From Notes on a Scandal to the real-life antics of Mary Kay Letourneau, relationships between teachers and students hold perennial intrigue in our culture. Set in Maryland at the time of the Lewinsky scandal, Rebecca Coleman’s psychologically disturbing novel, The Kingdom of Childhood, explores the dark, illicit side of desire.

Judy McFarland, a kindergarten teacher at the progressive and alternative Waldorf School, feels broken and displaced—she is haunted by the untimely death of her best friend and stuck in an unhappy, angry marriage with Russ, a Ph.D. candidate. Judy is asked to supervise 16-year-old Zach, a lonely transplant from New Hampshire, as he fulfills his service hours. Drawn together by mutual feelings of betrayal by their parents (in addition to untethered lust) the two quickly enter into an affair. Over time, Zach begins to retreat from increasingly obsessive, insatiable Judy, whose sexual proclivities grow unapologetically unsettling and unseemly. The novel barrels toward a suspenseful end as they both face the inevitable consequences of choices made.

The Kingdom of Childhood raises messy and controversial questions, making it a natural pick for book clubs. Coleman does not demand sympathy for her main character, and in fact, Judy’s break from reality and obscured moral barometer stokes the tension even further. Though at her strongest when revisiting Judy’s childhood in Germany, overall Coleman writes with a flair for capturing the underbelly of the human psyche and the all-consuming nature of desire.

Marisa de los Santos has established herself as a deft chronicler of human emotion. With her first two successful novels, Love Walked In and Belong to Me, she has explored the landscape of a variety of relationships: friendly, romantic, neighborly, maternal. And in her latest novel, de los Santos traverses all of that relational terrain at once.

Pen, Cat and Will were college best friends almost from the moment they met, when Pen discovered Cat seizing in the bathroom between classes, and then called into the hallway for help. Their friendship was so tight that they excluded others from their circle—but it was a closeness that couldn’t last forever. When it was time for Cat to pursue a romantic relationship, and therefore an identity separate from her two best friends, the group’s friendship fell apart.

Pen is still feeling that pain six years later, when she receives a letter from Cat asking that they meet up at an impending college reunion. Pen’s life has changed radically since she last saw her two best friends. She’s given birth to a child out of wedlock, regularly faces her complicated relationship with her daughter’s father and is still reeling from the sudden death of her own father, whom Cat and Will adored. She still thinks of her former friends often, and wonders what they would make of who she’s become.

And so Pen sets off toward that reunion, prepared to meet Cat but surprised instead to see Will, who received a similar letter. As the pair search for Cat, they revisit their lost friendship and their complicated feelings for one another.

Falling Together explores the ways our familial relationships and friendships affect who we are and who we’re becoming. Though the ride through Pen’s relational topography is sometimes bumpy—flashbacks aren’t always clearly differentiated from Pen’s present day—the appeal of de los Santos’ books remains the intimacy with which the reader gets to know each character.

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BookPage editor Trisha Ping interviews Marisa de los Santos about Falling Together:

Motherhood, in all its magical and messy incarnations, is at the heart of Lisa Tucker’s The Winters In Bloom, a story that skates gracefully amid wonder, terror and redemption. Indeed, Tucker’s sixth novel is impossible to categorize, bending the confines of the psychological thriller with an eloquent literary narrative of tangled family ties between not only mother and child, but sisters, ex-spouses and even former in-laws.

Without exception, the characters that populate The Winters In Bloom are fatally flawed from damaged childhoods, yet Tucker’s mastery of voice, time and place prevents their stories from sounding clichéd. Abandoned by their mother and raised by an emotionally distant father and stepmother, sisters Amy and Kyra forge an intense sibling relationship when they are forced to parent one another. Kyra’s husband David was blessed with a loving, albeit long-suffering mother, but he struggles to suppress bad memories of an abusive father and is haunted by the ghosts from his first marriage to the mentally unstable Courtney, whose own maternal experiences bear the imprimatur of Greek tragedy. Still, Kyra and David manage to create a happy life together—until their five-year-old son, Michael, goes missing from their backyard.

