In DAVID AND GOLIATH, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages. He offers a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, cope with a disability, lose a parent, attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.

Providing shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland is a death sentence, but Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, do exactly that. In their tiny home in Sokal, they hide a Jewish family in a loft above their pigsty, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen, and a defecting German soldier in the attic. For everyone to survive, Franciszka will have to outsmart her neighbors and the German commander.

Minna Bernays, an overeducated lady’s companion with a sharp, wry wit, turns to her sister Martha, a mother struggling with six children and an absent, disinterested husband named Sigmund Freud. While Martha and the scientific community are shocked and repulsed by Freud's "pornographic" work, Minna is fascinated. She and Freud embark on what is at first simply an intellectual courtship, but hides something deeper beneath the surface, a desire that Minna cannot escape.

Set in post-revolutionary Iran from 1983 to 2011, Sahar Delijani’s debut novel follows a group of mothers, fathers, children and lovers --- some related by blood, others brought together by the tide of history that washes over their lives. Finally, years later, it is the next generation that is left with the burden of the past and their country’s tenuous future as a new wave of protest and political strife begins.

Gretta Riordan awakes one morning to find that her husband of 40 years has vanished, cleaning out his bank account along the way. Her three grown children converge on their parents’ home for the first time in years: Michael Francis, whose marriage is failing; Monica, with two stepdaughters who despise her; and Aoife, who has arranged her entire life to conceal a devastating secret.

Teddi Overman has learned to turn other people’s castoffs into beautifully restored antiques, and eventually finds a way to open her own shop in Charleston. But nothing can alleviate the haunting uncertainty she has felt in the years since her brother Josh’s mysterious disappearance. When signs emerge that Josh might still be alive, Teddi is drawn home to Kentucky. It’s a journey that could help her come to terms with her shattered family, but first she must decide what to let go of and what to keep.

Elm Howells has a loving family and a distinguished career at an elite Manhattan auction house. But after a tragic loss throws her into an emotional crisis, she pursues a reckless course of action that jeopardizes her personal and professional success. Meanwhile, talented artist Gabriel Connois wearies of remaining at the margins of the capricious Parisian art scene. Desperate for recognition, he embarks on a scheme that threatens his burgeoning reputation.

When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of “Downton Abbey,” four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama --- and, even more unexpectedly, with each other.

Orphaned at birth, 17-year-old Korobi Roy has been troubled by the silence that surrounds her parents’ deaths. She dreams of one day finding a love as powerful as her parents’, and it seems her wish has come true when she meets the charming Rajat, the only son of a high-profile family. But shortly after their engagement, a heart attack kills Korobi’s grandfather, revealing serious financial problems and a devastating secret about Korobi's past.

Movie critic Violet Epps has learned to channel her literary hero, Dorothy Parker. If only she could summon that kind of courage in her personal life. Determined to defeat her social anxiety, Violet visits the Algonquin Hotel, where Parker and other famous writers of the 1920s traded barbs. But she gets more than she bargained for when Parker's feisty spirit rematerializes from an ancient guestbook and hitches a ride onto her life.