When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can’t cry. Over 10 years, Alzheimer’s had steadily eroded this erudite man into a paranoid lunatic. Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband, Cyril, have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early 50s, the couple fears what may lie ahead. To spare themselves and their loved ones such a humiliating and protracted decline, Cyril proposes that they agree to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned 80. When their deal is sealed, the spouses are blithely looking forward to another three decades together. But then they turn 80. SHOULD WE STAY OR SHOULD WE GO portrays 12 parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril.

Flora Mancini has been happily married for more than 20 years. But everything she thought she knew about herself, her marriage and her relationship with her best friend, Margot, is upended when she stumbles upon an envelope containing her husband’s wedding ring --- the one he claimed he lost one summer when their daughter, Ruby, was five. Flora and Julian struggled for years, scraping together just enough acting work to raise Ruby in Manhattan and keep Julian’s small theater company --- Good Company --- afloat. A move to Los Angeles brought their first real career successes and a reunion with Margot, now a bona fide television star. But has their new life been built on lies? What happened that summer all those years ago? And what happens now?

INTENTION TREMOR collects prose and poetry that chronicle Tamara Kaye Sellman’s life in the five years that followed her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. She wrote the majority of these pieces next to a campfire or inside a travel trailer at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, WA. One-hundred percent of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Accelerated Cure Project, which works to accelerate research and improve the quality of life for those affected by MS.

Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. Peter Todbaum, an old college friend and writing partner, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings’ life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear.

The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While 16-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula. Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless 19-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands.

Before Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea and Jonathan Lethem became revered authors, they were readers. In this ebullient book, America’s favorite librarian, Nancy Pearl, and noted playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America's most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark. Illustrated with beautiful line drawings, THE WRITER’S LIBRARY is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries and bookstores of today’s favorite authors --- the creative artists whose imagination and sublime talent make America's literary scene the wonderful, dynamic world it is.

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease in 1918, nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

After an ignominious early retirement, Remington announces to his wife, Serenata, that he’s decided to run a marathon. This from a sedentary man in his 60s who’s never done a lick of exercise in his life. As Remington joins the cult of fitness that increasingly consumes the Western world, Serenata’s once-modest husband burgeons into an unbearable narcissist. Ignoring all his other obligations, he engages a saucy, sexy personal trainer named Bambi, who treats Serenata with contempt. When Remington sets his sights on the legendarily grueling triathlon, MettleMan, Serenata is sure he’ll end up injured or dead. And even if he does survive, their marriage may not.

Prickly, wry and resistant to change, yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, move us and inspire us --- in Strout’s words --- “to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”

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.