Adult

Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Daniel Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. He illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse, but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation.

Hardly a day goes by when nine-year-old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. His tales are so extraordinary that no one can possibly believe him, including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the Quebec village of Three Pine. But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, an old crime, an old betrayal, and right to the door of an old poet.

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, at first it seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go but must. There he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, along with a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map. The focus of the investigation soon turns to Gamache himself, his mysterious relationship with one of the cadets, and his possible involvement in the crime.

After five years as a stay-at-home mom, Gabby Schaefer can't wait to return to work. But when her plans are derailed, she must fight for the right to have a life of her own. Hayley Batchelor believes that a woman who was born to be a mom should risk everything to fulfill her destiny --- no matter how high the cost. A great new guy tempts divorcée Nicole Lord to believe maybe the second time's the charm…but how can she trust herself to recognize true love? As their bonds of friendship deepen against the beautiful backdrop of Mischief Bay, Gabby Hayley and Nicole will rely on good food, good wine and especially each other to navigate life's toughest changes.

In 1958, an unheralded 23-year-old piano prodigy from Texas named Van Cliburn traveled to Moscow to compete in the First International Tchaikovsky Competition. The Soviets had no intention of bestowing their coveted prize on an unknown American; a Russian pianist had already been chosen to win. Yet when the gangly Texan with the shy grin took the stage and began to play, he instantly captivated an entire nation. Adored by millions in the USSR, Cliburn returned to a thunderous hero’s welcome in the US and became, for a time, an ambassador of hope for two dangerously hostile superpowers.

Thomas Spencer, the black sheep of his family, harbors only resentment toward those closest to him for what they have more of: good looks, good cheer, good social graces. But what Thomas may lack in charm, he makes up for in cunning. And it is this that will serve him best when he trades in his glittering world of privilege for a chance to claw his way to the top --- on his own terms, and at any cost. As Thomas achieves fame and success as an ad man, he becomes ever more deeply entrenched in an insidious underworld of media, politics and women, and an astonishing picture emerges of a complex, destructive personality who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child. Seven-year-old Janie O’Daire is a mathematical genius, which is surprising. But what is disturbing are the stories she tells: that her name was once Violet, she grew up in Kansas decades earlier, and she drowned at age nineteen. Alice delves into these stories, at first believing they’re no more than the product of the girl’s vast imagination. But, slowly, Alice comes to the realization that Janie might indeed be telling a strange truth.

They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet, through it all, they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. But when Regina discloses the truth about her abusive mother to her social worker, she is separated from her younger siblings, Norman and Rosie. And as Rosie discovers after Cookie kidnaps her from foster care, the one thing worse than being abandoned by her mother is living in Cookie’s presence. Beaten physically, abused emotionally, and forced to labor at the farm where Cookie settles in Idaho, Rosie refuses to give in.

Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos with his general theory of relativity and helped to lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his life, he was also ignored by most working scientists, his ideas opposed by even his closest friends. As renowned writer David Bodanis explains in EINSTEIN’S GREATEST MISTAKE, this stunning downfall can be traced to Einstein’s earliest successes and to personal qualities that were at first his best assets.

Ned Ayres has never wanted anything but a newspaper career. His defining moment comes early, when Ned is city editor of his hometown paper. One of his beat reporters fields a tip: William Grant, the town haberdasher, married to the bank president’s daughter and the father of two children, once served six years in Joliet. The story runs, and Ned offers no resistance to his publisher’s argument that the public has a right to know. The consequences, swift and shocking, haunt him throughout a long career until eventually, as the editor of a major newspaper in post-Kennedy-era Washington, DC, Ned has reason to return to the question of privacy and its many violations.