Adult

Male literary friendships are the stuff of legend, but what about the friendships of women writers? A SECRET SISTERHOOD brings to light a wealth of surprising female collaborations: the friendship between Jane Austen and one of the family servants, amateur playwright Anne Sharp; the daring feminist author Mary Taylor, who shaped the work of Charlotte Brontë; the transatlantic friendship of the seemingly aloof George Eliot and the ebullient Harriet Beecher Stowe; and Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, most often portrayed as bitter foes, but who, in fact, enjoyed a complex friendship. They were sometimes scandalous and volatile, sometimes supportive and inspiring, but always --- until now --- tantalizingly consigned to the shadows.

The first major biography of preeminent historian and intellectual Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a defining figure in Kennedy’s White House. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007), known today as the architect of John F. Kennedy’s presidential legacy --- and the myth of Camelot --- blazed an extraordinary path from Harvard University to wartime London to the West Wing. The son of a pioneering historian --- and a two-time Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner in his own right --- Schlesinger redefined the art of presidential biography.

In the early days of the new millennium, pages of a worn and weathered original sonata manuscript --- the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens --- come into the hands of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist whose concert piano career was cut short by an injury. The gift comes with the request that Meta attempt to find the manuscript’s true owner --- a Prague friend the old woman has not heard from since the Second World War forced them apart --- and to make the three-part sonata whole again. Leaving New York behind for the land of Dvořák and Kafka, Meta sets out on an unforgettable search to locate the remaining movements of the sonata and uncover a story that has influenced the course of many lives.

Bullied in high school, Dorothea Mathis' past is full of memories she'd rather forget. But there's one she can't seem to shake --- her long-standing crush on former army ranger Daniel Porter. Now that the sexy bad boy has started using her inn as his personal playground, she should kick him out…but his every heated glance makes her want to join him instead. Daniel returned to Strawberry Valley, Oklahoma, to care for his ailing father and burn off a little steam with no strings attached. Though he craves curvy Dorothea night and day, he's as marred by his past as she is by hers. The more he desires her, the more he fears losing her. But every sizzling encounter leaves him desperate for more, and soon Daniel must make a choice: take a chance on love or walk away forever.

When a top-secret weapon goes missing on Colonel Maggie Black's watch, her honor and her career are on the line. But finding her experimental missile won't be easy --- thanks to the revenge-fueled ambitions of Asdrubal Torres, whose hallucinatory encounter with the Great Spirit challenges him to refill Lake Cahuilla, the ancient inland sea that once covered much of southern California. To fulfill his blessed mission, Torres needs wizardry and weaponry, and the Great Spirit provides both. It turns into a race against time for Maggie and Jordan, who together must stop Torres from destroying Hoover Dam --- and turning the Colorado River into a tsunami that would kill hundreds of thousands and wipe out the Southwest's water supply.

Three American GIs have gone missing in different South Korean cities. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, agents for the Army CID, link the disappearances to a woman locally rumored to be a gumiho, a legendary thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox disguised as a woman. George suspects that the woman is no mythical creature, but a criminal who’s good at covering her tracks. Meanwhile, George and Ernie are caught in a power struggle between two high-ranking women in the 8th Army. Scrambling to appease his boss and stay one step ahead of a psychotic mastermind, George realizes he will have to risk his life to discover the whereabouts of his fellow countrymen.

During a sweltering South American summer, a family convenes for dinner at a restaurant. Midway through the meal, Carlos gets up from the table and disappears. An experienced, semi-retired detective takes the case, but what should be a routine investigation becomes something strange, intangible, even sinister.

Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry --- especially chemical embalming --- and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased.

When the king of Pagasae left his infant daughter on the slopes of a mountain to die, he believed he would never see her again. But Atalanta, against the will of the gods and the dictates of the Fates, survived --- and went on to bring to life one of the greatest legends of all of ancient Greece. Teaching herself to hunt and fight, Atalanta is determined to prove her worth to her father. Disguising herself as a man, she wins a place on the greatest voyage of that heroic age: the journey of Jason and the Argonauts to the very ends of the known world in search of the legendary Golden Fleece. But Atalanta is discovered, and abandoned in the mythical land of Colchis, where she is forced to make a choice that will determine her place in history.

THE FLOATING WORLD takes readers into the heart of Hurricane Katrina with the story of the Boisdorés, whose roots stretch back nearly to the foundation of New Orleans. Though the storm is fast approaching the Louisiana coast, Cora, the family’s fragile elder daughter, refuses to leave the city, forcing her parents, Joe Boisdoré, an artist descended from a freed slave who became one of the city’s preeminent furniture makers, and his white “Uptown” wife, Dr. Tess Eshleman, to evacuate without her, setting off a chain of events that leaves their marriage in shambles and Cora catatonic --- the victim or perpetrator of some violence mysterious even to herself.