With the powers of observation and richness of plot and character, the author of The Emperor of Ocean Park returns to the New England university town of Elm Harbor, where a murder begins to crack the veneer that has hidden the racial complications of the town’s past, the secrets of a prominent family, and the most hidden bastions of African-American political influence. And at the center: Lemaster Carlyle, the university president, and...

At a boarding school in Pennsylvania, a deathbed request from the school's dean brings three former students back to campus, where secrets and betrayals from the past are brought out into the open - secrets that could have a catastrophic effect on the dean's eighteen-year-old son. Told in alternating points of view and time frames, "Attachments" is the story of best friends Stewart ("Goody") Goodman, Sand ("Pick") Piccolo, and Laura Appleby, the girl...

"Like pearls threaded one-by-one to form a necklace, five women successively nurtured students on the Purdue University campus in America's heartland during the 1930s to 1990s. Individually, each became a legendary dean of women or dean of students. Collectively, they wove a sisterhood of mutual support in their common--sometimes thwarted--pursuit of shared human rights and equality for all. Dorothy C. Stratton, Helen B. Schleman, M. Beverley Stone,...