In January 2014, Henning Mankell received a diagnosis of lung cancer. QUICKSAND is a response to this shattering news --- but it is not a memoir of destruction. Instead, it is a testament to a life fully lived, a tribute to the extraordinary but fleeting human journey that delivers both boundless opportunity and crucial responsibility. In a series of intimate vignettes, Mankell ranges over rich and varied reflections. Along the way, he ponders the meaning of a good life, and the critically important ways we can shape the future of humanity if we are fortunate enough to have the choice.

For Will Schwalbe, reading is a way to entertain himself but also to make sense of the world, and to find the answers to life’s questions big and small. In each chapter, he discusses a particular book and how it relates to concerns we all share. These books span centuries and genres --- from STUART LITTLE to THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, from DAVID COPPERFIELD to WONDER, from GIOVANNI’S ROOM to REBECCA, and from 1984 to GIFTS FROM THE SEA. Throughout, Schwalbe tells stories from his life and focuses on the way certain books can help us honor those we've loved and lost, and also figure out how to live each day more fully.

Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’ own work possible. THE UNDOING PROJECT is about a compelling collaboration between two men who have the dimensions of great literary figures.

Jerusalem, 1959. Shmuel Ash, a biblical scholar, is adrift in his young life when he finds work as a caregiver for a brilliant but cantankerous old man named Gershom Wald. There is, however, a third, mysterious presence in his new home. Atalia Abarbanel, the daughter of a deceased Zionist leader, a beautiful woman in her 40s, entrances young Shmuel even as she keeps him at a distance. Piece by piece, the old Jerusalem stone house, haunted by tragic history and now home to the three misfits and their intricate relationship, reveals its secrets.

“Mister Monkey” --- a screwball children’s musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee --- is the kind of family favorite that survives far past its prime. Margot, who plays the chimp’s lawyer, knows the production is dreadful and bemoans the failure of her acting career. She’s settled into the drudgery of playing a humiliating part --- until the day she receives a mysterious letter from an anonymous admirer…and later, in the middle of a performance, has a shocking encounter with Adam, the 12-year-old who plays the title role.

On an average day in America, seven young people aged 19 or under will be shot dead. In ANOTHER DAY IN THE DEATH OF AMERICA, award-winning Guardian journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during the course of a single day in the United States. It could have been any day, but Younge has chosen November 23, 2013. From Jaiden Dixon (9), shot point-blank by his mother’s ex-boyfriend on his doorstep in Ohio, to Pedro Dado Cortez (16), shot by an enemy gang on a street corner in California, the narrative crisscrosses the country over a period of 24 hours to reveal the powerful human stories behind the statistics.

"Why do we write?" With this question, Joyce Carol Oates begins an imaginative exploration of the writing life, and all its attendant anxieties, joys and futilities, in this collection of seminal essays and criticism. Leading her quest is a desire to understand the source of the writer’s inspiration. Do subjects haunt those that might bring them back to life until the writer submits? Or does something "happen" to us, a sudden ignition of a burning flame? Can the appearance of a muse-like Other bring about a writer’s best work? In SOUL AT THE WHITE HEAT, Oates deploys her keenest critical faculties, conjuring contemporary and past voices whose work she dissects for clues to these elusive questions.

Robert Quinlan is a 70-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain under the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert’s own family are more apparent. He has almost no relationship with his brother, Jimmy. Their father, a veteran of WWII, is coming to the end of his life. And an unstable homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a deep impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.

At just 47 years old, William Giraldi’s father was killed in a horrific motorcycle crash while racing on a country road. This tragedy, which forever altered the young Giraldi and devastated his family, provides the pulse for THE HERO’S BODY. In the tradition of Andre Dubus III’s TOWNIE, this is a deep-seeing investigation into two generations of men from the working-class town of Manville, New Jersey, including Giraldi’s own forays into obsessive bodybuilding as a teenager desperate to be worthy of his family’s pitiless, exacting codes of manhood.

In this revealing memoir, Terry McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he’s known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny. Here, too, is an expert’s practical advice on how to recruit --- and keep --- high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works, and what it takes to write well.