Adult

THINGS MY SON NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THE WORLD collects the personal dispatches from the front lines of one of the most daunting experiences any man can face: fatherhood. As he conveys his profound awe at experiencing all the “firsts” that fill him with wonder and catch him completely unprepared, Fredrik Backman doesn’t shy away from revealing his own false steps and fatherly flaws, tackling issues both great and small, from masculinity and mid-life crises to practical jokes and poop. In between the sleep-deprived lows and wonderful highs, Backman takes a step back to share the true story of falling in love with a woman who is his complete opposite, and learning to live a life that revolves around the people you care about unconditionally.

Something has gone terribly wrong at the Banks wedding. A man is dead. Four different women rush to offer confessions, each insisting that they committed the crime --- alone. Ginger is holding her family together by a thread, and this wedding weekend is not the fabulous getaway she anticipated.  Kate has enough money to buy her way out of anything. Well, almost anything. Emily can’t shake her reputation or her memories, and she’s planning to drown this whole vacation in a bottle. Lulu has ex-husbands to spare, and another on the way --- as soon as she figures out what the devil the current husband is up to behind her back. Why would they confess to the same murder? Only they know --- and they’re not telling.

It was a Thursday at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, mostly sunny with the wind blowing out. Nobody expected an afternoon game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs on May 17, 1979, to be much more than a lazy early-season contest matching two teams heading in opposite directions --- the first-place Phillies and the Cubs, those lovable losers --- until they combined for 13 runs in the first inning. “The craziest game ever,” one player called it. “And then the second inning started.” TEN INNINGS AT WRIGLEY is Kevin Cook’s vivid account of a game that only could have happened at this ballpark, in this era, with this colorful cast of heroes and heels.

Charlotte Clancy, a young American au pair, vanishes without a trace in Mexico City. The case is left cold, but its legacy will be devastating. A decade later, Los Angeles is shaken by a spate of violent murders. Psychologist Nikki Roberts is the common link between the victims, her patients at the heart of this treacherous web. When someone makes an attempt on Nikki’s life, it’s clear she is a marked woman. With the police at a dead end, Nikki drafts in Derek Williams, a PI who isn’t afraid to put his hand into the hornet’s nest. Williams was thwarted in the notorious Charlotte Clancy case all those years ago, but what he unearths in LA --- and the mention of one name in particular --- leaves him cold, and takes him on a dangerous path into the past.

When gold is discovered in the foothills just outside of Appaloosa, it sets off a fight between two shrewd local business operations as their hired gun hands square off over the claim. First a young miner disappears, then another. And then one of the businessmen himself is killed, right on his front doorstep. Meanwhile, as Cole and Hitch try to put a stop to the escalating violence, another killer is making his way toward town in pursuit of a long-lost dream, and a mission of vengeance. Cole and Hitch will have their work cut out for them to keep the peace, especially when all these ruffians converge at the huge Appaloosa Days festival, where hundreds of innocent souls might get caught in the crossfire.

It’s New Year’s Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Binnie Kirshenbaum’s protagonist --- an acerbic, mordantly witty and clinically depressed writer --- fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow “lunatics” and writing a novel about what brought her there. Her story is a hilarious and harrowing deep dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly.

American expat Kate Moore drops her kids at the international school, makes her shopping rounds, and meets her husband Dexter at their regular café. Across the Seine, tech CEO Hunter Forsyth stands on his balcony, perplexed that his police escort just departed, and frustrated that his cell service has cut out; Hunter has important calls to make, not all of them technically legal. And on the nearby rue de Rivoli, Mahmoud Khalid climbs out of an electrician’s van, and elbows his way into the crowded courtyard of the world’s largest museum, in the epicenter of Western civilization. He sets down his metal briefcase and removes his windbreaker. That’s when people start to scream.

Growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation, David Crow and his siblings idolized their dad. But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with his own code of ethics that justified cruelty, violence, lies --- even murder. A shrewd con artist with a genius IQ, Thurston intimidated David with beatings to coerce him into doing his criminal bidding. David's mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn't protect him. One day, Thurston packed up the house and took the kids, leaving her nothing. When David finally found the courage to stop helping his father with his criminal activities, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a showdown with Thurston Crow.

Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story. Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math. Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realize it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet. Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own. Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.

In the wake of WWII, a grieving fisherman submits a poem to a local newspaper asking readers to send rocks in honor of loved ones to create something life-giving --- but the building halts when tragedy strikes. Decades later, Annie returns to the coastal Maine town where stone ruins spark her curiosity and her search for answers faces a battle against time.