Adult

When the police found the first body, left on a bonfire in the forest, they worried it had the hallmarks of a serial killer. Now, as they find the second, they know for sure. Panic about the “Bonfire Killer” quickly spreads through the sedate suburban area of Southampton. But single mom Aisling Cooley has a lot to distract her: two beloved teenage sons and a quest to find her long-lost father, whom she hasn’t seen since she was a teenager. After much debate, she decides to upload her DNA to an ancestry website. When she gets a match, she is filled with an anxious excitement that her questions about her father’s disappearance from her life might finally be answered. But to her horror, it’s not her father who’s found her. It’s a detective. And they say her DNA is a close match for the Bonfire Killer.

The hilarious and heartfelt conclusion to the Dear Committee Members trilogy chronicles the beleaguered Professor Fitger as he chaperones Payne University’s annual “Experience: Abroad” to London and beyond, with 11 undergrads in tow. Among his charges are a claustrophobe with a juvenile detention record, a student who erroneously believes he is headed for the Caribbean, a pair of unreconciled lovers, a set of undifferentiated twins, and one young woman who has never been away from her cat before. Through a sea of troubles --- personal, institutional and international --- the gimlet-eyed, acid-tongued Fitger strives to navigate safe passage for all concerned, revealing much about the essential need for human connection and the sometimes surprising places in which it is found.

It’s the middle of the night in the middle of Paris, and a woman just woke up with no memory. She only knows three things for certain: 1) She has a splitting headache. 2) The hottest guy she has (probably) ever seen is standing over her, telling her to run. And oh yeah… 3) People keep trying to kill her. When she sees footage of herself fighting off a dozen men, there’s only one explanation: obviously she’s a spy! Except, according to Mr. Hot Guy, she’s not. She’s a spy’s identical twin sister. Too bad the only person who knows she’s not the woman they’re looking for is this very grouchy, very sexy, very secret agent who (reluctantly) agrees to help her disappear. Which is easier said than done when a criminal organization wants you dead and every intelligence service in the world wants you caught.

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

Burned out by both her marriage and work, Liz is desperate for an escape. More than that, she craves an adventure, a total reset. So when she plans a vacation with her three best friends, she persuades them to spend four nights camping in the stunning mountains of Norway. Following a trail that climbs through lush valleys, towering peaks and past jewel-blue lakes, Liz is sure that the hike is just what they need. But as they stride farther from civilization, it becomes clear that the women are not the only ones looking to lose themselves in the mountains. The wilderness hides secrets darker than they ever could have imagined, and if they’re not careful, not all of them will return.

Twenty-two-year-old Olivia has been missing for one day…and counting. She was last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again. Julia, the detective heading up the search for Olivia, thinks she knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her husband and daughter. But she has no idea just how close to home this case is going to get. Because the criminal at the heart of the disappearance has something she never expected. His weapon isn’t a gun, or a knife: it’s a secret. Her worst one. And her family's safety depends on one thing: Julia must NOT find out what happened to Olivia --- and must frame somebody else for her murder.

In a tiny village in Provence, nine guests arrive at a luxury holiday home. The visitors know each other well, or at least they think they do. The only stranger among them is Lulu, the young woman catering their stay. But Lulu is not exactly the woman on the video the guests thought they’d hired. It turns out Lulu has plenty to hide --- and nowhere to run as the heat rises. In this seemingly idyllic getaway, under the scorching sun, loyalties will be tested, secrets exposed, and tensions pushed to the brink.

Toya Gardner, a young Black artist from Atlanta, has returned to her ancestral home in the North Carolina mountains to trace her family history and complete her graduate thesis. But when she encounters a still-standing Confederate monument in the heart of town, she sets her sights on something bigger. Meanwhile, local deputies find a man sleeping in the back of a station wagon and believe him to be nothing more than some slack-jawed drifter. Yet a search of the man’s vehicle reveals that he is a high-ranking member of the Klan, and the uncovering of a notebook filled with local names threatens to turn the mountain on end. After two horrific crimes split the county apart, every soul must wrestle with deep and unspoken secrets that stretch back for generations.

One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the 20th century, Robert Caro's monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens --- the way things really get done in America's City Halls and Statehouses --- and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.

After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon & Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited CATCH-22 and THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Graham, Robert Caro, Nora Ephron and Bill Clinton. In AVID READER, Gottlieb writes with wit and candor about succeeding William Shawn as the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine.