Adult

A seat at the anchor desk of the most-watched morning show. An adoring husband and a Princeton-bound daughter. Peyton is that woman. She has it all. Skye, her sister, is a stay-at-home mom living in a glitzy suburb of New York. But she’s looking for something real and dreams of a life beyond the PTA and pickup. Max, Peyton’s bright and quirky 17-year-old daughter, is poised to kiss her fancy private school goodbye and head off to pursue her dreams in film. She’s waited her entire life for this opportunity. One little lie. That’s all it takes. For the illusions to crack. For resentments to surface. Suddenly the grass doesn’t look so green. And they’re left wondering: Will they have what it takes to survive the truth?

J. Nicole Jones is the only daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, a family that grew rich building the hotels and seafood restaurants that draw tourists to Myrtle Beach. But at home, she is surrounded by violence and capriciousness: a grandfather who beats his wife, a barman father who dreams of being a country music star. At one time, Jones' parents can barely afford groceries; at another, her volatile grandfather presents her with a fur coat. After a girlhood of extreme wealth and deep debt, of ghosts and folklore, of cruel men and unwanted spectacle, Jones finds herself face to face with an explosive possibility concerning her long-abused grandmother that she can neither speak nor shake.

Twenty years ago, an unspeakable tragedy rocked Rose Yates' small, affluent hometown…and only Rose and her family know the truth about what happened. Haunted by guilt, Rose escaped into a new life. Now she seems to have it all: a marriage, a son, a career. And then her husband is found dead. As far as Detective Colin Pearson is concerned, Rose is guilty. Her marriage wasn't as happy as she'd led everyone to believe, and she's connected to a 20-year-old cold case. Grieving her husband and struggling to make ends meet, Rose returns home, hoping to finally confront her domineering father and unstable sister. But memories of a horrific crime echo through the house, and Rose soon learns that she can't trust anyone, especially not the people closest to her.

In a tiny settlement on the west coast of Greenland, 11-year-old Aleq and his best friend, frequent trespassers at a mining site exposed to mountains of long-buried and thawing permafrost, carry what they pick up back into their village. PHASE SIX follows Aleq, one of the few survivors of the initial outbreak, through his identification and radical isolation as the likely index patient. While he shoulders both a crushing guilt for what he may have done and the hopes of a world looking for answers, we also meet two Epidemic Intelligence Service investigators dispatched from the CDC --- Jeannine, an epidemiologist and daughter of Algerian immigrants, and Danice, an M.D. and lab wonk. As they attempt to head off the cataclysm, Jeannine does what she can to sustain Aleq.

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year, the familial and cultural dimensions of grief, and the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page --- and never without touches of rich, honest humor --- Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story.

Strange dealings are afoot in the Apostolic Palace --- a nun leapt to her death shortly after participating in a seemingly routine exorcism. But when a priest clad in Gammarelli and a Vatican commissario with an almost unholy level of sex appeal turn up at her door, Auntie Poldi is shocked to hear that she’s a suspect in their case. She will need all the help she can get to clear her name, but her nephew has been distracted by a love affair gone sour, someone in the town has been spraying graffiti death threats on her front door, and her local friends seem to be avoiding her. And even Vito Montana balks when Poldi discovers that the case hinges on a lost Madonna statue, stolen years ago from the pope himself.

When Emma Lawson, the youngest lead government ethics investigator in California's capital, takes a day off to help her best friend, Kate, prepare for the opening of her new business, Rainbow Alley Preschool, the morning takes a shocking turn. The school's most high-profile enrollee --- Vivian Lange, the governor's granddaughter --- is kidnapped, at the same time Kate's teenage son, Luke, goes missing. Emma is quickly drawn to a web of clues that point toward sordid secrets and a cold-case murder in a shadow world of bigotry and hate. Over a desperate and harrowing 48 hours, Emma races against the clock to solve the most important investigation of her life.

The Briscoe family is once again the talk of their small town when March returns to East Texas two years after he was caught having an affair with his brother's wife. His mother, June, hardly welcomes him back with open arms. Her husband's own past affairs have made her tired of being the long-suffering spouse. Is it, perhaps, time for a change? Within days of March's arrival, someone is dead, marriages are upended, and even the strongest of alliances are shattered. In the end, the ties that hold them together might be exactly what drag them all down.

In TINY TALES, Alexander McCall Smith explores romance, ambition, kindness and happiness in 30 short stories accompanied by 30 witty cartoons designed by Iain McIntosh. Here we meet the first Australian pope, who hopes to finally find some peace and quiet back home in Perth; a psychotherapist turned motorcycle racetrack manager; and an aspiring opera singer who gets her unlikely break onstage. And, of course, we spend time in McCall Smith’s beloved Scotland, where we are introduced to progressive Vikings, a group of housemates with complex romantic entanglements, and a couple of globe-trotting dentists. These tales and illustrations depict the full scope of human experience and reveal the rich tapestry of life --- painted in miniature.

Brian Broome’s early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward PUNCH ME UP TO THE GODS. Brian’s recounting of his experiences --- in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious and heartbreaking glory --- reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play crucial roles in our misfit’s origin story. But it is Brian’s voice in the retelling that shows the true depth of vulnerability for young Black boys that is often quietly near to bursting at the seams.