Adult

In the City of Lies, they cut out your tongue when you turn 13, to appease the terrifying Ajungo Empire and make sure it continues sending water. Tutu will be 13 in three days, but his parched mother won’t last that long. So Tutu goes to his oba and makes a deal: she provides water for his mother, and in exchange he will travel out into the desert and bring back water for the city. Thus begins Tutu’s quest for the salvation of his mother, his city and himself.

For much of the 20th century, a series of terrible events --- abuse, both physical and psychological, and even deaths --- took places inside orphanages. The survivors have been trying to tell their astonishing stories for a long time, but disbelief, secrecy and trauma have kept them from breaking through. For 10 years, Christine Kenneally has been on a quest to uncover the harrowing truth. Centering her story on St. Joseph’s, a Catholic orphanage in Vermont, Kenneally has written a stunning account of a series of crimes and abuses. But her work is not confined to one place. Following clues that take her into the darkened corners of several institutions across the globe, she finds a trail of terrifying stories and a courageous group of survivors who are seeking justice.

Four days before Christmas, eight-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident; 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer; and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family. So begins Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling, time-bending debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a vast network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself. Intertwined with them is the saga of an iconic ’80s detective show, "Raider," whose star actor has imploded spectacularly after revelations of long-term, concealed abuse.

After the death of her wife, Shelby is suffering from prolonged grief. In a grief support group, she meets Cammie, who gives her permission to express her most hopeless, hideous feelings. Cammie is charismatic and unlike anyone Shelby has ever met. She’s also recovering from cancer and going through several other calamities. Shelby puts all her energy into helping Cammie thrive --- until her intuition tells her that something isn’t right. Gibson is fresh from divorce and deeply depressed. Then he falls in love with Cammie. But his friends are wary of her. When Gibson and Shelby meet, they realize Cammie’s stories don’t always add up. In fact, they’re far from the truth. But what kind of a person would lie about having cancer? And what does it say about Shelby and Gibson that they fell for it?

Nola McCollum is the most desirable girl in Arthur’s class, and he is thrilled when they become friends. But Arthur wants far more than friendship. Unfortunately, Nola has a crush on the wrong Moses --- Arthur’s older brother, Frank, who is busy pursuing his own love interest and avoiding the boys’ father, a war veteran with a drinking problem and a penchant for starting fights. When a sudden tragedy rocks the family’s world, Arthur struggles to come to terms with his grief. In the end, it is nature that helps him to understand how to go on, beyond loss, and create a life of forgiveness and empathy. But what can he do about Nola, who seems confused about what she wants in life, and only half aware of the one who loves her most?

Charlie Garner’s ex-wife, Meg, has been missing for over a week. Neighbors claim she’s running from bill collectors, but Charlie suspects something more sinister is afoot. Meg was last seen working at the local donut shop, a business run by a shadow group most refer to as “The Saucer People” --- a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming. Along with his brother, Felix, and journalist Amelia “Scrappy” Moon, Charlie uncovers strange and frightening details about the compound (read: a massive, doomsday storehouse of weapons, a leashed chimpanzee!) When the body of their key informer is found dead with his arms ripped out of their sockets, Charlie knows he’s in danger but remains dogged in his quest to rescue Meg.

When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berkeley, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she hasn’t, she’s worked hard to secure their future in caste-driven 1980s Los Angeles, gaining them illegal entry to an affluent public school. When she enters a state hospital, her closest friend tries to keep the children safe and their mother’s dreams for them alive. Moving from Berkeley and Los Angeles to New York and back again, this is a story about one family trying to navigate the crisis of their lives, a crisis many know firsthand in their own families or in those of their neighbors.

Two days after a blizzard hits Field’s Crossing, Indiana, Sheriff Jhonni Laurent discovers the frozen body of a high school senior under a 15-foot pile of snow and ice. Just as the investigation gets underway, Jhonni’s opponent for sheriff from four years ago wages a bitter reelection battle to oust her. Then Jhonni finds another body, and further complications arise when a century-old feud between two families reaches its breaking point. Soon, a slew of newspaper articles causes the Indiana State Election Board to doubt her credibility. Jhonni must fight to maintain her reputation, keep the small farming community together, and find the murderer at large --- all while demons from her own past threaten to crush her.

When X --- an iconoclastic artist, writer and polarizing shape-shifter --- falls dead in her office, her widow, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born. In her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.

As German bombs fall over London in 1940, working-class parents Millie and Reginald Thompson make an impossible choice: they decide to send their 11-year-old daughter, Beatrix, to America. Bea arrives in Boston to meet the Gregorys. Mr. and Mrs. G, and their sons William and Gerald, fold Bea seamlessly into their world. As Bea comes into herself and relaxes into her new life, the girl she had been begins to fade away…until she is called home to London when the war ends. Desperate as she is not to leave this life behind, Bea dutifully retraces her trip across the Atlantic back to her new, old world. As she returns to post-war London, the memory of her American family stays with her, always pulling on her heart as she tries to move on and pursue love and a life of her own.