Adult

The story of Palestine’s food is really the story of its people. When the events of 1948 forced residents from all regions of Palestine together into one compressed land, recipes that were once closely guarded family secrets were shared and passed between different groups in an effort to ensure that they were not lost forever. In FALASTIN, Sami Tamimi retraces the lineage and evolution of his country’s cuisine, born of its agriculturally optimal geography, its distinct culinary traditions, and Palestinian cooks’ ingenuity and resourcefulness.

Reeling from the loss of her parents, Lucy Clairmont discovers an artifact under the floorboards of their London flat, leading her to an old seaside estate. Aided by her childhood friend Dashel, a renowned forensic astronomer, they start to unravel a history of heartbreak, sacrifice and love begun 200 years prior --- one that may offer the healing each seeks.

Sarah Weinman --- the acclaimed author of THE REAL LOLITA, and editor of WOMEN CRIME WRITERS and TROUBLED DAUGHTERS, TWISTED WIVES --- brings together an exemplary collection of recent true-crime tales. She culls together some of the most refreshing and exciting contemporary journalists and chroniclers of crime working today. There are 13 pieces in all, and as a collection, they showcase writing about true crime across the broadest possible spectrum, while also reflecting what makes crime stories so transfixing and irresistible to the modern reader.

After the death of his lover in a mass shooting, secret agent Jason Bourne is convinced that there is more to her murder than it seems. Worse, he believes that Treadstone --- the agency that made him who he is, that trained him --- is behind the killing. Bourne goes rogue, leaving Treadstone behind and taking on a new mission to infiltrate and expose an anarchist group, Medusa. But when a congresswoman is assassinated in New York, Bourne is framed for the crime, and he finds himself alone and on the run. In his quest to stay one step ahead of his enemies, Bourne teams up with journalist Abbey Laurent to figure out who was behind the frame-up, and to learn as much as he can about the ever-growing threat of the mysterious Medusa group.

Oona grew up on the island of Inis: a wind-blasted rock off the coast of Ireland. There, the men went out on fishing boats and the women tended turf fires, the only book was the Bible, and girls stayed at home until they became mothers themselves. Even as a child, Oona knew she wanted to escape island life, but she never could have anticipated the tumultuous turn of events that would ultimately compel her to flee. Twenty years later, after Oona has forged a new, very different life for herself, her daughter vanishes, forcing Oona to face her past in order, finally, to be free of it.

Written during the early months of lockdown, INTIMATIONS explores ideas and questions prompted by an unprecedented situation. What does it mean to submit to a new reality --- or to resist it? How do we compare relative sufferings? What is the relationship between time and work? In our isolation, what do other people mean to us? How do we think about them? What is the ratio of contempt to compassion in a crisis? When an unfamiliar world arrives, what does it reveal about the world that came before it? Zadie Smith clears a generous space for thought, open enough for each reader to reflect on what has happened --- and what should come next.

Both timeless and urgent, the 11 stories in Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her prize-winning book THE ISLE OF YOUTH confront misogyny, violence and the impossible economics of America. In “Lizards,” a man mutes his wife’s anxieties by giving her a LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in “Karolina,” a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother.

The site of the old campus bungalow where two girls were brutally slain is now a flower patch covered with chrysanthemums. It’s been 50 years since the Immaculate Conception Murders. Three more students and a teacher were killed in a sickening spree that many have forgotten. But there is one person who knows every twisted detail. Hannah O’Rourke and her volatile half-sister, Eden, have little in common except a parent. Yet they’ve ended up at the same small college outside Chicago, sharing a bungalow with another girl. When their arrival coincides with a spate of mysterious deaths, Hannah’s journalism professor, Ellie Goodwin, knows it’s more than a fluke. A copycat is recreating those long-ago murders.

In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. By the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are --- a devil or an angel or something else entirely --- is dwarfed by even larger truths.

Smart, self-assured and beautiful, Edie always worked hard. She worked as a teller at a bank, she worked to save her first marriage, and later, she worked to raise her daughter even as her second marriage came apart. Edie just wanted a good life, but everywhere she turned, her looks defined her. Two brothers fought over her. Her second husband became unreasonably possessive and jealous. Her daughter resented her. And now, as a grandmother, Edie finds herself harassed by a younger man. It’s been a lifetime of proving that she is allowed to exist in her own sphere. THE LIVES OF EDIE PRITCHARD tells the story of one woman just trying to be herself, even as multiple men attempt to categorize and own her.