Adult

Position Vacant: Two ancient old women residing at Providence Retirement Villa seek male assistant for casual exploitation and good-natured humiliation. The salary is generous and the employers are 90 years old, so how hard could the job be? Ruthie Midona will work in Providence’s front office, and be at the beck and call of the wealthy and eccentric Parloni Sisters, forever. Teddy Prescott devotes his life to sleeping, tattooing and avoiding seriousness. When Teddy needs a place to crash, he makes a deal with his developer dad. Teddy can stay in one of Providence’s on-site maintenance cottages but only if he works there and starts to grow up. An unimpressed Ruthie knows how this sweetly selfish rich boy can earn his keep --- and be out of her hair in under a week. After all, there is a position vacant.

Jonathan Stride's best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve's yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps, but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride's partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him? Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but he won't tell her why.

Jack Swyteck receives an emergency text from Riverside Day School. Both his daughter, Righley, and his wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, are in danger. Andie hears the fire alarms, then loud popping noises and screams coming from the hallway. The police find a handgun on the school grounds registered to a Muslim man named Amir Khoury. Within minutes Al Qaeda claims responsibility. Amir is married to Andie’s friend, Lilly, a WASP whose bloodline goes back to the American Revolution. When Xavier, Amir and Lilly’s oldest child, confesses to the crime, the local community’s anti-Muslim fervor explodes to levels unseen since 9/11. Jack must unearth the Khourys’ family secrets in order to expose the shocking truth and save his client from certain death.

Serge Storms has decided to investigate his own history using one of those DNA services from late-night TV. Excited to construct a family tree, he and Coleman hit the road to meet his kin. Serge is thrilled to discover he may be related to a notorious serial killer who’s terrorized the state for 20 years and never been caught. Which of his newfound relatives will be the one to help him hunt down this deranged maniac? Serge doesn’t know that a dogged investigator from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is also hot on the trail. Then he meets a park ranger who’s also longing to make a family reconnection. But all is not as it appears on the surface, and Serge’s newfound friendship in the mysterious swamps of Florida may lead to deadly results.

When Bertram Telemann, a developmentally disabled man, goes missing from a local diner near Greenbury, the entire community of the small upstate New York town volunteers to search the surrounding woods. When no trace of him is found, the disappearance quickly becomes an official missing persons case and is assigned to detectives Peter Decker and his partner, Tyler McAdams. As their investigation deepens, Decker becomes convinced that Bertram had left with someone he knew. Soon he discovers that Elsie Schulung, a recently fired nurse who had worked at the home, seemed to be especially interested in Bertram. But answers prove elusive when Elsie disappears and human blood is found in her kitchen. However, the complications are only beginning.

When Jennifer Brady returns to Northern Arizona University for her sophomore year, she quickly becomes a big sister to her new roommate, Beth Rankin, a brilliant yet sheltered 16-year-old freshman. For a homeschooled Beth, college is her first taste of both freedom and unfettered access to the internet, and Jenny is concerned that she’s too naïve and rebellious for her own good. Her worries are well-founded because one day Beth vanishes, prompting Jenny to alert campus authorities, local police and her mom, Sheriff Joanna Brady --- who calls in a favor. Beth is found, but Jenny’s concern has unwittingly put her in the crosshairs of a criminal bent on revenge.

A peaceful Welsh village is thrown into turmoil when a terrified boy stumbles on a body in a nearby river. With little to go on, the village police turn to Scotland Yard for help in identifying the body. When Inspector Ian Rutledge is sent from London to find answers, he is given few clues --- a faded military tattoo on the victim’s arm and an unusual label in the collar of his shirt. They eventually lead him to the victim’s identity: Sam Milford. By all accounts, he was a good man and well-respected. Then why is his death so mysterious? Rutledge uncovers a web of lies swirling around a suicidal woman, a child’s tragic fate, another woman bent on protecting her past. But where among all the lies is the motive for murder?

Land --- whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city --- is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. In LAND, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing --- and have done --- with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet. The book examines in depth how we acquire land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do, come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: Who actually owns the world’s land --- and why does it matter?

Trent Preszler thought he was living his best life in a seaside Long Island home and working as the C.E.O. of a winery. After 14 years of silence, his estranged father called to say his cancer had worsened, leading an uncertain Trent to return to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive. His death left Trent, nearing forty, broken down, adrift and alone. He had left Trent only one item: a toolbox, an inheritance that befuddled him. But maybe that was the point. And with that came an epiphany: he would build something.

The girls of St John the Divine, an elite English boarding school, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys and chain-smoking cigarettes. For Josephine, now in her 30s, the years at St John were a lifetime ago. She hasn’t spoken to another Divine in 15 years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace. Yet, Josephine now inexplicably finds herself returning to her old stomping grounds. The visit provokes blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. With each memory that resurfaces, she circles closer to the violent secret at the heart of the school’s scandal. But the more Josephine recalls, the further her life unravels.