Adult

In BEAUTIFUL DAYS, Joyce Carol Oates explores the most secret, intimate and unacknowledged interior lives of characters not unlike ourselves, who assert their independence in acts of bold and often irrevocable defiance. In “Big Burnt,” a cunningly manipulative university professor exploits a too-trusting woman in a way she never could have anticipated. “The Nice Girl” depicts a young woman who has been infuriatingly “nice,” until she is forced to come to terms with the raw desperation of her deepest self. And the tragic “Undocumented Alien” depicts a young African student enrolled in an American university who is suddenly stripped of his student visa and forced to undergo a terrifying test of courage.

It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where 17-year-old Angel first comes into her own. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone. The Xtravaganzas --- Venus, Juanito and Daniel --- are ambitious, resilient and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences.

Christiane, 86 years old with a vibrant sense of humor, lives alone in a large apartment in the heart of Paris. Her daughter, Catherine, is her total opposite: sullen and uptight, filled with resentment toward her unfaithful Milanese husband. After discovering yet another affair, Catherine takes refuge in Paris at her mother’s home, accompanied by her own daughter, Luna. Christiane --- who, in spite of occasional dalliances on both sides, lived a beautiful love story with her late husband --- uses all of her freethinking charm in an effort to change Catherine’s rigid, self-pitying attitude.

When thousands of Somali refugees resettled in Lewiston, Maine, a struggling, overwhelmingly white town, longtime residents grew uneasy. Then the mayor wrote a letter asking Somalis to stop coming, which became a national story. While scandal threatened to subsume the town, its high school's soccer coach integrated Somali kids onto his team, and their passion began to heal old wounds. Taking readers behind the tumult of this controversial team --- and onto the pitch where the teammates vied to become state champions and achieved a vital sense of understanding --- ONE GOAL is a timely story about overcoming the prejudices that divide us.

Oakland in 1983 is a city churning with violent crime and racial conflict. Officer Hanson, a Vietnam veteran, has abandoned academia for the life-and-death clarity of police work, a way to live with the demons he brought home from the war. His sense of fairness and honor leads to a precarious friendship with Felix Maxwell, the drug king of East Oakland. He is befriended by Weegee, a streetwise 11-year-old who is primed to become a dope dealer. He falls in love with Libya the moment he sees her, a confident and outspoken black woman. When an off-duty shooting prompts an internal investigation, Hanson must finally face who he is, and which side of the law he really belongs on.

Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge that lands him in solitary at Rikers Island. A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. Broken by the brutality he suffered and committed in equal measure while behind bars, his work and his daughter are the only light in his solitary life. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realizes that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of --- and why.

Nobody loves an honest man, or that was what police sergeant Hamish Macbeth tried to tell newcomer Paul English. Paul had moved to a house in Cnothan, a sour village on Hamish's beat. He attended church in Lochdubh. He told the minister, Mr. Wellington, that his sermons were boring. He accused Hamish of having dyed his fiery red hair. He told Jessie Currie --- who repeated all the last words of her twin sister --- that she needed psychiatric help. "I speak as I find," he bragged. Voices saying "I could kill that man" could be heard from Lochdubh to Cnothan. And someone did. Now Hamish is faced with a bewildering array of suspects.

Summer in New York: a golden hour on the city streets, but a dark time for Selene. She's lost her home and the man she loves. A cult hungry for ancient power has kidnapped her father and targeted her friends. To save them, Selene must face the past she's been running from --- a past that stretches back millennia, to when the faithful called her Huntress. Moon Goddess. Artemis. With the pantheon at her side, Selene must journey back to the seat of her immortal power: from the streets of Rome and the temples of Athens --- to the heights of Mount Olympus itself.

Despite a shadowy past, Philippa Lye has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in New York City. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women: Gwen Hogan, a childhood acquaintance who uncovers an explosive secret about Philippa's single days, and Minnie Curtis, a newcomer whose vast fortune and frank revelations about a penurious upbringing in Spanish Harlem put everyone on alert. When Gwen's prosecutor husband stumbles over the connection between Philippa's past and the criminal investigation he is pursuing at all costs, this insulated society is forced to confront the rot at its core and the price it has paid to survive into the new millennium.

Early one morning, a panther savagely attacks a family of homesteaders, mauling a young girl named Samantha and killing her mother. Samantha and her half-brother, Benjamin, survive, but she is left traumatized. THE WHICH WAY TREE is the story of Samantha's unshakeable resolve to stalk and kill the infamous panther and avenge her mother's death. In their quest, she and Benjamin enlist a charismatic Tejano outlaw and a haunted, compassionate preacher with an aging but relentless tracking dog. As the members of this unlikely posse hunt the panther, they are in turn pursued by a hapless but sadistic Confederate soldier with troubled family ties to the preacher and a score to settle.