Adult

As 1901 comes to an end, there is much to be grateful for: The Dilberne fortune has been restored, and the grand Dilberne Court has been saved. Lord Robert's son, Arthur, is happily married to Chicago heiress Minnie, who is pregnant and trying to come to terms with her new role as lady of the manor, and her charming but controlling mother-in-law, Lady Isobel. While Lord Robert and Lady Isobel debate the future of their recently orphaned niece, Adela, she runs away and joins a travelling group of spiritualists and has a life-saving run-in with the king.

“Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,” writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey through the continent he knows and loves best. Theroux first came to Africa as a 22-year-old Peace Corps volunteer, and the pull of the vast land never left him. Now he returns, after 50 years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself.

London defense attorney Philip Kennford’s wife and daughter are brutally murdered in their own home. When Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan arrives at the scene, the two survivors --- Philip and his other daughter, Lydia --- both claim to have seen nothing, but it’s clear right away that this is an unhappy family accustomed to keeping secrets. Maeve soon finds herself entangled in a case with a thousand leads that all seem to point nowhere.

When a tragic car accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it also upends the lives of Evie and Nicole, and their children. There’s no love lost between the widow and the ex. But Nicole is desperate to hang on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. Strapped for cash, Evie cautiously agrees to share living expenses --- and her home --- with Nicole and the baby. But when Evie suspects that Nicole is determined to rearrange more than her kitchen, Evie must decide who she can trust.

When is it wise to be a fool for something? What makes people want to be better than they are? The characters in Joan Silber’s new story collection tackle this question head-on. Vera, the shy, anarchist daughter of missionary parents, leaves her family for love and activism in New York. A generation later, her own doubting daughter insists on the truth of being of two minds, even in marriage. The adulterous son of a Florida hotel owner steals money from his family and departs for Paris, where he takes up with a young woman and finds himself outsmarted in turn.

Ten-year-old Helen and her summer guardian, Flora, are isolated together in Helen's decaying family house while her father is doing secret war work in Oak Ridge during the final months of World War II. Helen is desperate to keep her house intact with all its ghosts and stories. Flora, her late mother's 22-year old first cousin, is ardently determined to do her best for Helen. Their relationship and its fallout will haunt Helen for the rest of her life.

THE FAMILY MANSION tells the story of Hartley Fudges, whose personal destiny unfolds against the backdrop of 19th-century British culture, a time when English society was based upon the strictest subordination and stratification of the classes. Hartley's decision to migrate to Jamaica at the age of 23 seems sensible at first, but for all of its fabulous wealth, Jamaica was a difficult and inhospitable place for an immigrant.

Magdalena does not panic when she learns that her younger sister has disappeared. A free-spirit, Jadranka has always been prone to mysterious absences. But when weeks pass with no word, Magdalena leaves the isolated Croatian island where their family has always lived and sets off to New York to find her sister. Her search begins to unspool the dark history of their family, reaching back three generations to a country torn by war.

For more than a century, the enduring feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys has been American shorthand for passionate, unyielding, and even violent confrontation. Yet nobody has ever told the in-depth true story of this legendarily fierce and far-reaching clash in the heart of Appalachia. Drawing upon years of original research, Dean King finally gives us the complete tale, one vastly more enthralling than the myth.