Adult

A baby girl is abandoned on the doorstep of the Tribequeen’s kitchen. Cookmother takes her in and names her Ailia. Despite being an outsider in her village, Ailia grows up an intelligent and brave young woman, serving the Tribequeen of her township until the day when an encounter with an enigmatic man named Taliesin leads Ailia to the Mothers, the tribal ancestors, who have chosen her for another path. Ailia’s growing awareness of her future role as the tribal protector and her relationships with the two very different men she loves will be utterly tested by the imminent threat of Emperor Claudius preparing to take the island.

“The Truth About Death”, the title novella of this virtuosic collection, is a masterpiece of sardonic humor that confronts Death head on and emerges bloody but unbowed. The serious issues cleverly addressed in “The Truth About Death” are touched with warmth, humor and deep feeling in the eight "Other Stories," not by invoking comforting fairy tales but by accepting the fact that death and grief are part of the natural order of things.

From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Frank Hamer (known only as the “villain” of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde) stood on the frontlines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution’s spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers and Communists. When at last his career came to an end, it was only when he ran up against another legendary Texan: Lyndon B. Johnson.

KICK KENNEDY begins with Kick’s arrival in England in 1938 as her father became the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St James’s. In the closed world of the British aristocracy, Kick was gloriously, exhilaratingly different, the girl with whom all the boys fell in love. But she was the star of a world in the midst of tumultuous social and political change, and as war came, she would have to confront crushing sadness and the consequences of forsaking much dear to her for love, before her heartbreaking death in 1948.

Beginning in December 1884, Austin, Texas was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, using axes, knives and long steel rods to rip apart women. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders. When Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city.

The story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don't they teach you anything at school? So says 104-year-old Ona to the 11-year-old boy who's been sent to help her out every Saturday morning. As he refills the bird feeders and tidies the garden shed, Ona tells him about her long life, from first love to second chances. Soon she's confessing secrets she has kept hidden for decades. One Saturday, the boy doesn't show up. Ona starts to think he's not so special after all, but then his father arrives on her doorstep, determined to finish his son's good deed. The boy's mother is not so far behind. Ona is set to discover that the world can surprise us at any age, and that sometimes sharing a loss is the only way to find ourselves again.

For Maggie Rayburn --- wife, mother and secretary at a munitions plant --- life is pleasant, and predictable. When she finds proof of a high-level cover-up on her boss’s desk, she takes it --- an act that turns her world upside down. Pretty soon, Maggie starts to see injustice everywhere and her bottom drawer is filled with what she calls “evidence.” For Penn Sinclair --- Army Captain home from Iraq, Ivy League graduate and reluctant heir to his family’s fortune --- a hasty decision to launch a website exposing the truth about the war, has disastrous results.

Convicted murderer Melvin Mars is counting down the last hours before his execution --- for the violent killing of his parents 20 years earlier --- when he's granted an unexpected reprieve. Another man has confessed to the crime. Amos Decker, newly hired on an FBI special task force, takes an interest in Mars' case after discovering the striking similarities to his own life. Who wants Mars out of prison? And why now? But when a member of Decker's team disappears, it becomes clear that something much larger --- and more sinister --- than just one convicted criminal's life hangs in the balance.

It’s 1945, and Miklós is looking for a wife. The fact that he has six months left to live doesn’t discourage him --- he isn’t one to let small problems like that stand in the way, especially not after he’s survived a concentration camp. Currently marooned in an all-male sanatorium in Sweden, and desperate to get out, he acquires the names of the 117 Hungarian women also recovering in Sweden and writes each of them a letter in his beautiful cursive hand. Luckily for him, Lili decides to write back.

THE FATHER is inspired by the extraordinary true story of three brothers who committed 10 audacious bank robberies in Sweden over the course of just two years. None had committed a crime before, and all were under 24 years old. When their incredible spree had come to an end amid the glare of the international media, all of them would be changed forever as individuals and as a family. This intoxicating, heartbreaking thriller tells the story of how three boys are transformed over the course of their lives from innocent children to the most wanted criminals in Sweden. And of the man who made them that way: their father.