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Amy Bloom began to notice changes in her husband, Brian. Their world was altered forever when an MRI confirmed what they could no longer ignore: Brian had Alzheimer’s disease. Forced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Supporting each other in their last journey together, Brian and Amy made the unimaginably difficult and painful decision to go to Dignitas, an organization based in Switzerland that empowers a person to end their own life with dignity and peace. In this heartbreaking and surprising memoir, Bloom sheds light on a part of life we so often shy away from discussing --- its ending.

The daughter of a famous vaudevillian dancer, Evie Grace Devlin is pushed onto the stage at a young age and dubbed the toe-dancing “Pint-Sized Pavlova.” Evie hates the glare of the spotlight, no matter how much her fame-obsessed mother forces her into it. A scholarship to study nursing at a Catholic hospital in Galveston, Texas, provides Evie with her only hope of escape. However, just as Evie is about to be certified, secrets from her past are revealed, and she is cast out. It’s 1932, and she is just one more casualty of the Great Depression. With no choice but to return to her roots, Evie finds work --- as an unregistered nurse --- looking after a troupe of marathon dancers. Unexpectedly she is thrust back where she doesn’t want to be: in front of screaming, adoring audiences.

Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone. In these 10 beautifully moving short stories written mostly over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times. A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother’s funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret.

When Ropa Moyo discovered an occult underground library, she expected great things. She’s really into Edinburgh’s secret societies, but it turns out they are less into her. So instead of getting paid to work magic, she’s had to accept a crummy unpaid internship. Then her friend, Priya, offers her a job on the side. Priya works at Our Lady of Mysterious Maladies, a very specialized hospital, where a new illness is resisting magical and medical remedies alike. If Ropa can solve the case, she might earn as she learns --- and impress her mentor, Sir Callander. Her sleuthing will lead her to a lost fortune, an avenging spirit and a secret buried deep in Scotland’s past. But how are they connected? Lives are at stake, and Ropa is running out of time.

When a young woman washes ashore on a Fort Lauderdale beach, Sloan McPherson of the Underwater Investigation Unit is called in to consult. For answers she reaches out to Gwen Wylder. The Miami homicide detective is notorious for being manipulative, bitter, a tyrant to her peers and wicked smart. And she demands something in return from Sloan: fresh insight into seemingly unrelated cold-case murders and disappearances --- and a possible serial killer trolling the Florida coast. As loose ends of the old files begin to come together, another woman disappears. Sloan and Gwen are certain she’s the newest link in a deadly chain. They are determined to track her down before she dies, but they soon find themselves in uncharted waters.

Mikhail lives in Russia in 1881. When a skeleton of a rare wild horse is brought to him, the zoologist plans an expedition to Mongolia to find the fabled Przewalski horse. In 1992, Karin, alongside her troubled son Mathias and several Przewalski horses, travels to Mongolia to reintroduce the magnificent horses to their native land. Europe’s future is uncertain in 2064, but Eva is willing to sacrifice nearly everything to hold onto her family’s farm. Her teenage daughter implores her to leave the farm and Norway, but a pregnant wild mare Eva is tending is about to foal. Then, a young woman named Louise unexpectedly arrives on the farm, with mysterious intentions that will either bring them all together or devastate them one by one.

Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother, Ben, didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up --- to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? --- he’s not there. The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.

In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor, she hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood. This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine --- and to decide what is forgivable, and how much should be sacrificed, in pursuit of the cure.

After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses and hidden reading nooks. When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Fearing she was the intended victim, it’s up to Tempest to solve this seemingly impossible crime.

Despite its beauty, Newport is a place that Cass Coventry would prefer to forget. But after an extended absence, she’s back in her hometown to celebrate her sister’s engagement --- even if she’s marrying into the family that famously stole the Gilded Age Coventry mansion out from under them a decade ago. The moment Cass pulls up to the estate, she’s in for one surprise after another. The bride-to-be is hiding a big secret. Her mother has royal-wedding aspirations. And when the date is set for only three months away, a local gossip blog makes the two families its new favorite subject. It's not long before Cass' weekend in town becomes a full summer of frenzied wedding planning and society drama --- but also idyllic sails, starry nights and a former love.

By age 30, Stephanie Foo had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at “This American Life” and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD --- a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. In WHAT MY BONES KNOW, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations.

In a working-class town in a county west of London, a schoolgirl scribbles stories in the back pages of her exercise book, intoxicated by the first sparks of her imagination. As she grows, everything and everyone she encounters become fuel for a burning talent. The large Russian man in the ancient maroon car who careens around the grocery store where she works as a checkout clerk, and slips her a copy of BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. The growing heaps of other books in which she loses --- and finds --- herself. Even the derailing of a friendship, in a devastating violation. The thrill of learning to conjure characters and scenarios in her head is matched by the exhilaration of forging her own way in the world.

Since William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, crossed the English Channel in 1066 to defeat King Harold II and unite England’s various kingdoms, 41 kings and queens have sat on Britain’s throne. Ironically, during very few of these 955 years has the throne’s occupant been unambiguously English. Appealing to the intrinsic fascination with British royalty, Tracy Borman lifts the veil to reveal the remarkable characters and personalities who have ruled and, since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, have more ceremonially reigned --- a crucial distinction explaining the staying power of the monarchy as the royal family has evolved and adapted to the needs and opinions of its people, avoiding the storms of rebellion that brought many of Europe’s royals to an abrupt end.

