Adult

Kirsten Hammarstrom hasn’t been home to her tiny corner of rural Wisconsin in years --- not since the mysterious disappearance of a local teenage girl rocked the town and shattered her family. Now, years later, a new tragedy forces Kirsten and her siblings to return home, where they must confront the devastating event that shifted the trajectory of their lives. Tautly written and beautifully evocative, THE MOURNING HOURS is a gripping portrayal of a family straining against extraordinary pressure, and a powerful tale of loyalty, betrayal and forgiveness.

Cold and poverty define Hanna Renström’s childhood in northern Sweden, and in 1904 she boards a ship for Australia. But none of her hopes --- or fears --- prepares her for the life she will lead. As Hanna’s story unfurls over the next several years in this “treacherous paradise,” she wrestles with a devastating loneliness and with the racism she is meant to unthinkingly adopt.

When FBI special agent Maggie O'Dell and her partner, Tully, discover the remains of a young woman in a highway ditch, the one clue left behind is a map that will send Maggie and Tully on a frantic hunt crisscrossing the country to stop a madman before he kills again. As the body count rises, she turns to a former foe for help. As she gets closer to finding the killer, it becomes eerily clear that Maggie is the ultimate target.

Thirteen-year-old AnnMarie Walker dreams of a world beyond Far Rockaway, where the sway of the neighborhood keeps her tied to old ideas about success. While attending a school for pregnant teens, AnnMarie comes across a flyer advertising movie auditions in Manhattan. Four months before she’s due to give birth, she lands a lead role. But when the film fades from view and the realities of her life set in, AnnMarie’s grit and determination are the only tools left to keep her moving forward.

In the unforgiving class system of the 1950s, Lucy de Bourgh, daughter of one of Rhode Island's first families and beneficiary of an ample trust fund, was married to Thomas Snow, son of a Newport garage owner and his bookkeeper wife. Decades later, a chance meeting brings Lucy together with Philip, our narrator. They'd known each other earlier, and he remembers her as a ravishing, funny, ready-for-anything hellion. He also remembers Thomas, killed in a freak accident years after his and Lucy's divorce, and is shocked to hear Lucy refer to Thomas insistently as "that monster." How is he to reconcile that unexpected and overflowing reservoir of bitterness and resentments with his own memories?

LOVE, DISHONOR, MARRY, DIE, CHERISH, PERISH leaps cities and decades as the late David Rakoff sings the song of an America whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. The characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. Rakoff's insistence on beauty and the necessity of kindness in a selfish world raises this novel far above mere satire.

It's 1943 and the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. Twelve years later, Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence police department, is assigned to a gruesome case --- a serial killer targeting the Rosatis, murdering the remnants of the family one-by-one in cold blood. She finds herself digging into a past that involves both the victims and her own tragic history.

When Leila discovers the website Red Pill, she feels she has finally found people who understand her. Thus she is thrilled when Adrian, the website's founder, asks to meet her, flattered when he invites her to be part of "Project Tess." As they email, chat and Skype, Leila becomes enveloped in the world of Tess, learning every single thing she can about this other woman --- because soon, Leila will have to become her.

When two plane crashes set off a spellbinding chain reaction of murder, inadvertent kidnapping, corporate corruption, and financial double-dealing, it’s not enough that Niceville detective Nick Kavanaugh (ex–Special Forces) has to investigate. He and his wife, family lawyer Kate, have also just taken in brutally orphaned Rainey Teague. Something bothers Nick about Rainey --- and it isn’t just that the woman in charge of attendance at Rainey’s prep school has disappeared.

In the tradition of M. F. K. Fisher, Laurie Colwin and Ruth Reichl, BLUE PLATE SPECIAL is a narrative in which food --- eating it, cooking it, reflecting on it --- becomes the vehicle for unpacking a life. Kate Christensen explores her history of hunger --- not just for food, but for love and confidence and a sense of belonging --- with a profound honesty, starting with her unorthodox childhood in 1960s Berkeley as the daughter of a mercurial legal activist who ruled the house with his fists.