Adult

After her parents perish in a tragic accident, 23-year-old Cosima Saverio assumes leadership of her family’s haute couture Italian leather brand. She also must maintain the 400-year-old family palazzo in Venice and care for her younger siblings. Then she meets Olivier Bayard, the founder of France’s most successful ready-to-wear handbag company. Fifteen years after her parents’ deaths, Cosima has found a confidant. Now the business is financially stable and generating enough income for the Saverios to live comfortably. Then Cosima’s brother, Luca, loses a hefty sum at the casino, and his debt must be repaid with money or his life. Forced to bail him out, Cosima is given an impossible choice: list the palazzo, sell a third of the family business, or let Luca fend for himself.

One summer, Heidi Julavits sees her son silhouetted by the sun and notices he is at the threshold of what she calls “the end times of childhood.” When did this happen?, she asks herself. Who is my son becoming --- and what qualifies me to be his guide? The next four years feel like uncharted waters. Rape allegations rock the university campus where Julavits teaches, unleashing questions of justice and accountability. She begins to wonder how to prepare her son to be the best possible citizen of the world he’s about to enter. Looking back to her childhood in Maine, Julavits takes us on an intellectual navigation of the self. Throughout, she intertwines her internal analysis with a wide-ranging exploration of what it means to raise a child in a time full of contradictions and moral complexity.

Beatrice Steele has never fit the definition of a true lady, according to the strict code of conduct that reigns in Swampshire, her small English township. Nevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life with her marriage-scheming mother, prankster father and two younger sisters --- beautiful Louisa and forgettable Mary. But she harbors a dark secret: She is obsessed with the true crime cases she reads about in the newspaper. Eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. However, when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet, the evening descends into a frenzy of panic, fear and betrayal as it becomes clear they are trapped with a killer.

Ess wakes up alone on a sailboat in the remote Pacific Northwest with no memory of who she is or how she got there. She finds a note, but it's more warning than comfort: Start over. Don't make yourself known. Don't look back. Ess must have answers. She sails over a turbulent ocean to a town hundreds of miles away that she hopes might offer insight. The chilling clues she uncovers point to a desperate attempt at erasing her former life. But why? And someone is watching her…someone who knows she must never learn her truth. In Ess' world, the earth is precariously balanced at a climate tipping point, and she is perched at the edge of a choice. Which life does she want? The one taken from her --- and the dangerous secret that was buried --- or the new one she can make for herself?

Kelly’s new life in Philadelphia has turned into a nightmare. The only bright spot is her newly rekindled friendship with her childhood friend, Sabrina --- now a glamorous bestselling author with a handsome, high-powered husband. When Sabrina and Nathan offer Kelly an escape hatch, volunteering the spare room of their remote Virginia mansion, she jumps at the chance to run away from her old life. There, Kelly secretly finds herself falling for both her enchanting hosts --- until one night, a wild and unexpected threesome leads the couple to open their marriage for her. At first, Kelly loves being part of this risqué new world. But when she discovers that the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, she starts to wonder if they could be dangerous…and if she might be next.

Life as a working-class girl in Prohibition-era New York isn’t safe or easy. But Vivian Kelly has a new job at the Nightingale, an underground speakeasy. Things are finally looking up for her and her sister, Florence...until the night Vivian learns that her friend Bea's uncle, a bouncer at the Nightingale, has died. His death is ruled a suicide, but Bea isn’t so convinced. She knew her uncle was keeping a secret: a payoff from a mob boss that was going to take him out of the tenements and into a better life. Now, the money is missing. Vivian and Bea uncover more than they expected when rumors surface of a mysterious letter writer who's blackmailing Vivian's poorest neighbors for their most valuable possessions, threatening poison if they don't comply.

Coogan’s Bar and Restaurant opened in New York City’s Washington Heights in 1985 and closed its doors for good in the pandemic spring of 2020. Sometimes called Uptown City Hall, it became a staple of neighborhood life during its 35 years in operation --- a place of safety and a bulwark against prejudice in a multi-ethnic, majority-immigrant community undergoing rapid change. LAST CALL AT COOGAN’S tells the story of this beloved saloon --- from the challenging years of the late ’80s and early ’90s, when Washington Heights suffered from the highest crime rate in the city, to the 2010s, when gentrification pushed out longtime residents and nearly closed Coogan's itself. Only a massive community mobilization including local politicians and Lin-Manuel Miranda kept the doors open.

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. Then a year to the day after Titus’ election, a schoolteacher is killed by a former student, and the student is fatally shot by Titus’ deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

Summer and Leo travel around sunny California in Summer’s tricked-out Land Cruiser. It’s not a glamorous life, but it gives them the freedom they crave from the painful pasts they’ve left behind. Summer is a skilled pickpocket, a small-time thief and a con artist --- and Leo has learned a trick or two. Eager for a big score, Leo catches in her crosshairs Michael Forrester, a self-made billionaire and philanthropist. When her charm wins him over, Leo is rewarded with an invitation to his private island off the California coastline for a night of fabulous excess. But when Leo disappears, Summer infiltrates Michael’s island to find out what really happened. Trapped in a scheme she helped initiate, could Summer have met her match?

On his wedding day in 1976, Viktor Moroz stumbles upon a murder scene: two gay men, one of them a U.S. official, have been axed to death in Moscow. Viktor, a Jewish refusenik, is stuck in the Soviet Union because the government has denied his application to leave for Israel. But the KGB spots him leaving the murder scene. Plucked off the street, he’s given a choice: find the murderer or become the suspect of convenience. His deadline is nine days later, when Henry Kissinger will be arriving in Moscow. To help solve the case, Viktor ropes in his community. As he struggles to determine whom to trust, he’s forced to question not only the KGB’s murky motives but also those of his fellow refuseniks --- and the man he admires above all: Kissinger himself.