Adult

Standing with his children near his grandmother’s grave on a recent trip to Ischia, an island off the coast of Naples, Lorenzo Carcaterra realized how much of his life has been shaped by the women who taught him how to look for joy and overcome sorrow. This book is his tribute to them. Nonna Maria, his grandmother, gave him his first taste of a loving home during the summers he spent with her as a teenager on Ischia. His mother, Raffaela, dealt with daily hardships: a loveless and abusive marriage, the burden of debt and a life of dread. The third woman is his wife, Susan, a gifted editor and his professional champion. Their marriage lasted three decades before her death from lung cancer in 2013.

Once a bestselling author, Melissa Henderson now pours all her energy into renovating a Victorian house nestled in the foothills of rural New England. Six years ago, she lost her young son to cancer, and her marriage dissolved. After a wildfire that threatens her home appears on the news, Melissa receives a call from her sister, Hattie. They were close once, but that was before Melissa withdrew from the world. Now Hattie, who became a nun at 25, is determined to help Melissa turn a new page. At 16, a pregnant Melissa was sent to a gloomy convent in Ireland to have --- and give up --- her baby. Hattie now feels compelled to embark on a journey that will change both their lives forever, and track down the child Melissa gave up.

Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns that a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment.

Junior barrister Daniel Pitt is summoned to the scene of a murder in the London district known as Mile End. The victim is a senior barrister from the same firm. The firm’s head, Marcus fford Croft, may know more than he admits, but his memory is not what it used to be. Daniel and Kitteridge’s inquiries lead them to a local brothel and to an opium den, but also to a wealthy shipbuilder crucial to Britain’s effort to build up its fleet, which may soon face the fearsome naval might of Germany. Daniel finds his path blocked by officials at every turn, and even his father receives a chilling warning from a powerful source. Suddenly, not just Daniel but his whole family --- including his beloved mother, Charlotte --- is in danger.

Esme spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. One day, a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath their sorting table. Esme rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means “slave girl,” she begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so, she must venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Joe Goldberg is done with the cities. He’s done with the muck and the posers, done with Love. Now he’s saying hello to nature, to simple pleasures on a cozy island in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in a long time, he can just breathe. He gets a job at the local library, and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle, he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old-fashioned way…by providing a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand. Over time, they’ll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after. The trouble is, Mary Kay already has a life. She’s a mother. She’s a friend. She’s…busy. Hopefully, with Joe’s encouragement and undying support, Mary Kay will do the right thing and make room for him.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s narrator, a woman questioning her place in the world, wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home acts as a companion and interlocutor. We follow her to the pool she frequents, and to the train station that leads to her mother, who is mired in her own solitude after her husband’s untimely death. Among those who appear on this woman’s path are colleagues with whom she feels ill at ease, casual acquaintances, and “him,” a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. Until one day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun’s vital heat, her perspective will abruptly change.

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. Unfortunately, he has slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan, and she sees his old girlfriends everywhere. His ex-wife, Aggie, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from his apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it --- never mind four. Five if you count Aggie's eccentric husband, Gary. But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon her life is permanently intertwined with Duncan's, Aggie's and Jimmy's, and she knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane's eyes?

When someone falls tragically to her death at The Seafarer, a glamorous Boston hotel, the event ripples through the lives of four very different people. Bride-to-be Riley is at the hotel to plan her wedding. Her bossy mother-in-law has taken charge, and her fiancé hasn’t seemed to notice. Jean-Paul, the hotel’s manager, must devote all his energy to this latest scandal at work. Claire, recently widowed, comes to town to connect with a long-lost love, but has too much changed in the last 30 years? And then there’s Jason, whose romantic getaway with his girlfriend has not exactly gone the way he'd hoped. Over three sun-drenched days, as the truth about the woman who died --- and the secret she was hiding --- is uncovered, these four strangers become linked in the most unexpected of ways.

August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and drawn curtains that she finds on her arrival are not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London. Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed --- a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.