Adult

One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe and Duncan Lang discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed. Matthew becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back. Duncan, who has seldom thought about being adopted, suddenly decides he wants to find his birth mother. Overshadowing all three is the awareness that something is amiss in their parents’ marriage.

You might as well know this going in: Lawrence Block's new novel is not for everyone. It's recounted in journal form by its protagonist, and begins when he walks into a roadhouse outside of Bakersfield, California, and walks out with a woman. And rapes and murders her. But, um, not in that order. Right. But it's what he does with the rest of his life that's really interesting.

Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. Until now. Bea, Agnes and 18 others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it. But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of this new existence, Bea realizes that saving her daughter’s life means losing her in a different way. The farther they get from civilization, the more their bond is tested in astonishing and heartbreaking ways.

In the Before, humankind is created with a hole in its heart, the designers not realizing their mistake --- if it was a mistake --- until too late. Elliot Chance is just a boy and knows nothing of this. All he knows is that he doesn’t feel at home in this world, and his desire for escape becomes more urgent as he grows into adulthood. Desperate and lost, he stumbles upon a support group on the edge of Manhattan. There he meets Sasha, who leaves coded messages in the copy she writes for advertising campaigns, and Bannor, whose detailed depictions of the future make Elliot think he may have actually been there. With these two unlikely allies, Elliot launches into the business of life, determined to be happy in spite of himself. Yet the hole in the heart is not so easily filled.

In 1934, the nation’s most legendary crime-fighter --- fresh from taking on the greatest gangster in American history --- arrived in Cleveland, a corrupt and dangerous town about to host a world's fair. It was to be his coronation, as well as the city's. Instead, terror descended, as headless bodies started turning up. The young detective, already battling the mob and crooked cops, found his drive to transform American policing subverted by a menace largely unknown to law enforcement: a serial murderer. Eliot Ness' greatest case had begun. Now, Max Allan Collins and A. Brad Schwartz uncover this lost crime epic, delivering a gripping nonfiction account based on decades of groundbreaking research.

Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Slight of build, with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Dickens looked much older than his 58 years when he died. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them. THE MYSTERY OF CHARLES DICKENS looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, award-winning biographer A. N. Wilson seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity.

Alex Vogel has always been a high achiever who lived her life by the book. Accepting a dream offer at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, she promises her sweet and supportive longtime boyfriend that the job won’t change her. Yet Alex is seduced by the firm’s money and energy…and by her cocksure male colleagues. But as her clients’ expectations and demands on her increase, and Alex finds herself magnetically drawn to a handsome coworker, she begins to question everything. When something happens that reveals the dark reality of the firm, Alex can no longer stand by silently --- even if doing what’s right means putting everything on the line to expose the shocking truth.

Abby Kelley Foster arrived in Springfield, Illinois, with the fate of the nation on her mind. The famed abolitionist speaker knew that her first speech in the city would make headlines. One of the residents reading those headlines would be none other than the likely next president of the United States. Abraham Lincoln knew his chances of winning were good. But when her speech sparks violence, leading to her arrest and a high-profile trial, he suspects that his political rivals have conspired against him. President James Buchanan is one such rival. As his term ends and his political power crumbles, he makes one last move that might derail Lincoln’s campaign, steal the election and throw America into chaos.

Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early 19th-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. Months later, she is sentenced to Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, including Mathinna, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land.

Is the human race conclusively set for self-annihilation? As futurists prophesize, are we only decades away from extinguishing the planet? Or are we capable of changing this trajectory because of what YOU start today? Renewal is about how each one of us can: Renew ourselves at a body-mind-spirit level. Renew our society and our environment. Renew the systems we operate with. Written to serve as a practical guide for everyone's day-to-day “karma,” RENEWAL is strung together by the charismatic Guru Pranachandra, whose discourse drives home the vital message: that the world is a mere 30 habits away from Renewal.