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Alone at a party, sipping her celery sour, Charli knows she’s in a rut. Kicking around with the rest of London’s bohemian dropouts, she has no idea what to do with her arts degree and her research project on Romy Haag --- the transsexual disco singer and long-time lover of David Bowie --- has all but stalled out. But her life takes a turn when she bumps into the mysterious Alexander Geist. Androgynously, glamorously handsome, he feels something like a soul mate, another love once lost and now found. Naturally, when he leaves for Berlin, Charli follows. There, at the center of the city’s febrile party scene, Charli and Alexander embark on their great project: turn Alexander into the greatest pop star since David Bowie. But Alexander is elusive, mercurial; Charli is in over her head before she realizes just how self-destructive her life has become under his spell.

Simultaneously heart-breaking and hilarious, LEAVING HOME is a portrait of the artist both as a child and as an adult. His parents were not really cut out for the job of having children. They were cut out, respectively, for the jobs of designing abattoirs and keeping a pathologically clean and tidy house. At least he had the consolations of The Weetabix Solar System Wallchart, walnut whips and the occasional Babycham. Astringently honest and scalpel sharp, this is a book about being different and seeing the world differently. It’s about being a cartoonist and a care assistant. It’s about family. It’s about knickerbocker glories and heart surgery, about papier mâché and mental breakdown and great white sharks. It’s about how art, in all its varied forms, provides a way of understanding and coming to terms with the mess of human life.

Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black female writer --- and her work is highly complex.” In ON MORRISON, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre --- her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry --- with contextual guidance and original close readings.

From Grant Ginder, the bestselling author of THE PEOPLE WE HATE AT THE WEDDING, comes a generation-defining novel that is part love story, part tragic comedy. Five parties over the course of 20 years bring six college friends together, exploring the ways we run from and cling to our friends in love, life and death. For Marco and Mia, Sasha and Theo, Richie and Adam, the one constant in life after college together has been change. New jobs. New cities. New spouses. New children. Through it all, one thing they thought would always stay the same is their friendship. But time has a way of breaking even the strongest bonds, and testing what we thought we knew.

Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Alix takes nightly refuge in the reading room at the Boston Public Library. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives...inside their favorite books. The Librarian takes Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian flee through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy --- Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself?

Cotton Malone is called to Sweden when the younger sister of King Wilhelm I is kidnapped. The ransom demand? Hand over an 800-year-old book, the Codex Gigas. Claimed as war loot from Bohemia in 1648, it’s been kept in Stockholm for nearly 400 years. Now the Czech Republic wants the codex back and Sweden has agreed to return it, but forces are at work to stop that deal from happening. The likely instigator? Russia. It’s up to Cotton and Cassiopeia Vitt to locate the king’s sister, secure the codex and thwart the Russians. Yet nothing is as it seems. Making matters worse, an array of conflicting personalities re-emerge from Cotton’s past, transforming an already chaotic international situation into something far more personal and deadly.

Court Gentry’s current family operates out of an office park in Virginia. The Ghost Town is an off-the-books direct action team run by a former CIA Deputy Director. They take on the jobs the Agency needs handled “discretely." Somewhere at the top of the US Intelligence apparatus operations worldwide are threatened. Then Court himself barely escapes from an ambush. Now key members of the U.S. counterintelligence community are being assassinated in their own neighborhoods. With the feds compromised, it’s up to Court and his team to stop the hit squads. But eliminating professional kill teams may be the least of the Gray Man’s worries when he finds himself targeted by the legendary assassin codenamed Whetstone, a man driven by a personal quest to rain down hellfire on Court and everyone he’s ever loved.

Nell Masters is certain someone is following her. The hairs on the back of her neck rise when she travels to and from work, there are silent calls to her office, and a huge bouquet of flowers arrives without a card. And Nell has a reason to be looking over her shoulder, because she has a secret that she’s hiding from everyone in her life. Fourteen years earlier, she witnessed a student, Bryony Sanders, getting into a stranger’s car. When Bryony was found murdered, Elle became obsessed with finding the person responsible. Now, Nell tries to convince herself that this unnerving feeling of being watched is all in her mind. Has someone from her past discovered her new identity? Has the stalker become the stalked? Or is there something even more deadly at play?

It’s the night of November 4, 2008. America's first Black president has just been elected. And 53-year-old Hollis Montrose --- a Black ex-police officer from the suburbs of Chicago --- has become the latest victim of a brutal attack. He was shot 10 times in cold blood by four white men who otherwise would have been colleagues back in his police days. Beau Lee Cooper was born serious, as if on an urgent mission with little time to waste. Raised in the tumultuous world of Texas, it had always been his dream to become a lawyer and fight for what’s right, ever since he was a little boy reading TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. And now, 10 years into running his own law firm with his best friend and partner in crime Nelson “Nellie” Rivers and his suave right-hand-man Brent “Cape” Capers, he feels he’s finally making a difference. When Beau Lee learns about Hollis’s situation, he’s determined to help.

In the farm country outside Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan --- a border town where life moves slow and dreams run fast --- most kids want out. Not Everett Lindt. He’s set on staying put, rebuilding his family’s sheep farm and carving a future from the land he loves. Then he meets Mary, a new girl in town with restless energy and bigger plans. When their relationship reaches a crossroads, Everett sees a life together. Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. Together, they make an impulsive choice --- one that could change everything.

Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. These nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other peoples’ good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can. 

ENCOUNTERS WITH UNEXPECTED ANIMALS takes readers deep into the heart of bestselling author Bret Anthony Johnston’s home state of Texas, where teenagers search for love, parents grasp at connections with their children, and animals --- real or imagined, familiar or unexpected --- are reminders of the mystery, danger and beauty of being alive. In “Caiman,” a father buys a baby alligator in hopes of keeping his family safe. In “Soldier of Fortune,” a teenage boy dog-sits for his neighbors after tragedy strikes, and his innocent snooping uncovers the family’s most guarded secret. And in the luminous “Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows About Horses,” an elderly man’s heart is laid bare with the raw and breathtaking power of wild horses.

Detective Inspector Samantha Hansen has been on leave for six months, but when a 14-year-old girl is murdered in a local park, Sam jumps at the chance to return to the job and prove that she's still got what it takes to be Scotland Yard's most successful homicide detective. One of the case's only leads is a copy of a self-help book found in the victim's backpack called How To Get Away With Murder by a man named Denver Brady. Chapter by chapter, he details his methodology and his past victims, and as Sam's investigation progresses and the details of the book go viral, Sam begins to suspect that there’s more to the author than what he’s revealed. But in order to find a killer and get justice for young Charlotte, Sam must learn to trust her instincts once again, before Denver Brady --- or someone else --- really does get away with murder.

Toño Azpilcueta, writer of sundry articles, aspirant to the now defunct professorship of Peruvian studies, is an expert in the vals, a genre of music descended from the European waltz but rooted in New World Creole culture. When he hears a performance by the elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino, he is convinced not only that he is in the presence of the country’s finest musician, but that his own love for Peruvian music has a profound social function. If he could just write the biography of the man before him and tell the story of both the vals and its attendant inspiring ethos, huachafería (Peru’s most important contribution to world culture, according to Toño), he might capture his country’s soul and inspire his fellow citizens remember the ties that bind them. Through music, the populace might unite and lay down their arms and embrace a harmonious and unified Peruvian culture.

Marla Gibbs has been a Hollywood icon for generations of fans. Now, at 93, she chronicles her climb from a difficult youth in which she yearned for safety and love, to the high-stakes world of Hollywood where she became a confident powerbroker learning to work behind the scenes for fair pay, access, and more creative control for herself and her colleagues. Told in her forthright voice, IT'S NEVER TOO LATE illuminates Gibbs' daring move to Los Angeles to rebuild her life after an abusive marriage, how she became an actor, and how she eventually learned to balance acting with show running. Though the authority she wielded behind the scenes created deep tensions on and off the set, her hard-luck young life had prepared her to succeed even as her tenacity was put to the test. Her experiences laid the groundwork for powerbrokers like Shonda Rhimes and Issa Rae.

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at 18 for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.

High school English teacher Polly Goodman can talk about everything and anything with the women in her book club, which is why they’ve become her closest friends and, along with her veterinarian husband, the bedrock of her life. Her students, her fraught relationship with her mother, her struggles with IVF --- Polly’s book club friends have heard about it all. But when they give Polly an ancestry test kit as a joke, the results match her with a stranger. It is clear to Polly that this match is a mistake, but still she cannot help but comb through her family history for answers. Then, when it seems that the book club circle of four will become three, Polly learns how friendships can change your life in the most profound ways.

Two siblings set off in the dark of night. They’re heading for Nowhere --- an abandoned ranch, rumored to be haunted by its former movie-star owner and now a haven for runaways. What awaits could be the freedom they crave. And while they may have escaped the devil they knew, something darker is waiting in the burned shell of Nowhere. Something which asks a terrible price for sanctuary.

