Adult

After nearly two decades, Noel Post, an editor for a major New York publishing house, returns to her childhood home in Salt Lake City to see her estranged, dying father. What she believed would be a brief visit turns into something more as she inherits the bookstore her father fought to keep alive. Reeling from loneliness, a recent divorce and unanticipated upheavals in her world, Noel begins receiving letters from an anonymous source, each one containing thoughts and lessons about her life and her future. She begins to reacquaint herself with the bookstore and the people she left behind, and in doing so, she starts to unravel the reality of her painful childhood and the truth about her family.

Christie Tate had just been named the top student in her law school class and finally had her eating disorder under control. Why then was she driving through Chicago fantasizing about her own death? Why was she envisioning putting an end to the isolation and sadness that still plagued her in spite of her achievements? Enter Dr. Rosen, a therapist who calmly assures her that if she joins one of his psychotherapy groups, he can transform her life. All she has to do is show up and be honest about everything. Christie is skeptical, insisting that she is defective, but Dr. Rosen issues a nine-word prescription that will change everything: “You don’t need a cure, you need a witness.” So begins her entry into the strange, terrifying and ultimately life-changing world of group therapy.

Bud Threadgoode grew up in the bustling little railroad town of Whistle Stop with his mother, Ruth, and his Aunt Idgie. Together they ran the town’s popular Whistle Stop Cafe, known far and wide for its fun and famous fried green tomatoes. But sadly, as the railroad yards shut down and Whistle Stop became a ghost town, nothing was left but boarded-up buildings and memories of a happier time. Then one day, Bud decides to take one last trip, just to see what has become of his beloved Whistle Stop. In so doing, he discovers new friends, as well as surprises about Idgie’s life and the town itself. He also sets off a series of events that change his life and the lives of his daughter and many others.

Welcome to Cobble Hill. In this eclectic Brooklyn neighborhood, private storms brew amongst four married couples and their children. There’s ex-groupie Mandy, so underwhelmed by motherhood and her current physical state that she fakes a debilitating disease to get the attention of her husband, Stuart. There’s the unconventional new school nurse, Peaches, on whom Stuart has an unrequited crush, and her disappointing husband Greg, who wears noise-cancelling headphones everywhere. Roy, a newly transplanted British novelist, has lost the thread of his next novel and his marriage to Wendy. Around the corner, Tupper, a nervous, introverted industrial designer, struggles to pin down his elusive artist wife, Elizabeth.

It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one in the Dirty South wants to admit it. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. Obsessed with avenging his lost family, his life is about to take a shocking turn. Witness the dawning of a conscience. Witness the birth of a hunter. Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker.

I’ve been in this life for 50 years, been trying to work out its riddle for 42, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last 35. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far.

Growing up amid Kansas wheat fields and airplane factories, Sarah Smarsh witnessed firsthand the particular vulnerabilities --- and strengths --- of women in working poverty. Meanwhile, country songs by female artists played in the background, telling powerful stories about life, men, hard times and surviving. In her family, she writes that “country music was foremost a language among women. It’s how we talked to each other in a place where feelings aren’t discussed.” And no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton. In SHE COME BY IT NATURAL, Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women as exemplified by Dolly Parton’s life and art.

When six-year-old Ibrahimah is approached in his rural village one day by Marabout Ahmed, a seemingly kind stranger and highly regarded teacher, the tides of his life turn forever. Ibrahimah is sent to the capital city of Dakar to join his cousin, Étienne, in studying the Koran under Marabout Ahmed for a year. But instead of the days of learning that Ibrahimah’s parents imagine, the young boys, called Talibé, are forced to beg in the streets in order to line their teacher’s pockets. To make it back home, Étienne and Ibrahimah must help each other survive both the dangers posed by their Marabout and the darker sides of Dakar: threats of black-market organ traders, rival packs of Talibé, and mounting student protest on the streets.

More so than almost anyone outside of John McCain’s immediate family, Mark Salter had unparalleled access to and served to influence the late Senator’s thoughts and actions, cowriting seven books with him and acting as a valued confidant. Now, in THE LUCKIEST MAN, Salter draws on the storied facets of McCain’s early biography as well as the later-in-life political philosophy for which the nation knew and loved him, delivering an intimate and comprehensive account of McCain’s life and philosophy. Salter covers all the major events of McCain’s life --- his peripatetic childhood, his naval service --- but also introduces aspects of the man that the public rarely saw and hardly knew.

A top real-estate executive, Everly Lancaster finds that her work is her life, leaving no space for anything (or anyone) else. Sensing her stress, Everly’s boss insists she take December off. But after her vengeful assistant books a guided cruise in the Amazon instead of the luxury beach vacation she expected, Everly is horrified to realize that she’s about to spend the next two weeks trapped in the rain forest. Not even Asher Adams, the ship’s charming naturalist, can convince Everly that the trip will be unforgettable. Slowly but surely, she realizes he is right: the sights are spectacular. And with each passing day, Everly’s relationship with Asher deepens, forcing her to take a long, hard look at her priorities.