Adult

On April 18, 1775, a Boston-based silversmith, engraver and anti-British political operative named Paul Revere set out on a borrowed horse to fulfill a dangerous but crucial mission: to alert American colonists of advancing British troops, which would seek to crush their nascent revolt. Revere had completed at least 18 previous rides across New England and other colonies, disseminating intelligence about British movements. But this ride was like no other, and its consequences in the months and years to come --- as the American Revolution morphed from isolated skirmishes to a full-fledged war --- became one of our founding legends. In THE RIDE, Kostya Kennedy presents a dramatic new narrative of the events of April 18 and 19, 1775, informed by fresh primary and secondary source research into archives, family letters and diaries, contemporary accounts, and more.

Ernest Cuneo played Ivy League football at Columbia University and was in the old Brooklyn Dodgers NFL franchise before becoming a city hall lawyer and “Brain Trust'' aide to President Roosevelt. But his status as a spy remained a secret, hiding in plain sight. During this time, Cuneo began a close friendship with British spy Ian Fleming and helped inspire Fleming's James Bond novels. He also began a love affair with one of Churchill's agents at Rockefeller Center, Margaret Watson, a beautiful Canadian woman with a photographic memory ideal for spycraft. In one nighttime attack, Watson was nearly smothered to death by a Nazi assassin. Cuneo’s transformation from a gridiron athlete into a high-stakes intelligence go-between and political influencer is one of the great untold stories of American espionage. He has remained “invisible” in the public eye --- until now.

Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit --- and became a notorious tabloid story in the process. Though she was exonerated, it’s taken more than a decade for her to reclaim her identity and truly feel free. FREE recounts how Knox survived prison, the mistakes she made, and the misadventures she had reintegrating into society, culminating in the untold story of her return to Italy --- and the extraordinary relationship she’s built with the man who sent her to prison. It is the gripping saga of what happens when you become the definition of notorious, but have quietly returned to the matters of a normal life --- seeking a life partner, finding a job, or even just going out in public.

Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, will grow to have a feisty and somewhat uncompromising character in adult life. But she is always a one-off, from her infancy. Young Elphie is shaped and molded by the behaviors of her promiscuous mother, Melena, and her pious father, Frex. She suffers ordinary childhood jealousies when her sister, saintly Nessarose, and her brother, junior felon Shell, arrive. She first encounters the mistreatment of the Animal populations of Oz, which live adjacent to but not intertwined with human settlements, haunted by a Monkey and receiving aid from Dwarf Bears. She thrashes through her first bruising attempts at friendship, a possible lifeline from her tricky family life. And she gleans the benefits of an education --- until she arrives at the doors of Shiz University, about to meet the radiant creature that is Galinda.

Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and fuccbois rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity. Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past?

When Abby steps foot on Isla Colel, she isn’t sure what --- if anything --- she’ll find. She only knows that she needs to see the place where her fiancée, Eszter, died to try and make sense of the tragic accident. Though it was once a bustling tourist hub, a hurricane has left it a shell of its former self, with only a handful of residents remaining. Even the once-daily ferry to the mainland now runs every week or so. There, Abby befriends an alluring group of expats but her sense of unease surges when one of them says he knows the truth about Eszter’s final days. Before he can tell her more, though, he vanishes from the island. Hours turn to days with no sign of him and the others are chillingly cavalier about his disappearance. As her quest for the truth unearths dark secrets, shady pasts and a web of lies, Abby grows more determined than ever to find out what happened to the love of her life.

Sandy thought she was making her greatest mistake yet when she got unexpectedly pregnant in her mid-30s by a dating-app flop. Now, her baby Rosie is the love of her life, but trying to co-parent with her daughter’s dad, a wannabe rock star, is a challenge --- and seems to be veering into catastrophe territory when Sandy finds out through social media that her daughter has a half-sibling Sandy doesn’t know anything about. Enter her ex’s ex, Stephanie, the other mother. Sandy is prepared to hate her, but when the two women meet, they are shocked to learn how much they have in common beyond the deadbeat father their children share. Now Sandy needs to figure out what her and Rosie’s family looks like with all these new additions. Could life in a “mommune” be the answer to her prayers or just a new brand of chaos?

In San Francisco in 1866, an Irish nun, abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman. To pursue her passion for writing, Emilia is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of 17, she begins to publish pulp fiction using a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can no longer satisfy her sense of adventure, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at The Daily Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan. As Emilia proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, as does Eric. While there, she meets her estranged father and delves into the violent confrontation in the country where her roots lie.

In 10 piercing new stories, Richard Bausch fleshes out the rich inner worlds of his characters and plumbs the nuances of infidelity, loss and profound loneliness. In “Donnaiolo,” a young divorcé moves back into her childhood home, with no plans other than to eat her parents’ food and smoke cigarettes in her room. In “Isolation,” a woman pines for her lover while quarantining from the COVID-19 pandemic with her husband, a situation that deteriorates when she learns her beloved has fallen gravely ill. In “Broken Home,” a Catholic school field trip takes a violent turn when the unsupervised altar boys discover an abandoned house in the woods. And in “The Widow’s Tale,” a recent widow attends a séance after her sister reports having reoccurring dreams about her late husband.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey enjoyed one of the most meteoric careers in history. His rise from humble beginnings coincided with young Henry VIII’s ascension to the throne in 1509. The two grew to be cherished friends. And by 1515, Wolsey, now a cardinal, had become the controlling figure in all matters of church and state. Wolsey operated on an international stage and worked hard to broker universal peace. All was going dazzlingly well until Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn --- the woman whom Wolsey would one day call “the night crow” --- and sought to end his marriage to his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. Swept up in the maelstrom of “the Divorce,” Wolsey, who had successfully given his master everything he wanted, found himself in an impossible situation. As he drew the ire of the future queen, the cardinal found his privileged life and his relationship with Henry crumbling around him.