As a foster kid, Jacaranda has learned the hard way that the less she talks about her mother and why she's in jail, the better. But when a video of Jacaranda singing goes viral, a mysterious benefactor offers her a life-changing opportunity: a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school for performing arts, and she eagerly accepts. Pouring her heart out to her sponsor despite having never met them, Jackie (to her new friends) tries to navigate this...

From New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub, the tale of a literary sojourn that turns into something far more sinister. Esswood House. Home and estate of the Seneschal family, aristocratic patrons of the literary arts for well over a hundred years. D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, and Henry James were privileged to call themselves guests. There was always talk of a hidden secret in Esswood's past, and the Seneschal children...

Feeling guilty for the car accident that claimed the lives of his close friends, an old philanthropist devotes himself to helping and supporting their daughter and her newlywed husband, but as it turns out, his help comes at a price.

The author's grandfather, Sam Stone, placed an ad in the Canton, OH, newspaper shortly before Christmas in 1933, offering cash gifts to seventy-five families in distress. Readers were asked to send letters describing their hardships to a benefactor calling himself Mr. B. Virdot. The author investigates a suitcase full of letters responding to these ads as he learns more about his grandfather's hidden past as well as the suffering and triumphs of strangers...