Adult

In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall with an injury that almost cost him his leg. When the India Office recruits him for an expedition to fetch quinine --- essential for the treatment of malaria --- from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea; nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is eager to escape the strange events plaguing his family's crumbling estate, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for the edge of the Amazon. There he meets Raphael, a priest who turns out to be the key to a legacy left by generations of Tremayne explorers before him, one that will prove more valuable than quinine, and far more dangerous.

In THE SEVENTH FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE, Laurent Binet spins a madcap secret history of the French intelligentsia, starring such luminaries as Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva --- as well as the hapless police detective Jacques Bayard, whose new case will plunge him into the depths of literary theory (starting with the French version of ROLAND BARTHES FOR DUMMIES). Soon Bayard finds himself in search of a lost manuscript by the linguist Roman Jakobson on the mysterious “seventh function of language.”

Joan Ashby is a brilliant and intense literary sensation acclaimed for her explosively dark and singular stories. When she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she is stunned by Martin’s delight, his instant betrayal of their pact (“work is paramount, absolutely no children”). She then makes a fateful, selfless decision to embrace her unintentional family. Challenged by raising two precocious sons, it is decades before she finally completes her masterpiece novel. Poised to reclaim the spotlight, to resume the intended life she gave up for love, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportion forces her to question every choice she has made.

Cole is a boy in high school. He runs cross country, he sketches, he jokes around with friends. But none of this quite matters next to the allure of sex. He fantasizes about whomever he's looking at. He consumes and shares pornography. And he sleeps with a lot of girls, which is beginning to earn him a not-quite-savory reputation around school. This leaves him adrift with only his best friend for company, and then something startling starts to happen between them that might be what he's been after all this time. And then he meets Grisaille.

Mary Willis has always been an outcast, an abolitionist in a town of bounty hunters and anti-Union farmers. After college, she dreams of exploring the country, but is obligated to take over the household duties and management of her family’s farm. Helping runaways is the only thing that makes her life in Town Line bearable. When escaped slave Joe Bell collapses in her father’s barn, Mary is determined to help him cross to freedom in nearby Canada. But the wounded fugitive is haunted by his vengeful owner, and his sister, who is still trapped as a slave in the South. Rebels and soldiers from both sides bring intrigue and violence of the brutal war to the town and the farm, threatening to destroy all that Mary loves.

When a mysterious figure appears in Three Pines, Armand Gamache and the rest of the villagers are at first curious. Then wary. From the moment its shadow falls over the village, Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, suspects the creature has deep roots and a dark purpose. Yet he does nothing. What can he do? Only watch and wait. And hope his mounting fears are not realized. But when the figure vanishes overnight and a body is discovered, it falls to Gamache to discover if a debt has been paid or levied. Months later, as the trial for the accused begins, Chief Superintendent Gamache continues to struggle with actions he set in motion, from which there is no going back.

February 1943. Both the Allies and the Nazis are full speed ahead to construct the decisive weapon of the war. Kurt Nordstrum, an engineer in Oslo, puts his life aside to take up arms against the Germans as part of the Norwegian resistance. After the loss of his fiancée, and with his outfit whittled to shreds, Kurt escapes to England to transmit secret evidence that the Nazis are closing in on the atomic bomb. His mission: to disrupt their plans before they advance any further. Parachuted onto the unforgiving terrain in Europe, Kurt must lead the most daring raid of the war. But completing it may come at the cost of the one person he has grown to love.

The 1947 World Series was “the most exciting ever” in the words of Joe DiMaggio, with a decade’s worth of drama packed into seven games between the mighty New York Yankees and underdog Brooklyn Dodgers. It was Jackie Robinson’s first Series, a postwar spectacle featuring Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway and President Harry Truman in supporting roles. It was also the first televised World Series --- sportswriters called it “Electric October.”

HAPPINESS begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a world-roaming California girl, and Brian, an intellectual, homebody writer, kind and slyly funny, but loath to leave his Upper West Side studio. Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant --- Brian is sure he loves her, only he doesn't want kids. Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, buoyed by family and friends. Mere hours after Gracie's arrival, Heather's bliss is interrupted when a nurse wakes her, "Get dressed, your baby is in trouble."

Cork O’Connor and his new bride, Rainy Bisonette, listen to a desperate voicemail left by Rainy's son, Peter, who confesses to the murder of someone named Rodriguez. After unsuccessfully trying to contact him, they fly to Coronado County in southern Arizona, where Peter has been working as a counselor in a drug rehab center. They learn that Peter was fired six months earlier and hasn’t been heard from since. So they head to the little desert town of Sulfur Springs where Peter has been receiving his mail. But no one in Sulfur Springs seems to know him. They do, however, recognize the name Rodriguez. Carlos Rodriguez is the head of a cartel that controls everything illegal crossing the border from Mexico into Coronado County.