A mom of two struggles against the pull of persistent romantic daydreams in which her younger self globe-trots with a half-dressed Jeremy Renner

The birth-to-death saga of one Jacob Crouch unfolds against a remarkable period in American history. As the railway stretches ever westward and the advent of electricity resets internal clocks, a patriarch farmer and his children amass—and tragically lose—a fortune.

In the wake of a sex-abuse scandal at an all-boys’ summer camp, an openly gay alum returns as a “guest-star counselor.” But then, he finds himself not only a role model but also the object of an adolescent camper’s crush.

A transplant to Brooklyn joins the search for a lost grandmother and considers what it means to truly belong

“Don’t marry a man like your father,” Carolyn Edgar’s mother warned her. But the impact of a family history of domestic violence proves almost as profound as the head-shaped dent in a wall of the author’s childhood home.

On her eighteenth birthday, Gabriela Denise Frank asks her father to take her shooting in the desert—a father-daughter bonding day. But are there other motives behind her request? This far-ranging discussion of guns, ballistics, mass shootings, and the psychology of abuse ends in a simple question: Will she, or won’t she?

A search for an inherited plot of undeveloped land in New Mexico inspires this sprawling history of lies and broken promises involving railroads and ranchers, land grants and land grabs.

Taking stock after a midlife medical crisis inspires a woman to fulfill her lifelong dream of learning to play the electric bass. Her quest to understand the instrument’s appeal leads her to the pioneering women of Fanny, and to some realizations about herself.

A community college professor runs away from middle age and grief to spend a summer on the Nona’s Ark, a halibut charter based in Homer, Alaska. While there, he finds his fish story, but he also captures a vivid portrait of a salty old-timer struggling to make a living in an industry threatened by overfishing and rising temperatures.

She gets lost on a straight line—that’s what Heather Sellers’s father said about her, and it wasn’t an unfair description. But a chance encounter with a stranger in an airport proves to be a turning point.