Most of us have experienced what it’s like to know what someone is going to say right before they say it. Or perhaps you have been shocked by the irrefutable phenomena of coincidence, when your life intersects with another’s in the most unlikely way. In gripping prose marked by stark simplicity, Another Place You’ve Never Been by debut novelist Rebecca Kauffman explores the intersection of human experience amidst the minutiae of everyday life.
In her mid-thirties and living in Buffalo, New York (where she is originally from), Tracy spends most days at the restaurant where she works as a hostess, despite her aspirations of a career that would make use of her creative talents. Tracy’s life is explored not only though her own personal point of view, but also through the viewpoints of other characters, wherein Tracy may only make a peripheral appearance or even emerge at different periods in her life.
Kauffman subtly exposes the lives of these characters-alongside the presences of spiritually mysterious Native American figures that appear throughout-and gradually reveals the true purposes of both as their paths intersect.

The seven Shaw siblings have long been haunted by two early and profoundly consequential events. Told in turns from the early twentieth century through the 1950s, the story builds as each sibling relays their own versions of the memories that surround both their mother’s mysterious death and the circumstances of one sister’s scandalous teenage pregnancy. As they move into adulthood, the siblings assume new roles: caretaker to their aging father, addict, enabler, academic, decorated veteran, widow, and mothers and fathers to the next generation.

Entangled in a family knot, the Shaw siblings face divorce, drama, and death while haunted by a mother who was never truly there. Through this lens, they all seek not only to understand how her death shaped their family, but also to illuminate the insoluble nature of the many familial experiences we all encounter–the concept of home, the tenacity that is a family’s love, and the unexpected ways through which healing can occur.

Chorus is a hopeful story of family, of loss and recovery, of complicated relationships forged between brothers and sisters as they move through life together, and of the unlikely forces that first drive them away and then ultimately back home.

Following on her wonderfully received first novel, Another Place You’ve Never Been, called “mesmerizing,” “powerful,” and “gorgeous,” by critics all over the country, Rebecca Kauffman returns with Mikey Callahan, a thirty-year-old who is suffering from the clouded vision of macular degeneration. He struggles to establish human connections–even his emotional life is a blur.

As the novel begins, he is reconnecting with “the Gunners,” his group of childhood friends, after one of their members has committed suicide. Sally had distanced herself from all of them before ending her life, and she died harboring secrets about the group and its individuals. Mikey especially needs to confront dark secrets about his own past and his father. How much of this darkness accounts for the emotional stupor Mikey is suffering from as he reaches his maturity? And can the Gunners, prompted by Sally’s death, find their way to a new day? The core of this adventure, made by Mikey, Alice, Lynn, Jimmy, and Sam, becomes a search for the core of truth, friendship, and forgiveness.

A quietly startling, beautiful book, The Gunners engages us with vividly unforgettable characters and advances Rebecca Kauffman’s place as one of the most important young writers of her generation.

Fripp Island, South Carolina, is the perfect destination for the wealthy Daly family: Lisa, Scott, and their two girls.
For Lisa’s childhood friend Poppy Ford, however, the resort island is a world away from what she and her family are used to.

Everyone brings secrets to the island, distorting what should be a convivial, relaxing summer on the beach. Lisa
sees danger everywhere–the local handyman can’t be allowed near the children, and Lisa suspects Scott is fixated
on something, or someone, else. Poppy watches over her husband, John, and his routines with a sharp eye. For
the children, it’s a summer of change: Ryan Ford prepares for college in the fall, Rae Daly seethes on the brink of
adulthood, and the two youngest, Kimmy Daly and Alex Ford, are exposed to new ideas and different ways of life as
they forge a friendship of their own. The ones who return from this vacation will spend the rest of their lives trying
to process what they witnessed, the tipping points, moments of violence and tenderness, and the memory of whom
they left behind.