When Fliss, the daughter of the Fitzmaurice clan, is found deadi, what seems like a tragic accident stirs more suspicion than closure for those who’ve traded favors with her family. There is Ben, Fliss’ brother. And Martin, Ben’s best friend, who is happy to re-enter the Fitzmaurice orbit. He can’t help but notice that Ben’s wife, Serena, seems to have discovered in middle age that her privileged existence is more like a gilded cage. Or that Ben and Serena’s daughter Cosima, has become an environmental activist fighting against everything her parents seem to stand for. Where does Richard Take, Ben's disgraced colleague, determined to make his big comeback, fit in? And circling them all is Andrew Jarvis and his money --- has he been their loyal hero or the one who has thrown his weight around just to keep them all in check?

In Michigan, Sarah’s childhood was defined by fear and silence. As a teenager, she saw a chance to escape and took it. Now, in 1999, she is an artist living on the rugged coast of Donegal, Ireland, where she is known as Saoirse --- a name that sounds like the sea and means freedom in the language of her adopted country. Her partner and two beloved daughters are regular subjects of her paintings, and together they have made the safe home she always longed for. But Saoirse's secrets haunt her. When her artwork wins unexpected acclaim at a Dublin exhibition, the spotlight of fame threatens to unravel the careful lies that hold her world together. Journalists and admirers begin to ask questions about the mysterious artist from Donegal, and she fears the unwanted publicity will expose all that she has done.

Emma Shrader receives an invitation to meet her estranged father for the first time. Alex Spencer is an author who had a brief fling with Emma’s mom, then disappeared. Now he’d like Emma to come stay at his beautiful home on Cheshire Lake in Maine. It should be an inspiring place for Emma to finish working on her own novel, especially with Alex’s guidance. But when a neighbor is found dead under strange circumstances, the surroundings begin to feel less welcoming. Cheshire Lake harbors secrets. What exactly has been going on in this quiet, close-knit community? And how much of it has to do with Emma’s arrival? As Emma learns of other disappearances and mysterious deaths, what seemed like a fresh start begins to fill her with unease. Emma thought Cheshire Lake held the home and family she’s long been looking for. Now she wonders if she’ll ever be allowed to leave alive.

Marybeth Pickett gets the call she has always dreaded: her husband Joe is in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head. Joe was found in his pickup at Antler Creek Junction, a crossroads connecting three ranches. Each road leading to a dangerous family. Each family with a different bone to pick with the local game warden. Marybeth and the new sheriff assume that Joe was ambushed by one of the families, but they have no idea which one since Joe didn’t say where he was going or why. With Joe unconscious and fighting for his life with Marybeth at his side, Sheridan, April and Lucy split up and investigate each of families to uncover the truth of what happened to their father, before it’s too late.

Stranger is trapped in the dark, with only her imagination and the scribbles on the wall left by long-dead girls to keep her company. Nearly out of food and water, she makes one last attempt to escape. But if the door opens at last, will it mean salvation, or only the beginning of her fight to survive? Audrey is a search and rescue expert who never stopped looking for her ex-best friend, Janie, who disappeared when they were teenagers. Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who saves girls from bad men, but Audrey knows now that for every one saved, there’s always another one lost. When she stumbles upon evidence in the forest that a teenage runaway might have actually been kidnapped from land belonging to the town’s most prominent family, she will have to dig through decades of secrets to reveal the biggest one of all: what happened to the girls before.

In THE IRISH GOODBYE, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences. The longer essays concern Fennelly’s relationships --- with a beloved mother-in-law, a decades-long friendship between five former college roommates, an artist who paints a series of nude portraits in Fennelly’s town, for which she poses. THE IRISH GOODBYE offers a rare pleasure: intimacy.

Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant, dedicated and possibly a few pages ahead in a book no one else is reading. He’s a magician able to enchant 14-year-olds into a love of writing and literature. Yet no student has lived up to the promise of their potential more than Clara Hightower. Over the course of three decades, Clara is a kindergarten thief, a high school genius, a Silicon Valley celebrity, and an animal rights activist turned terrorist. To tell Clara’s story, Mr. Keating must tell his own, including his courtship and marriage, his dreams of writing and comedy, his days in the classroom in lower Manhattan, along with the rivalry and friendship with his Head of School, and his eventual stroke and the isolation that follows.