Adult

Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach. But Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is still reeling from the loss of her newborn brother several years before, and turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time. Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream and is traveling aboard the space ship Chawla, part of a small group hoping to colonize a distant planet. But as she floats in zero gravity, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her.

As thrilling as travel can be, planning a great trip can be intimidating for those hoping for a rewarding and personalized journey. The travel editors at Fathom have spent years gathering a treasure trove of recommendations and stories from a network of interesting people who travel well (chefs, novelists, designers, innkeepers, musicians) in places both well-known and off the beaten path. All of this has been beautifully packaged up in the first edition of TRAVEL ANYWHERE (AND AVOID BEING A TOURIST), a book that will inspire the traveler in you, no matter what kind of experience you're looking for.

Toby Fleishman thought he knew what to expect when he and his wife of almost 15 years separated. He could not have predicted that one day, in the middle of his summer of sexual emancipation, Rachel would just drop their two children off at his place and simply not return. As Toby tries to figure out where Rachel went, all while juggling his patients at the hospital, his never-ending parental duties, and his new app-assisted sexual popularity, his tidy narrative of the spurned husband with the too-ambitious wife is his sole consolation. But if Toby ever wants to truly understand what happened to Rachel and what happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen things all that clearly in the first place.

When San Remo County Acting Sheriff Buddy Steel is deputized by the California Coastal Commission to investigate a reclusive Russian billionaire who has repeatedly violated state law by obstructing public access to his vast beachfront property, he makes a shocking discovery. He also learns that the politicos will not back up enforcement. This makes Buddy dig in his heels and face down the Russian's imported goon squad. At the same time, a string of random murders in the county's normally sleepy town of Freedom, a wealthy enclave up the coast from Los Angeles, places the Sheriff's Department on high alert as it seeks to apprehend a serial killer whose crimes are so perfectly executed they leave no forensic evidence.

India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Sahyadri mountains, where the princely state of Satapur is tucked away. A curse seems to have fallen upon Satapur’s royal family, whose maharaja died of a sudden illness shortly before his teenage son was struck down in a tragic hunting accident. Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer, is determined to bring peace to the royal house and make a sound recommendation for the young crown prince’s future, but she arrives to find that the Satapur palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realizes she has walked into a trap. But whose? And how can she protect the royal children from the palace’s deadly curse?

Dry, witty and unapologetic, May Attaway loves literature and her work as a botanist for the university in her hometown. More at home with plants than people, May begins to suspect that she isn’t very good at friendship and wonders if it’s possible to improve with practice. Granted some leave from her job, she sets out on a journey to spend time with four long-neglected friends. RULES FOR VISITING is the story of a search for friendship in the digital age, a singular look at the way we stay in touch. While May travels, she studies her friends’ lives and begins to confront the pain of her own.

After Wisconsin graduate student Mildred Fish marries brilliant German economist Arvid Harnack, she accompanies him to his German homeland, where a promising future awaits. In the thriving intellectual culture of 1930s Berlin, the newlyweds create a rich new life filled with love, friendships and rewarding work --- but the rise of a malevolent new political faction inexorably changes their fate. As Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party wield violence and lies to seize power, Mildred, Arvid and their friends resolve to resist. For years, Mildred’s network stealthily fights to bring down the Third Reich from within. But when Nazi radio operatives detect an errant Russian signal, the Harnack resistance cell is exposed, with fatal consequences.

In "Bog Girl," a young man falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl who he's extracted from a mass of peat in a Northern European bog. In "The Prospectors," two opportunistic young women fleeing the Great Depression strike out for new territory, and find themselves fighting for their lives. And in the title story, a new mother desperate to ensure her infant's safety strikes a diabolical deal, agreeing to breastfeed the devil in exchange for his protection. The landscape in which these and five other stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void --- yet within it, Karen Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life.

Two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when a brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, falls and strikes her unconscious. She is immediately rushed to the hospital. Jayson Greene’s memoir begins with this event and with the anguish he and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter’s trauma and the hours leading up to her death. But ONCE MORE WE SAW STARS quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it --- that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable.

A visionary young filmmaker hunted for sport across a vast Colorado ranch by the celebrated billionaire at the heart of a monstrous cabal. A brilliant computer hacker slipping through top-secret databases a whisper ahead of security trackers, gathering the facts to fight the all-powerful perpetrators of mass murder. A Vegas mob boss teamed with a homicidal sociopath, circling a beloved boy and his protectors, aiming to secure him as leverage against his fugitive mother. And that fugitive mother herself, ex-agent Jane Hawk, closing in on the malevolent architects of ruin she has stalked as they stalk her. These are some of the people and circumstances of THE NIGHT WINDOW, the stunning conclusion to Dean Koontz’s acclaimed Jane Hawk series.