Adult

With all the glittering decorations, twinkling lights, snow angels, gingerbread men and mistletoe, Christmas is Emmie’s first love. This year, she can’t wait to share her favorite Christmas traditions with her boyfriend, Grant. She thinks he’s “the one.” So when Grant’s hectic work schedule has him more “Bah Humbug” than “Ho, Ho, Ho,” Emmie creates a holiday-themed scavenger hunt to help him find his Christmas spirit. At the end of the journey, Grant will arrive at the charming town of Christmas Point, where she’s planned a romantic weekend filled with holiday activities. But Emmie’s plan backfires when a mix-up has the wrong guy following her clues!

When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist --- and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit --- or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance?

Jamie Oliver --- one of the bestselling cookbook authors of all time --- is back with a bang. Focusing on incredible combinations of just five ingredients, he's created 130 brand-new recipes that you can cook up at home, any day of the week. From salads, pasta, chicken and fish to exciting ways with vegetables, rice and noodles, beef, pork and lamb, plus a bonus chapter of sweet treats, Jamie has all the bases covered. This is about maximum flavor with minimum fuss, lots of nutritious options and loads of epic inspiration.

One night in 2012, executive Zhang Guo Xing takes a group of European clients to a fashionable nightclub in Shanghai. While there, he meets a strikingly beautiful young Western woman called Naemi Vieno Kuusela. The physical attraction between them proves irresistible, and they embark on an intoxicating affair. But Naemi is not what she appears to be. To Zhang’s surprise, she veers between passion and wariness, conducting the relationship entirely on her own terms. He feels driven to find out more about her, and is swiftly drawn into a web of intrigue, mystery and horror. Is she a ghost? A demon? Do the living dead walk the streets of 21st-century Shanghai?

Cuba and the United States are in talks to normalize relations, something the old guard on the Communist-controlled island has vowed to stop --- by any means necessary. Zayda de la Guardia, a rogue general in the Cuban security services, has gotten his hands on a nuclear weapon left over from the Cold War. He plans to launch it on Miami, an attack that could kill millions. There’s just one thing standing in his way: special agent Jericho Quinn and his team have traveled undercover to Cuba to unravel de la Guardia’s plot before it ignites a nuclear holocaust. Thrown into a secret prison, pursued by assassins, and trapped on the tiny island during one of the worst hurricanes of the century, Quinn and his crew must survive a trial by fire to prevent an international confrontation that would make the Cuban Missile Crisis look like a fist fight.

A blues singer, Boratin, attempts suicide by jumping off the Bosphorus Bridge, but opens his eyes in the hospital. He has lost his memory and can't recall why he wished to end his life. He remembers only things that are unrelated to himself, but confuses their timing. He knows that the Ottoman Empire fell, and that the last sultan died, but has no idea when. His mind falters when remembering civilizations, while life, like a labyrinth, leads him down different paths. From the confusion of his social and individual memory, he is faced with two questions. Does physical recognition provide a sense of identity? Which is more liberating for a man, or a society: knowing the past, or forgetting it?

It’s 1988, and Shelley Cooper is in trouble. He’s broke, he’s been fired from his construction job, and his ex-wife has left him for their next-door neighbor and a new life in Kansas City. The only opportunity on his horizon is 50 pounds of his brother’s high-grade marijuana, which needs to be driven from Colorado to Houston and exchanged for a lockbox full of cash. The delivery goes off without a hitch, but getting home with the money proves to be a different challenge altogether. Fueled by a grab bag of resentments and self-punishment, Shelley becomes a case study in the question of whether it’s possible to live without accepting yourself, and the dope money is the key to a lock he might never find.

Jack Callahan is an outsider in his adopted hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina. A successful lawyer, he has spent years trying to move in all the right circles. But with his literary mother in a sanitarium, his society marriage on the rocks, and his biggest client --- Raleigh’s family-owned newspaper the Criterion --- facing a hostile takeover, he’s beginning to wonder if it’s really worth it. Step by step, readers are drawn into the “non-secret secrets” of an elite that wields power founded on intricate manners and unsolved crimes. Wall Street raider Victor Broman, Jack’s former client, is hell-bent to acquire the Criterion for shadowy patrons. Eventually, Jack takes counsel from his friend Lowry, a mysterious Native American mystic, who unveils a different path, away from all the right circles.

At 78, Twyla Tharp is revered not only for the dances she makes, but for her astounding regime of exercise and nonstop engagement. She is famed for religiously hitting the gym each morning at daybreak, and utilizing that energy to propel her breakneck schedule as a teacher, writer, creator and lecturer. KEEP IT MOVING is a series of no-nonsense mediations on how to live with purpose as time passes. From the details of how she stays motivated to the stages of her evolving fitness routine, Tharp models how fulfillment depends not on fortune but on attitude, possible for anyone willing to try and keep trying. Culling anecdotes from Twyla’s life and the lives of other luminaries, each chapter is accompanied by a small exercise that will help anyone develop a more hopeful and energetic approach to the everyday.

From the age of two-and-a-half, Jacob, born “Em,” adamantly told his family he was a boy. While his mother, Mimi, struggled to understand and come to terms with the fact that her child may be transgender, she experienced a sense of déjà vu --- the journey to uncover the source of her child’s inner turmoil unearthed ghosts from Mimi’s past and her own struggle to live an authentic life. As a young woman, she wrestled with the demands of her ultra-Orthodox Jewish faith and eventually made the painful decision to leave her religious community and the strict gender roles it upheld. Having risen from the ashes of her former life, Mimi was prepared to help her son forge a new one --- at a time when there was little consensus on how best to help young transgender children.