In Opole, Michigan, they celebrate their Polish heritage by baking paczkis and hosting an annual Wianki festival. Esther Fuhrman is a small-town gossip in Opole who slips in and out of everyone’s lives. She spreads their stories, adding her own details when necessary to fill the gaps or make the stories more interesting. Whether it’s the pornography being distributed on the playground, the sale of firearms on the school bus, or a cheese shoppe that might be a front for the mob, Esther has her nose in it all. Sometimes she uncovers a truth and averts a disaster, and other times she’s simply wrong. When the neighbors lose faith in her as a reliable source for news and close their doors to Esther, she struggles to establish a new identity and purpose.

<adult, contemporary bookclub fiction>

Ann Arbor, MI. 1990. Louie is drowning his sorrows in crappy retail jobs while trying to avoid the inevitable transition into pending adulthood. Through a mix of luck, rebellion, and boredom, he makes new friends who form a ska band, SKAborough Fair, to pass the time. Louie, Denis, Ruby, Harry, and Rudie have an undeniable chemistry on stage and generate a genuine hit song that charts but earns them the label of "one-hit wonder." As they try to shake that label, tour the world, and find themselves, they stumble through the pains of navigating young adulthood and adjusting to the stress of creating new music. Eventually, tensions between some band members threaten to break the band apart as the other members try to keep the peace and produce new music, hoping to find unity in the one thing that brought them together.

<adult, contemporary bookclub fiction>

Jenny is an orphan caught in the middle of a bidding war between two clerks with ties to wealthy philanthropists, who find ways to manipulate the system through insider trading. The Market allows shares of children to be traded, where more investment provides a better opportunity for the child's future. However, you can also short a child's stock and bet on him or her failing. Because orphans are unknown commodities, they offer great risk and potential reward for savvy investors, but leave the orphans to the whims of the Market.

<adult, literary, science fiction, speculative fiction>