wonders whose unique storytelling genius has been acclaimed by a host of literary luminaries from Norman Mailer to Stephen King, Gaiman’s astonishing powers are on glorious displays in Fragile Things. Enter and be amazed!

April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear. From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.

A powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt—the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d'Anvers—McAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of “invading” France’s cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behind—many ultimately donated to the French state—were their response, tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them.

Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called “the art of living.”

When she is carjacked, Gilly Solomon, a stay-at-home mom who is tired of always putting herself last, is stranded in a remote, snowbound cabin with a man who, teetering on the edge of madness, refuses to let her leave.

Margot DeWitt had it all—a gorgeous home, a lucrative career, and the love of her sweet, handsome husband, a renowned heart surgeon. When everything she’s taken for granted as a solid foundation in her life is destroyed in a single instant, Margot comes undone. Nearly a year later, although her physical wounds have healed, Margot’s heart is still broken. She is a ghost, mired in grief, questioning the purpose of her life. Chase Goodwin owns the tattoo shop next door to the bar Margot has begun to frequent. After their volatile introduction, Chase and Margot embark on a tenuous working relationship. Intuitively, Chase understands Margot’s fragility, for he’s experienced a devastating loss of his own. As their relationship deepens, Margot slowly begins to reclaim her identity as a creative, strong, resilient woman. When Margot is ultimately confronted by the full extent of her loss, something she has subconsciously buried in order to protect her own sanity, she faces her hardest test yet. Can Margot honor her lost loved ones by embracing her own survival or will her heart remain paralyzed, bound to her past?