Adult

For more than 50 years, Casey Stengel lived baseball, first as a player and then as a manager. He made his biggest mark on the game, revolutionizing the role of manager while winning an astounding 10 pennants and seven World Series Championships with the Yankees. Playing with and against a Who's Who of Cooperstown --- Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb --- and forming indelible, and sometimes complicated, relationships with Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin, Stengel was, for an astonishing five decades, the undisputed, hilarious and beloved face of baseball. Marty Appel paints an intimate portrait of a private man who was larger than life and remains the embodiment of the national pastime.

Faye Longchamp-Mantooth, who runs a small archaeological consulting firm with her husband, Joe, has come to Sylacauga so she and Joe can join his father in dispersing his mother's ashes. Faye has partially financed the trip by hiring on to consult on the reopening of a site closed down 29 years ago when archaeologist Dr. Sophia Townsend disappeared. What no one expects is the lonely red bones that emerge as the backhoe completes its work. Inevitably they prove to be those of Sophia Townsend. Chief Roy Cloud of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation's Lighthorse Tribal Police hires Faye, who clearly can't be a suspect, to consult. But the investigation comes uncomfortably close to home when she learns that her father-in-law knows more about the dead woman than he is willing to admit.

It is 1940. France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The war could go either way, and everyone must do their bit. Young copy writer Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help “write women” into propaganda films --- something that the men aren’t very good at. She is quickly seconded to the Ministry’s latest endeavor: a heartwarming tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. It’s all completely fabricated, of course, but what does that matter when the nation’s morale is at stake? Since call-up has stripped the industry of its brightest and best, it is the callow, the jaded and the utterly unsuitable who must make up the numbers.

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE CASABLANCA is celebrated film historian Noah Isenberg’s rich account of the origins of the famed Humphrey Bogart movie, which premiered over 75 years ago. Through extensive research and interviews with filmmakers, film critics, family members of the cast and crew, and diehard fans, Isenberg reveals the myths and realities behind Casablanca’s production, exploring the transformation of the unproduced stage play into the classic screenplay, the controversial casting decisions, the battles with Production Code censors, and the effect of the war’s progress on the movie’s reception.

When the Twin Towers suddenly reappear in the Badlands of South Dakota two decades after their fall, nobody can explain their return. To the tens of thousands drawn to the “American Stonehenge” --- including Parker and Zema, siblings driving from L.A. to Michigan --- the Towers seem to sing, even as everybody hears a different song. And on the 93rd floor of the South Tower, Jesse Presley, the stillborn twin of the most famous singer who ever lived, suddenly awakes. Over the days and months and years to come, he’s driven mad by a voice in his head that sounds like his but isn’t, and by the memory of a country where he survived in his brother’s place.

It’s February 1862, and the Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved 11-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. The boy finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state --- called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo --- a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.

As the specter of war darkens Europe in 1939, Rose Zimmer’s parents manage to secure passage for their young daughter on a kindertransport and send her to live with strangers in England. Six years later, Rose cannot help but try to search out one piece of her childhood: the Chaim Soutine painting her mother had cherished. In modern-day Los Angeles, Lizzie Goldstein has returned home for her father’s funeral. The Soutine painting that she loved and had provided lasting comfort to her after her own mother had died was stolen, and has never been recovered. This painting will bring Lizzie and Rose together and ignite an unexpected friendship, eventually revealing long-held secrets that hold painful truths.

Jake Lassiter’s client, Miami Dolphins’ running back Thunder Thurston, has been cleared of murdering his wife. Jake didn’t expect to win (or want to win) since he is sure his client is guilty. When Thurston walks free, Lassiter vows to seek his own kind of justice. Street justice. Vigilante justice. Law partners Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord can’t believe their friend has become so obsessed with killing Thurston. Convinced Jake’s unhinged behavior is due to concussive brain injuries suffered during his football career, they beg him to seek treatment. But as Lassiter’s raging fixation on vengeance grows, Solomon and Lord wonder if they’re too late to help.

Who is Andrea Bern? When her dippy therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid --- she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh --- that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult, though. But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart?