Stewart O'Nan

"In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the build-up to and fall-out from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. Angel, the murderer, Carol, her mother, and Birdy, the victim, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable....

With intricate feeling and perfect pitch, this novel by the author of In the Walled City weaves together the stories of two small-town Pennsylvania families connected by tragedy. "An exquisite double helix, each of its two strands the tale of an unraveling family."--Elle.

"A "rich, sometimes heartbreaking" (Dennis Lehane) novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald's last years in Hollywood. In 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a troubled, uncertain man whose literary success was long over. In poor health, with his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruins, he struggled to make a new start as a screenwriter in Hollywood. By December 1940, he would be dead of a heart attack. Those last three years of Fitzgerald's life,...