Adult

Byron Hemmings wakes to a morning that looks like any other: his school uniform draped over his wooden desk chair, his sister arguing over the breakfast cereal, the click of his mother’s heels as she crosses the kitchen. But when the three of them leave home, the morning takes an unmistakable turn. In one terrible moment, something happens, something completely unexpected and at odds with life as Byron understands it. While his mother seems not to have noticed, 11-year-old Byron realizes that from now on nothing can be the same. Over the days and weeks that follow, Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Unable to trust his parents, he confides in his best friend, James, and together they concoct a plan.

Alma Katsu’s The Taker trilogy comes to a stunning conclusion, bringing Lanore McIlvrae to a final encounter with Adair, her powerful nemesis. Dismayed by Adair’s otherworldly powers and afraid of his passionate temper, Lanore has run from him across time, even imprisoning him behind a wall for two centuries to save Jonathan, her eternal love. But instead of punishing her for her betrayal, Adair declared his love for Lanore once more and set her free.

Charlie Henry is the proud new owner of the Three Balls pawnshop, having recently returned Stateside from special-ops work in Iraq. The transition back to normal life seems to be going smoothly until his childhood friend, Gina, is shot. With the help of his Army buddy (and co-owner of the shop) Gordon Sweeney, Charlie finds that the shooting has to do with the previous owner of the pawnshop and his rather questionable morals.

Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to as simply “the wife,” once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked Dept. of Speculation. As they confront an array of common catastrophes, the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it.

INFECTED shocked readers with a visceral, up-close account of physical metamorphosis and one man’s desperate fight for sanity and survival. The sequel, CONTAGIOUS, let the reader experience the frantic national response to this growing cataclysm. And now in PANDEMIC, the entire human race balances on the razor’s edge of annihilation, beset by an enemy that turns our own bodies against us, changing normal people into psychopaths or transforming them into nightmares.

Eleven-year-old chemist and aspiring detective Flavia de Luce gathers with her family at the railway station, awaiting the return of her long-lost mother. Yet upon the train’s arrival, Flavia is approached by a stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear. Moments later he is dead, mysteriously pushed under the train by someone in the crowd. Who was this man, what did his words mean, and why were they intended for Flavia?

Louise’s troublesome neighbor has begun blasting choral music at all hours of the night --- and she’s the only one who can hear it. Hoping to find some peace, Louise convinces her husband, Stuart, to buy them a country house in an idyllic, sun-dappled community. But it seems that the haunting melodies of the choir have followed her there. Louise starts to suspect that this sinister choir is not only real, but a warning. But of what? And how can it be, when no one else can hear it?

CARELESS PEOPLE is a unique literary investigation: a gripping double narrative that combines a forensic search for clues to an unsolved crime and a quest for the roots of one of America’s best-loved novels. Acclaimed scholar of American literature Sarah Churchwell reconstructs the events of that pivotal autumn in 1922, revealing in the process new ways of thinking about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.

In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan’s journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that will soon become legend to those she left behind.

Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer, has just been convicted of treason and stripped of his rank in front of a crowd of 20,000. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, the recently promoted head of the counterespionage agency that “proved” Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans. However, it isn’t long before Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country --- and himself.