Adult

Gracie Mueller is a proud mother of two and a devoted wife. Her life is complicated by the usual tedium and stressors, and she’s settled down comfortably enough. But when her husband’s failing career as a real estate agent makes finances tight, their home goes into foreclosure, and Gracie feels she has no choice but to return to the creatively illegal and high-stakes lifestyle of her past in order to keep all that she’s worked so hard to have. Gracie has a lot to hide about where she’s from, who she is and who she’s been. And when things inevitably begin to spin out of her control, more questions about the truth of her past are raised, including all the ones she never meant to --- or even knew to --- ask.

EVERY DAY IS EXTRA is John Kerry’s candid personal story. A Yale graduate, Kerry enlisted in the US Navy in 1966 and served in Vietnam. He returned home highly decorated but disillusioned, and he testified powerfully before Congress as a young veteran opposed to the war. Kerry was elected to the Senate in 1984, eventually serving five terms. In 2004 he was the Democratic presidential nominee and came within one state --- Ohio --- of winning. He succeeded Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2013. In that position he tried to find peace in the Middle East; dealt with the Syrian civil war while combating ISIS; and negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement.

Each of the six stories in YOUR DUCK IS MY DUCK, Deborah Eisenberg’s first collection since 2006, has the heft and complexity of a novel. With her own inexorable but utterly unpredictable logic and her almost uncanny ability to conjure the strange states of mind and emotion that constitute our daily consciousness, Eisenberg pulls us as if by gossamer threads through her characters --- a tormented woman whose face determines her destiny; a group of film actors shocked to read a book about their past; a privileged young man who unexpectedly falls into a love affair with a human rights worker caught up in an all-consuming quest that he doesn't understand.

Lucius is a 22-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. He enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. However, upon his arrival, he discovers a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains. But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon's scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient and nurse forever.

Retired romance author Sara Medlar finds herself back in her hometown of Lachlan, Florida, remodeling the grand old mansion she admired as a child. Then her niece, Kate, is offered a job in Lachlan --- a start in what could be a very successful career in real estate. She accepts immediately, but with so little saved up, she’ll have to approach her estranged yet incredibly famous aunt for a place to stay. Jackson Wyatt already has his own room at the mansion and irritates Kate to no end. However, when two skeletons are accidentally uncovered in the quiet town, this unlikely trio is suddenly thrust together by a common goal: to solve a mystery everyone else seems eager to keep under wraps.

Jessie Sloane is on the path to rebuilding her life, renting a new apartment and applying for college. But when the college informs her that her social security number has raised a red flag, Jessie discovers a shocking detail that causes her to doubt everything she’s ever known. Finding herself suddenly at the center of a bizarre mystery, Jessie tumbles down a rabbit hole, which is only exacerbated by grief and a relentless lack of sleep. She begins to see things until she can no longer tell the difference between what’s real and what she’s only imagined. Meanwhile, 20 years earlier and 250 miles away, another woman’s split-second decision may hold the key to Jessie’s secret past. Has Jessie’s whole life been a lie, or have her delusions gotten the best of her?

College professor Sam Teagarden stumbles upon a decades-old government cover-up when an encoded document mysteriously lands in his inbox, followed by a cluster of mini-drones programmed to kill him. That begins a terrifying flight from upstate New York, to Washington, to Key West, as Teagarden must outfox teams of hitmen equipped with highly sophisticated technology. While a fugitive, he races to decode the journal, only to realize the dreadful truth --- it’s the reason he’s being hunted because it details criminal secrets committed by the U.S. in the 20th century. If he survives and publishes the decoded diary, he’ll be a heroic whistleblower. But there is no guarantee. He may also end up dead.

The Anthony-nominated collection of crime stories without guns is back for Volume 2. Two dozen more crime writers have come together to raise their voices and take pen in hand to call for a sensible and reasoned debate about guns in America. In stories of crime, mystery and suspense, these authors have left the guns out to show for a short while that we can do without them and the plot doesn’t fall apart. The top priority in these stories is to entertain with thrilling action and suspense that readers know and love about a crime story. To do so without guns leads to some creative leaps from writers who spin tales of simians on the loose, androids with buried secrets, punk rock shows and tattoo shops.

Millions of people around the world are heavily invested in the motivations, decisions and destinies of their favorite superheroes. In SUPERHERO ETHICS, Travis Smith investigates what they are saying and what messages about life they are communicating. Throughout the book, Smith frames his analysis around a single question: Which superhero embodies the kind of ethical character we should strive to emulate in today’s society? He arrives at his choice by structuring the book as a contest. He takes 10 top superheroes and pits them one against another, chapter by chapter. The hero who better exemplifies how we ought to live advances to the final round. By the end of the book, a single superhero emerges victorious and is crowned most exemplary for our times.

Eddie Bennison is at the top of his game, one of the most successful and popular golfers out there, until Tee Time, a national golf magazine, publishes a story that destroys his reputation. Now Eddie, championed by cunning lawyer Charlie Mayfield, must defend himself in court. But proving libel is extremely difficult, and the truth has a way of coming out, especially when the trial becomes a national spectacle. Eddie and Charlie are in for the fight of their lives, proving that what was written in that article was nothing but bad lies.