Adult

In the heart of a small mountain town where football reigns supreme and tradition casts long shadows, Ms. Chelsea Deal defies the norm. Amid the echoes of clashing helmets and the roar of a crowd, Chelsea, a former big-city lawyer now cast as the interim head coach for the undefeated Rabon Knights, becomes the unexpected mentor for two young players whose dreams echo her own. Palmer, a reclusive teenager brimming with untapped talent, and Ty, an old soul fighting the gravest of battles, join forces with Chelsea to overcome their differences and fight for a championship. As the season unfolds, so do the lives of these characters as each one strives to defeat personal challenges.

The campaign of destruction that Axel Soledad and Dallas Cates wreaked on Nate Romanowski and Joe Pickett left both men in tatters, especially Nate, who lost almost everything. Wondering if the civilized life left him vulnerable to attack, Nate dropped off the grid with his falcons in tow to prepare for vengeance. When Joe gets a call from the governor asking for help finding his son-in-law, who has gone missing in the Sierra Madre mountain range, he enlists the help of a local, a rookie game warden named Susan Kany. As Nate and fellow falconer Geronimo Jones circle closer to their prey, Joe and Susan follow the nearly cold trail to Warm Springs. Little do Nate and Joe know that their separate journeys are about to converge…at Battle Mountain.

Chief of Police Jesse Stone is on his way home from a long shift when a call comes in for a welfare check on an elderly resident of the wealthy seaside town of Paradise, Massachusetts. Inside a house packed with junk and trash is a man’s dead body. It’s a sad, lonely end, but nothing criminal…until Jesse finds the photos of murder victims strewn around the corpse, on top of a treasure trove of $2 million in cash. Jesse takes on the case and finds a trail leading to an aging mobster who will do whatever it takes to keep the past from coming to light. Before long, Jesse has a price on his head as hit men converge on Paradise to take back the cash and destroy any remaining evidence. But the real danger might be coming from inside his own department.

When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted. The footsteps she hears at night, the doors slamming and the music playing are not figments of her imagination. In her dreams she sees glimpses of the past. In the present she finds portraits of brides. And when she has visions of an antique mirror, she is drawn to it, sensing it holds dark family secrets. Then one night the mirror appears, and Sonya glides through this looking glass, into the past --- and sees a bride murdered on her wedding day, the circle of gold torn from her finger. It is a scene that will play out again and again --- a centuries-old curse that must be broken, and a puzzle she must solve if there is any hope of breaking the curse.

After years apart from his criminal family, young Luke Crosswhite returns to their flock deep in the California desert. Luke’s father is serving time for a brutal murder that Luke himself witnessed. Now, his uncle vies for power and rival biker gangs encroach on the family’s various criminal enterprises. A sensitive boy grown hard man, Luke navigates the vicious pressures of “home,” and the loyalties to his cousin, Callie, who has hatched a scheme with her boyfriend, Pretty Baby, to escape the control of the gang, the Combine. Hanging over these desperate, lonesome parties is the gang’s motto, tattooed indelibly across the heart: Blood is Love.

After more than 70 years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir. As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship. With her trademark honesty and humor, CHER traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century. It follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono --- and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous but eventually drove them apart.

Gemma Guillory has lived in the Australian Outback enclave of Rainier her entire life. Her once charming town is now remembered for one reason and one reason only: three innocent people died there at the hands of a serial killer. The last stop on the Rainier Ripper’s trail of deaths 15 years ago was her picturesque little tea shop. She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her policeman husband and their marriage to this day, and some of her neighbors are desperate enough to welcome a dark tourism company keen to cash in on Rainier’s notoriety as the “Murder Town.” When the tour guide is killed by a Ripper copycat on Gemma’s doorstep, the unease that has lurked quietly in the original killer’s wake explodes into the light, and Gemma is drawn into the investigation.

Dragon fire no longer blisters the skies over Penterra, but inside the lavish palace, life is still perilous, especially for Tamsyn. Raised in the glittering court alongside the princesses, it's her duty to be punished for their misdeeds. Treated as part of the royal family but also as the lowliest servant, Tamsyn fits nowhere. Her only friend is Stig, Captain of the Guard, though sometimes she thinks he wants more than friendship. When Fell, the Beast of the Borderlands, descends on her home, Tamsyn’s world becomes even more dangerous. To save the pampered princesses from a fate worse than death, she is commanded to don a veil and marry the brutal warrior. She agrees to the deception even though it means leaving Stig, and the only life she’s ever known, behind. The wedding night begins with unexpected passion --- and ends in near violence when her trickery is exposed.

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past.

Drawing on her background --- her father's abuse, her complicated dynamic with her disabled mother, the death of her child, her sexual relationships with men and women --- and her creative life as an author and teacher, Lidia Yuknavitch has come to understand that by using the power of literature and storytelling to reframe her memories, she can loosen the bonds that have enslaved her emotional growth. Armed with this insight, she allows herself to look with the eye of an artist at the wounds she suffered and come to understand the transformational power this has to restore her soul. By turns candid and lyrical, stoic and forgiving, blunt and evocative, READING THE WAVES reframes memory to show how crucial this process can be to gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves.