Lucas Page visits St. Louis to give a sparsely attended reading—but among the yawning attendees is someone he did not expect: Lola Faye Gilroy, the “other woman” he has long blamed for his father’s murder. Reluctantly, Luke joins Lola Faye for a drink, and the two battered souls relive, from their different perspectives, the most searing experience of their lives. Slowly the hotel bar dissolves around them and they are transported back to the tiny southern town where this defining moment—a violent crime of passion—is turned in the light once more to reveal flaws in the old answers. As it turns out, there is much Luke doesn’t know. And what he doesn’t know can hurt him.

A woman wakes up in the middle of the night paralyzed with fear. A strange man is in her bedroom. The woman is an author and the man one of her characters, desperately waiting for the time when she’ll tell his story. He, the author decides, is named Alvar Eide, forty-two years old, single, works in a gallery. He lives a quiet, orderly life and likes it that way—until one icy winter day when a young drug addict, skinny and fragile, walks into the gallery. Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. And then she comes back the next day, and the one after that, drawing Alvar ever deeper into her dark world...

The 2010 Original Art Gold Medalist

The 2010 Original Art Silver Medalist

At seventeen, Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin, Tilda. Life assumes a new kind of normality, until the handsome German student Hans Mohring arrives in town. With World War II as a backdrop, Wyatt’s compounding grief, desire, and jealousy gather momentum, leading to the tragedy that will define his life forever.

Finally fulfilling a childhood dream, Susan Richards buys a new horse, Georgia. When she adds a daily ride to her routine of hungover mornings and wine-soaked nights, she suddenly realizes that her heavy drinking over the last nine years has become alcoholism. The epiphany blows Susan away, but every day she lives a little more and thinks about her mistakes a little less, and learns a little more from Georgia, the kind of horse who doesn’t go in for indecision, who doesn’t apologize for her opinions, and who isn’t afraid to be herself.

Reinhardt and Kristine Ris, a married couple, are out for a Sunday walk when they discover the body of a boy and see the figure of a man limping away. They alert the police, but not before Reinhardt, to Kristine’s horror, kneels down and takes photographs of the dead child with his cell phone. Inspectors Konrad Sejer and Jakob Skarre begin to make inquiries in the little town of Huseby. But then another boy disappears, and an explanation seems more remote than ever. Meanwhile, the Rises’ marriage unravels as Reinhardt becomes obsessed with the tragic events and his own part in them.