Adult

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad’s disappearance. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the U.S. government to deport him to South Korea, he’s forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life. One mishap leads to another, and as an outsider, Bucky has to fall back on not just his raw physical strength, but resources of character and attitude he didn’t know he had. That means managing his ego, insecurities, sexual desires, family legacies and allegiances in order to make it back home --- wherever that might be --- and determine who he is.

Mathematician Lakshmi Nayak receives a letter from her future self about faster-than-light travel. The equations work, and the letter itself seems to prove the possibility will be realized someday. But her paper on the topic is fiercely criticized. After defecting to the Union, she gets an unexpected offer: “I can build your ship.” Shipbuilder John Grant learns of a secret project that, unknown to the world, has been traveling to the stars for decades: Black Horizon. Biologist Emma Hazeldene works for Black Horizon on an alien world, Apis, investigating rock formations that are thought to be an alien, crystal-like intelligence. But refugees exiled to a hard life in the wilds of Apis already know more than the scientists have ever suspected. Everything changes when the rocks wake up, with dire results.

It’s ball season in Vienna, and Maria Wallner only wants one thing: to restore her family’s hotel, the Hotel Wallner, to its former glory. She’s not going to let anything get in her way, especially not the broad-shouldered American foreign agent who has saved her life two times already. Eli Whittaker also only wants one thing: to find out who is selling American secret codes across Europe, arrest them and go home to his sensible life in Washington, DC. But when he arrives in Vienna, he is immediately swept up into a chaotic whirlwind of balls, spies, waltzes and beautiful hotelkeepers who seem to constantly find themselves in danger. He disapproves of all of it! But his disapproval is tested as he slowly falls deeper into the chaos --- and as his attraction to said hotelkeeper grows.

Everyone in Denmark knew that Yousef Ahmed, a refugee from Iraq, brutally murdered the right-wing politician Sanne Melgaard. So when part-time blues musician, frustrated home renovator and full-time private detective Gabriel Præst agrees to investigate the matter, he knew it was a no-win case. But as Gabriel starts to ask questions, his face meets with the fists of Russian gangsters; the Danish prime minister asks him for a favor; and he starts to realize that something may be rotten in the state of Denmark. Wondering if Yousef was framed to heighten the local anti-Muslim sentiment, Gabriel follows a trail back in time to World War II when anti-Semitism was raging in Europe during the German occupation of Denmark, and he finds that some very powerful Danes don’t want him digging into the case.

Can we love the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski or Picasso? Should we? In this unflinching, deeply personal book, Claire Dederer explores the audience's relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an artist is also a mother, does one's identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss?

Katherine Heiny brings us glittering stories of love --- friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts --- in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime. The games and rituals performed by Heiny’s characters range from mischievous to tender. In “Bridesmaid, Revisited,” Marlee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid’s dress to work. In “Twist and Shout,” Erica’s elderly father mistakes his $4,000 hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In “Turn Back, Turn Back,” a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor’s deception. And in “561,” Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband’s ex-wife move out of the family home.

Bern Hendricks is one of the world’s preeminent experts on composer Frederick Delaney. When Mallory Roberts, a direct descendant of Delaney, asks for Bern’s help authenticating a newly discovered piece, which may be his famous lost opera, he jumps at the chance. In 1920s Manhattan, Josephine Reed meets struggling musician Fred Delaney. Josephine is a natural prodigy who hears beautiful music in the sounds of the world around her. With Josephine as his silent partner, Delaney’s career takes off. In the present day, Bern and his tech-savvy acquaintance, Eboni, begin to uncover more clues that indicate Delaney may have had help in composing his most successful work. And they soon become caught in the crosshairs of a powerful organization that will stop at nothing to keep their secret hidden.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were 30 emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. Six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The 30 sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes --- they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth.

It's the most anticipated event of the decade --- Big Lou and Fat Bob's wedding --- and everyone is invited! But the relative peace and tranquillity of 44 Scotland Street is about to be disrupted. Domineering Irene is set to return for a two-month stay, consigning young Bertie to a summer camp. Not content with that, she somehow manages to come between the enigmatic nun, Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna, and her friend, the hagiographer Antonia Collie. And can a person really change, even after being struck by lightning? Bruce Anderson’s metamorphosis and new-found outlook on life is put to the test as he prepares to leave his creature comforts for the monastic simplicity of Pluscarden Abbey.

Martin Hench is a 67-year-old self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money and those who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires and international drug gangs alike. He also knows Silicon Valley like the back of his hand. Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before --- and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.