Adult

An army veteran with a career as a beat cop behind her, security guard Addie Finch finds Jonathan, a homeless teenager abandoned by his mother, holed up in a warehouse and vulnerable to the elements and to predators. Touched by the boy’s gentle nature and a wisdom beyond his years, Addie offers him temporary shelter in her garden shed in exchange for maintaining the sprawling property. It’s an act of kindness and purpose that means the world to Jonathan. But when Addie faces a situation that sends her internal world tumbling, the emotional connection with Jonathan becomes her lifeline as well. As both process past traumas, Addie and Jonathan forge a surrogate grandmother-grandson bond --- a chosen family that could restore trust and heal hearts they thought were broken forever.

Cold case reporter Sloane Grayson has come to a small mountain town in Virginia to solve a mystery. Thirty years ago, her mother was one of four women who vanished during a music festival. The event’s promoter was eventually convicted of their murders, and Sheriff CJ Taggart closed the case. But for Sloane, it’s still open. Because the bodies were never found. With Taggart now long dead, Sloane must make do with questioning the victims’ families and the few remaining witnesses once again. If they’re still willing to dredge up memories of a crime that made their town notorious. As for the incarcerated killer, he has always maintained his innocence. Sloane isn’t entirely convinced he’s lying. Somewhere nearby, unmarked graves conceal the bones and secrets of the dead. Sloane will do anything to find them and unearth the truth.

Alice Ingold has been kidnapped. Beautiful, blond and immensely privileged, Alice is the perfect victim for a true-crime-obsessed culture --- and for a masked duo with a singular purpose. Instead of a demand for ransom, her captors have a riddle, and they’re inviting the entire country to solve it. No one is more invested in the search than Alice’s parents: Catherine, a socialite with obscene generational wealth, and Brian, a visionary AI tech guru. But while Brian turns to machines to solve the problem, Catherine tries to crowdsource the solution. And America isn’t just watching the story unfold…it’s playing along. As an increasingly desperate Catherine strives to understand each new clue, a complex picture of the crime develops. Soon, everyone will see the kidnapping of Alice Ingold for what it is --- and Alice won’t be the only one who will need saving.

TWICE BLESSED is a beautifully written memoir that explores the depths of love, resilience and the true meaning of family. Stefanie Mercado Altman, Claire Altman and Stan Altman share an intimate and inspiring story about the bonds that define us, from adoption to caregiving and beyond. When Stefanie was adopted by Claire and Stan, their family was built on love and trust rather than biology. As they navigated the joys and struggles of parenting, they faced challenges that tested their resilience, including Stefanie’s search for identity and connection with her birth mother, Rosa, a gifted artist whose struggles with AIDS cast a long shadow. 

Shannon Wells is a private investigator who helps women with nowhere else to go. Last year, a woman named Faith Selby came to Shannon with a strange request: Find out who I really am. Shannon soon discovered that Faith was hiding a whole other life, but was unable to penetrate the web of mystery the woman had built around her past. Now Faith is dead. The only clue to who she was and why she was murdered is an old photograph of a little girl in the rain outside a Midwestern motel. The hunt for answers takes Shannon from the hot beaches of Florida to a remote small town in Michigan as she peels away layer after layer of a shocking cold case that has rippled violently into the present. With each secret she uncovers, the danger around her grows --- and forces Shannon to confront the demons hiding in her own past.

Sweetwater Peak, Wyoming, was supposed to be in Collins Cartwright's rearview mirror. But when she finds out that a developer is trying to buy her parents’ antiques shop out from under them, she doesn’t have a choice --- at least, that’s what she tells her family. They don’t need to know that she has lost her job and is out of money. Or that the ghosts who have always been her companions have recently gone silent. Lucky for her, the new-to-town upholsterer has a room for rent above his store. Unluckily, it is absolutely crawling with more ghosts who are freezing her out. When Brady Cooper agrees to let the elusive Collins stay in his spare room, he doesn’t know that she’s absolutely bonkers. But as they begin to get closer, the lines between them start to blur, leaving them wondering if their temporary arrangement could be something more permanent. 

Librarian Ingrid Dahl has been happily dating her college boyfriend, Cory, for 11 years without ever discussing marriage. But when Ingrid’s sister announces her engagement to a woman she’s only been dating for two years, Ingrid and Cory feel pressured to consider their future. Neither has ever been with anybody else, so they make an unconventional decision. They'll take a one-month break to date other people, then they'll reunite and move toward marriage. Ingrid even has someone in mind: her charmingly grumpy coworker, Macon Nowakowski, on whom she’s secretly crushed for years. But plans go awry, and when the month ends, Ingrid and Cory realize they’re not ready to resume their relationship --- and Ingrid’s harmless crush on Macon has turned into something much more complicated.

A woman invests in a series of sex robots to get her off and comes to terms with the limitations --- and real threat --- of automated companionship. A knowing young student pursues an affair with an older man, the poet in residence at the university where she studies writing, and weighs the benefits and costs of their arrangement. A mother moves to a farm with her family and must come to terms with the violence simmering beneath her skin. NEAR FLESH is the first and only collection of short fiction by Katherine Dunn, the author of the bestselling novel GEEK LOVE. These 19 stories are attuned to the spit and grit of tough living. They pulse with yearning for a more prosperous life, for sexual satisfaction, to escape abusive husbands and the disappointments of convention.

When Father Tim’s wife, Cynthia, asks what he wants for Christmas, he pens the answer in a love letter that bares his most private feelings. Then the letter goes missing and circulates among his astonished neighbors. So much for private. Can a letter change a life? Ask Helene, the piano teacher who has avoided her feelings for a lifetime. Ask Hope, the village bookseller who desperately needs something that’s impossibly out of reach. Or, if you’d like to know how a brush with death can be the portal to a happy marriage, Cynthia will tell you all about it. In MY BELOVED, Harley gets an important letter of his own; a broken heart teaches the Old Mayor, Esther Cunningham, a lesson that’s been a long time coming; and thanks to Lace and Dooley, readers get what they’ve been waiting for: Sadie.

When the kidnapping of a little girl shocks the Mexican capital, the lives of two very different women become forever intertwined. Gloria Felipe lives a comfortable upper-class life with her husband and five children. Nuria Valencia comes from a working-class background and has been desperately trying to get pregnant in order to save her marriage. After traditional methods produce no results, she subjects herself to horrific fertility treatments designed and administered by men, and ultimately tries to adopt but is rejected on the basis that a woman in her early 30s is too old to adopt a baby. Failed time and again by the system and about to lose hope, she is presented with an opportunity that seems almost too good to be true.