Adult

On the morning of the most important booking in the long history of the celebrated restaurant, Aunt Orsa's erupts into chaos with the discovery that 22 rib eye steaks have been stolen. Hers is the most august of fine-dining establishments in this Midwestern college town, and tonight Orsa is set to host a large party honoring a very special guest --- a bestselling author of national renown. And what's up with the recent spate of online reviews, from insulting to frankly terrible? Is Orsa, who wants only to be loved, being sabotaged on several fronts? No one is above suspicion, not the Mennonite baker nor the tattooed hard-ass chef de cuisine. Could the culprit be among the servers, or even the inexperienced undergrad working as hostess?

Alone at a party, sipping her celery sour, Charli knows she’s in a rut. Kicking around with the rest of London’s bohemian dropouts, she has no idea what to do with her arts degree and her research project on Romy Haag --- the transsexual disco singer and long-time lover of David Bowie --- has all but stalled out. But her life takes a turn when she bumps into the mysterious Alexander Geist. Androgynously, glamorously handsome, he feels something like a soul mate, another love once lost and now found. Naturally, when he leaves for Berlin, Charli follows. There, at the center of the city’s febrile party scene, Charli and Alexander embark on their great project: turn Alexander into the greatest pop star since David Bowie. But Alexander is elusive, mercurial; Charli is in over her head before she realizes just how self-destructive her life has become under his spell.

The Great War may be over, but brilliant scientist Billie McKennan continues the fight to be taken seriously. When a deliberate omission wins her a marine biologist position aboard an expedition funded by a wealthy eccentric, she quickly discovers she’s not the only one keeping secrets. The opulent Eurybia sets sail for the Gulf of California with a handful of well-to-do passengers and talented scientists on board. To Billie’s surprise, her ex-husband counts among them. The true mission of the voyage comes into question when a mysterious specimen is captured. And then science unexpectedly gives way to wild rumors and superstition. Soon, a sinister force takes hold of the vessel --- and everyone on it. Billie must reconcile her beliefs with the reality of what she encounters in the vermilion sea. But how much is she willing to sacrifice in order to survive?

Fern’s dream of becoming a published author is finally coming true. After years of rejection, her debut novel has sold, and she’s ready to join the supportive online community of fellow debuts. But when she discovers her high school bully, Haven, has landed a major book deal and will be debuting alongside her, old wounds reopen. As the pandemic forces everyone online, tensions escalate in their writing community. While Haven seems to succeed effortlessly, Fern watches her own career crumble. Yet beneath their polished personas lies a darker truth about their shared past --- one involving a lost friend, Dani, and secrets neither wants revealed. Fern isn’t the same person Haven bullied all those years ago. She’s learned that the best revenge stories aren’t written --- they’re lived. And she’s been plotting this one for years.

Ana Robbins was an Olympic star in the making --- until tragedy forced her to leave that world behind. At the age of 16, she gave up her dream and never looked back. 14 years later, she’s a successful defense attorney, revered for her work with minors. But when her former coach turns up dead, Ana lands right back where it all began, and abruptly ended: The Palace, a world-renowned skating facility nestled high in the mountains of Colorado. Ana returns to The Palace to defend the young skater accused of the brutal crime --- Grace Montgomery. Despite her claims of innocence, all evidence points squarely at Grace’s guilt, and she’s days away from facing charges of first-degree murder. But Ana’s investigation dredges up childhood memories of her own, triggering the fear that permeates this place where she once lived and trained far from home as an “Orphan.”

Homer’s ILIAD and ODYSSEY were not the only ancient tales of the Trojan War. In SON OF NOBODY, Yann Martel composes a new legend: the Psoad, an epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight at Troy. Psoas meets his doom and the poem of his life is lost --- until a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, Harlow Donne, discovers its relics 30 centuries later. As Harlow assembles and comments on the fragments in footnotes, he retrieves memories of his wife and daughter and grapples with questions of ambition, family and responsibility in both the ancient and modern worlds.

When asked what matters to her the most, Kate would, of course, say her children and her husband. Because she loves her life. Even when it involves making a costume late into the night, scouring the supermarket for the only bread rolls her children will eat and working during any spare moment in between. And she has found the way to hang onto her sanity in the process: Hours stolen away, once every few months, to have sex with another man. Until one such rendezvous when Kate turns on the television to discover that the very London hotel they’re in has been taken under siege. And with that, she knows that nothing will ever be the same. In the confines of a room with everything at stake, Kate is left to contemplate what has led her here, in hiding with a man who is not her husband while her beloved family waits at home.

Legendary mystery writer Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel about detective Sam Spade: THE MALTESE FALCON, the most famous private-eye story ever told. But the case was never really solved. The priceless golden, bejeweled bird that men and women had been dying to possess turned out to be a fake. Now, Max Allan Collins brings closure to this crime classic, reuniting all the surviving members of the original cast alongside femme fatales, crooked collectors and greedy gangsters for one more thrilling, deadly chase through the streets, wharves, morgues, bars and back alleys of 1920s San Francisco --- and finally answers the question: Whatever became of the Maltese falcon?

Once a globe-trotting anthropologist, Harry Lancaster is now certain that all his grand adventures are behind him. Recently widowed and suffering from a fractured hip, Harry spends his days and nights behind a pair of binoculars, nose-deep in his neighbors’ affairs. His millennial caregiver, Emma, is determined to get him out of his armchair and back into the world. Fate intervenes when Harry’s mysterious neighbor Sue phones, pleading for help. But instead of rescuing her, Harry and Emma find Sue dead: poisoned, days after a break-in at Sue’s house. Harry resolves to find out what happened, and Emma insists on going along for the ride. Together, they discover motives and suspects abound in Harry’s quaint condominium community --- putting them both in the crosshairs of a cold-blooded killer.

In August 2020, a group of nurses are working in the ICU at a hospital in San Bernardino at the height of a COVID surge: Larette Embers, whose husband, Grief, is an animal control officer; Cherrise Martinez, whose husband died years ago in a car crash, and whose daughter, Raquel, has been sent to a Coachella date farm to live with her great-aunt to avoid the virus; and Marisol Manalang, born in the Philippines but based in Sacramento. As the nurses struggle with the skyrocketing number of sick patients, Cherisse's daughter goes missing. Grief's friend Johnny Frias, a California Highway Patrol officer, joins the search to find her. The resulting journey leads to new love and loss, pushing all our characters to their breaking points.