Mariah Stover is left for dead and with no memory when the Deadeye Gang robs the stagecoach she's riding in, killing both her father and brother. As she takes over her father's blacksmith shop and tries to move forward, she soon finds herself in jeopardy and wondering: Does someone know she witnessed the robbery and is still alive? Clint Roberts escaped to western Wyoming, leaving his painful memories behind. Hoping for a fresh start, he opens a diner where he creates fine dishes, but is met with harsh resistance from the townsfolk, who prefer to stick to their old ways. Clint and Mariah are drawn together by the trials they face in town, and Clint is determined to protect Mariah at all costs when danger descends upon her home. As threats pursue them from every side, will they survive to build a life forged in love?

NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, GLORY shows a country's imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. At the center of this tumult is Destiny, a young goat who returns to Jidada to bear witness to revolution --- and to recount the unofficial history and the potential legacy of the females who have quietly pulled the strings here.

Beginning on August 17, 1942, American heavy bomber crews of the Eighth Air Force took off for combat in the hostile skies over occupied Europe. The final price was staggering. 4,300 B-17s and B-24s failed to return. Nearly 21,000 men were taken prisoner or interned in a neutral country, and a further 17,650 made the ultimate sacrifice. LUCK OF THE DRAW is more than a war story. It’s the incredible, inspiring story of Frank Murphy, one of the few survivors from the 100th Bombardment Group, who cheated death for months in a German POW camp after being shot out of his B-17 Flying Fortress.

Marra --- a shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter --- is relieved not to be married off for the sake of her parents’ throne. Her older sister wasn’t so fortunate, though, and her royal husband is as abusive as he is powerful. From the safety of the convent, Marra wonders who will come to her sister’s rescue and put a stop to this. But after years of watching their families and kingdoms pretend that all is well, Marra realizes if any hero is coming, it will have to be Marra herself. If Marra can complete three impossible tasks, a witch will grant her the tools she needs. But, as is the way in stories of princes and the impossible, these tasks are only the beginning of Marra’s strange and enchanting journey to save her sister and topple a throne.

Charlie Wynwood and Silas Nash have been best friends since they could walk. They've been in love since the age of 14. But as of this morning, they are complete strangers. Their first kiss, their first fight, the moment they fell in love...every memory has vanished. Now Charlie and Silas must work together to uncover the truth about what happened to them and why. But the more they learn about the couple they used to be, the more they question why they were ever together to begin with. Forgetting is terrifying, but remembering may be worse.

Nora Hamilton, a romance channel screenwriter, turns her marriage’s collapse into cash and writes the best script of her life. No one is more surprised than her when it’s picked up for the big screen and set to film on location at her 100-year-old-home. When former Sexiest Man Alive Leo Vance is cast as her ne’er-do-well husband, Nora’s life will never be the same. The morning after shooting wraps, Leo has a proposition. He will pay a thousand dollars a day to stay for a week. The extra seven grand would give Nora breathing room, but it’s the need in his eyes that makes her say yes. Seven days: it’s the blink of an eye or an eternity depending on how you look at it. Enough time to fall in love. Enough time to break your heart.

Elinor Hanson is struggling to reinvent herself as a freelance writer when she receives an unexpected assignment, a chance to write for a prestigious magazine about the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota. Elinor grew up near the Bakken, raised by an overbearing father and a distant Korean mother. After decades away from home, Elinor returns to a landscape she hardly recognizes. Surrounded by roughnecks seeking their fortunes in oil and long-time residents worried about their changing community, Elinor experiences a profound sense of alienation and grief. The longer she pursues this potentially career-altering assignment, the more her past intertwines with the story she’s trying to tell, revealing disturbing new realities that will forever change her and the way she looks at the world.

China, 1938. Meilin and her four-year-old son, Renshu, flee their burning city as Japanese forces advance. On the perilous journey that follows, across a China transformed by war, they find comfort and wisdom in their most treasured possession, a beautifully illustrated hand scroll filled with ancient fables. Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. Though his daughter, Lily, is desperate to understand her heritage, he refuses to talk about his childhood in China. How can he tell his story when he's left so much behind?

In John Grisham’s first collection of novellas, law is a common thread --- but he has several surprises in store. “Homecoming” marks the return of Jake Brigance, but he’s not in the courtroom. He’s called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer who stole money from his clients. In “Strawberry Moon,” Cody Wallace is only three hours away from execution, and he has one final request. The “Sparring Partners” are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust.

In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders. Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect, but she was acquitted and retreated to the isolation of her mansion. Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist who runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes. They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?

On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle: Martha Gellhorn, who got the scoop on Ernest Hemingway on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller, who went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, a “society girl columnist” turned combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth, the first English journalist to break the news of World War II; and Helen Kirkpatrick, the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men. In Judith Mackrell's THE CORRESPONDENTS, these six women are captured in all their complexity.

At dusk on a November evening, a woman slips through her garden gate and turns up the hill. Kate is in the middle of a two-week mandatory quarantine period, a true lockdown, but she can’t take it anymore --- the closeness of the air in her small house, the confinement. And anyway, the moor will be deserted at this time. Nobody need ever know she’s stepped out. Kate planned only a quick walk --- a stretch of the legs, a breath of fresh air --- on paths she knows too well. But somehow she falls. Injured and unable to move, she sees that her short, furtive stroll will become a mountain rescue operation, maybe even a missing person case.