Frank fell in love with Miranda in high school. When he encounters her again years later, his feelings are still fresh, while Miranda doesn’t remember him at all. The relationship is further complicated by the fact that the former schoolmates meet in a state prison where Miranda is serving a sentence for a shocking crime and Frank is working as the inmate psychologist. Demonstrating the poor judgment that lost him his prestigious Manhattan practice, Frank fails to reassign Miranda to another counselor. Miranda, for her part, is caught up in painful memories that date from childhood. She’s desperate to survive and gradually sees Frank as a potential savior. In this taut psychological thriller, Immergut, a former journalist and editor with extensive volunteer experience in prisons, evokes life inside with a pitch-perfect attention to the institution’s complex, shifting power dynamics.

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The 1962 crash of a chartered Air France jet shortly after takeoff in Paris killed over one hundred of Atlanta’s cultural leaders, who were returning from an art-tour of Europe. The second-deadliest disaster in aviation history, it was a pivotal moment for Atlanta’s history, and Pittard, an Atlanta native, skillfully illuminates the social and psychological fallout of the disaster. Using the deft characterization that made Listen to Me and The Fates Will Find Their Way so arresting, Pittard traces the destinies of historic and imagined figures including progressive mayor Ivan Allen, who would one day receive the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize; a nineteen-year-old recently denied admission at an integrated school; and a woman struggling to come to terms with her marriage who finds her wealthy parents have left her penniless.