Set in rural Georgia in the late 1930s, The Griots focuses on an elderly African American woman (Ada) who grew up in slavery, a young woman who is the descendant of the plantation owner’s family (Lizzie), and a young white man from Ohio (John) who has been sent to the South to interview ex-slaves as a part of the WPA Writers’ Project. As John gains Ada’s trust over a period of several weeks, her stories turn from quaint tales of happy field hands, to brutal accounts of violence and intolerance. And when her tales contradict Lizzie’s family legends, exposing the truth may have too great a cost.

Beloved children’s book author William McGinn has writer’s block. His wife, his agent, and his readers are eagerly awaiting his next story, but William believes he has nothing more to say -- until an ambitious upstart from his publishing company mentions the measles vaccine debate. Enraged and consumed by grief, William begins one last book that illustrates the danger of propagating fear about scientific and medical advances, and the grave consequences of awakening sleeping monsters. But to tell this story he needs the help of his 8-year-old daughter Miranda, who has been dead for decades. The book they create is a ghost story like none other.

In The Tales of Wandering Grace (or The Revengers’ Tragedies), all is not well in Sicilia. King Leontes is convinced that his wife Hermione has had an affair with his best friend, King Polixenes. Who would plant such a terrible thought in the King’s brain? Perhaps the young soldier who was recently rescued from a shipwreck knows something about this. There is something strange about Iago. . . Determined to find her daughter and fight for her innocence, Hermione sets out on a journey to Bohemia under an enchanted spell — during the day she assumes the form of a bear but at night she is a ghost, who visits those who have wronged her demanding revenge. She travels around the countryside with Constantine, the man who inherited his father’s bear-baiting business, and the elderly Russian bear Anatoly. Meanwhile Prospero is visiting the Oracle of Delphi, hoping to learn how to interpret his visions, which center on the Hermione’s fall from grace. But Ariel is refusing to obey her magical master until he grants her freedom. How can the Oracle intervene, if her prophecies are ignored? The Tales of Wandering Grace (or The Revengers’ Tragedies) merges the worlds of Othello, The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale, to create an exciting narrative that fills in many of the gaps for important characters such as Prospero, Ariel, Iago, Leontes, and Hermione, finding interesting parallels in their stories. Follow Iago’s first attempt at duping a king, Hermione’s quest to prove her innocence, and Prospero’s desire to interpret magical visions, as the stories are interwoven and each character learns the price of seeking revenge.

Otto Kannenberg is an aged recluse, living in a tiny apartment in Munich. Although he has very little human contact, he is not lonely — he immerses himself in the worlds of hundreds of paintings that fill his dingy flat, many by masters of Modernism, Expressionism, Cubism, Impressionism and Dadaism including Klee, Kirchner, Picasso, Monet, and Chagall. When the German government begins investigating how Otto acquired so many rare and wonderful pieces, his world is thrown into turmoil. He and the authorities must decide how to make peace with the past and make amends for Hitler’s war on “Degenerate Art.”