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Adult

by Richard Paul Evans - Fiction, Holiday

Bestselling romance author Jacob Churcher hasn't been home for almost 20 years --- not since his mentally ill mother kicked him out of the house when he was just 16. When a lawyer calls to inform him that his estranged mother has passed away and left her house to him, Jacob returns to try and reconcile with the past and the pain and abuse he experienced as a child. As he digs through two decades worth of clutter, he uncovers many puzzling items, including a diary left by someone named Noel, who stayed with Jacob’s family during her pregnancy. Jacob then has an unexpected visitor, Rachel, who is looking for the mother who put her up for adoption 30 years before. United by their quest to make sense of the past and rewrite their futures, Jacob and Rachel begin a search for Noel.

by John Banville - Fiction, Historical Fiction

In MRS. OSMOND, John Banville continues the story of Isabel Archer, the young protagonist of Henry James’ beloved THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Eager but naïve, in James’ novel Isabel comes into a large, unforeseen inheritance and marries the charming, penniless, and --- as Isabel finds out too late --- cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond. Here Banville imagines Isabel’s second chapter, telling the story of a woman reawakened by grief and the knowledge that she has been grievously wronged, and determined to resume her quest for freedom and independence.

by Lee Child - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of a small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness. The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes.

by Rebecca Fraser - History, Nonfiction

The voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony is one of the seminal events in world history. But the poorly equipped group of English Puritans who ventured across the Atlantic in the early autumn of 1620 had no sense they would pass into legend. They had 80 casks of butter and two dogs but no cattle for milk, meat or ploughing. They were ill-prepared for the brutal journey and the new land that few of them could comprehend. But the Mayflower story did not end with these Pilgrims’ arrival on the coast of New England or their first uncertain years as settlers. Rebecca Fraser traces two generations of one ordinary family and their extraordinary response to the challenges of life in America.

by Victor Sebestyen - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Brought up in comfort and with a passion for hunting and fishing, chess and the English classics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was radicalized after the execution of his brother in 1887. Victor Sebestyen traces the story from Lenin's early years to his long exile in Europe and return to Petrograd in 1917 to lead the first Communist revolution in history. Uniquely, Sebestyen has discovered that throughout Lenin's life his closest relationships were with his mother, his sisters, his wife and his mistress. The long-suppressed story told here of the love triangle that Lenin had with his wife and his beautiful, married mistress and comrade reveals a more complicated character than that of the coldly one-dimensional leader of the Bolshevik Revolution.

by David Lebovitz - Memoir, Nonfiction

When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with the famously inconsistent European work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen. In the midst of it all, he reveals the adventure that accompanies carving out a place for yourself in a foreign country --- under baffling conditions --- while never losing sight of the magic that inspired him to move to the City of Light many years ago, and to truly make his home there.

by A.J. Jacobs - Humor, Memoir, Nonfiction

A.J. Jacobs has received some strange emails over the years, but this note was perhaps the strangest: “You don’t know me, but I’m your eighth cousin. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our database.” Who are these people, he wondered, and how do I find them? So began A.J.’s three-year adventure to help build the biggest family tree in history. His journey would take him to all seven continents. He drank beer with a US president, found himself singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and unearthed genetic links to Hollywood actresses and real-life scoundrels. After all, we can choose our friends, but not our family.

by Edgar Feuchtwanger with Bertil Scali, translated by Adriana Hunter - Memoir, Nonfiction

Edgar Feuchtwanger came from a prominent German-Jewish family. He was a carefree five-year-old when Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, moved into the building opposite theirs in Munich. In 1933, the joy of this untroubled life was shattered. Hitler had been named Chancellor. Edgar's parents, stripped of their rights as citizens, tried to protect him from increasingly degrading realities. In class, his teacher had him draw swastikas, and his schoolmates joined the Hitler Youth. In 1939, Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past --- a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of 88, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor.

by Ken Bruen - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

As well-versed in politics, pop culture and crime fiction as he is ill-fated in life, Jack Taylor is recovering from a failed suicide attempt. In need of money, Jack has been hired as a night-shift security guard. But his Ukrainian boss has Jack in mind for some unexpected off-the-books work --- getting his hands on what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, The Red Book, which is currently in the possession of a rogue priest hiding out in Galway. Despite Jack’s distaste for priests of any stripe, the money is too good to turn down. Em, the woman-of-many-guises who has had a vise on Jack’s heart and mind for the past two years, reappears and turns out to be entangled with the story of the same blasphemous book.

by Robert Dallek - Biography, History, Nonfiction, Politics

In an era of such great national divisiveness, there could be no more timely biography of one of our greatest presidents than one that focuses on his unparalleled political ability as a uniter and consensus maker. Robert Dallek’s book takes a fresh look at the many compelling questions that have attracted all his biographers: How did a man who came from so privileged a background become the greatest presidential champion of the country’s needy? How did someone who never won recognition for his intellect foster revolutionary changes in the country’s economic and social institutions? How did he work such a profound change in the country’s foreign relations?