They were an unlikely pair --- a blond bombshell and a photographer determined to be taken seriously --- but Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold would make a deal that would change their lives.

They were an unlikely pair --- a blond bombshell and a photographer determined to be taken seriously --- but Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold would make a deal that would change their lives.

They were an unlikely pair --- a blond bombshell and a photographer determined to be taken seriously --- but Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold would make a deal that would change their lives in this dazzling new novel from the nationally bestselling author of MRS. POE and THE WOMAN WITH THE CURE.

In 1952, Norma Jeane Baker follows documentary photographer Eve Arnold into a powder room on the night they first meet. She has a proposition for her. Norma Jeane created Marilyn Monroe to be photographed, and she wants Eve to do it. Eve is better than anyone she’s seen at revealing a person’s inner truth. Together they can help each other. Together, she says, they can make something brilliant.

Skeptical of this cipher of a young woman, Eve demurs. She’s looking for more serious subjects than this ambitious starlet. But she keeps getting drawn back into Marilyn’s orbit, and the women come to recognize something in each other --- something fundamental. Nothing will get in the way of what they want, and when Marilyn’s star takes off to teetering heights, neither will ever be the same.

A lavish and transporting novel, WHEN WE WERE BRILLIANT captures the halcyon days of an icon and the grit of women determining their own futures as it explores the exceptional and complicated friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold.

From the author of THE HUNTING WIVES comes a deliciously wicked thriller about mean girls, mean moms, and the delicious secrets inside all the little houses.

From the author of THE HUNTING WIVES comes a deliciously wicked thriller about mean girls, mean moms, and the delicious secrets inside all the little houses.

Adults can behave badly too.

From the author of THE HUNTING WIVES comes a deliciously wicked new thriller about mean girls, mean moms, and the delicious secrets inside all the little houses. 

It's the mid-1980s in the tiny town of Longview, Texas. Nellie Anderson, the beautiful daughter of the Anderson family dynasty, has burst onto the scene. She always gets what she wants. What she can't get for herself… well, that's what her mother is for.

Because Charleigh Andersen --- blond, beautiful and ruthlessly cunning --- remembers all too well having to claw her way to the top. When she was coming of age on the poor side of East Texas, she was a loser and an outcast, humiliated and shunned by the in-crowd, whose approval she'd so desperately thirsted for. When a prairie-kissed family moves to town --- all trad wife, woodworking dad, wholesome daughter vibes --- Charleigh's entire self-made social empire threatens to crumble.

Who will be left standing when the dust settles?

From the New York Times bestselling author of MY ABSOLUTE DARLING comes a story of intense friendship and grit, in which two down-and-out teens escape their lives and chase a different future through rock climbing.

From the New York Times bestselling author of MY ABSOLUTE DARLING comes a story of intense friendship and grit, in which two down-and-out teens escape their lives and chase a different future through rock climbing.

In this story of intense friendship and grit, two down-and-out teens escape their lives and chase a different future through rock climbing --- from the New York Times bestselling author of MY ABSOLUTE DARLING.

Dan and Tamma are two teenagers in their last year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert. One is a gifted golden child, the other a mouthy burnout. Climbing boulders in trash-strewn parking lots during cold desert nights, they seal their unique bond and dream of a life of adventure.

As the year progresses and adult reality looms, they are rocked by change and pulled apart by irreconcilable obligations. Differences of class, talent and prospects take on new importance; options dwindle, and their decisions grow ever more consequential and perilous. It feels inevitable, finally, that something must give.

With a magnificent gift for nature writing and a joyful appreciation for the redemptive power of friendship, Gabriel Tallent gives readers a rollicking, adrenaline-filled and soul-searching novel about risking everything to change your life.

This bold, inventive and fiercely original debut novel begins with an uncle dead and his tween niece’s private confession to the reader --- she and her sister killed him, and they blame the British.

This bold, inventive and fiercely original debut novel begins with an uncle dead and his tween niece’s private confession to the reader --- she and her sister killed him, and they blame the British.

A bold, inventive and fiercely original debut novel that begins with an uncle dead and his tween niece’s private confession to the reader --- she and her sister killed him, and they blame the British.

Summer, 1986.The Creel sisters, Georgie Ayyar and Agatha Krishna, welcome their aunt, uncle and young cousin --- newly arrived from India --- into their house in rural Wyoming where they’ll all live together. Because this is what families do. That is, until the sisters decide that it’s time for their uncle to die.

According to Georgie, the British are to blame. And to understand why, you need to hear her story. She details the violence hiding in their house and history, her once-unshakeable bond with Agatha Krishna, and her understanding of herself as an Indian-American in the heart of the West. Her account is, at every turn, cheeky, unflinching and infectiously inflected with the trappings of teendom, including the magazine quizzes that help her make sense of her life. At its heart, the tale she weaves is:

a) a vivid portrait of an extended family
b) a moving story of sisterhood
c) a playful ode to the '80s
d) a murder mystery (of sorts)
e) an unexpected and unwaveringly powerful meditation on history and language, trauma and healing, and the meaning of independence

Or maybe it’s really:

f) all of the above