Melinda Soto, aged sixty-four, vacationing in Mexico, is murdered by a fellow American tourist.
Back in her hometown of Reno, Nevada, she leaves behind her adopted son, Jeremy, whom she rescued from war-torn Guatamala when he was a toddler--just one of her many causes over the years. And she leaves behind a circle of friends: Veronique, the academic stuck in a teaching job from which she can't retire; Rosemary, who's losing her husband to Alzheimer's and who's trying to lose herself in volunteer work; Henrietta, the priest at Rosemary's and Melinda's church.
Jeremy already had a fraught relationship with his charismatic mother and the people in her orbit. Now her death is tearing him apart, and he can barely stand the rituals of remembrance that ensue among his mother's friends. Then the police reveal who killed Melinda: a Seattle teenager who flew home to his parents and drowned himself just days later.
It's too much. Jeremy's not the only one who can't deal. Friendships fray. But the unexpected happens: an invitation to them all, from the murderer's mother, to come to Seattle for his memorial. It's ridiculous. And yet, somehow, each of them begins to see in it a chance to heal. Aided, in peculiar ways, by Jeremy's years-long obsession with the comic-book hero Comrade Cosmos, and the immense cult of online commentary it's spawned.
Shot through with feeling and inventiveness, Susan Palwick's "Mending the Moon "is a novel of the odd paths that lead to home.

The three basic human needs are food, water...and shelter. But in the late 21st century, compassion is a crime. You can get your memories wiped just for trying to help.
Papa Preston Walford's world doesn't allow for coincidences. Accidents. Secrets in the backs of closets. Or the needs of his own daughter.
Meredith Preston has reason to seek shelter. She needs protection from the monsters in her mind, in her history, in her family. And the great storms of a changing climate have made literal shelter imperative.
When a cutting-edge, high-tech house, designed by a genius with a unique connection to Meredith, overcomes its programming to give shelter to a homeless man in a storm, from its closets emerge the revelations of a past too painful to remember.
In the world of Susan Palwick's "Shelter," perception is about to meet reality, and reality has mud all over it. The truth won't make you happy, but it may just make you whole.

Once in a while, a first novel arrives like a bolt of lightning, commanding attention with an explosion of power, grace, and light. "Flying in Place" is such a book. As unflinching as "The Lovely Bones," as startling as "Beloved," it is a work to bear witness--with bravery and compassion--for the experience of millions of readers and their loved ones.
Emma is twelve, a perfectly normal girl, in a perfectly normal home. With a perfectly normal father...who comes into her bedroom every night in the hours before dawn. Emma will do anything to escape. From the visits. From the bodies. From the breathing. Even go walking on the ceiling--which is where Emma meets Ginny, the sister who died before she was born. Ginny, who knows things. Ginny, who can fly....