Adult

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives, which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits.

After being initiated into a coven of island witches, Neva begins to fulfill her fate in a Tenderloin dive bar. Her worshippers include Richard, the introverted, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a profane, aggressive transgender sex worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after her idol Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction.

When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the 20th century --- man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War and was the first woman to break the sound barrier. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession. While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality --- an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress.

One by one, the seven precious relics of the Arma Christi, the weapons of Christ, are disappearing from sanctuaries across the world. After Cotton Malone witnesses the theft of one of them, he learns from his old boss, Stephanie Nelle, that a private auction is about to be held where incriminating information on the president of Poland will be offered to the highest bidder. The price of admission to that auction is one of the relics, so Malone is first sent to a castle in Poland to steal the Holy Lance, a thousand-year-old spear sacred not only to Christians but to the Polish people, and then on to the auction itself. But nothing goes as planned, and Malone is thrust into a bloody battle among three nations over information that, if exposed, could change the balance of power in Europe.

Pediatrician Kent Abner received the package on a beautiful April morning. Inside was a cheap trinket, a golden egg that could be opened into two halves. When he pried it apart, highly toxic airborne fumes entered his body --- and killed him. After Eve Dallas calls the hazmat team --- and undergoes testing to reassure both her and her husband that she hasn’t been exposed --- it’s time to look into Dr. Abner’s past and relationships. While the lab tries to identify the deadly toxin, Eve hunts for the sender. But when someone else dies in the same grisly manner, it becomes clear that she’s dealing with either a madman --- or someone who has a hidden and elusive connection to both victims.

At 39, Josie Bordelon's modeling career as the "it" black beauty of the '90s is far behind her. Now director of admissions at San Francisco's most sought-after private school, she's chic, single and determined to keep her 17-year-old daughter, Etta, from making the same mistakes she did. But Etta has plans of her own --- and their beloved matriarch, Aunt Viv, has Etta's back. If only Josie could manage Etta's future as well as she manages the shenanigans of the over-anxious, over-eager parents at school --- or her best friend's attempts to coax Josie out of her sex sabbatical and back onto the dating scene. As admissions season heats up, Josie discovers that when it comes to matters of the heart --- and the office --- the biggest surprises lie closest to home.

Culleton, New York has a long history --- of writers, of artists and of unsolved mysteries. It’s where Adair grew up before she moved to Brooklyn to try to make it as an artist. But after years away from her hometown and little to show for it, Adair decides to return. She moves back into Moye House, the old mansion and current writer’s retreat, imbued with her family's legacy. Ciaran is a writer staying at Moye House in the hopes of finally solving the mystery of what happened to Rowan Kinnane --- his sister, and Adair’s childhood best friend. As the two begin investigating, secrets long buried rise to the surface, complicating their sense of themselves and their understanding of what happened on that fateful day.

Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Benjamin Franklin, an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north, and George Washington, a slaveholding general from the agrarian south, were the indispensable authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention. Yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since. Illuminating Franklin and Washington’s relationship with striking new detail and energy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson shows that theirs was truly an intimate working friendship that amplified the talents of each for collective advancement of the American project.

On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions --- and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.

In the tradition of Alison Bechdel’s FUN HOME and George Hodgman’s BETTYVILLE, Helen Fremont writes with wit and candor about growing up in a household held together by a powerful glue: secrets. Her parents, profoundly affected by their memories of the Holocaust, pass on to both Helen and her older sister a zealous determination to protect themselves from what they see as danger from the outside world. Fremont delves deeply into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret keeping, beginning with the painful and unexpected discovery that she has been disinherited in her father’s will.