If all this angst sounds confusing, stereotypical or even onerous, rest assured, The Winters In Bloom is exquisitely rendered and incredibly addictive. It will resonate with—and terrify—any parent who lies anxiously awake at night, fretful of the maladies and mayhem that can befall a child. This is a beguiling novel, alternately infused with despair and hope, and above all, the redemptive power of love.

A request from an old family friend lures Madeline Stone from her stale life as a Chicago waitress to Lake Superior’s coast. McAllaster, Michigan, is only 500 miles from home, but to Madeline, who just lost her adoptive mother, the landscape feels further from anything she’s experienced before: Icebergs bob and waves lash a town that time forgot.

As she cares for a sweet elderly woman—and butts heads with the woman’s stubborn sister—Madeline discovers the town hasn’t forgotten her. Nor has it forgotten the young, wild mother who abandoned her. Madeline learns bit by bit of her family’s connection to the land—and to the shuttered Hotel Leppinen, which she is sneakily using as a nighttime painting studio.

South of Superior is a story about home, what people are willing to fight for, the weight of friendships and continued ambition. Despite Madeline’s move to a one-stoplight town, she never stops dreaming: She wants to sell paintings, illustrate books and run a destination hotel. A romantic storyline takes a backseat to allow for Madeline’s self-actualization, and it’s a treat to read a book starring such a stirring female lead. Ellen Airgood, who has spent the last 19 years in the Upper Peninsula, knows small-town life and portrays its positive and negative aspects with affection and feeling. Readers will tear through this engrossing story.

Jennifer Weiner’s latest novel, Then Came You, opens with a scene her readers would expect from this best-selling author—but it unfolds unlike any other she’s ever written. In the first pages of Then Came You, a man walks over to a woman having lunch and asks to sit down. He compliments her, tries to buy her meal, and then, just when readers expect him to fish for her phone number, he poses a question: “How would you like to make twenty thousand dollars?” He’s talking about egg donation, and just like that, Then Came You instantly veers off the ordinary path and dives headlong into a very modern story of motherhood.

Beautiful and athletic Princeton grad Jules, courted by a rep from the fertility center, considers how the hefty reward could buy her father another much-needed round of rehab. Jules’ story intersects with Annie’s, a stay-at-home mom of two boys who is considering surrogacy to make ends meet. India, the newly wedded second wife of wealthy, older Marcus, needs both Jules and Annie to help her conceive a child.

Bettina, Marcus’ daughter, is incensed when she gets the news that she’ll have to graft a half-sister onto her fractured family tree. She does her best to expose India as a Botoxed, gold-digging phony. But Bettina grapples with her own insecurities, especially when it comes to making her life count for something outside of her work. Though India’s maternal instincts surface for seemingly obvious reasons—to secure her inheritance—her backstory is slowly revealed. By the book’s end, readers will discover her true motivation.

Weiner has a history of turning out lighthearted and romance-infused reads like Good In Bed and Best Friends Forever. Then Came You is something different for her, offering an eye-opening perspective on parenthood in an age where the family is ever evolving.

A near-perfect marriage is tested by an indecent proposal in Victoria Christopher Murray’s latest, The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil. Evia and Adam Langston have been in love since they were 12, and their devotion and determination have carried them through a teenage pregnancy and out of stifling poverty to a six-figure income and a 4,000-square-foot home. But while their commitment to each other seems unshakeable, money troubles vex them: Adam lost his job 18 months ago and he and Evia haven’t told the kids. As bill collectors descend, Evia’s seductive boss, Shay-Shaunte, makes a shocking offer: five million dollars for a weekend in Adam’s arms. While Evia balks, Adam is desperate to keep up the façade that he is still employed—and when a promising job offer falls through, the pair wonder how much damage 48 hours could really do to their marriage. The answer, it turns out, is a lot. Murray’s characters are extremely likable and the eponymous deal’s psychological effects on Evia are stirring. Shay-Shaunte gives “evil woman” special meaning—especially in the final chapter, which might try some readers’ patience. But while Murray’s fiction is Christian, it’s not saccharine, and this page-turning take on the Faustian theme should satisfy fans and newcomers alike.