This riveting, perceptive, and richly layered novel explores the lasting effects of trauma, and how it can limit our ability to trust or love. It’s also a compelling mystery story, one that considers the possibility that sometimes, the greatest enigmas are posed by those closest to us.

Duet for One is a profound and multilayered meditation on love, loss, and grief, with a passion for music resonating throughout. With empathy and insight, the novel also explores the complicated relationships within one musically talented family.

In these perceptive, richly observed stories, characters arrive at major turning points in their lives through conflicts in relationships or other circumstances, often leading them to a greater understanding of themselves and those close to them. Taken together, the stories offer a layered examination of how people can find ways to live with emotionally complex and difficult situations and, perhaps, imagine new possibilities for themselves.

As a former journalist, and as a citizen who is deeply concerned about the multiple threats facing the news media today, I was heartened and moved by Sunshine Girl, which can be seen as an extended tribute to the reporters and editors who devote long hours to shedding light on issues that would otherwise be overlooked, or actively hidden from view. With depth and feeling, the novel also explores the struggles of a family with close ties to the news business.

The stories in this unflinchingly frank and emotionally resonant collection explore multiple effects of the traumas that women face, whether from abusive or emotionally absent partners, from the physical or psychological strains of motherhood, from sexual harassment, or from threatened or enacted violence. In doing so, the stories shed an unsparing light on individual women’s fears, struggles, and anxieties and on the root causes of their traumas. The result is a haunting and deeply relevant collection, one that often indicts the larger culture.

As we approach or make our way through middle age, many of us ask some difficult questions of ourselves: Are we truly living the life our earlier selves envisioned? What dreams, or great loves, did we abandon–or not even give a real chance? This perceptive, emotionally complex, and often-heartrending novel grapples with these questions and more, while also suggesting that new possibilities aren’t just for the young.