City Hearts

Laurent Marchand has the best eye in New York — and the coldest gallery in Chelsea. Charlie has one name, no last name, and a wet painting he just dragged straight across Laurent’s spotless floor.Laurent built his gallery, his reputation, and the whole armored version of himself on impeccable taste and wanting nothin...

The last thing Allen Cabrera needs is another rich kid on his public courts — especially the billionaire’s son who won’t stop showing up, won’t stop bleeding for it, and won’t stop looking at him like that.Allen coaches community kids on cracked Miami clay and dreams of an academy he’s clawing out of the ground o...

The last thing Dave Nowak wanted in his quiet second life was a reason to look forward to 6:15 in the morning.Dave traded a twenty-year finance career for a failing sourdough bakery at the foggy edge of San Francisco — where the bread is slow, the hours are brutal, and nobody expects him to be charming.He built the wh...

Eleven days. One meddling French bulldog. Zero chance of walking away clean.Frankie Bissonnette does not do temporary.He rebuilt his whole life into one small, sharp, perfect grooming shop on the east side of Toronto — his name on the lease and nobody else’s, exactly the way he needs it after the last man who called ...

The best piano player Marcus Fontenot has heard in ten years just sat down at the one piano in New Orleans he lets nobody touch — his.Marcus used to be the best on Frenchmen Street. Then he lost the music, and the man he loved, in a single night — and built a jazz club where he decides who gets heard and never once s...

Nick Roussos inherited three things when his father died: a beloved Long Beach diner, a mountain of grief, and one problem he isn’t allowed to fire.Nick can’t cook. He can barely keep the lights on, and with a developer circling the block and the lease running out, the Skylark has maybe one summer left. All he has le...