Adult

As the four adult sons of retired senator John Bright head with their partners to the annual family reunion, they have everything they need, except self-awareness. This year, the senator has agreed to let a producer document the reunion at the lake house. As petty jealousies surface, Philip, the youngest, reveals a surprising personal decision that earns the ribbing --- or is it scorn? --- of his brothers, JJ, Spencer and Charlie. Then the senator unexpectedly announces his desire for another political run. Not everyone is on board, especially matriarch Patty, who is keenly aware of the toll it will take on their private lives. Suddenly closely held family secrets start tumbling out and keep coming, including the biggest one that will rock this family to the core.

In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript. Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious manuscript written by none other than Adana Moreau. With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Adana’s son in New Orleans, but as Hurricane Katrina strikes, they must head to the storm-ravaged city for answers.

The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica, a country surveilled by one “Aunt Nettie,” a Big Brother that is part artificial intelligence, part internet and oddly human --- even funny. The people: divided. The “angelfair” Netted have jobs and, what with the country half under water, literally occupy the high ground. The Surplus live on swampland if they’re lucky, on water if they’re not. The story: To a Surplus couple --- he once a professor, she still a lawyer --- is born a girl, Gwen, with a golden arm. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league, but when AutoAmerica faces ChinRussia in the Olympics, Gwen finds herself in dangerous territory, playing ball with the Netted even as her mother battles this apartheid-like society in court.

Spring, 1946: Best friends Vera Frankel and Edith Ban arrive in Naples. Refugees from Hungary, they managed to escape from a train headed for Auschwitz and spent the rest of the war hiding on an Austrian farm. Now, the two young women are starting new lives abroad. Armed with a letter of recommendation from an American officer, Vera finds work at the United States embassy, where she falls in love with Captain Anton Wight. But as Vera and Edith grapple with the aftermath of the war, so too does Anton, and when he suddenly disappears, Vera is forced to change course. Their quest for a better life takes Vera and Edith from Naples to Ellis Island to Caracas as they start careers, reunite with old friends and rebuild their lives after terrible loss.

This new collection from critically acclaimed writer Lily Tuck explores the hidden dynamics and unspoken conflicts at the heart of human relationships. In the novella, a married woman reads WUTHERING HEIGHTS at the same time that she falls under the erotic and destructive spell of her own Heathcliff. In the stories that follow, a single photograph illuminates the intricate web of connections between friends at an Italian café; a forgotten act of violence in New York’s Carl Schurz Park returns to haunt the present; and a woman is prompted by a flurry of mysterious emails to recall her time as a member of the infamous Rajneesh cult.

Sean Tennant and Molly Winter are living quietly and cautiously in Houston when a troubled, obsessive stranger shatters the safety they have carefully constructed for themselves. Sean is at a shopping mall when Henry Alan Keen, scorned by a woman he’s been dating, pulls out a gun at the store where she works and begins shooting everyone in sight. A former soldier, Sean rushes toward Keen and ends the slaughter with two well-placed shots --- becoming a hero with his face plastered across the news. But Sean’s newfound notoriety exposes him to the wrath of two men he thought he had left safely in his past. One of them blames Sean for his brother’s death. The other wants to recover a treasure that Sean and Molly stole from him.

Pediatrician Kent Abner received the package on a beautiful April morning. Inside was a cheap trinket, a golden egg that could be opened into two halves. When he pried it apart, highly toxic airborne fumes entered his body --- and killed him. After Eve Dallas calls the hazmat team --- and undergoes testing to reassure both her and her husband that she hasn’t been exposed --- it’s time to look into Dr. Abner’s past and relationships. While the lab tries to identify the deadly toxin, Eve hunts for the sender. But when someone else dies in the same grisly manner, it becomes clear that she’s dealing with either a madman --- or someone who has a hidden and elusive connection to both victims.

Adunni is a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice” --- the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir. When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing. But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it.

Beth Montgomery seems to have the perfect life. So it doesn't occur to her to worry when the news breaks of a quadruple homicide across town, a botched drug deal that leaves an undercover officer among the dead. Beth certainly would never think to tie the murders to the sudden reappearance in her life of wild, sexy Cassie Ogilvy, the estranged best friend she hasn't seen since they were college roommates. As Cassie confidently settles into Beth's new life, it becomes increasingly clear that her old friend has a lot to hide. But it isn't until a shocking late-night phone call, and Cassie's even more startling disappearance, that Beth begins to understand that her world, as she knew it, is gone forever.

Claude McKay Love is an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. Yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place --- to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.