Adult

Technically speaking, Hendrik Groen is...elderly. But at age 83 1/4, this feisty, indomitable curmudgeon has no plans to go out quietly. He begins writing an exposé: secretly recording the antics of day-to-day life in his retirement home, where he refuses to take himself, or his fellow "inmates," too seriously. With an eccentric group of friends, he founds the wickedly anarchic Old-But-Not-Dead Club, and he and his best friend, Evert, gleefully stir up trouble. And when a sweet and sassy widow moves in next door, he polishes his shoes, grooms what's left of his hair, and determines to savor every ounce of joy in the time he has left, with hilarious and tender consequences.

After 68-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard --- that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline. David decides to return something precious he long ago stole from the man he now calls Clayton Fire Bear. It may be the only way to find closure in a world increasingly at odds with the one he served to protect. It may also help him to finally recover from his wife’s untimely demise.

“My time in Paris,” says Paula McLain (THE PARIS WIFE), “was like no one else’s ever.” For each of the 18 bestselling authors in this warm, inspiring and charming collection of personal essays on the City of Light, nothing could be more true. While all of the female writers featured here have written books connected to Paris, their personal stories of the city are wildly different. Meg Waite Clayton (THE RACE FOR PARIS) and M. J. Rose (THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES) share the romantic secrets that have made Paris the destination for lovers for hundreds of years. Susan Vreeland (THE GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE) and J. Courtney Sullivan (THE ENGAGEMENTS) peek behind the stereotype of snobbish Parisians to show us the genuine kindness of real people.

A young boy has fled his home. He’s pursued by dangerous forces. What lies before him is an infinite, arid plain, one he must cross in order to escape those from whom he’s fleeing. One night on the road, he meets an old goatherd, a man who lives simply but righteously, and from that moment on, their paths intertwine. OUT IN THE OPEN tells the story of this journey through a drought-stricken country ruled by violence. A world where names and dates don’t matter, where morals have drained away with the water. In this landscape, the boy --- not yet a lost cause --- has the chance to choose hope and bravery, or to live forever mired in the cycle of violence in which he was raised.

Hazel has moved into a trailer park of senior citizens after running out on her marriage to Byron Gogol. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked. But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human “mind-meld,” Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. As she tries to carve out a new life for herself, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron’s virtual clutches once and for all.

In this collection of nine works of short fiction, Sarah Hall uses her piercing insight to plumb the depth of the female experience and the human soul. A husband’s wife transforms into a vulpine in "Mrs. Fox," winner of the BBC Short Story Prize. In "Case Study 2,” a social worker struggles with a foster child raised in a commune. A new mother runs into an old lover in "Luxury Hour." In prose that is full of rich observations and striking clarity, Hall has composed nine wholly original pieces --- works of fiction that will resonate long after the final page is turned.

Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed. With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service, Elizabeth goes through her late father's journals, which have been found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own --- to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse 70 years before. As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed.

Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns everything over to the day shift. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two assignments she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Against orders and her partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the investigations entwine, they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job.

When Silas Van Loy flees home on horseback to avoid capture for his brother’s murder, he is soon followed by both the police and his brother’s wife, Lena, who is intent on exacting revenge. She reluctantly lets her trusted stable assistant join her in a journey across the wilds of Northern California in the hopes of catching Silas for one final showdown. Author Ian Stansel follows the chase and shares the story of the brothers’ rise from hardscrabble childhood to their reign as the region’s preeminent horse trainers, tracking the tense sibling rivalry that ultimately leads to the elder’s death.

Take a trip back to Jane Austen's world and the many places she lived as historian Lucy Worsley visits Austen's childhood home, her schools, her holiday accommodations, the houses --- both grand and small --- of the relations upon whom she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister towards the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House and a small rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a "life without incident." She examines the rooms, spaces and possessions that mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons.