Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of AFTERLIFE, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves --- lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack --- but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.

Abandoned as an infant by his actress mother in her theater dressing room, August March was raised by an ancient laundress. Highly intelligent and a tad feral, August is a true child of the theater. But like all productions, August’s wondrous time inside the theater comes to a close, and he finds himself in the wilds of postwar New York City, where he quickly rises from pickpocket street urchin to star student at the stuffiest boarding school in the nation. To survive, August must rely upon the kindness of strangers, only some of whom have his best interests at heart. As he grows up, his heart begins to yearn for love --- which he may or may not finally find in Penny, a clever and gifted con artist.

Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter --- radicalized by the online alt-right --- attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart. Still, there is the sweetness of the music from her father’s oud, and the hope and community Afaf finally finds in Islam.

Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time, so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless. Letting glamorous, seductive Drue back into her life is risky, but it comes with an invitation to spend a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and pleads and dangles the prospect of cute single guys, Daphne finds herself powerless as ever to resist her friend’s siren song.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. In their eyes she’s a prophet. And to disobey her means eternal damnation. The control Whaley exerts is absolute: she decides what her followers study, where they work, whom they can marry --- even when they can have sex. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations and thousands of pages of documents, BROKEN FAITH is a terrifying portrait of life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

By May 2019, the Washington Nationals had one of the worst records in the majors. Yet by blending an old-school brand of baseball with modern analytics, they managed to sneak into the playoffs and put together the most unlikely postseason run in baseball history. Not only did they beat the Houston Astros to claim the franchise’s first championship, they won all four games in Houston, making them the first club to ever win four road games in a World Series. Washington Post beat writer Jesse Dougherty followed the Nationals more closely than any other writer in America, and in BUZZ SAW he recounts the dramatic year in vivid detail, taking readers inside the dugout, the clubhouse, the front office, and ultimately the championship parade.

When Athens journalist Nikoletta Elia disappears while on assignment on the island of Naxos, her editor calls on Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis to investigate. Sent to report on the conflict between preservationists and advocates for expanded tourism, Nikoletta is approached by a fan who takes credit for several suspicious deaths she'd reported on in the past. The assassin claims to have abandoned that life, and convinces the reporter to write about him and his murderous exploits for hire. Kaldis sends his deputy, Yianni, to look into her disappearance when an unidentified body is found at the base of a cliff. Who is the mysterious corpse, and where is Nikoletta?

When Eliza Hunt created The Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board 15 years ago, she was happily entrenched in her picture-perfect suburban life. Now, with an empty nest and a crippling case of agoraphobia, the once-fun hobby has become her lifeline. So when a rival parenting forum threatens the site’s existence, she doesn’t think twice before fabricating a salacious rumor to spark things up a bit. It doesn’t take long before that spark becomes a flame. Across town, new mom and site devotee Olivia York is thrown into a tailspin by what she reads on the Bulletin Board. Allison Le is making cyber friends with a woman who isn’t quite who she says she is. And Amanda Cole, Eliza’s childhood friend, may just hold the key to unearthing why Eliza can’t step out of her front door.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her hard life on the swamp and her harsh father. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle. She forms a plan to go north, to pack up the secrets she's holding about her life in the South and hang them on the line for all to see in Ohio. As the two girls are drawn deeper into a dangerous world of bootleggers and moral corruption, they must come to terms with the complexities of their tenuous bond and a hidden past that links them in ways that could cost them their lives.

Escaping from an abusive marriage, 17-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist --- and confidante --- to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own. Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation and her livelihood. As she pursues her dream of an independent life, she is startled one day when she is confronted by her husband, who has tracked her down these many years later with a high-spirited young girl in tow --- a sister Lakshmi never knew she had. Suddenly, the caution that she has carefully cultivated as protection is threatened.

1952. Millers Kill Police Chief Harry McNeil is called to a crime scene where a woman in a party dress has been murdered with no obvious cause of death. 1972. Millers Kill Police Chief Jack Liddle is called to a murder scene of a woman that's very similar to one he worked as a trooper in the ’50s. The only difference is that they have a suspect this time. Young Vietnam War veteran Russ van Alstyne found the body while riding his motorcycle and is quickly pegged as the prime focus of the investigation. Present-day. Millers Kill Police Chief Russ van Alstyne gets a 911 call that a young woman has been found dead in a party dress, the same MO as the crime he was accused of in the ’70s. The pressure is on for Russ to solve the murder before he's removed from the case.

Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints and the specters of a ravaged landscape, as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry and glimpses of a different kind of future.

Baseball is a sport of decisions. Some are so small and routine they become the building blocks of the game itself --- what pitch to throw or when to swing away. Others are so huge they dictate the future of franchises --- when to make a strategic trade for a chance to win now, or when to offer millions and a multi-year contract for a 28-year-old star. These decisions have long shaped the behavior of players, managers and entire franchises. But as those choices have become more complex and data-driven, knowing what’s behind them has become key to understanding the sport. THE INSIDE GAME explores as never before the essential question: What were they thinking?

After the sex-positive start-up that Naomi Grant cofounded becomes an international sensation, she wants to extend her educational platform to live lecturing. Unfortunately, higher ed won't hire her. Recently LA Mag nominated Ethan Cohen as one of the city's hottest bachelors, and he became rabbi of his own synagogue. Low on both funds and congregants, the executive board has given him three months to turn things around, or else they'll close the doors of his synagogue for good. Naomi and Ethan join forces to host a buzzy seminar series on Modern Intimacy, the perfect solution to their problems until they discover a new one --- their growing attraction to each other.

Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa --- the setting of her novels GILEAD, HOME and LILA --- and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions and the wonders of a sacred world. JACK is the fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now.

August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and drawn curtains that she finds on her arrival are not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London. Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed --- a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.

Lee Durkee takes readers on a high-stakes cab ride through an unforgettable shift. Meet Lou --- a lapsed novelist, struggling Buddhist and UFO fan --- who drives for a ramshackle taxi company that operates on the outskirts of a north Mississippi college town. With Uber moving into town and his way of life vanishing, his girlfriend moving out, and his archenemy dispatcher suddenly returning to town on the lam, Lou must finish his bedlam shift by aiding and abetting the host of criminal misfits haunting the back seat of his disintegrating Town Car. Lou is forced to decide how much he can take as a driver, and if keeping his job is worth madness and heartbreak.

When Vanessa Price quit her job to pursue her dream of traveling the globe, she wasn't expecting to gain millions of YouTube followers who shared her joy of seizing every moment. But after her half-sister suddenly leaves Vanessa with custody of her baby daughter, life goes from "daily adventure" to "next-level bad." The last person Vanessa expects to show up offering help is the hot lawyer next door, Adrian Copeland. No one warned her that he was the Secret Baby Tamer or that she'd be spending a whole lot of time with him and his geriatric Chihuahua. Now she's feeling things she's vowed not to feel. Because the only thing worse than falling for Adrian is finding a little hope for a future she may never see.

In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires. Together with 2,000 other refugees, they embark on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile. As unlikely partners, they embrace exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war.

Now that Relos Var’s plans have been revealed and demons are free to rampage across the empire, the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies --- and the end of the world --- is closer than ever. To buy time for humanity, Kihrin needs to convince the king of the Manol vané to perform an ancient ritual that will strip the entire race of their immortality, but it’s a ritual that certain vané will do anything to prevent. Including assassinating the messengers. Worse, Kihrin must come to terms with the horrifying possibility that his connection to the king of demons, Vol Karoth, is growing steadily in strength. How can he hope to save anyone when he might turn out to be the greatest threat of them all?

Though nobody has ever identified a single secret --- no universally accepted truth --- to the sport of golf, every real player searches for one. Travis McKinley is one such seeker. A former professional golfer who feels like he's an amateur at the rest of life, he makes a pilgrimage to the mythical greens at St. Andrews. On the course where golf was born, every link, hole, fairway --- even the gorse --- feels like sacred ground. Ground that can help an ordinary player, an ordinary man, achieve a higher plane.

Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, blithely ignorant of all that awaits them. By 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest. Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. With the unexpected arrival of young Jonah Bendt --- a child placed for adoption by one of the daughters 15 years before --- the Sorensons will be forced to reckon with the rich and varied tapestry of their past.

When a desperate woman comes to Daniel Pitt seeking a lawyer for her boyfriend, Rob Adwell, Daniel is convinced of the young man’s innocence. Adwell has been accused of murder and of setting a fire to conceal the body, but Daniel is sure that science can absolve him --- and Miriam fford Croft is the best scientist he knows. Miriam connects Daniel with her former teacher, Sir Barnabas Saltram, an expert in arson. Together, they reveal Adwell’s innocence by proving that an accidental fire caused the victim’s death. But it’s not long before Adwell is killed in the same fiery fashion. If these deaths are, in fact, murders, what essential clue could Daniel and Miriam have missed?

What if Mary Bennet’s life took a different path from that laid out for her in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? What if the frustrated intellectual of the Bennet family --- the marginalized middle daughter, the plain girl who takes refuge in her books --- eventually found the fulfillment enjoyed by her prettier, more confident sisters? This is the plot of Janice Hadlow's debut novel, THE OTHER BENNET SISTER, in which Mary’s destiny diverges from that of her sisters. It does not involve broad acres or landed gentry. But it does include a man; and, as in all Austen novels, Mary must decide if he is truly the one for her.

Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina. Nina’s, Vanessa’s and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.

Bridget Jones penned a diary; Roxy writes letters. Specifically, she writes letters to her hapless, rent-avoidant ex-boyfriend --- and current roommate --- Everett. This charming and funny twenty-something is under-employed (and under-romanced), and she’s decidedly fed up with the indignities she endures as a deli maid at Whole Foods (the original), and the dismaying speed at which her beloved Austin is becoming corporatized. When a new Lululemon pops up at the intersection of Sixth and Lamar where the old Waterloo Video used to be, Roxy can stay silent no longer. As her letters to Everett become less about overdue rent and more about the state of her life, Roxy realizes she’s ready to be the heroine of her own story.

Eight years ago, Poke Rafferty, an American travel writer, and his Thai wife, Rose, adopted a Bangkok street child named Miaow, forming an unconventional intercultural family. But now that family is in jeopardy. The birth of Poke and Rose’s newborn son has littered their small apartment with emotional land mines, forcing Poke to question his identity as a dad and Miaow to question her identity as a daughter. At the same time, the most cantankerous member of the small gang of Old Bangkok Hands who hang out at the Expat Bar suddenly goes missing under suspicious circumstances. Engaged in the search for the missing American, Poke is caught completely off-guard when someone he thought was gone forever resurfaces --- and she has the power to tear the Raffertys apart.

In 1873, a Cheyenne chief offers President Grant the opportunity to exchange 1,000 horses for 1,000 white women, in order to marry them with his warriors and create a lasting peace. These women, "recruited" by force in the penitentiaries and asylums of the country, gradually integrate the way of life of the Cheyenne, at the time when the great massacres of the tribes begin. After the battle of Little Big Horn, some female survivors decide to take up arms against the United States, which has stolen from the Native Americans their lands, their way of life, their culture and their history. This ghost tribe of rebellious women will soon go underground to wage an implacable battle, which will continue from generation to generation.

When someone falls tragically to her death at The Seafarer, a glamorous Boston hotel, the event ripples through the lives of four very different people. Bride-to-be Riley is at the hotel to plan her wedding. Her bossy mother-in-law has taken charge, and her fiancé hasn’t seemed to notice. Jean-Paul, the hotel’s manager, must devote all his energy to this latest scandal at work. Claire, recently widowed, comes to town to connect with a long-lost love, but has too much changed in the last 30 years? And then there’s Jason, whose romantic getaway with his girlfriend has not exactly gone the way he'd hoped. Over three sun-drenched days, as the truth about the woman who died --- and the secret she was hiding --- is uncovered, these four strangers become linked in the most unexpected of ways.

