Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together --- at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a 70-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged. But when Ruth’s loose tooth turns out to be something much more malicious, the beautiful, reliable life they’ve created together comes to a crisis. As Ruth struggles with her crumbling independence, Abe must learn how to take care of her while their three living children question his ability to look after his wife. And once again, the couple has to reconfigure how to be there for each other.

Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she’s taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to rest those anonymous accusations of plagiarism that so tormented him. Now she is living the contented life of a literary widow, enjoying her husband’s royalty checks in perpetuity. But for the second time in her life, a work of fiction intercedes, and this time it’s her own debut novel, The Afterword. When Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. Someone out there knows far too much: about her late brother, her late husband, and just possibly...Anna herself. What does this person want, and what are they prepared to do?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future --- age 103! --- and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all. If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky --- and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then --- through a combination of hard work and serendipity --- she started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York City, from the English countryside to the tropical beaches of St. Thomas, from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and back again. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage and on tour, and she tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing. Could it be true love? Or is that not actually what Jodie is looking for?

When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, children and closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the linchpin of all their lives. Bill is overwhelmed without his beloved wife, and Annemarie wrestles with the bad habits her best friend had helped her overcome. And Ali, the eldest of Annie’s children, has to grow up overnight, to care for her younger brothers and even her father and to puzzle out for herself many of the mysteries of adult life. Over the course of the next year, what saves them all is Annie --- ever-present in their minds, loving but not sentimental, caring but nobody’s fool, a voice in their heads that is funny, sharp and remarkably clear. The power she has given to those who loved her is the power to go on without her. The lesson they learn is that no one beloved is ever truly gone.

Women can be heroes. When 20-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many --- all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it. Who is Geno? A lonely old man clinging to his delusions and rehearsing his fantasies, or a legitimate anomaly, a thousand-year-old man who continues to search for the love he lost so long ago? As Angel comes to learn the truth about Geno, so, too, does the reader. As his miraculous story comes to a head, so does the biggest truth of all: that love --- timeless, often elusive --- is sometimes right in front of us.

Silent illumination, a way of penetrating the mind through curious inquiry, is an especially potent, accessible and portable meditation practice perfectly suited for a time when there is so much fear, upheaval and sorrow in our world. It is a method of reconnecting with our true nature, which encompasses all that exists and where suffering cannot touch us. The practice of silent illumination is simple, allowing each moment to be experienced as it is in order to manifest our innate wisdom and natural capacity for compassion. After guiding readers through the history and practice of silent illumination, Rebecca Li shows us how we can recognize and unlearn our “modes of operation” --- habits of mind that get in the way of being fully present and engaged with life.

Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx --- the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother --- to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville. At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee. Between treatments he dreams of escape and imagines his life as a fugitive. Soon, though, he finds a new sense of freedom far from home. But with the promise of a life-changing cure on the horizon, Victor’s time at Carville is running out, and he has some difficult choices to make.

Can we love the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski or Picasso? Should we? In this unflinching, deeply personal book, Claire Dederer explores the audience's relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an artist is also a mother, does one's identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss?