Adult

When grandmother Maureen Phelan is surprised in her home by a stranger, she clubs the intruder with a Holy Stone. The consequences of this unplanned murder connect four misfits struggling against their meager circumstances. Ryan is a 15-year-old drug dealer desperate not to turn out like his alcoholic father, Tony, whose feud with his next-door neighbor threatens to ruin his family. Georgie is a sex worker who half-heartedly joins a born-again movement to escape her profession and drug habit. And Jimmy Phelan, the most fearsome gangster in the city and Maureen’s estranged son, finds that his mother’s bizarre attempts at redemption threaten his entire organization.

When journalist Jake Wolsey stumbles upon a declassified file showing Winston Churchill's interest in the ancient, esoteric Etruscan civilisation, his curiosity is piqued. But a series of deadly coincidences seems to surround the file and everyone who knows of its existence. Wolsey soon attracts the unlikely attention of alluring archaeologist Florence Chung --- and that of MI6. As journalist and archaeologist are pursued across Europe and Africa in search of a sacred Etruscan text, danger closes in and more questions than answers arise. In a thrilling race against time and enemies known and unknown, Wolsey fears the very survival of the West may depend on his ability to stay one step ahead of his adversaries.

Arrowood, the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River, has a mystery it has never revealed: It’s where Arden Arrowood’s younger twin sisters vanished on her watch 20 years ago, never to be seen again. After the twins’ disappearance, Arden’s parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. Arden has held on to the hope that her sisters are still alive, and it seems she can’t move forward until she finds them. When her father dies and she inherits Arrowood, Arden returns to her childhood home determined to discover what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer.

Lara Vapnyar follows the intertwined lives of four immigrants in New York City as they grapple with love and tumult, the challenges of a new home, and the absurdities of the digital age. One of these immigrants is Sergey, who cycles through jobs as an analyst, hoping his idea for an app will finally bring him success. As he develops "Virtual Grave," a program to preserve a person's online presence after death, a formidable debate begins among his friends, spurring questions about the changing perception of death in the modern world and the future of our virtual selves. How do our online personas define us in our daily lives, and what will they say about us when we're gone?

The rich and powerful Josephine Lazarow, matriarch of Fairham Island, is dead. The police say it's suicide, but Keith, her estranged son, doesn't believe it. After walking away from his mother and her controlling ways five years ago, Keith has built a new life in LA. He’s also accumulated a fortune of his own. But as soon as he learns of his mother’s death, he returns to Fairham to find his mother’s killer. The problem is, coming home puts him back in contact with Nancy Dellinger, the woman he hurt so badly when he left before. And digging that deep into his mother’s final days and hours entails a very real risk. Because the person who killed her could be someone he loves.

In WAR PORN, three lives fit inside one another like nesting dolls: a restless young woman at an end-of-summer barbecue in Utah; an American soldier in occupied Baghdad; and Qasim al-Zabadi, an Iraqi math professor, who faces the US invasion of his country with fear, denial and perseverance. As the book cuts from America to Iraq and back again, as home and hell merge, we come to see America through the eyes of the occupied, even as we see Qasim become a prisoner of the occupation. Through the looking glass of WAR PORN, Roy Scranton reveals the fragile humanity that connects Americans and Iraqis, torturers and the tortured, victors and their victims.

The story of the world's greatest civilization spans 4,000 years of history that has shaped the world. It is full of spectacular cities and epic stories --- an evolving society rich in inventors, heroes, heroines, villains, artisans and pioneers. Professor Joann Fletcher pulls together the complete story of Egypt --- charting the rise and fall of the ancient Egyptians while putting their whole world into a context to which we can all relate.

Sisters Rose and Lily Martin were inseparable when growing up on their family’s Kentucky flower farm, yet became distant as adults when Lily found herself unable to deal with the demands of Rose’s unusual daughter. But when Rose becomes ill, Lily is forced to return to the farm and confront the fears that had driven her away. Rose’s daughter, 10-year-old Antoinette, has a form of autism that requires constant care and attention. She has never spoken a word, but has a powerful gift that others would give anything to harness --- she can heal with her touch. Her gift, though, comes at a price, since each healing puts her own life in jeopardy.

When long-serving Kentucky sheriff Lew Mattock is murdered by a confused, drug-addicted teenager, chief deputy Harlan Dupee is tasked with solving the crime. But as Harlan soon discovers, his former boss wasn't exactly innocent. The investigation throws Harlan headlong into the burgeoning OxyContin trade --- from the slanted steps of trailer parks to the manicured porches of prominent citizens, from ATV trails and tobacco farms to riverboat casinos and country clubs. As the evidence draws him closer to an unlikely suspect, Harlan comes to question whether the law can even right a wrong during the corrupt and violent years that followed the release of OxyContin.

Little more than 10 years after the first powered flight, aircraft were pressed into service in World War I. Nearly forgotten in the war's massive overall death toll, some 50,000 aircrew would die in the combatant nations' fledgling air forces. The romance of aviation had a remarkable grip on the public imagination, but the reality was horribly different. MARKED FOR DEATH debunks popular myth to explore the brutal truths of wartime aviation: of flimsy planes and unprotected pilots; of burning 19-year-olds falling screaming to their deaths; of pilots blinded by the entrails of their observers. James Hamilton-Paterson also reveals how four years of war produced profound changes both in the aircraft themselves and in military attitudes and strategy.