Adult

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was “just” an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? Her life is fascinating for its mysteries and its passions. She went surfing in Hawaii, loved fast cars, and was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why, despite all the evidence to the contrary, did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world that had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of a massively, internationally successful writer. It's also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.

New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison (1937–2016) was a writer with a poet’s economy of style and a trencherman’s appetites. Praised as a “national treasure” (Chicago Tribune) and published in 27 languages, he was one of this country’s most beloved and critically acclaimed authors. Best known for his poetry and fiction, such as LEGENDS OF THE FALL, DALVA and RETURNING TO EARTH, Harrison was also a prolific nonfiction writer, with columns running in Sports Illustrated and Esquire, and work in Outside, Field & Stream and others. The first collection of Harrison’s general nonfiction in 30 years, THE SEARCH FOR THE GENUINE is a sparkling, definitive volume of essays and journalism --- from the near-classic to the never-published.

In the lush world banking capital of Geneva, Switzerland, three young wealth managers (Catherine, Majid and Rafe) are handling investments for clients with dubious pedigrees. When problems with troubled investments are “fixed” by murders and bombs, they come to suspect that their clients are Mafiosi and terrorists. But by then they are accomplices, and under threat, and have no easy way to back out. Their efforts to save themselves --- and innocent lives --- are complicated by their being in a love triangle, by one of them secretly working with the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence to investigate the other two, and by the unexpected appearance of a detective from Nigeria who may or may not be in league with terrorists himself.

Little known in America but venerated as a martyr in Iran, Howard Baskerville was a 22-year-old Christian missionary from South Dakota who traveled to Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1907 for a two-year stint teaching English and preaching the gospel. He arrived in the midst of a democratic revolution led by a group of brilliant young firebrands committed to transforming their country into a fully self-determining, constitutional monarchy, one with free elections and an independent parliament. The Persian students Baskerville educated in English in turn educated him about their struggle for democracy, ultimately inspiring him to leave his teaching post and join them in their fight against a tyrannical shah and his British and Russian backers.

DINOSAURS is the story of a man named Gil who walks from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed love. After he arrives, new neighbors move into the glass-walled house next door, and his life begins to mesh with theirs. In this warmly textured, dryly funny and philosophical account of Gil’s unexpected devotion to the family, Lydia Millet explores the uncanny territory where the self ends and community begins --- what one person can do in a world beset by emergencies.

This anthology of exclusive new short stories offers tribute to the master of the pulp era --- Cornell Woolrich, who stands with Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and Dashiell Hammett as a legend in the genre. Enter a world of vengeful brides and black widows, where cold-blooded killers watch from every window and every sin shall be paid for, no matter how deep you bury them. See the chilling fate of a young woman, and the darkness in every family, in Joe R. Lansdale’s “Missing Sister”; the cold, calculating mind of an ambitious wife and her cheating husband in Samantha Lee Howe’s “Trophy Wife”; a reunion dinner ripped apart by conspiracies and violence in Susi Holliday’s “The Invitation”; and the tight-knit family of a New York dive bar explode into violence in William Boyle’s “New York Blues Redux.” 

In December 1960, Crystal Singer, her boyfriend Rick and three other MIT grad students take a cross-country road trip from Boston to Arizona to paint a message in the desert. Mars has been silent for 30 years, since the last time Earth solved one of the mathematical proofs the Martian civilization carved onto its surface. The latest proof, which seems to assert contradictory truths about distance, has resisted human understanding for decades. Crystal thinks she’s solved it, and Rick is intent on putting her answer to the test --- if he can keep her from cracking under the pressure on the way. But Crystal’s disappearance after the experiment will set him on a different path than he expected, forever changing the distance between them.

After immigrating from Jamaica to the United States, Prince Shakur’s family is rocked by the murder of Prince’s biological father in 1995. Behind the murder is a sordid family truth, scripted in the lines of a diary by an outlawed uncle hell-bent on avenging the murder of Prince’s father. As Shakur begins to unravel his family’s secrets, he must navigate the strenuous terrain of coming to terms with one’s inner self while confronting the steeped complexities of the Afro-diaspora. WHEN THEY TELL YOU TO BE GOOD charts Shakur’s political coming-of-age from closeted queer kid in a Jamaican family to radicalized adult traveler, writer and anarchist in Obama’s and Trump’s America.

The supernatural, the surreal and the all-too real. Such tales of the dark and the unknown have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows. The latest volume of The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror edited by fantasy aficionado Paula Guran offers more than 400 pages of tales from some of today’s finest writers of the fantastique, including Alix E. Harrow, Zen Cho and Elizabeth Hand. Indulge if you dare, because these 23 tales of terror are sure to delight as well as disturb!

After the trauma of his last case, and after three months spent recovering in Ireland, life is looking up for newly retired homicide detective Brian (Brick) Kavanagh. Back home in Washington, D.C., a new job shows promise when he’s asked to train criminology students in cold case techniques. Then he’s off to a whirlwind weekend in Chicago with Nora, an Aer Lingus flight attendant he’d met in Ireland. There he receives shocking news that his former partner’s wife and twin infants have been kidnapped. Brick rushes to D.C. to support Ron, the man who’s always had his back. But as days pass, Brick questions how well he really knows this man.