Adult

As an earnest young girl, Anna learned to fit in by hiding her quirks from her parents and friends. But at 16, a sudden depression takes hold of her life, and she loses her sense of self and purpose as well as the will to conform. Then the Bible-touting Goldschmidts and their charismatic son, Lars, move in next door, leaning Anna in awe of both Lars and their violent prophecies for the Tribulation at the End of Days. Yet when her newfound beliefs bear irrevocable consequences, she must persevere with the help of unlikely friends.

Max Travers, an English teacher in Japan, wants out, as his manipulative boss, Yoko, is trying to swindle the unsuspecting parents of his students. Desperate to seize his locked-up passport, he sneaks into Yoko's office in the middle of the night only to surprise the Japanese mafia's burglary in progress. Escaping with his life, Max is on the run from tattooed Yakuza, the Japanese police, and a mysterious American named Lloyd Elgin, who seems to have ties in high places. All are after the leather book Max grabbed instead of his passport.

Michael Dirda's latest volume collects 50 of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on literary journalism, book collecting, and the writers he loves. Reaching from the classics to the post-moderns, his allusions dance from Samuel Johnson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and M. F. K. Fisher to Marilynne Robinson, Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace. Dirda's topics are equally diverse: literary pets, the lost art of cursive writing, novelists in old age, Oberlin College, a year in Marseille, writer's block and much more, not to overlook a few rants about Washington life and American culture.

As a 16-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan.” Her testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row. Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans just outside her bedroom window. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter.

It was only ever meant to be a game played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University --- a game of consequences, silly forfeits and childish dares. But then the game changed: The stakes grew higher and the dares more personal and humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results. Now, 14 years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round. Who knows better than your best friends what would break you?

College football has doubled in size in the last decade, thanks to generous tax breaks, lavish TV deals, and corporate sponsors eager to slap their logos on everything from scoreboards to footballs and uniforms. In BILLION-DOLLAR BALL, Gilbert M. Gaul offers a surprising, incendiary examination of how college football has come to dominate some of our best, most prestigious universities, reframing campus values, distorting academic missions, and transforming athletic departments into astonishingly rich entertainment factories.

In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database. As a series of strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond.

Brilliant, irascible and frequently frustrating to both his friends and his long-suffering bosses, John Rebus has made the dark places of Edinburgh his home for over two decades. THE BEAT GOES ON collects all of Ian Rankin’s Rebus short stories for the first time, including two never-before published tales written specifically for this collection. From his beginnings as a young Detective Constable right up to his retirement, Rebus shines as he investigates sinister cases.

In 2000, while moving his household from Vermont to North Carolina, author David Payne watched from his rearview mirror as his younger brother, George A., driving behind him in a two-man convoy of rental trucks, lost control of his vehicle. David’s life hit a downward spiral. He found himself haunted not only by George A.’s death, but also by his brother’s manic depression, an inherited past that now threatened David’s and his children’s futures. The only way out, he found, was to write about his brother.

In “Desert Hearts,” a woman takes a job selling sex toys in San Francisco rather than embark on the law career she pursued only for the sake of her father. In “Pearl and the Swiss Guy Fall in Love,” a woman realizes she much prefers the company of her pit bull to the neurotic foreign fling who won’t decamp from her apartment. And in “Barbara the Slut,” a young woman with an autistic brother, a Princeton acceptance letter, and a love of sex navigates her high school’s toxic, slut-shaming culture with open eyes. Lauren Holmes' debut collection is about family, friends and lovers, and the flaws that make us most human.