In Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, there lived a family with nine siblings, the youngest a girl named Barb. As the older children headed off to college, only Barb was home to see their mother fall under a gothic spell, changing into someone she didn’t recognize. We learn that this family has a genetic mutation that causes dementia, but with an especially cruel twist. As early as their 40s, formerly loving parents and hard-driving executives will lose their jobs, have affairs, take up drinking, and become people their families hardly know. Their former personalities seem to vanish --- and there is a 50-50 chance that it will happen to their children, too. THE VANISHING FAMILY unfolds like a heartbreaking thriller as the siblings begin to realize that what happened to their mother is happening to them.

Born under the shadow of a birthing tree sacred to generations of Mi’kmaq women, Aliet Paul grows up outside a small Nova Scotia town with her fierce, loving grandmother, Kiju. Her mother died bringing her into the world under that very tree. Her father remains a mystery no one will name. As Aliet comes of age, she navigates love, loss and a personal tragedy that veers her from the path her grandmother wanted for her. She becomes a nurse trained in modern medicine, yet she carries Kiju’s teachings close. Years later, when the call comes that Kiju has died, Aliet returns home to a crumbling house. As she digs to uncover who her family really is, each revelation pulls her deeper into a web of long-guarded silences, dangerous loyalties and generational wounds that refuse to stay buried.

Cricket Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love. Thus begins a 65-year entwining between Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership and love affair. Together they go to art school --- an experience of dubious value --- and then navigate the art world for the next 50 years, together and apart.

Manil Suri grew up in a large crumbling apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai), which his parents, who were Hindu, shared with three Muslim families. At age 20, Suri broke free from their single room and came to the US, where he finally found the freedom to embrace his sexuality and find a life partner. But the room kept wrenching him back to Bombay. By now, real estate prices had risen so much that neighbors had begun conspiring to take over the room. Eventually it was only his mother, Prem, left, who had staked all her happiness on her son but was unable to escape the room’s hold on her. When a rash of mysterious incidents seemed to beset the room, Suri realized how little time he had left to convince Prem that a happier life might await beyond the four walls that both enthralled and imprisoned her.

In honor of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, nine authors --- Adriana Trigiani, Sarah MacLean, Eloisa James, Elinor Lipman, Audrey Bellezza, Karen Dukess, Emily Harding, Nikki Payne and Diana Quincy --- have come together with wildly imaginative reboots of the lives of several of Austen’s minor characters. Written with plenty of love and wit, these clever stories star everyone from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE’s snobbish Caroline Bingley to the modern descendant of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY’s Eliza Williams, and much more. Blurring genres and taking us across the oceans, LADIES IN WAITING is a heartfelt celebration of Jane Austen and her timeless masterpieces.

In DEAD AND ALIVE, Zadie Smith brings her unique skills as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years. She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kara Walker and Celia Paul. She invites us along to the movies, to see and to think about Tár, and to New York to reflect on the spontaneous moments that connect us. She takes us on a walk down Kilburn High Road in her beloved North West London and welcomes us to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison. She considers changes of government on both sides of the Atlantic --- and the meaning of "the commons" in all our lives.

In blue-collar Lake Como, New Jersey, family comes first. Recently divorced from Bobby Bilancia, Jess Capodimonte Baratta moves into her parents’ basement to hide and heal. Jess is the overlooked daughter, who dutifully takes care of her parents, cooks Sunday dinner and puts herself last. Despite her role as the family handmaiden, Jess is also a talented draftswoman in the marble business run by her dapper uncle Louie, who believes she can do anything (once she invests in a better wardrobe). When the Capodimonte and Baratta families endure an unexpected loss, the shock unearths long-buried secrets that will force Jess to question her loyalty to those she trusted. Fueled by her lost dreams, Jess takes fate into her own hands and escapes to her ancestral home, Carrara, Italy.

New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown Corby Ledbetter’s marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that’s before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness and elemental kinship with a prison librarian who sees his light and some of his fellow offenders, including a tender-hearted cellmate and a troubled teen desperate for a role model. Buoyed by them and by his mother’s enduring faith in him, Corby begins to transcend the boundaries of his confinement, sustained by his hope that mercy and reconciliation still might be possible. Can his crimes ever be forgiven by those he loves?

Joan Didion opened THE WHITE ALBUM (1979) with what would become one of the most iconic lines in American literature: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Today, this phrase is deployed inspirationally, printed on T-shirts and posters, used as a battle cry for artists and writers. In truth, Didion was describing something much less rosy: our human tendency to manufacture delusions that might ward away our anxieties when society seems to spin off its axis. Nowhere was this collective hallucination more effectively crafted than in Hollywood. In this riveting cultural biography, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion’s influence through the lens of American mythmaking.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job --- or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.