Adult

Five years ago, when Detective Jena Campbell put the Leviticus Killer behind bars, she locked her darkest secret away with him. Something never meant to surface. Something better left to rot with the madman who had destroyed so many lives. When a strange man calling himself Azrael appears on social media with threats to unleash 10 plagues and 10 deaths in 10 days unless Leviticus is released, Jena is forced to reopen that door and face her past. Unable to share what she knows, she turns to the only man who can help her find Azrael before he kills again, the man she condemned. Jena quickly learns that the only thing more terrifying than facing him is facing herself.

Leo Parker's stay in Alphafen seems idyllic, but after he leaves, the nightmares begin. An airport turns into a labyrinth. His own words become treacherous, if not lethal. And what are those creatures in the photographs he took? Even the therapy Leo undertakes becomes a source of menace. Perhaps Leo has roused an ancient Alpine legend. Even once he understands what he brought back, his attempts to overcome its influence may lead into greater nightmares still.

For 16 years, Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany and at the forefront of European and international politics. In her memoir, she looks back on her life in two German states --- East Germany until 1990, and reunified Germany thereafter. How did she, coming from the East, rise to the top of the Christian Democratic Union to become the first woman to hold the office of chancellor? And how did she then become one of the most powerful heads of government in the Western world? What guided her? In FREEDOM, Merkel recounts daily life in the chancellor’s office, as well as the dramatic days and nights when she made far-reaching decisions in Berlin, Brussels and beyond. She traces the long lines of change in international cooperation and reveals the pressure politicians face when seeking solutions to complex problems in a globalized world.

In Washington, DC, the president-elect is tapping the country’s brightest legal minds as candidates for the Supreme Court. Then one of them is gunned down. Another is stabbed. A third is murdered near midnight on a city street. Now it’s up to Detective Alex Cross, the FBI’s top expert in criminal behavior, to go inside the mind of a diabolical killer and protect the country’s best hope for justice. 

Sloane Caraway is a liar. Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad little life a bit more interesting. So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can’t help herself. She tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad that she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl’s foot. With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. They’re the perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island. But maybe Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and all that’s picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth.

Beth and her gentle, kind husband, Frank, are happily married, though their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager --- the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son, Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise, and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was and the woman she has become.

Bunny Simpson grew up poor in Grand Junction, Colorado. Now in his 20s and working in Denver, he has simple dreams: He wants to help his uncle pay rent, save a little money, and maybe start a business one day. His best friend, Jerry LeClair, fantasizes about moving to California. The problem is they don’t have any prospects. Enter Helen McCalla, an attorney with an ax to grind against her ex-husband, who happens to be a judge in the local court. She offers the boys a deal: scare the man, rough him up a little, and she’ll give them a few thousand dollars. It’s simple --- just friends helping friends, right?

Mick Hardin never wanted to be sheriff. An ex-Army CID officer, he’s supposed to be retired --- or he was until his sister, Linda, was shot in the line of duty, requiring him to step in as interim sheriff while she recovered. Now he’s stuck in Rocksalt, the place he was most hoping to escape. Back in uniform, Mick is chafing at the sudden dissolution of his retirement plans, wearied by the petty squabbles of Rocksalt’s townsfolk. It’s all business as usual, until the murder of a local bar owner draws an unlikely suspect who threatens to fan the flames of Mick’s past. When two more bodies turn up, seemingly unconnected to the first, Mick is forced to reckon with the mysterious circumstances of a case that is not so open-and-shut as everyone believes.

On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin knows all the details of the building and its people --- including the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished. All else that’s familiar fractures when whispers of German occupation become reality, and the lives of the residents grow increasingly intertwined. Charlotte’s godmother, Masha, deepens her risky affair with a wartime compatriot of Colonel Warlemont --- a man far more calculating than his neighbors believe. When a Nazi functionary with an interest in the Raphaëls moves into the building, knowing who can and cannot be trusted becomes a matter of life and death.

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In THE ANXIOUS GENERATION, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood” began to decline in the 1980s and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood” in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood” has interfered with children’s social and neurological development.