In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland. During the tumultuous summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher-turned-missionary, disrupts the community’s fragile balance through his efforts to educate its children. His presence attracts the attention of authorities on the mainland who decide to forcibly evacuate the island, institutionalize its residents and develop the island as a vacation destination.

“It all started with my balls.” So begins Colm Tóibín’s fabulously compelling essay, laced with humor, about his diagnosis and treatment for cancer. Tóibín survives, but he has entered, as he says, “the age of one ball.” The second essay in this collection is a memoir about growing up in the 1950s and ’60s in the small town of Enniscorthy in County Wexford, the setting for many of Tóibín’s novels and stories, including BROOKLYN, THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP and NORA WEBSTER. Tóibín describes his education by priests, several of whom were condemned years later for abuse. He writes about Irish history and literature, and about the long, tragic journey toward legal and social acceptance of homosexuality.

Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm --- or was, until a prudish neighbor observes her having sex on the roof of her NYC apartment building. Police are summoned, and a punishing judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, life looks bleak. When a doorman lets slip that Jane isn't the only resident wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to life within her apartment walls, she discovers she hasn’t heard the end of that tattletale neighbor --- whose past isn’t as decorous as her 9-1-1 snitching would suggest. Why are police knocking on Jane’s door again? Can her house arrest have a silver lining? Can two wrongs make a right?

Every so often, a pairing comes along that seems completely unlikely --- until it’s not. Peanut butter and jelly, Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un, ducks and puppies, and now: Dickens and Prince. Equipped with a fan’s admiration and his trademark humor and wit, Nick Hornby invites us into his latest obsession: the cosmic link between two unlikely artists, geniuses in their own rights, spanning race, class and centuries --- each of whom electrified their different disciplines and whose legacy resounded far beyond their own time.

Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally bestselling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists and musicians. Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer’s “mental chest of drawers”; the necessity of loneliness, patience and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career; and more.

NAVIGATING GRIEF AND LOSS is a book for anyone who has experienced the pain of mourning, struggled to find a job, or is devastated by a bad breakup. It's a guidebook filled with relatable stories and practical meditations to help navigate the profound experience of death and loss. Filled with traditional Buddhist wisdom into the nature of life, each short chapter honestly describes a personal experience dealing with death or grief, followed by compassionate and mindful practices --- meditations, exercises or contemplations that readers can use to discover insights and truths, and bring comfort and friendship to their own struggles and sorrow.

A man with a borrowed name steps from a flashy red sports car --- also borrowed --- onto the estate of his youth. But all is not as it seems. There is a new family living in the drafty old house: the Godleys, descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley, whose theory of existence threw the universe into chaos. And this mystery man, who has just completed a prison sentence, feels as if time has stopped, or was torn, or was opened in new and strange ways. He must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, their harried housekeeper who becomes his landlady, his recently commissioned biographer of Godley Sr., and a wealthy and beautiful woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request.

An ancient majestic oak stands beneath the stars on Division Street. And under the tree sits Ben Wilf, a retired doctor, and 10-year-old Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant, lonely boy who is pointing out his favorite constellations. Waldo doesn’t realize it, but he and Ben have met before. And they will again, and again. Across time and space, and shared destiny. Division Street is full of secrets. An impulsive lie begets a secret --- one that will forever haunt the Wilf family. And the Shenkmans, who move into the neighborhood many years later, bring secrets of their own. Spanning 50 kaleidoscopic years, on a street --- and in a galaxy --- where stars collapse and stories collide, these two families become bound in ways they never could have imagined.

DINOSAURS is the story of a man named Gil who walks from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed love. After he arrives, new neighbors move into the glass-walled house next door, and his life begins to mesh with theirs. In this warmly textured, dryly funny and philosophical account of Gil’s unexpected devotion to the family, Lydia Millet explores the uncanny territory where the self ends and community begins --- what one person can do in a world beset by emergencies.

Arthur Less is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US. Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,” through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo --- a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. We cannot, however, escape ourselves. From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Less must eventually face his personal demons.