Adult

When Jax receives nine missed calls from Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. Jax learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property --- and discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she ever could have imagined. In 1929, 37-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. Her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the Northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the water is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.

Two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Commissario Guido Brunetti’s curiosity is aroused by the behavior of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. He and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, discover that one of the young men works for a man rumored to be involved in more sinister nighttime activities in the Laguna. As a result, Brunetti enlists the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organized.

When John Edgar Wideman won the PEN Malamud Award in 2019, he joined a list of esteemed writers --- from Eudora Welty to George Saunders --- all of whom are acknowledged masters of the short story. Wideman’s commitment to short fiction has been lifelong, and here he gathers a representative selection from throughout his career, stories that challenge what defines, separates and unites us; dare to push form and defy convention; and, to quote Wideman, seek to “deconstruct the given formulas of African American culture and life.”

THE COMMITTED follows the man of two minds as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother, Bon. The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing. Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, Man, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals whom he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt,” he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils he has not foreseen, and he will need all his wits, resourcefulness and moral flexibility if he is to prevail.

Phoebe Hayes is in search of excitement and adventure. But the recent death of her father has so devastated her that her mother wants her to remain home in Baltimore to recover. Phoebe wants to return to New York, not only to chase the glamorous life she so desperately craves but also to confront Ivan, the older man who wronged her. With her best friend Carmen, she escapes to the East Village, disappearing into an underworld haunted by artists, It Girls and lost souls. Carmen juggles her junkie-poet boyfriend and a sexy painter, while, as Astrid the Star Girl, Phoebe tells fortunes in a nightclub and plots her revenge on Ivan. When the intoxicating brew of sex, drugs and self-destruction leads Phoebe to betray her friend, Carmen disappears, and Phoebe begins an unstoppable descent into darkness.

The summer of 1937 will be a turning point for 14-year-old Houston “Huck” Finn. When he and a friend find a dead body in a local creek, with a rare Lindbergh flight watch on its wrist, it seems like a sign. Huck is building his own airplane. That summer also marks the arrival of his cousin Annelise, sent to live with the family under mysterious circumstances. It turns out she has had flying lessons --- another sign. As Huck’s airplane takes shape, so does his burgeoning understanding of the world, including the battle over worldliness vs. godliness that has split Annelise from her family and, in a quieter way, divides Huck’s family. Meanwhile, there’s the matter of the watch, which the dead man’s cohort of bank robbers would very much like back.

A young woman sits in her apartment, watching the small daily dramas of her neighbors across the way. Journeying from her war-torn Syrian homeland to this unnamed British city has traumatized her into silence, and her only connection to the world is the column she writes for a magazine under the pseudonym “the Voiceless,” where she tries to explain the refugee experience without sensationalizing it --- or revealing anything about herself. Gradually, though, the boundaries of her world expand. When an anti-Muslim hate crime rattles the neighborhood, she has to make a choice: Will she remain a voiceless observer, or become an active participant in a community that is quickly becoming her own?

As soon as Gail and Jon Durbin bring home their adopted baby Maya, she becomes the glue that mends their fractured marriage. But the Durbins' social worker, Paige, can’t find the teenage birth mother to sign the consent forms. By law, Carli has 72 hours to change her mind. Without her signature, the adoption will unravel. Carli is desperate to pursue her dreams, so giving her baby a life with the Durbins seems like the right choice --- until her own mother throws down an ultimatum. Soon Carli realizes how few choices she has. As the hours tick by, Paige knows that the Durbins’ marriage won’t survive the loss of Maya, but everyone’s life is shattered when they --- and baby Maya --- disappear without a trace.

Bored, restless and lonely, Ali never expected her life would change as dramatically as it did the day she walked into the local Stop & Shop. But she’s never met anyone like Justine, the store’s cashier. Ali applies for a job on the spot, securing a place for herself in Justine’s glittering vicinity. As Justine takes Ali under her wing, Ali learns how best to bag groceries, what foods to eat (and not to eat), how to shoplift, who to admire, and who she can become outside of her cold home, where her inattentive grandmother hardly notices the changes in her. Ali becomes more and more fixated on Justine, reshaping herself in her new idol’s image, leading to a series of events that spiral from superficial to seismic.

Posy Fairweather is over the moon when her boyfriend, Matt, proposes in what is probably the most romantic way possible --- on top of a mountain, in a thunderstorm, like something from a Nicholas Sparks novel. But a few days later he dumps her. Crushed and humiliated, Posy wonders why all her romances have always been such train wrecks. Determined to gain some insight, Posy resolves to get online, track down her exes and ask them. Which doors from Posy’s past should stay closed? Which might open? Can she learn from past mistakes? And what if she has let Mr. Right slip through her fingers along the way?