Adult

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading and forming friendships. She serves in the household of the Commander and his wife, and under the new social order she has only one purpose: once a month, she must lie on her back and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if they are fertile. But Offred remembers the years before Gilead, when she was an independent woman who had a job, a family and a name of her own. Now, her memories and her will to survive are acts of rebellion.

When Condé Nast offered Ruth Reichl the top position at America’s oldest epicurean magazine, she declined. She was a writer, not a manager, and had no inclination to be anyone’s boss. But Reichl had been reading Gourmet since she was eight; it had inspired her career. How could she say no? This is the story of a former Berkeley hippie entering the corporate world and worrying about losing her soul. It is the story of the moment restaurants became an important part of popular culture, a time when the rise of the farm-to-table movement changed, forever, the way we eat.

The Chelsea Hotel has long been New York City's creative oasis for the many artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers and poets who have called it home --- a scene playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead are determined to use to their advantage. Yet they soon discover that the greatest obstacle to putting up a show on Broadway has nothing to do with their art, and everything to do with politics. A Red scare is sweeping across America, and Senator Joseph McCarthy has started a witch hunt for Communists. As the pressure builds to name names, it is more than Hazel and Maxine's Broadway dreams that may suffer as they grapple with the terrible consequences, but also their livelihood, their friendship and even their freedom.

After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes that a fresh start will help him and his young son, Jake, heal. But the town of Featherbank has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed "The Whisper Man," for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night. Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Carter's crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late. And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window...

Coach Randy is working mightily to keep it together, as this season's soccer parents are a demanding bunch. Diane's wine-fueled group emails are almost unintelligible; team mom Jacqui's enthusiasm for the league verges on manic; a divorced couple can barely conceal their murderous rage at each other; and another mom is laser-focused on schooling everyone on what constitutes a healthy snack option. All the secrets and lies bubbling below the surface of their membrane-thin civility threaten to combust when Alejandro, a young, foreign assistant coach, refuses to play by the Beverly Hills code, which is to mind your own business and don't look too deeply into anyone's soul. Especially your own.

Former CIA case officer Charles Jenkins is a man at a crossroads: in his early 60s, he has a family, a new baby on the way, and a security consulting business on the brink of bankruptcy. Then his former bureau chief shows up at his house with a risky new assignment: travel undercover to Moscow and locate a Russian agent believed to be killing members of a clandestine US spy cell known as the seven sisters. Desperate for money, Jenkins agrees to the mission and heads to the Russian capital. But when he finds the mastermind agent behind the assassinations --- the so-called eighth sister --- she is not who or what he was led to believe. Then again, neither is anyone else in this deadly game of cat and mouse.

In 1912, as New York reels from the news of the Titanic disaster, ladies’ maid Jane Prescott travels to Long Island with the Benchley family. Their daughter, Louise, is to marry William Tyler at their uncle and aunt’s mansion. Jane quickly befriends the Tyler children’s nanny, Sofia, a young Italian-American woman, who ends up being a murder victim. She is asked to help with the investigation by her friend, journalist Michael Behan, who knows that she is uniquely placed to see what other tensions may simmer just below the surface in this wealthy, secretive household. Was Sofia’s murder fallout from the social tensions rife in New York, or could it be a much more personal crime?

Rafael Zhettah relishes the simplicity and freedom of his life. He is the owner and head chef of a promising Houston restaurant. A pilot with open access to the boundless Texas horizon. A bachelor, content with having few personal or material attachments that ground him. Then lightning strikes. When he finds Tieresse --- billionaire, philanthropist, sophisticate, bombshell --- sitting at one of his tables, he also finds his soul mate and his life starts again. And just as fast --- when she is brutally murdered in their home, when he is convicted of the crime, when he is sentenced to die --- it is all ripped away. But for Rafael Zhettah, death row is not the end; it is only the beginning. Now, he will stop at nothing to deliver justice to those who stole everything from him.

It is 1968 in rural Australia, and lonely Tom Hope can't make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he's ever met --- she's passionate, brilliant and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown's first bookshop. Despite the fact that Tom has read only one book in his life, when Hannah hires him to install shelving for the shop, the two discover an astonishing spark. Recently abandoned by an unfaithful wife --- and still missing her sweet son, Peter --- Tom dares to believe that he might make Hannah happy. But Hannah is a haunted woman. Twenty-four years earlier, she had been marched to the gates of Auschwitz.

Henri Skinner is a hardened ex-war reporter on the run from his past. On his way to see his son, Sam, for the first time in years, Henri collides with oncoming traffic. He is rushed to a nearby hospital where he floats, comatose, between dreams. After the accident, Sam --- a 13-year-old synesthete with an IQ of 144 and an appetite for science fiction --- waits by his father’s bedside every day. There he meets Eddie Tomlin, a woman forced to confront her love for Henri after all these years, and 12-year-old Madelyn Zeidler, a coma patient like Henri and the sole survivor of a traffic accident that killed her family. As these four very different individuals fight --- for hope, for patience, for life --- they are bound together inextricably, facing the ravages of loss and first love side by side.