Adult

When Hazel Blum’s father gets a tenured job at a prestigious college, she and her family relocate from the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn to a middle-of-nowhere college town in Maine. With her mother, Claire, a clothing designer, and her father, Gus, an American Studies professor, Hazel and her eleven-year-old brother, Wolf, spend the summer at the town pool, where they acclimate to their new lives and connect with the town’s sprawling community. That is, until a dramatic fallout on the very first day of her senior year tips the fickle balance of idyllic Riverburg and impacts everyone in her family. Tracking through the perspectives of each member of the Blum family, this relatable fish-out-of-water story handles big issues with great empathy and humor, capturing the love that unites one unforgettable family and the essence of life in small-town Maine.

A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured and the readers she inspired, TONI AT RANDOM demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison’s contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. 

Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over 25 years. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well...except that Wendy wants to murder her husband. What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago. Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early 20s, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.

John’s House provides all he needs. In his House, John is safe and untroubled. But then a terrible shadow creature breaks in --- and it wants him out. Pushed from the House, John falls into the light. And finds himself in modern-day Los Angeles, the first person to ever come back from the other side. Though he has no memory of his past life, everyone wants to know more about the Black man who has returned from the dead, yet all John wants is to go home. In search of a way back, John grudgingly joins forces with a mystic holding dubious qualifications, a hard-edged publicist bent on making him famous and an aspiring actress who is unsettlingly familiar. John begins a journey to find his House on the ocean --- but will mean uncovering painful truths about who John was in life and, perhaps most difficult, who he must become.

Destiny Whip is a former child prodigy, world-renowned enigmatologist and a letter arrives inviting her to interview for the position of Scruffmore family historian. She decodes the invitation's hidden message with ease and soon finds herself on Eerie Island. It’s a place whose inhabitants are almost as inhospitable as the tempestuous weather. The Scruffmores themselves turn out to be not much better, a snarled mess of secrets and motives connected by their mistrust for one another. Their newly arrived guest proves to be just as much an enigma to them as they are to her. While Destiny slowly works to unravel the mysteries hidden throughout the ominous castle, she struggles to interpret disturbing nightly visions of what is to come. In the midst of cryptic ciphers, hidden passages and the family’s magical line of succession, Destiny is certain of two things: one of the Scruffmores is going to die, and she’s running out of time to stop it.

Rei, Kiki and Ai are three sisters divided by distance and circumstance. Ambitious Rei works in finance in London; Kiki is the single mother of a young son, working in a retirement home in Tokyo; and Ai, the youngest, is a peripatetic Japanese music idol. Having lost both parents, one way or another, the sisters rely on each other as family, far-flung as they are. When Ai is embroiled in a scandal, Rei and Kiki pause their own lives to rescue their baby sister. Over the course of a summer spent in their childhood home on the Japanese coast, the sisters will reunite with their sharp-edged grandmother, care for Kiki’s irrepressible son and silently worry about Ai, all while carefully not talking about the circumstances of their mother’s death 15 years before. But silence between sisters can only last for so long.

Rhys Kinnick has gone off the grid. At Thanksgiving a few years back, a fed-up Rhys punched his conspiracy-theorist son-in-law in the mouth, chucked his smartphone out a car window and fled for a cabin in the woods, with no one around except a pack of hungry raccoons. Now Kinnick’s old life is about to land right back on his crumbling doorstep. Can this failed husband and father, a man with no internet and a car that barely runs, reemerge into a broken world to track down his missing daughter and save his sweet, precocious grandchildren from the members of a dangerous militia? With the help of his caustic ex-girlfriend, a bipolar retired detective and his only friend (who happens to be furious with him), Kinnick heads off on a wild journey through cultural lunacy and the rubble of a life he thought he’d left behind. 

Emmy Jameson lives by three rules: no dating, no sharing personal news at work and baseball above everything. Especially when she’s put up for a senior analyst position against her arrogant, infuriating coworker Gabe Olson. There will be no distractions this summer. Not even her sister’s pending destination wedding in Mexico for which she needs to find a plus one. But when she strikes up a conversation with a mystery texter, Emmy can’t deny the instant connection she feels and soon finds herself falling for the stranger on the other side of the screen...and inviting him to her sister’s wedding. Emmy’s world turns upside down when her mystery man turns out to be none other than Gabe Olson. They are left having to travel to the wedding together while trying to sort out which version of their relationship is real: their in-person rivalry or the deep connection they found in their messages.

Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and counts the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their 90s, and Monica worries about them constantly --- especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China. Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica’s discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun’s own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. 

Following a nasty divorce, Rayna Dumont came to Amsterdam for a fresh start. She’s never been the type for a one-night stand, but this move is all about adventure and Xander is handsome and successful and more than willing to go along for the ride. Until the morning after, when Rayna finds him dead on the shower floor and millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds missing from his safe. From her lavish home in the heart of the city, Willow Prins is captivated by the news. Her husband is Xander’s former boss and heir to a diamond house and the scandal strains their already-rocky marriage. As the house comes under scrutiny, Willow wonders if her life is about to implode --- and how much of the blame she can place on Rayna. Soon, Willow and Rayna are dragged into the dark and dangerous underbelly of the diamond market, where they’ll have to uncover the truth to survive.