Adult

During the week, Linda earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, and then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges her true passion, taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant, because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger --- a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could. Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes. Nor can she reveal her belief that it’s her destiny to “marry” one of her suitors, uniting with her soulmate plane for eternity. But then an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control.

After facilitating a handful of successful romances, Katie Donald is eager to continue helping the lovelorn citizens of Edinburgh find connection. Word of her expertise spreads quickly, and more people than ever are flocking to the Perfect Passion Company seeking Katie's advice. With each client's distinctive quirks and unique personalities, Katie finds herself seeking new and creative solutions to locate their perfect match.

Ursula, Alvin, Jen and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family. As young adults, they’re on the precipice of new ventures. But their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America creates a national panic, prompting a government policy that pushes Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma, while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions. Cut off entirely from the outside world, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long, dusty days in camp and acclimate to life without the internet. That is, until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this connection as a chance to tell the world about the horrors of camp --- and as an opportunity to bolster her own reporting career in the process.

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he’s fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore’s romance hotline, that’s a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and "Heartstrings" into the limelight. Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life --- or lack thereof --- she begins to question if she’s as happy as she believed. Maybe a little more romance wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending…even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final decision between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.

In 1480, the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends John Collan’s life forever. John is not John Collan, the son of Will Collan, but Lambert Simnel, the son of the long-deceased Duke of Clarence. Lambert has been hidden in the countryside after a brotherly rift over the crown --- and because Richard III has a habit of making his nephews disappear. He is removed from his humble origins and sent to Oxford to be educated in a manner befitting the throne’s rightful heir. There he encounters the intractable Joan, the delightfully strong-willed daughter of his Irish patrons, who is imbued with both extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies. Together Lambert and Joan form an alliance that will change the fate of the English monarchy.

So, who’s the best of 'em all? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus? Bobby Jones? Ben Hogan? Golf fans will disagree until the end of time, but one thing is certain: For well over 100 years, the sport has provided its share of spectacular careers and indelible moments. And what about fan favorites such as Phil Mickelson, Nancy Lopez and Lee Trevino? Where do they rank on the list? Or modern players like Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth, Nelly Korda and Justin Thomas. Did they make the final cut --- and if so, where? In a joyride through golf history itself, Michael Arkush establishes a ranking system that places a heavy emphasis on the game’s major championships and profiles the most accomplished and impactful golfers ever --- men and women, known and unknown.

The first 21 months of the American Revolution --- which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton --- was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world’s most formidable fighting force. Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king’s task is now far more complicated. Fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans. Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution.

Throughout her life, Sybil Van Antwerp has used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past 10, Sybil sits down to write letters --- to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being. This inventive collection from Lydia Millet offers overlapping tales of urges ranging from rage to jealousy to yearning. The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced that her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel’s fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard. As they pick away at the splitting seams in American culture, Millet’s characters shimmer with the sense of powerlessness we share in an era of mass overwhelm.

Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah’s help. Laboring in the warmth of a Scottish summer, Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough --- and then things go terribly wrong. Joe Mungo Reed’s novel expands from this extraordinary event, drawing together the stories of four lives reckoning with what it means to take fate into their own hands, moving from the last days of civilization on Earth through the birth of another on Mars.