Adult

England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on. A young Latin tutor --- penniless and bullied by a violent father --- falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

Just when Isabel and Jamie finally seem to have some time to connect and unwind, a wealthy Edinburgh resident comes to Isabel with an unusual request --- he would like her to become the executor of his large Highland estate. He has only a short time to live and, without any direct heirs, is struggling to determine which of his three cousins would be the best caretaker. Should the estate go to the bohemian artist, the savvy city property developer, or the quiet, unassuming bachelor? All the while, Isabel is also busy helping her niece, Cat, who, though perennially unlucky in love, appears to have finally found her match in the leonine Leo. But Isabel is beginning to suspect that Leo might be interested in more than Cat’s charms --- namely, her access to the family trust.

Faye has loved Jack since they were students at business school. Jack, the perpetual golden boy, grew up wealthy, unlike Faye, who has worked hard to bury a dark past. When Jack needed help launching a new company, Faye left school to support him, waitressing by day and working as his strategist by night. When the business took off, Faye stayed home and cared for their daughter. Now, she is wealthier than she ever imagined, but more and more removed from the excitement of the business world. And none of the perks of wealth make up for the fact that Jack has begun to treat her coldly. When Faye discovers that he's having an affair, the polished façade of their life cracks wide open.

Miles Lambert breaks the devastating news that Pete Riley’s son, Theo, isn’t actually his son --- he is the Lamberts’, switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they’ve been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again. The two families take comfort in shared good intentions, eagerly entwining their very different lives in the hope of becoming one unconventional modern family. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about the night their children were switched. How much can they trust the other parents --- or even each other?

Clay Edison has his hands full. He has a new baby who won't sleep and is working the graveyard shift. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there? No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call --- this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing fifty years ago, the man says. Or at least I think she did. It’s a little complicated. Clay’s relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. And it can be murderous.

Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, it embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on “Top of the Pops,” the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon and San Francisco during the autumn of ’68. David Mitchell’s novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper; of music, madness and idealism. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us?

Gail Caldwell traces a path from her west Texas girlhood through her emergence as a young daredevil, then as a feminist --- a journey that reflected seismic shifts in the culture itself. Caldwell’s travels took her to California and Mexico and dark country roads, and the dangers she encountered were rivaled only by the personal demons she faced. BRIGHT PRECIOUS THING is the captivating story of a woman’s odyssey, her search for adventure giving way to something more profound: the evolution of a writer and a woman, a struggle to embrace one’s life as a precious thing.

B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, a neurotic and underappreciated film critic, stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider --- a film he’s convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made --- a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur 90 years to complete --- B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius. All that’s left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. 

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight-year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents --- her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality.

On the eve of the 1948 election, America was a fractured country. Racism was rampant, foreign relations were fraught, and political parties were more divided than ever. Americans were certain that President Harry S. Truman’s political career was over. The only man in the world confident that Truman would win was Mr. Truman himself. And win he did. The year 1948 was a fight for the soul of a nation. In DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN, A. J. Baime sheds light on one of the most action-packed six months in American history, as Truman not only triumphs, but oversees watershed events --- the passing of the Marshall plan, the acknowledgement of Israel as a new state, the careful attention to the origins of the Cold War, and the first desegregation of the military.