Adult

Anna Badkhen has forged a career chronicling life in extremis around the world, from war-torn Afghanistan to the border regions of the American Southwest. In WALKING WITH ABEL, she embeds herself with a family of Fulani cowboys --- nomadic herders in Mali’s Sahel grasslands --- as they embark on their annual migration across the savanna. Badkhen transports us from the Neolithic Sahara crisscrossed by rivers and abundant with wildlife to obelisk forests where the Fulani’s Stone Age ancestors painted tributes to cattle.

London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse’s bones. Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the 28 stories in this collection --- many published here for the first time.

Many of these stories are set in Maine, but THE STATE WE'RE IN is about more than geographical location. Some characters have arrived in Maine by accident, others are trying to escape. Ann Beattie's collection is woven around Jocelyn, a wry, disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle while attending summer school. As in life, the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn’s --- sometimes challenging, sometimes embellishing her view.

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.

A brilliant, deeply dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches. Only five years old when she witnessed her parents’ deaths in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace’s harrowing past returns with a vengeance.

Fearing for his life, journalist Philip Mangan has gone into hiding from the Chinese agents who have identified him as a Western spy. But when he is caught in a terrorist attack in East Africa and a shadowy Chinese figure approaches him with information on the origins of the attack, Mangan is suddenly back in the eye of the storm. Meanwhile, on a humid Hong Kong night, a key British Intelligence source is murdered minutes after meeting spy Trish Patterson. A sinister power is stirring that will use Mangan and Patterson as its pawns --- if they survive.

A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the Laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, and among switchboard operators, struggling mothers, hitchhikers and bad Christians.

A beautiful jogger, drained of blood, dismembered, then meticulously reassembled on the grass in Central Park. Subway derailments, plummeting elevators, collapsing construction cranes, apartment explosions --- all creating a bloody, senseless puzzle. Detective Frank Quinn knows that even while the slayer is taunting the cops and the public, he’s also screaming to be caught. But Quinn will have to risk everything he holds precious to bring in this killer.

Jo has been hiding the truth about her role in her high school boyfriend's drowning for 16 years. Then seven-year-old Sara Starr goes missing from the community beach. Rescue workers fail to uncover any sign of her --- but instead dredge up the bones Jo hoped would never be discovered, shattering the quiet lakeside community's tranquility. As Jo’s daughter, Caroline, searches for Sara, she uncovers the secrets her mother has been concealing, unraveling the very foundation of everything she knows about herself and her family.

David Heller has taken a job as a live-in aide to current quadriplegic and former playboy Hans Bromwell --- in part to extend his stay studying abroad, but in truth, he's looking to escape his own family still paralyzed by the death of his younger sister a decade ago. When David moves into the Bromwell house, his life becomes quickly entwined with those of Hans, his alcoholic sister, and her beautiful fatherless daughter. As David befriends the Bromwells, the details behind the family's staggering fall from grace are slowly revealed.