Adult

From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, John le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer’s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla. LITTLE NOTHING unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whose ultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all.

A decade ago, kidnappers grabbed two boys from wealthy families and demanded ransom, then went silent. No trace of the boys ever surfaced. For 10 years their families have been left with nothing but painful memories and a quiet desperation for the day that has finally, miraculously arrived: Myron Bolitar and his friend, Win, believe they have located one of the boys, now a teenager. Where has he been for 10 years, and what does he know about the day, more than half a life ago, when he was taken? And most critically: What can he tell Myron and Win about the fate of his missing friend?

When four American sport fishermen stray into Cuban waters and are arrested by Castro’s navy, State Department crisis manager Judd Ryker finds himself called in to negotiate their release. But with relations between the United States and Cuba supposedly thawing, things just don’t seem to fit. Some see the new initiative as an opportunity for something radical, and Ryker is caught in the middle.

The subject of more than a century of scholarship, speculation and even obsession, John Wilkes Booth is often portrayed as a shadowy figure: a violent loner whose single murderous act made him the most hated man in America. Lost to history until now is the story of the four women whom he loved and who loved him in return: Mary Ann, the steadfast matriarch of the Booth family; Asia, his loyal sister and confidante; Lucy Lambert Hale, the senator’s daughter who adored Booth yet tragically misunderstood the intensity of his wrath; and Mary Surratt, the Confederate widow entrusted with the secrets of his vengeful plot.

We never know what will happen next in Florida. We know only that, any minute now, something will. Every few months, Dave Barry gets a call from some media person wanting to know, “What the hell is wrong with Florida?” Somehow, the state has acquired an image as a subtropical festival of stupid, and as a loyal Floridian, Dave begs to differ. It is a great state, and Dave is going to tell you why. Join him as he celebrates Florida from Key West at the bottom to whatever it is that’s at the top, from the Sunshine State’s earliest history to the fun-fair of weirdness that it is today.

A talented young skater, a doctor and a teacher have been shot dead at Central Park’s ice-skating rink. A review of the security videos reveals that the victims were killed with a tactical laser rifle fired by a sniper, who could have been miles away when the trigger was pulled. Though the list of locations where the shooter could have set up seems endless, the number of people with that particular skill set is finite. Eve Dallas’ husband, Roarke, has unlimited resources --- and genius --- at his disposal. When his computer program leads Eve to the location of the sniper, she learns a shocking fact: Someone is being trained by an expert in the science of killing, and they have an agenda.

Joy Bergman is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would prefer. She won't take their advice, and she won't take an antidepressant. Her marriage to their father, Aaron, has lasted through health and dementia, as well as some phenomenally lousy business decisions. The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws and same-sex spouses. But families don't just grow, they grow old. Cathleen Schine's THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO is a tender, sometimes hilarious intergenerational story about searching for where you belong as your family changes with age.

In the small, affluent town of Fairview, Connecticut, everything seems picture perfect. Until one night when young Jenny Kramer is attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. As they seek help for their daughter, the fault lines within Tom and Charlotte's marriage and their close-knit community emerge from the shadows where they have been hidden for years.

Born Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid was a diminutive, charming, blond-haired young man who, growing up in New York, Kansas and later New Mexico, demonstrated a precocious dexterity at firing six-shooters with either hand --- a skill that both got him into and out of trouble and that turned him into an American legend of the old West. He was smart, well-spoken, attractive to both white and Mexican women, a good dancer, and a man with a nose for money, horses and trouble. His spree of crimes and murders has been immortalized in dime westerns, novels and movies. In THE KID, Ron Hansen breathes life into history, bringing readers back into Billy’s boyhood as a ranch hand just trying to wrest a fortune from an unforgiving landscape.