Adult

HILLBILLY ELEGY is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis --- that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than 40 years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

Solomon Creed has no recollection of who he is. The only solid clue to his identity is a label stitched in his jacket. The jacket fits perfectly, but there is a second name on the label, the name of the tailor who made the suit and an address in southern France. Solomon heads to France in search of this man. But instead of answers he finds a bloody corpse, the Star of David carved into his chest. When the police discover Solomon at the crime scene they suspect he is the murderer and lock him up. Solomon must escape to clear his name and solve the mystery of why the last remaining survivors of a notorious Nazi death camp are being hunted down and murdered. Only by saving these survivors from evil can Solomon hope to piece together the truth about a decades-old conspiracy.

Presumed dead by the Stockholm police, master criminal and undercover informant Piet Hoffmann is now on the run from the Swedish authorities, living with his wife and two young sons under an assumed name in Cali, Colombia. Only Hoffmann's former police handler, Erik Wilson, knows where he is --- and that he has accepted two dangerous new jobs: one as a high-level enforcer for a Colombian cocaine cartel, and one as an infiltrator for the DEA, working to bring the cartel down. The FBI even lends credence to his cover story by adding Hoffmann's alias to the Most Wanted list. But when the Speaker of the House is kidnapped by the cartel during an official visit to Colombia, everything changes --- fast.

This is a story of the 1970s. Of a road trip in a wood-paneled station wagon, with the kids in the way-back, singing along to the Steve Miller Band. Of brothers waking up early on Saturday mornings for five consecutive hours of cartoons. Of growing up in a magical era populated by Bic pens, Mr. Clean and Scrubbing Bubbles, lightsabers and those oh-so-coveted Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. And of a father --- one of 3M's greatest and last eight-track salesmen --- traveling across the country on the brand-new Boeing 747, providing for his family but wanting nothing more than to get home.

When the lights go out one night, no one panics. Not yet. The lights always come back on soon, don't they? Surely it's a glitch, a storm, a malfunction. But something seems strange about this night. Across Europe, controllers watch in disbelief as electrical grids collapse. There is no power, anywhere. A former hacker and activist, Piero investigates a possible cause of the disaster. The authorities don't believe him, and he soon becomes a prime suspect himself. With the United States now also at risk, Piero goes on the run with Lauren Shannon, a young American CNN reporter based in Paris, desperate to uncover who is behind the attacks. After all, the power doesn't just keep the lights on --- it keeps us alive.

Rowan Petty is a conman down on his luck. He's flat broke, living out of cheap hotels, and wondering how it all went wrong. His car quits on him in Reno, and he takes a job there on the bottom rung of a lousy phone scam. When he's not swindling lonely widows, he tries to turn nickels into dimes at the poker table. One snowy night, he crosses paths with a sweet-talking hooker who's tired of the streets, and sparks fly. When an old friend of his turns up spreading a rumor about two million dollars in army money smuggled out of Afghanistan and stashed in an apartment in Los Angeles, it seems like a chance at the score of a lifetime. So Petty and the hooker head south, and straight into trouble.

You are a failed novelist about to turn 50. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes --- it would be too awkward. And you can't say no --- it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world. How do you arrange to skip town? You accept them all. Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face.

Early one October morning, Grace's mother snatches her from sleep and brutally cuts off her hair, declaring, "You are the strong one now." With winter close at hand and Ireland already suffering, Grace is no longer safe at home. And so her mother outfits her in men's clothing and casts her out. When her younger brother Colly follows after her, the two set off on a remarkable odyssey in the looming shadow of their country's darkest hour. The broken land they pass through reveals untold suffering as well as unexpected beauty. To survive, Grace must become a boy, a bandit, a penitent and, finally, a woman --- all the while afflicted by inner voices that arise out of what she has seen and what she has lost.

Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, 10 men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers --- chosen male descendants of the original 10 --- are allowed to cross to the wastelands. The daughters of these men are wives-in-training. At the first sign of puberty, they face their Summer of Fruition, a ritualistic season that drags them from adolescence to matrimony. At the end of one summer, little Caitlin Jacob sees something so horrifying, so contradictory to the laws of the island, that she must share it with the others.

Shay Benson adored her younger brother, Caden, and that got her into trouble. Pastor Drew Douglas adored his wife. But when he lost her, it was all he could do to focus on his two beautiful kids, and his flock came in a distant third. Shay and Drew meet in church one day and strike up a friendship that, over time, turns into something deeper and possibly romantic. Shay learns to trust again as she, in turn, proves herself trustworthy to her adopted community. But Caden’s return to town and a disastrous secret threaten to undo the life Shay has tried so hard to rebuild. It will take the utmost courage and faith if she and Drew hope to find healing and open their hearts to a brighter future.