Adult

Exhausted by dead-end forays in the gay dating scene, surrounded constantly by friends but deeply lonely in New York City, and drifting into academic abyss, twenty-something graduate student Richard has plenty of sources of anxiety. But at the forefront is his crippling writer’s block. Enter Anne: his brilliant classmate who offers to “help” Richard write his papers in exchange for his company, despite Richard’s fairly obvious sexual orientation. What begins as an initially transactional relationship blooms gradually into something more complex. But then a one-swipe-stand with an attractive, successful lawyer becomes serious, and Richard suddenly finds himself unable to detach from Anne.

A year has passed since Pete Fernandez’s latest, closest brush with death. After months of recovery, the newly sober Pete has managed to rebuild his life, contentedly running a small Miami bookstore and steering clear of the dangers of private-eye work. So when an aging Cuban mobster asks Pete to find out who killed his drug-addicted, jazz pianist son and to locate his missing daughter-in-law, Pete balks. Until another victim suggests that the murder of the gangster’s son may be connected to the people who nearly ended Pete’s life, while revealing an unexpected, dangerous truth about the death of the Miami PI's own mother.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie, the eldest of six children born during the Depression to Hungarian immigrant parents. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football. But when his parents finally relented, they discovered that their son, though perhaps short on the physical gifts of the truly blessed, had an unmatched mind for the game’s strategy and a stomach for its brutality.

It begins in Bloomington, Minnesota, with a 13-year-old kid staging his own author photo that he hopes will someday grace the cover of a book jacket. And it ends at a desk in the legendary Time & Life building, with that same boy --- now in his early 20s and writing professionally --- reflecting on how he got there from what seems like a distant universe. In between, Steve Rushin whisks us along on an extraordinarily funny and tender journey. From a menial summer job at suburban Bennigan's, to first-time college experiences in Milwaukee, to surviving early adulthood in seedy New York City, NIGHTS IN WHITE CASTLE will remind any reader of those special moments when they too went from innocence to experience.

Champagne, 1940: Inès has just married Michel, the owner of storied champagne house Maison Chauveau, when the Germans invade. As the danger mounts, Michel turns his back on his marriage to begin hiding munitions for the Résistance. Inès fears they’ll be exposed, but for Céline, the French-Jewish wife of Chauveau’s chef de cave, the risk is even greater --- rumors abound of Jews being shipped east to an unspeakable fate. When Céline recklessly follows her heart in one desperate bid for happiness, and Inès makes a dangerous mistake with a Nazi collaborator, they risk the lives of those they love --- and the vineyard that ties them together.

In the summer of '69, the hard-living rockers of the British Invasion still rule London when former Rolling Stone Brian Jones is found floating in the pool of his palatial home. On a quiet residential block that should be far removed from the swinging party scene, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen investigates the murder of a young woman. But the victim, known professionally as Julie Teenager, was a call girl for the rich and famous. As DS Breen hones in on his prime target, he receives a pointed warning: Watch your back. Fortunately, Breen doesn't have to work alone. His keenly intuitive, deeply moral partner Helen Tozer, despite the pregnancy that's interrupted her policing career, can't help being drawn into the case of a girl used and cast aside.

Established by the leaders of America’s only successful slave revolt in the mid-19th century, the mythical town of Cross River, Maryland, still evokes the rhythms of its founding. Among its residents --- wildly spanning decades, perspectives and species --- are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God’s last son; Tyrone, a ruthless yet charismatic PhD candidate, whose dissertation about a childhood game ignites mayhem in the neighboring, once-segregated town of Port Yooga; and Jim, an all-too-obedient robot who obeys his Master.

When Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother’s death, she’s focused only on saying goodbye to that dark and dismal part of her life. Her childhood home is packed solid with useless junk, her mother’s presence already fading. But within this mess, she discovers a small stash of letters --- and, ultimately, the truth. Forty years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet except for the constant wind that encircles her as she hurries deeper into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. She has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on.

As a doctoral candidate, Donna Freitas loved asking big questions, challenging established theories and sinking her teeth into sacred texts. But during her first year, one particular scholar became obsessed with her academic enthusiasm. While his attraction was not overtly sexual, it was undeniably inappropriate and, most importantly, unwanted. In CONSENT, Freitas delivers a forensic examination of the years she spent stalked by her professor, and uses her nightmarish experience to examine the ways in which we stigmatize, debate and attempt to understand consent today.

When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss --- a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten --- by the luxurious “smart” home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family. What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare --- one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder. Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unraveling events that led to her incarceration.