Adult

A marketing director in a biotech company, Asmi rose through the corporate ranks and never really took the time to think about couplehood. She has good friends, a terrific sister who lives close by, and a married on-again, off-again lover in Paris she sees while she travels around the world for work. As Asmi reaches the big 4-0 and contemplates making some life choices, her boss announces he is retiring, and she is suddenly thrown into a corporate Hunger Games against her nemesis Scott Beauregard III to win a promotion. Worried that her inability to commit to a real relationship with a man is a personality flaw and afraid that she's unqualified for the job she desperately wants, Asmi must learn to lean in to have the career and life she wants and deserves, without worrying about what society expects from her.

Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book --- a book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world, and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

Noah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side, but born in the South of France. He is days away from his first visit back to Nice since he was a child, bringing with him a handful of puzzling photos he's discovered from his mother's wartime years. But he receives a call from social services: Noah is the closest available relative of an 11-year-old great-nephew he's never met, who urgently needs someone to look after him. Out of a feeling of obligation, Noah agrees to take Michael along on his trip. Both come to grasp the risks people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

TALKING TO STRANGERS is a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology and scandals taken straight from the news. Here, Malcolm Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland --- throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.

The murder of an Ivy League professor reunites Dr. Dylan Reinhart with his old partner, Detective Elizabeth Needham. As the worst act of terror since 9/11 strikes New York City, a name on the casualty list rocks Dylan's world. Is his secret past about to be brought to light? As the terrorist attack unfolds, Elizabeth does something courageous that thrusts her into the media spotlight. Thanks to the attention, she becomes a prime target for the ruthless murderer behind the attack. Dylan literally wrote the book on the psychology of murder, and he and Elizabeth have solved cases that have baffled conventional detectives. But the sociopath they're facing this time is the opposite of a textbook case.

Stockholm, Sweden: Seventy-three refugees have been found dead, suffocated in a container at Varta harbor. Niamey, Niger: Ewert Grens arrives in a city he's never heard of, in search of a man he never thought he would see again. Piet Hoffmann has again got himself in too deep, infiltrating a West African trafficking ring. He thinks he has two weeks to extricate himself, but will learn that his life --- and that of countless defenseless people --- now hangs on his actions during three desperate hours.

Reclusive bookseller Shaun Ryan has always believed that his uncle Teddy died in a car accident 20 years ago. Then he learns the truth: Teddy fled his home in Catholic, deeply conservative County Wicklow, Ireland, for New York and hasn't been heard from since. Shaun’s search for his uncle is unsuccessful until he's contacted by Chris Guzman, a woman who runs a website dedicated to matching missing-persons cases with unidentified bodies. Chris and her team of cold-case obsessives suspect that Shaun is looking for the "Boy in the Dress," one victim in a series of gay men murdered by the same killer. But who are these internet fanatics really, and how do they know so much about a case that has stumped police for decades?

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her --- but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

On vacation from London on the beautiful Italian coast, 28-year-old Elena Standish and her older sister, Margot, have finally been able to move on from the lasting trauma of the Great War, in which the newly married Margot lost her husband and the sisters their beloved brother. Touring with her camera in hand, Elena has found new inspiration in the striking Italian landscape, and she’s met an equally striking man named Ian. When Ian has to leave unexpectedly, Elena finds she’s not ready to part from him, and the two share a spontaneous train trip home to England. But a shocking sequence of events disrupts their itinerary, forcing Elena to personally deliver a message to Berlin on Ian’s behalf, one that could change the fate of Europe.