Adult

From flurries of delicate snowflakes to deliciously decorated gingerbread houses and reindeer-led sleighs, JOHANNA'S CHRISTMAS is a celebration of this wonderful holiday season that invites you to pick up your pens and pencils to color, complete or embellish each of the festive artworks. Hidden in this book are a flock of elusive little robins. Can you spot them all?

Did you know that your answers to just a handful of questions can predict the zip code of where you grew up? In 2013, Josh Katz accumulated and visually mapped over 350,000 unique survey responses to questions about word choice and pronunciation throughout America. His dialect quiz quickly became the most viewed webpage in the history of The New York Times. In SPEAKING AMERICAN, Katz offers a visual atlas of the American vernacular --- who says what, and where they say it --- revealing the history of our nation, our regions and our language.

Our world belongs to the Equals --- aristocrats with magical gifts --- and all commoners must serve them for 10 years. But behind the gates of England’s grandest estate lies a power that could break the world. Abi is a servant to England’s most powerful family, but when she falls for one of their noble-born sons, she faces a terrible choice. Uncovering the family’s secrets might win her liberty --- but will her heart pay the price? Abi’s brother, Luke, is enslaved in a brutal factory town and makes friends whose ideals could cost him everything. Now he has discovered there may be a power even greater than magic: revolution. Luke is a shadow in the glittering world of the Equals, with mysterious powers no one else understands. But will he liberate --- or destroy?

Heart surgeon Suzette Kendall is stunned when her husband, Hyland, admits his yearning for a child. From the beginning they had decided that having children was not an option, as Suzette feared passing along the genes that landed her mother in a mental institution. But Hyland proposes a different idea: a baby via surrogate. A young woman named Dorothy Muscarello is chosen as the one who will help make this family complete. For Dorrie, surrogacy (and the money that comes with it) are her opportunity to leave behind a troubled past and create a future for herself. But this situation forces all three of them to face a devastating uncertainty that will reverberate in the years to come.

At nearly 100 years old, Thalia Mars is a far cry from the patients who child psychologist Alex Delaware normally treats. But the charming, witty woman convinces Alex to meet with her in a suite at the Aventura, a luxury hotel with a checkered history. What Thalia wants from Alex are answers to unsettling questions --- about guilt, patterns of criminal behavior and victim selection. When Alex asks the reason for her morbid fascination, Thalia promises to tell all during their next session. But when he shows up the following morning, he discovers Thalia dead in her room. Alex and homicide detective Milo Sturgis must peel back the layers of a fascinating but elusive woman’s life and embark on one of the most baffling investigations either of them has ever experienced.

Enjoying a romantic candlelit dinner with her fiancé, Ryan, Kailey Crain can’t believe her good fortune: She has a great job as a journalist and is now engaged to a guy who is perfect in nearly every way. As she and Ryan leave the restaurant, Kailey spies a thin, bearded homeless man on the sidewalk. She approaches him to offer up her bag of leftovers, and is stunned when their eyes meet: The man is the love of her life, Cade McAllister. Over the next few weeks, Kailey helps Cade begin to piece his life together, something she initially keeps from Ryan. As she revisits her long-ago relationship, Kailey realizes that she must decide exactly what --- and whom --- she wants.

Everywhere Katie Brenner looks, someone else is living the life she longs for, particularly her boss, Demeter Farlowe. But just as she’s finding her feet --- not to mention a possible new romance --- Demeter fires Katie. Shattered but determined to stay positive, Katie retreats to her family’s farm in Somerset to help them set up a vacation business. London has never seemed so far away --- until Demeter unexpectedly turns up as a guest. Secrets are spilled and relationships rejiggered, and as the stakes for Katie’s future get higher, she must question her own assumptions about what makes for a truly meaningful life.

August Snow joined the police force only to be drummed out by a conspiracy of corrupt cops and politicians. It’s not long before he’s summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estates, home of business magnate Eleanore Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank. But detective work is no longer August’s beat, and he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide --- which August isn’t buying for a minute. What begins as an inquiry into Eleanore Paget’s death soon drags August into a rat’s nest of Detroit’s most dangerous criminals, from corporate embezzlers to tattooed mercenaries.

In THE REFUGEES, Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds: the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, these stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.

Three British couples meet around the pool on their Florida holiday and become fast friends. But on Easter Sunday, the last day of their vacation, tragedy strikes: the 14-year-old daughter of an American vacationer goes missing, and her body is later found floating in the mangroves. When the shocked couples return home to the UK, they remain in contact, and over the course of three increasingly fraught dinner parties, they come to know one another better. But buried beneath these apparently normal exteriors are some unusual kinks and unpleasant vices. Then a second girl goes missing, in Kent --- not far from where any of the couples lives. Could it be that one of these six has a secret far darker than anybody can imagine?