Maggie, Eliza and Tricia Sweeney grew up as a happy threesome in the idyllic seaside town of Southport, Connecticut. But their mother’s death from cancer 15 years ago tarnished their golden-hued memories, and the sisters drifted apart. Their one touchstone is their father, Bill Sweeney, an internationally famous literary lion and college professor. When Bill dies unexpectedly, his shell-shocked daughters return to their childhood home and throw an Irish wake like no other. As guests pay their respects and reminisce, one stranger crashes the party. When journalist Serena Tucker had her DNA tested, she learned that she had a 50% genetic match with her childhood neighbor, Maggie. It seems that Serena’s chilly WASP mother, Birdie, had a history with Bill --- one that has remained totally secret until now.

In love with musical theater from a young age, Eleanor O'Hanlon memorized every show album she could get her hands on. So when she discovers an open call for one of her favorite productions, she runs off to New York City and auditions. Raw and untrained, she catches the eye of famed composer Don Mannheim, who catapults her into the leading role of his new work, "A Tender Thing," a provocative love story between a white woman and black man. As word of the production gets out, an outpouring of protest whips into a fury. When explosive secrets threaten to shatter the delicate balance of the company, and the possibility of the show itself, Eleanor must face a new reality and ultimately decide what it is she truly wants.

On the same day Bells Walker learns that her IUD has failed, her husband, Harry, is denied tenure at his Manhattan university. So Bells, Harry, their two adolescent children and her baby bump move to New York’s Hudson Valley, where Harry has landed a job at Dutchess College in the town of Pigkill. When the farm-to-table utopia Bells envisioned is anything but, she turns to the blogosphere. Under the pen name the County Dutchess, she anonymously dishes about life in Pigkill, detailing the activities of hypercompetitive parents and kombucha-drinking hipsters. As Bells turns the focus of her blog on her new neighbors, her readership continues to grow, but her scandalous posts hit closer to home: she puts Harry’s new job in jeopardy, derails her children’s lives, and risks the one real friendship she’s built.

Maya Shanbhag Lang grew up idolizing her mother, an accomplished physician who immigrated to the United States from India and completed her residency, all while raising her children. Maya’s mother had always been a source of support --- until Maya became a mother herself. Then the parent who had once been so capable and attentive became suddenly and inexplicably unavailable. Struggling to understand this abrupt change, Maya searches for answers and soon learns that her mother is living with Alzheimer’s. Unable to remember or keep track of the stories she once told her daughter, Maya’s mother divulges secrets about her past that force Maya to reexamine their relationship. It becomes clear that Maya never really knew her mother, despite their close bond.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist who would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But his specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered. He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world. When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool. But what she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality and the world beneath her feet.

Lawrence "Yogi" Berra was never supposed to become a major league ballplayer. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too --- right to his face. Yet baseball was his lifeblood. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to keep him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game --- at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have. Drawing on more than 100 interviews and four years of reporting, Jon Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success --- on and off the playing field --- as well as his failures.

Montana, 1925: An Irish boy orphaned by Spanish flu, a tiny girl who won’t speak, and a volatile young man who lies about his age to escape Hell’s Kitchen are paraded on train platforms across the Midwest to work-worn folks. Fate guides them toward the ranch of a family stricken by loss. Nara, the daughter of a successful cattleman, has grown into a brusque spinster who refuses the kids on sight. She works them without mercy, hoping they’ll run off, but they buck up and show spirit. And though Nara will never be motherly, she begins to take to them. So when Charles is jailed for freeing wild horses that were rounded up for slaughter, and an abusive mother from New York shows up to take the youngest, Nara does the unthinkable, risking everything she holds dear to change their lives forever.

Professor Dr. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld and his colleagues at the University of Regensburg's Institute of Romance Philology pride themselves on their unwavering commitment to intellectual excellence. So when a new deputy librarian, Dr. Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler, threatens to drag them all down a path of progressive inclusivity, they are determined to stop her in the name of scholarship --- even if that requires von Igelfeld to make the noble sacrifice of running for director of the Institute. Alas, politics is never easy, and in order to put his best foot forward, von Igelfeld will be required to take up a visiting fellowship at Oxford and cultivate the attentions of a rather effusive young American scholar.