Adult

Israel, October 1973. As the Yom Kippur War flares into life, a state-of-the-art Soviet MiG fighter plane plummets to an unexpected landing. NASA Flight Controller and former US test pilot Kaz Zemeckis watches from the ground --- unaware that its arrival will pull him into a high-stakes game of spies, lies and secrets that hold the key to Cold War air and space supremacy. For within that plane is a Soviet pilot pleading to defect, offering a prize beyond value: the workings of the Soviets' mythical "Foxbat" MiG-25, the fastest, highest-flying fighter plane in the world. But trusting him is risky, and Kaz must tread a careful line. As Kaz accompanies the defector into the United States, to the military’s most secret test site, he must hope that --- with skill and cunning --- the game plays out his way.

Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she finally may be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play. Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join Holly in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known. All too soon, Holly and her friends find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself.

1923 was a “year of lunacy” in Germany, defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Most observers found it miraculous that the Weimar Republic --- the first German democracy --- was able to survive, though some of the more astute realized that the feral undercurrents unleashed that year could lead to much worse. Now, a century later, Volker Ullrich draws on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles and other sources to present a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced --- one with haunting parallels to our own political moment.

Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbor or lover, and the relationships between self and others. A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor, who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible’s specifications. In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found?

Wittold Walccyzkiecz is a vigorous, extravagantly white-haired pianist and interpreter of Chopin who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his concert in Barcelona. Although Beatriz, a married woman, is initially unimpressed by Wittold, she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept into his world. As the journeyman performer sends her countless letters, extends invitations to travel, and even visits her husband’s summer home in Mallorca, their unlikely relationship blossoms, though only on Beatriz’s terms. The power struggle between them intensifies, eventually escalating into a full-fledged battle of the sexes. But is it Beatriz who limits their passion by paralyzing her emotions? Or is it Wittold trying to force into life his dream of love?

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the celebrated Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless and wryly self-assured, at 22 Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s orderly home to find her own voice as a writer. As she chases obsessive love, damage and transcendence, her grandfather’s poetry seems to guide her home. Carmel knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry too well. In his poems to her, Phil envisions his daughter as a bright-eyed wren ascending in escape from his hand. But it is Phil who departs, abandoning his wife and two young daughters. Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet” with the father whose desertion scars her life, along with that of her fiercely dutiful sister and their gentle, cancer-ridden mother.

As a young girl, Hannah Stowe was raised at the tide’s edge on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, falling asleep to the sweep of the lighthouse beam. Now in her mid-20s, working as a marine biologist and sailor, Stowe draws on her professional experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea and the Caribbean to explore the human relationship with wild waters. Why is it, she asks, that she and so many others have been drawn to life at sea --- and what might the water around us be able to teach us? In MOVE LIKE WATER, Stowe invites readers to fall in love, as she has, with the sea and those that call it home, and to discover the majesty, wonder and vulnerability of the underwater world.

Ghassan Zeineddine’s debut collection examines the diverse range and complexities of the Arab American community in Dearborn, Michigan. In 10 tragicomic stories, Zeineddine explores themes of identity, generational conflicts, war trauma, migration, sexuality, queerness, home and belonging, and more. A father teaches his son how to cheat the IRS and hide their cash earnings inside of frozen chickens. Tensions heighten within a close-knit group of couples when a mysterious man begins to frequent the local gym pool, dressed in Speedos printed with nostalgic images of Lebanon. And a failed stage actor attempts to drive a young Lebanese man with ambitions of becoming a Hollywood action hero to LA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have other plans.

Buddy Steel's maverick behavior as a police officer has won his commander's respect and a promotion to LAPD homicide detective. Almost immediately, he is asked to join a task force working to bust a major meth shipment to LA from Mexico. One of the two undercover agents on the case has gotten himself killed by the Mexican cartel but not before spilling that a female agent is deeply enmeshed within their organization. The agent in question --- Kara Machado --- barely learns that her true identity may soon be exposed to the cartel when she is whisked abruptly to their family compound in Mexico, cut off from any communication with the outside world. But Buddy has personal history with Kara, and he's determined to bring her home safely.

When a cryptic note arrives, signaling the beginning of a deadly game, the Prince of Envy knows it will take more than a hint of sin to win and save his falling demon court. None of his meticulous plans prepare him for the frustrating artist who ignites his sin like no other. The trouble with scoundrels and blackguards is that they haven’t a modicum of honor, which Miss Camilla Antonius learns after one desperate mistake allows Waverly Green’s most notorious rake to blackmail her. To avoid a ruinous scandal, Camilla is forced to enter a devil’s bargain with Envy, little expecting that his game will awaken her true nature. Together, Envy and Camilla must embark on a perilous journey through the Underworld while trying to avoid the most dangerous trap of all: falling in love.