Adult

In the spring of 1540, Henry VIII is desperate to be rid of his unappealing German queen, Anna of Kleve, and casts an amorous eye on a pretty 19-year-old brunette, Katheryn Howard. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, Katheryn is a niece of the Duke of Norfolk, England’s premier Catholic peer, who is scheming to replace Anna of Kleve with a good Catholic queen. A fun-loving, eager participant in the life of the royal court, Katheryn readily succumbs to the king’s attentions when she is intentionally pushed into his path by her ambitious family. But Katheryn has a past of which Henry knows nothing, and which comes back increasingly to haunt her. What happens next to this naïve and much-wronged girl is one of the saddest chapters in English history.

Alice always thought she'd see her brother again. Rob ran away when he was 15, with so many years left to find his way home. But his funeral happened first. Now that she has to clear out her childhood home in Georgia, the memories come flooding in, bringing with them an autopsy report showing her family's lies --- and sealed, addressed letters from Rob. In a search for answers to questions she's always been afraid to ask, Alice delivers the letters. Each dares her to open her eyes to her family's dark past --- and her own role in it. But it's the last letter, addressed to her brother's final home in New Orleans, that will force her to choose if she'll let the secrets break her or finally bring her home.

FUNNY WEATHER brings together a career’s worth of Olivia Laing’s writing about art and culture, examining their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, reads Maggie Nelson and Sally Rooney, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time. We’re often told that art can’t change anything. Laing argues that it can. Art changes how we see the world. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers fertile new ways of living.

A CHILDREN’S BIBLE follows a group of 12 eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group’s ringleaders --- including Eve, who narrates the story --- decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. As the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by her beloved little brother, Eve devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm.

In 1796 Trinidad, young Rosa Rendón quietly but purposefully rebels against the life others expect her to lead. She sees no reason why she should learn to cook and keep house, for it is obvious her talents lie in running the farm that she, alone, views as her birthright. But when her homeland changes from Spanish to British rule, it becomes increasingly unclear whether its free Black property owners --- Rosa’s family among them --- will be allowed to keep their assets, their land and, ultimately, their freedom. By 1830, Rosa is living among the Crow Nation in Bighorn, Montana, with her children and her husband, Edward Rose, a Crow chief. Her son, Victor, is of the age where he must seek his vision and become a man. But his path forward is blocked by secrets Rosa has kept from him.

Francesca Delaney has a knack for matching a bride-to-be with the perfect gown. Her shop, The Whispering Dress, is no ordinary bridal boutique. Every gown is vintage, and the dresses seem to share their stories with Francesca, pointing to which woman needs them next. Fran credits her success to two rules: never covet a dress, and never sell a dress that led to a doomed marriage. But then she finds a beautiful 1950s couture floor-length gown, and her talent veers into obsession. The owner, however, would quite like the dark past of the dress to remain hidden forever.

On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son. From the Nile's depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the "struggle for survival…hand to hand, word to word."

CIA operations officer Michael Dunne is tasked with infiltrating an Italian news organization that smells like a front for an enemy intelligence service. Headed by an American journalist, the self-styled bandits run a cyber operation unlike anything the CIA has seen before. Fast, slick and indiscriminate, the group steals secrets from everywhere and anyone, and exploits them in ways the CIA can neither understand nor stop. Dunne has never refused an assignment, and his boss has assured his protection. But when news of the operation breaks and someone leaks that Dunne had an extramarital affair while on the job, the CIA leaves him to take the fall. Now a year later, fresh out of jail, Dunne sets out to hunt down and take vengeance on the people who destroyed his life.

You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot. Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century. When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then.

London, 1667. In the Court of Charles II, it’s a dangerous time to be alive --- a wrong move may lead to disgrace, exile or death. Therefore, the discovery of a body at Clarendon House, the palatial home of one of the highest courtiers in the land, could have catastrophic consequences. James Marwood, a traitor’s son, is ordered to cover up the murder. But the dead man is Edward Alderley, the cousin of one of Marwood’s acquaintances. Cat Lovett had every reason to want her cousin dead. Since his murder, she has vanished, and all the evidence points to her as the killer. Marwood is determined to clear Cat’s name and discover who really killed Alderley. But time is running out for everyone. If he makes a mistake, it could threaten not only the government but the King himself.