Susan Coll Books in Order

Graduate student Ella Kennedy finds a compelling thesis subject in Eleanor Marx while taking a job at a new Washington think tank. Building a Marxist mail-order catalogue draws her into institutional absurdity and the gap between intellectual ideals and daily life.

Jane Kramer leaves New York to help run her husband's struggling furniture store in suburban Maryland. Facing a restless family, a mysterious saleswoman, and a contentious expansion, she begins questioning the life she has accepted and the possibilities still ahead.

At an affluent Washington-area high school, college applications become a consuming contest for students and parents. Harry, Maya, and their classmates navigate academic ambition, parental manipulation, and the pressure to turn adolescence into a flawless admissions package.

Ten graduating teenage girls plan a week of unsupervised celebration at the beach, complete with alcohol and stolen medication. Their affluent parents obsess over legal exposure while missing the deeper risks and anxieties surrounding their children's passage into adulthood.

A professional home stager arrives at a Maryland mansion and recognizes its owner as her former best friend. Familiarity with the family's buried secrets threatens the polished appearance surrounding a troubled marriage, an observant child, and a deeply unhappy rabbit.

A grieving bookstore owner wants to retreat from a chaotic summer, but a controversial poet's scheduled appearance threatens fresh trouble. Her events coordinator resists canceling him because discovering a possible family connection matters more than avoiding another literary disaster.

After learning of her husband's infidelity, Cassie Klein leaves home with a puppy and searches for answers about her parents' deaths. A cryptozoologist and stories of the Mothman complicate her journey through grief, family history, and uncertain explanations.

Clemi takes a job at a Washington literary nonprofit hoping to meet her favorite novelist. When the director vanishes, the accounts are empty, and the FBI starts asking questions, she has three days to rescue its prestigious fundraising gala.

Returning to Washington to care for her mother, orderly Matilda takes a bookstore job alongside the chaotic Sage. Planning an appearance by a controversial public intellectual exposes personal connections, legal trouble, and a snowstorm that threaten to overwhelm them both.