Adult

Eudora Honeysett is done with this noisy, moronic world. She has witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age and has lived a full life. At 85, she isn’t going to leave things to chance. Her end will be on her terms. With one call to a clinic in Switzerland, a plan is set in motion. Then she meets 10-year-old Rose Trewidney and is soon embarking on a series of adventures with her and their affable fellow neighbor, the recently widowed Stanley. While the trio of unlikely BFFs grow closer and await the arrival of Rose’s new baby sister, Eudora is reminded of her own childhood and realizes she must come to terms with what lies ahead. But now that her joy for life has been rekindled, how can she possibly say goodbye?

What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the question facing the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, when the DNAMIX machine appears in their local grocery store. Its promise is amazing: With just a quick swab of your cheek and two dollars, the device claims to use the science of DNA to tell you your life's potential. With enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, soon the former teachers, nurses and shopkeepers of Deerfield are abruptly changing course to pursue their destinies as magicians, cowboys and athletes --- including the novel's main characters, Douglas Hubbard and his wife, Cherilyn, who both believed they were perfectly happy until they realized they could dream for more.

That elusive Holy Grail of modern physics, A Theory of Everything (ToE), would explain the universe in a single set of equations. Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking tackled the problem during their lifetimes, and the quest continues today in laboratories around the world. Leaving string theory, galaxy clusters and supersymmetry to the Quantum Computer and Hadron Collider crowd, Laura Pedersen has taken up the rest --- that is, A Theory of Everything Else (ToEE), based on her own groundbreaking experiences as a dog walker, camp counselor and Bingo caller. Pedersen’s essays are a series of colorful helium balloons that entertain as well as affirm and uplift.

After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of RED PILL arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches “Blue Lives” --- a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life --- and soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all. When some friends drag him to a party where he meets Anton, the creator of “Blue Lives,” the narrator starts to believe that the two of them are involved in a cosmic battle, and that Anton is "red-pilling" his viewers --- turning them toward an ugly, alt-rightish worldview --- ultimately forcing the narrator to wonder if he is losing his mind.

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” In MILL TOWN, Arsenault illuminates the rise and collapse of the working class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease.

In the first portrait of James Beard in 25 years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard’s life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet’s complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the 20th century. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an American cuisine. THE MAN WHO ATE TOO MUCH is informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything Beard wrote.

“My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts,” Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges, she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. Described by the New York Times as a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?”

Hilo, Hawaiʻi Chief Detective Koa Kāne learns that an elementary school was placed atop a volcanic vent, which has now exploded. The subsequent murders of the school’s contractor and architect only add urgency to his search for the truth. As Koa’s investigation heats up, his brother collapses in jail from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor. Using his connections, Koa devises a risky plan to win his brother’s freedom. As Koa gradually unravels the obscure connections between multiple suspects, he uncovers a 40-year-old conspiracy. When he is about to apprehend the perpetrators, his investigation suddenly becomes entwined with his brother’s future, forcing Koa to choose between justice for the victims and his brother’s freedom.

When NYPD detectives Paul Rossi and Hamilton P. Turner begin investigating the Sutton Place murder of an Italian air force pilot, they find themselves sucked into the potential cover-up of the Ustica massacre, the most horrific aviation crime in Italian history. But as they begin investigating, Rossi and Turner come up against NYPD bureaucratic obstacles and stonewalling by the Italian Consulate in New York City. Lieutenant Laura Muro, the policewoman sister of the victim, comes to New York to aid the investigation, but soon the trio find themselves in the crosshairs of the Gladio, Italy’s powerful, shadowy political cabal whose reach extends to the highest reaches of New York political and ruling class.

Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has always borne witness to the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries, the fates of three women are inextricably linked to this place and to one another. Sarah, accused of being a witch, is fleeing for her life; Ruth, in the aftermath of the Second World War, is navigating a new marriage and the strange waters of the local community; and six decades later, Viv, still mourning the death of her father, is cataloging Ruth's belongings in the now-empty house. As each woman's story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that their choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men who seek to control them. But in sisterhood there is also the possibility of survival and a new way of life.