Adult

Lifelong friends and occasional rivals, Kevin Brennan and Patrick Donahue enter seminary together, but their lives soon diverge dramatically. Intellectual and independent, Kevin achieves success as a scholar but often finds himself at odds with his superiors in the Church. And his unwavering principles threaten to cut him off from those closest to him --- including the former sweetheart he has never forgotten. By contrast, the ambitious Patrick rises steadily through the Church hierarchy, only to fall prey to the temptations of lust and power. As hidden scandals and Patrick’s inner demons threaten to destroy the lives of everyone around him, it’s up to his oldest friend to save him from himself --- and foil a conspiracy that could change the very future of the Papacy!

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. THE BURNING GIRL is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality.

J.D. Vance's grandparents moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. However, Vance's family struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of poverty. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and colorful figures, HILLBILLY ELEGY is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

Death, accidental and early, has always been Abby Walters's preoccupation. Now thirty-three and eager to settle down with her commitment-shy boyfriend, a recurring dream from her past returns: a paralyzing nightmare of being buried alive. But this time the dream reveals a name from her family's past. Looking for answers, Abby returns home to small-town Minnesota for the first time in fourteen years. When Abby tries on her grandmother's mesmerizing diamond ring, a ring she always dreamed would be hers, she discovers a cryptic note long hidden beneath the box's velvet lining. As she begins to uncover the traces of a love triangle gone shockingly wrong nearly seventy years before, we, too, see that the layers of our lives may echo a past we’ve never known.

High in the Hollywood Hills, writer Lady Daniels has decided to take a break from her husband. Left alone with her children, she’s going to need a hand taking care of her young son if she’s ever going to finish her memoir. In response to a Craigslist ad, S arrives, a magnetic young artist who will live in the secluded guest house out back, care for Lady’s toddler, Devin, and keep a watchful eye on her teenage son, Seth. S performs her day job beautifully, quickly drawing the entire family into her orbit and becoming a confidante for Lady. But in the heat of the summer, S’s connection to Lady’s older son takes a disturbing, and possibly destructive, turn.

Annie Darling’s friend and fellow shop owner Ves Roundtree is a very wealthy woman. Her rich brother entrusted her with his estate, and upon her death, his fortune is to be divided. Several cash-strapped islanders are in line to collect life-changing inheritances. The problem is that Ves is very much alive and hosts a dinner for the prospective beneficiaries. Not long after, she suffers a bad fall that was no accident. Everyone at the table had a motive, but not a shred of evidence was left behind. When one of the suspects is found floating in the harbor and Ves disappears, Annie and her husband Max spring into action to catch a calculating killer before greed takes another life.

Estranged from her family, best friends with her driverless car, partnered with a Frenchman who believes in post-sexual sex, international trend forecaster Sloane Jacobsen is the perfect candidate to lead tech giant Mammoth's conference for affluent consumers who prefer virtual relationships to the real things. But early in her contract, Sloane starts picking up on cues that physical intimacy is going to make a major comeback, leaving many --- Sloane included --- to question if the 40-year-old's intuitions are as dependable as they once were. And if Sloane goes rogue against her all-powerful employer, will she be able to let in the love and connectedness she's long been denying herself?

Connie Kelly thought she’d found her perfect man on an online dating site. She fell so hard for M. Brooks Welles that she wrote him a check for almost $300,000, hoping for a big return on her investment. But within weeks, both Welles and her money are gone. Enter Spenser, who quickly discovers that everything about Welles is phony. But uncovering the truth won’t be easy, as he’ll have to keep the mystery man alive long enough to get back his client’s money. As the trail winds from Boston to backroads Georgia, Spenser will need help from trusted allies Hawk and Teddy Sapp to make sure Welles’ next con is his last.

In the title story, a Mediterranean purple swamp hen chronicles the secrets and scandals of Quintus Pompeius’ villa, culminating with his narrow escape from the lava and ash of Vesuvius. “Abroad” captures the low point of an artist couple’s tumultuous European road trip, trapped in a remote Spanish farmhouse and forced to paint a family mural and pitch in with chores to pay for repairs to their broken-down car. Other stories in Penelope Lively’s first story collection in decades reveal friends and lovers in fateful moments of indiscretion, discovery and even retribution --- as in “The Third Wife,” when a woman learns her husband is a serial con artist and turns a house-hunting trip into an elaborately staged revenge trap.

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met --- a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and constantly jams on the guitar. His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church’s country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents’ rectory, their two worlds collide. In PRIESTDADDY, Patricia Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents’ household after a decade of living on their own.