Adult

Cono is a startling young man of mixed and haunting heritage who has been gifted --- or cursed --- with an accelerated nervous system --- an orphan and a loner, he acts as a freelance spy. In Kazakhstan he is sucked into a deadly maelstrom of betrayal that forces him to question all notions of friendship and allegiance. Relevant to our times, PERFORMANCE ANOMALIES explores the expansion of Beijing’s imperial reach into Central Asia, and the takeover of Kazakhstan.

From birth, Noah Hogarty has lived with severe cerebral palsy. He is nearly blind, unable to speak, and cannot run, walk, or crawl. Yet his mind works just as well as any other twelve-year-old's---maybe even better. And Noah holds a secret dream: to become a great spy, following in the footsteps of his aunt, Liv ''Boots'' Bergen.

Reviving the ancient philosophy of “cosmopolitanism,” a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

When President McCain dies and Sarah Palin becomes president, the reader, along with the nation, stumbles down a terrifyingly credible path toward theocracy, realizing too late that the Christian right meant precisely what it said. One of America’s foremost lawyers lays out in chilling detail what such a future might look like: constitutional protections dismantled; all aspects of life dominated by an authoritarian law called “The Blessing,” enforced by a totally integrated digital world known as the "Purity Web."

In BIRTHING GOD, forty women relate Spirit-filled moments: a grieving pastor walks a labyrinth and rediscovers the Rock of her existence; a human rights advocate re-encounters Allah in an intensely visceral moment in the sun; an educator, moved by an ancestral vision, launches a global tree-planting project to heal the wounds of slavery; a revolutionary awakens from a coma and realizes that all of life is infused with Spirit; a peasant woman under fire discovers within herself the God who gives her courage; and a disabled doctor, embraced by Shekhinah, turns her heart to rabbinical studies.

Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighborhood in America’s whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In his commanding autobiographical novel, Mitchell writes what it was to come of age in that time and place. THE RESIDUE YEARS switches between the perspectives of a young man, Champ, and his mother, Grace, who, fresh out of a drug treatment program, is trying to stay clean and get her kids back.

Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart and self-aware 13-year-old boy with autism, THE REASON I JUMP demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. He shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself.

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor --- these form a series of events that change the orphan Pip's life forever, as he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman.

Recruited into SHADE, the elite, covert group formed by the U.S. military, Rollie Waters must locate and retrieve the countless millions taken from Saddam’s cache during the Iraq War and shipped home in the coffins of dead soldiers. But when a sniper attacks the team, Rollie is forced to go undercover to solve the riddle of the graves and to apprehend the puppet master behind the whole plot.

After more than 40 years, Charles Manson continues to mystify and fascinate us. One of the most notorious criminals in American history, Manson and members of his mostly female commune killed nine people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Now, drawing on new information, bestselling author Jeff Guinn tells the definitive story of how this ordinary delinquent became a murderer.