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The Johnston family is one of the first families of Charlotte–that’s the story anyway. Jerene, the matriarch, presides over a gallery in the Mint Museum with a small treasure trove of American art; Duke the patriarch, a former city councilman and football hero, is descended from a Civil War general. But the prospect of keeping the financially dwindling family – comprising four children indifferent to social niceties, a spendthrift grandmother, and debauched Uncle Gaston, a famous Southern author – in the black and out of scandal proves a full-time challenge.
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A cautionary tale, perhaps, for the English major: Samantha Flint follows a darkly comic path, away from teaching English and writing her dream novel, and instead uses her communicative skills to lie for a living. First, in personal publicity in New York, then as a senator’s spokesperson in Washington D.C., arriving finally to that pinnacle of spin, artist management in Hollywood. The book also explores the conundrum of having a best friend who is, in the final analysis, not all that good for you.
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Dr. Patrick O’Hanrahan, disgraced, often inebriated former Theology department head of the University of Chicago, has escaped with a department credit card and is on a secret, no-expense-spared mission across the monasteries of Europe, hunting for a lost gospel in a lost language that was last seen by scholars decades ago, if the thing even really exists… but just to be safe, the university dispatches the most dependable, unexciting grad student they can find (Lucy Dantan) to retrieve the crazy old crank. Instead, a multi-continent adventure begins as academics, collectors, fanatics, and representatives of all faiths and factions race to get their hands on this black market treasure. (Don’t worry, every other chapter you get to read the actual 1st Century gospel they are pursuing…)
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To be 20-something in New York in the ’70s and ’80s before the city priced out its bohemians! This is the story of would-be Broadway star, Gil Freeman, and his equally poor cohort of Lisa, the would-be artist, and Emma, the would-be poet, all starving and fighting and colliding in a ten-year adventure culminating in… well, pretty much failure, but a lot of New York life, spectacular and hilarious and heartbreaking, along the way.
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