A "wildly entertaining" (NPR), "gripping" (The Washington Post) work of historical fiction about an incendiary tragedy that shocked a young nation and tore apart a community in a single night, from the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever. Richmond, Virginia 1811. It's the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia's gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. At the city's only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that's done looking for enlightenment at the front of a church. On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn't give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater's managers, he'll be offered a permanent job with the company. And on the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater, but he'll have to buy her freedom first. When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined. Based on the true story of Richmond's theater fire, The House Is on Fire is a "stunning" (Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle), "all-consuming exploration" (E! News) that offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious--and fleeting--chances at redemption.

Winner of The National Jewish Book Awards Gold berg Prize for Debut Fic tion.. How far would you go to hide the truth from the ones you love the most? Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to holidaymakers and move into the apartment above the bakery they own. The apartment is where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and, despite the cramped quarters, it still feels like home. Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bedrest, leaving her seven-year-old daughter Gussie in Esther's care. After Joseph insists they take in Anna, a young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams. Esther wants nothing more than to keep her daughters close and safe but some matters are beyond her control: there's Fannie's risky pregnancy-not to mention her always-scheming husband, Isaac-and the fact that Stuart Williams, the heir of a hotel notorious for its anti-Semitic policies, seems to be in love with Florence. When tragedy strikes during one of Florence's practice swims, Esther makes the shocking decision to keep the truth about Florence's death from Fannie-at least until the baby is born. She pulls the rest of the family into an elaborate web of secret keeping and lies, forcing to the surface long-buried tensions that show us just how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal. Told with humour and tenderness and based on a true story, Rachel Beanland's debut is a breathtaking meditation on the lengths we go to in order to keep our families together. At its heart, it is an uplifting portrayal of how the human spirit can endure-and even thrive-after tragedy. Praise for Florence Adler Swims Forever: 'A wonderfully assured and completely engrossing first novel. From the very first page, I was completely invested in the lives of Florence, Gussie, Anna and the rest. Florence Adler Swims Forever has muchto say about family, loss and all the ways we have to wonder what might have been, and it does so with great skill and a deeply humane vision. I could not recommend it more highly." -Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds 'A perfect summer read... What's remarkable is not how quickly the book hooked me, but how it held my attention during and after reading...I simply couldn't put it out of my head. I finished in two days.... I felt awe'-USA Today 'Beanland's novel draws the reader in... The situation she describes is poignant and the characters she develops win us over with their private grief. This is a book about the American dream. The dream is not without costs, and the dreamers are not immune to tragedy' - New York Times Book Review