High Society Fiction

Meet the Days, Howards, Madisons, and Lees. Four wealthy couples obsessed with keeping up appearances. Pearson, Vonita, Nadalia, and Ryan want the world to believe that they live flawlessly prosperous lives, but behind the custom-made doors of their elaborate mansions lie salacious secrets that are becoming harder to hide. Saving face may be a priority for these wives, but scandal, addiction, financial ruin, and infidelity threaten to reveal their truths to the world - and worst of all, each other.

Agnes Wilkins is standing in front of an Egyptian mummy, about to make the first cut into the wrappings, about to unlock ancient (and not-so-ancient) history. Maybe you think this girl is wearing a pith helmet with antique dust swirling around her. Maybe you think she is a young Egyptologist who has arrived in Cairo on camelback. Maybe she would like to think that too. Agnes Wilkins dreams of adventures that reach beyond the garden walls, but reality for a 17-year-old debutante in 1815 London does not allow for camels....

Kyle Stilleno is no longer the invisible boy, and he doesn't quite know how he feels about it. On one hand, he now has a great boyfriend, Brad Greymark, and a handful of new friends, and even a new job. On the other hand, no one screamed obscenities at him in public when he was invisible.

In this sequel to Stalking Susan, TV reporter Riley Spartz pursues a curious story of a bride left at the altar and finds herself caught in a dangerous missing-person case. When Riley Spartz sees a want ad reading “Wedding Dress for Sale: Never Worn,” her news instincts tell her that the backstory might make an intriguing television sweeps piece. The groom, Mark, last seen at the rehearsal dinner, never showed up for the wedding, humiliating his bride, Madeline—and her high-strung, high-society mother—in front of 300 guests.

Writing in the grand American tradition of Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez, Donovan Hohn is an "adventurous, inquisitive, and brightly illuminating writer" (New York Times). Since the publication of Moby-Duck a decade ago, Hohn has been widely hailed for his prize-winning essays on the borderlands between the natural and the human. The Inner Coast collects 10 of his best, many of them originally published in such magazines as the New York Times Magazine and Harper's.

The young aspiring poet Alexander Pope crosses paths with the coquettish Arabella and man-about-town Lord Petre at a masquerade ball. It's 1711, and the fashionable citizens of London, weary of recent political and social upheaval, are intent on simply pursuing enjoyment. But society in general is not accepting of any attraction that can't restrain itself behind at least a veneer of respectability, and Arabella and Lord Petre's intense attraction is both unacceptable and dangerous.

Probably the most famous of Edith Wharton's novels, Ethan Frome contrasts sharply with her usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged and whose strengths and weaknesses she understood so well. Ethan Frome is a keenly-etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a 19th-century New England village.

For Chicago's Oak Park and River Forest High School's Spoken Word Club, there is one phrase that reigns supreme: Respect the Mic. It's been the club's call to arms since its inception in 1999. As its founder Peter Kahn says, "It's a call of pride and history and tradition and hope." This vivid new collection of poetry and prose - curated by award-winning and bestselling poets Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, Peter Kahn, and Dan "Sully" Sullivan - illuminates just that, uplifting the incredible legacy this community has cultivated.