Adult

From Bowling Green all the way to Marble Hill, Fran Leadon takes us on a mile-by-mile journey up America’s most vibrant and complex thoroughfare, through the history at the heart of Manhattan. BROADWAY traces the physical and social transformation of an avenue that has been both the “Path of Progress” and a “street of broken dreams,” home to both parades and riots, startling wealth and appalling destitution. Glamorous, complex and sometimes troubling, the evolution of an oft-flooded dead end to a canyon of steel and glass is the story of American progress.

The bitter feud between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren framed the tumultuous future of the modern civil rights movement. Eisenhower was a gradualist who wanted to coax white Americans in the South into eventually accepting integration, while Warren, author of the Supreme Court’s historic unanimous opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, demanded immediate action to dismantle the segregation of the public school system. In EISENHOWSER VS. WARREN, James F. Simon examines the years of strife between them that led Eisenhower to say that his biggest mistake as president was appointing that “dumb son of a bitch Earl Warren.”

Recently suspended for a so-called outburst, high school English teacher Anna Crawford is stewing over the injustice at home when she is shocked to see herself named on television as a suspect in a shooting at the school where she works. Though she is quickly exonerated, and the actual teenage murderer identified, her life is nevertheless held up for relentless scrutiny and judgment as this quiet town descends into media mania. Gun sales skyrocket, victims are transformed into martyrs, and the rules of public mourning are ruthlessly enforced. Anna decides to wholeheartedly reject the culpability she’s somehow been assigned, and the rampant sexism that comes with it, both in person and online.

From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, THE OVERSTORY unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late-20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours --- vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

At 24, Ella Durran has finally made it to England on a Rhodes Scholarship when she’s offered an unbelievable position in a rising political star’s presidential campaign. With the promise that she’ll work remotely and return to DC at the end of her Oxford year, she’s free to enjoy her Once in a Lifetime Experience. That is, until a smart-mouthed local ruins her shirt and her first day. When Ella discovers that her English literature course will be taught by that same local, Jamie Davenport, she thinks that Oxford might not be all she’s envisioned. But a late-night drink reveals a connection she wasn’t anticipating finding, and what begins as a casual fling soon develops into something much more when Ella learns that Jamie has a life-changing secret.

Intermingling settings in America and Britain, Lionel Shriver’s first collection explores property in both senses of the word: real estate and stuff. These 10 short stories and two novellas illustrate how our possessions act as proxies for ourselves, and how tussles over ownership articulate the power dynamics of our relationships. In Shriver’s world, we may possess people and objects and places, but in turn they possess us.

It’s not every afternoon that an enigmatic, comely blonde named Stilton (like the cheese) walks into the scruffy gin joint where Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin tends bar. It’s love at first sight, but before Sammy can make his move, an Air Force general named Remy arrives with some urgent business. Meanwhile, a suspicious flying object has been spotted, followed by a mysterious plane crash in a distant patch of desert in New Mexico that goes by the name Roswell. When one of Sammy’s schemes goes south and the Cheese mysteriously vanishes, Sammy is forced to contend with his own dark secrets --- and more than a few strange goings-on --- if he wants to find his girl.

Having left the military, Dakota Jones is at a crossroads in his life. With his elder brother and youngest sister happily settled in Sullivan’s Crossing, he shows up hoping to clear his head before moving on to his next adventure. But he’s drawn to the down-to-earth people and the seemingly simple way of life. Dakota is unprepared for how quickly things get complicated. As a newcomer, he’s on everyone’s radar, but he’s really only attracted to the one woman who isn’t interested. When all the Jones siblings gather for a family wedding, the true nature and strength of their bond is tested as they struggle to accept each other, warts and all.

Coming of age on the perilous frontier of revolutionary New York, Elizabeth Schuyler champions the fight for independence. And when she meets Alexander Hamilton, she’s captivated by the young officer’s charisma and brilliance. They fall in love, despite Hamilton’s bastard birth and the uncertainties of war. From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, the Hamiltons are at the center of it all --- including the political treachery of America’s first sex scandal. When a duel destroys Eliza’s hard-won peace, the grieving widow fights her husband’s enemies to preserve Alexander’s legacy. But long-buried secrets threaten everything Eliza believes about her marriage and her own legacy.

Esme Silver has always taken care of her charming ne’er-do-well father, Ike Silver, a small-time crook with dreams of making it big with Bugsy Siegel. In awe of her mother, Dina Wells, Esme is more than happy to be the foil who gets the beautiful Dina into meetings and screen tests with some of Hollywood’s greats. When Ike gets an opportunity to move to Vegas --- and, in what could at last be his big break, to help the man she knows as "Benny" open the Flamingo Hotel --- life takes an unexpected turn for Esme. A stunner like her mother, the young girl catches the attention of Nate Stein, one of the Strip’s most powerful men.