Adult

Three years after the storming of the Bastille, the streets of Paris are roiling with revolution. Jean-Luc, an idealistic young lawyer, moves his wife and their infant son from a comfortable life in Marseille to Paris, in the hopes of joining the cause. André, the son of a denounced nobleman, has evaded execution by joining the new French army. Sophie, a young aristocratic widow, embarks on her own fight for independence against her powerful, vindictive uncle. As chaos threatens to undo the progress of the Revolution and the demand for justice breeds instability and paranoia, the lives of these compatriots become inextricably linked.

Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor --- someone, or something, to love. In WHAT WE LOSE, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood.

Meet Sunday Night, a woman with physical and psychological scars, and a killer instinct. Sunnie has spent years running from her past, burying secrets and building a life in which she needs no one and feels nothing. But a girl has gone missing, lost in the chaos of a bomb explosion, and the family needs Sunnie’s help. Is the girl dead? Did someone take her? If she’s out there, why doesn’t she want to be found? It’s time for Sunnie to face her own demons --- because they just might lead her to the truth about what really happened all those years ago.

Alice is a scientist who relies on method, precision and tangible proof. But when her relationship with Oxford artist Peter Brown collapses spectacularly, she is forced to use her skills to evaluate her own life for the first time. Alice accepts an invitation to travel to the southernmost point of the earth, Antarctica. Upon arrival, she is awestruck by the strangeness of a continent painted in shades of blue and white, lit by an unearthly permanent sunlight. And nothing has prepared her for the close confines of a small base shared with eight men and one other woman. It’s in these close quarters that she develops a strong attraction to a man shrouded in danger and mystery.

When Cal Ripken Jr. began his career with the Baltimore Orioles at age 21, he had no idea he’d beat the historic record of playing 2,130 games in a row set by Lou Gehrig, the fabled “Iron Horse” of the New York Yankees. Was his streak or Gehrig’s the more difficult achievement? When did someone first think it was a good idea to play in so many games without taking a day off? THE STREAK delves into this impressive but controversial milestone, unraveling Gehrig’s at times unwitting pursuit of that goal and Ripken’s fierce determination to play the game his way. Along the way, John Eisenberg dives deep into the history of the record and offers a portrait of the pastime in different eras.

When the Oakland coroner’s office uncovers a body buried in a shallow grave in the outskirts of the city, homicide sergeant Matt Sinclair expects to find a drug dealer caught in the crosshairs of a turf war. Instead, the victim is identified as Phil Roberts, the commander of the police department’s intelligence unit and Sinclair’s former partner. Police brass want to pin the murder on a dead member of an outlaw motorcycle gang and they want the case closed quickly, but Sinclair and his current partner, Cathy Braddock, aren’t satisfied with that answer. As Sinclair delves into Roberts’s past, secrets from his work and personal life come to the surface. But Sinclair won’t stop until he finds the truth, even if it means sacrificing his former partner’s reputation and possibly his own career.

On a still summer night in a seventeenth-century canal house in Amsterdam’s old quarter, Pia de Jong gives birth to a delicate, bright-eyed baby girl with a riddle on her back --- a pale blue spot that soon multiplies. In a bare, air-conditioned hospital room, a doctor reveals the devastating answer: it is a rare and deadly form of leukemia, often treated with chemotherapy, a cure nearly as dangerous to a newborn as the disease itself. Pia and her husband Robbert make an intuitive decision. They do not subject Charlotte to chemotherapy; they bring her home. They transform their canal house into a sanctuary where Charlotte can live surrounded by love and strength, where Pia can give her a chance to live. In return, Charlotte gives her mother the greatest gift of all: purpose.

Adjusting to civilian life has not been easy for former Marine Derek Walsh. As he navigates a brutal job on Wall Street and a challenging romance, he wonders if he could be doing more with his life. When an inexplicable $200 million dollar money transfer is made on his computer, he is thrust into the world of international terror, and the global economy is knocked off its hinges. On the other side of the Atlantic, radical Islamists and Russian extremists have set the wheels in motion for Russia to assert its power in Europe. The US President has proven to be weak on foreign policy, the military is stretched too thin, and Vladimir Putin judges this to be the time for Russia to regain its Soviet Empire.

When the investment bank Weiss & Partners is shuttered in September 2008, CEO Bob D’Amico must fend off allegations of malfeasance, as well as the judgment and resentment of his community. As panic builds, five women in his life must scramble to negotiate power on their own terms and ask themselves what  --- if anything --- is worth saving. In the aftermath of this collapse, D’Amico’s teenage daughter, Madison, begins to probe her father’s heretofore secret world for information. Four other women in Madison’s life --- her mother Isabel, her best friend Amanda, her nanny Lily, and family friend Mina --- begin to question their own shifting roles in their insular, moneyed world.

Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family --- that his father’s mysterious absences resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. After years of experiencing the ups and downs of his father’s illness without knowing it existed, Hinshaw began to piece together the silent, often terrifying history of his father’s life. This exploration led to larger discoveries about the family saga, to Hinshaw’s correctly diagnosing his father with bipolar disorder, and to his full-fledged career as a clinical and developmental psychologist and professor.