Adult

In this collection of original and previously published nonfiction essays, New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman offers readers an introspective look into various facets of her life. Her childhood and school years, her successful career as a newspaper reporter, the challenge of balance, her life as a novelist and a reader --- Lippman’s takes on these universal subjects offer as many twists as her award-winning crime fiction. Of the 16 essays, only three have appeared in book form before.

Graduating from Harvard at the height of World War II, brilliant mathematician Charlie Fish is assigned to the Manhattan Project, where he works on designing and building the detonator of the atomic bomb. But he suffers a crisis of conscience, which his wife, Brenda --- unaware of the true nature of Charlie’s top-secret task --- mistakes as self-doubt. Once the bombs strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the feelings of culpability devastate him and Brenda. At the war’s end, Charlie receives a scholarship to pursue a PhD in physics at Stanford, but the past proves inescapable. Haunted by guilt, Charlie and Brenda decide to dedicate the rest of their lives to making amends for the evil he helped to birth into the world.

In this treasure of a book, Anna Quindlen, the bestselling novelist and columnist, reflects on what it takes to “get a life” --- to live deeply every day and from your own unique self, rather than merely to exist through your days. Her mother died when Quindlen was 19: “It was the dividing line between seeing the world in black and white, and in Technicolor. The lights came on for the darkest possible reason.... I learned something enduring, in a very short period of time, about life. And that was that it was glorious, and that you had no business taking it for granted.” But how to live from that perspective, to fully engage in our days? In A SHORT GUIDE TO A HAPPY LIFE, Quindlen guides us with an understanding that comes from knowing how to see the view, the richness in living.

Impelled by runaway spending and rampant corruption, America’s much-beloved games of college basketball and football have not been so threatened since the widespread cheating scandals in the early 1950s. The specter of billion-dollar sums being showered on imperial coaches, voracious athletic directors, hordes of support staff, and lavish comforts for fat-cat fans has led to a near-deafening roar to pay the players. The injustice of such sums being amassed, in the main, from the labor of young men of color --- many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds --- cannot be justified. But MARCHING TOWARD MADNESS cites 21 reasons why the pro-pay position is wrong, while presenting comprehensive reforms to end cheating and corruption in college sports, put academics first, and end the peonage of non-white athletes once and for all.

Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable. One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together to preserve both Jane Austen's home and her legacy. These people --- a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor and a movie star, among others --- could not be more different, yet they are united in their love for the works and words of Austen. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society.

James Lionel Falconer has risen quickly from a mere shop worker to being the right-hand man of Henry Malvern, head of the most prestigious shipping company in London. With Malvern's daughter, Alexis, running away to the country after a terrible tragedy and refusing to return, James' ascent to head of the company seems inevitable. But even a charmed life like James' is not without its setbacks. A terrible fire threatens to end his merchant career before it's had a chance to truly begin. Mrs. Ward, James' former paramour, has a secret that could change his life forever. And his distaste for Alexis Malvern is slowly growing into feelings of quite a different sort. Can James continue to be the master of his own fate, or will all of his charm, intelligence and wit finally fail him when he has to enter the lion's den?

Caitlyn Sullivan had come from a long line of Hollywood royalty. At nine, she was already a star --- yet still an innocent child who loved to play hide and seek with her cousins. It was during one of those games that she disappeared. Some may have considered her a pampered princess, but Cate was a smart, scrappy fighter who managed to escape her abductors. Her ordeal, though, was far from over. First came the discovery of a shocking betrayal that would send someone she’d trusted to prison. Then there were years spent away in western Ireland. Finally, she would return to Los Angeles, gathering the courage to act again. What she didn’t yet know was that two seeds had been planted that long-ago night --- one of a great love, and one of a terrible vengeance.

August 1572: Minou Joubert and her husband, Piet, travel to Paris to attend a royal wedding that, after a decade of religious wars, is intended to finally bring peace between the Catholics and the Huguenots. Also in Paris is their oldest enemy, Vidal, in pursuit of an ancient relic that will change the course of history. Within days of the marriage, thousands will lie dead in the street, and Minou’s family will be scattered to the four winds.

One phone call is all it takes to lure real estate photographer Mallory Aldiss back to her family Rhode Island beach home. It's been 20 years since she's been gone --- running from the scandal that destroyed her parents' marriage, drove her and her two sisters apart, and crushed her relationship with her first love. But going home is fraught with emotional baggage --- memories, mysteries and secrets abound. Mal's 13-year-old daughter, Joy, has never been to the place where Mal's life was shaped and is desperate to go. In just seven watershed days on the Rhode Island coast, three women will test the bonds of sisterhood, friendship and family, and discover the role that love and memory play in defining their lives.