Adult

Baking has become more than a hobby or a means to a delicious end. Now more than ever, it also has become a source of solace, relief and relaxation. COMFORT BAKING focuses on easy-to-follow recipes that make people feel good from the inside out. For anyone who is looking for a moment in the kitchen as a time to create, worship, relax or prepare a recipe for a friend in need, this is your guidebook. In addition to over 100 recipes that exude comfort from beginning to end, baker Stephanie Wise includes plenty of helpful tips along the way to make the process as simple and enjoyable as possible. Whether you're preparing a quiche or whipping up a late-night batch of cookies, the recipes in this book are guaranteed to bring you and the people you share your creations with comfort.

Everything you’ve heard about vampires is a lie. They can’t fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ridiculous. In fact, vampire life is really just a lot of blood bags and night jobs. For Louise Chao, it’s also lonely since she swore off family ages ago. At least she’s gone to decades of punk rock shows. And if she can join a band of her own (while keeping her...situation under wraps), maybe she’ll finally feel like she belongs, too. Then a long-lost teenage relative shows up at her door. Whether it’s Ian’s love of music or his bad attitude, for the first time in ages, Louise feels a connection. But as Ian uncovers Louise’s true identity, things get dangerous --- especially when he asks her for the ultimate favor.

Russia 1917: Svetlana Petrova defied her stifling aristocratic family to join a revolution promising freedom. Now, released after years of imprisonment, she discovers her socialist party vying for power against the dictatorial Bolsheviks and resolves to avenge the death of her beloved uncle, even as she longs to reunite with the daughter she has not seen in years. USSR 1941: Now living in a remote village, Svetlana opens her home to Mila Rozovskaya, the 18-year-old granddaughter she has never met. She hopes to protect Mila from the oncoming Nazi invasion, but when the enemy occupies the village, Svetlana sees the young woman fall under the spell of the resistance. As Mila takes up her fight, dangerous secrets and old enemies soon threaten all that Svetlana holds dear.

Conducting a routine cover development trip to Tajikistan, Pike Logan and Jennifer learn that Afghanistan has fallen. A man is on the run --- one who has done more for the United States in Afghanistan than anyone else. Pulled in to extract him, Pike collides headlong into a broader mystery: His covert company, along with every other entity in the Taskforce, has been hit with a ransomware attack, and there’s some connection between the Taliban and the hack. Given the order to track down the perpetrators, he has no idea that the problem set is much, much larger and more dangerous than a simple attack on his organization. That hack was just a test-run, and the real one is coming soon, engendered by a former NSA specialist in the U.S. government.

The COVID pandemic propelled many people to change their lives in ways large and small. Some adopted puppies. Others stress-baked. Peggy Orenstein, a lifelong knitter, went just a little further. To keep herself engaged and cope with a series of seismic shifts in family life, she set out to make a garment from the ground up: learning to shear sheep, spin and dye yarn, then knitting herself a sweater. Orenstein hoped the project would help her process not just wool but her grief over the recent death of her mother and the decline of her dad, the impending departure of her college-bound daughter, and other thorny issues of aging as a woman in a culture that by turns ignores and disdains them. What she didn’t expect was a journey into some of the major issues of our time.

When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup --- it just happens. Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around, and her friend drags her along to meet her mom --- the hot, older woman Cassie slept with. Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior. In her defense, she hadn’t known Cassie was a student when they'd met. What should've been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost?

Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days. But at the ripe old age of 29, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™. Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.

India, 1947. In a rural village in Bengal live three sisters. Priya is intelligent and idealistic, resolved to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a doctor. Deepa is the beauty, determined to make a marriage that will bring her family joy and status. Jamini is devout, sharp-eyed and a talented quiltmaker, with deeper passions than she reveals. Theirs is a home of love and safety, a refuge from the violent events taking shape in the nation. Then their father is killed during a riot, and even their neighbors turn against them. When the partition of India is officially decided, a drastic --- and dangerous --- change is in the air. The sisters find themselves separated from one another, each on different paths. They fear for what will happen not just to themselves, but to each other.

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it?

London, 1799. Dora Blake, an aspiring jewelry artist, lives with her odious uncle atop her late parents’ once-famed shop of antiquities. After a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, her uncle begins to act suspiciously, keeping the vase locked in the store’s basement, away from prying eyes --- including Dora’s. Intrigued by her uncle’s peculiar behavior, Dora turns to young, ambitious antiquarian scholar Edward Lawrence, who eagerly agrees to help. Edward believes the ancient vase is the key that will unlock his academic future; Dora sees it as a chance to establish her own name. But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has believed about her life, her family and the world as she knows it.