Adult

Angélique Latham has grown up at magnificent Belgrave Castle under the loving tutelage of her father, the Duke of Westerfield, after the death of her aristocratic French mother. At 18 she is her father’s closest, most trusted child, schooled in managing their grand estate. But when he dies, her half-brothers brutally turn her out, denying her very existence. Unable to secure employment without references or connections, Angélique desperately makes her way to Paris, where she rescues a young woman fleeing an abusive madam and suddenly sees a possibility: Open an elegant house of pleasure that will protect its women and serve only the best clients. But living on the edge of scandal, can she ever make a life of her own --- or regain her rightful place in the world?

When Liv and Nora decide to take their husbands and children on a holiday cruise, everyone is thrilled. But when they all go ashore for an adventure in Central America, a series of minor misfortunes and miscalculations leads the families farther from the safety of the ship. One minute the children are there, and the next they’re gone. The disintegration of the world the families knew --- told from the perspectives of both the adults and the children --- is riveting and revealing. The parents, accustomed to security and control, turn on each other and blame themselves, while the seemingly helpless children discover resources they never knew they possessed.

Buddhist monk Wayan Bagus lost his island of solitude and wants to get it back. The island was about 200 miles northeast of Samoa. It had a mountain, beaches, a rain forest and a volcano. And now it’s gone. Vanished without a trace. Brilliant and boyishly charming Emerson Knight likes nothing better than solving an unsolvable, improbable mystery. When clues lead to a dark and sinister secret that is being guarded by the National Park Service, Emerson will need to assemble a crack team for help. Since a crack team isn’t available, he enlists Riley Moon and his cousin Vernon. Together, this ragtag, mismatched trio will embark on a worldwide investigation that will expose a conspiracy 100 years in the making.

Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, LANGUAGES OF TRUTH chronicles Salman Rushdie’s intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty and Toni Morrison mean to him, whether on the page or in person. He delves deep into the nature of “truth,” revels in the vibrant malleability of language and the creative lines that can join art and life, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism and censorship.

When Apollo Kagwa’s father disappeared, all he left his son were strange recurring dreams and a box of books stamped with the word IMPROBABILIA. Now Apollo is a father himself --- and as he and his wife, Emma, are settling into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Irritable and disconnected from their new baby boy, at first Emma seems to be exhibiting signs of postpartum depression, but it quickly becomes clear that her troubles go even deeper. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act and vanishes. Thus begins Apollo’s odyssey through a world he only thought he understood, to find a wife and child who are nothing like he had imagined.

Collin James is young, creative and unhappy. A college dropout, he waits tables and spends his free time beautifying the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his medium of choice: chalk. Collin’s art captivates passersby with its vibrant colors and intricate lines --- until the moment he wipes it all away. Nothing in Collin’s life is meant to last. Then he meets Nina. The daughter of a tech mogul who is revolutionizing virtual reality, Nina Lazare is trying to give back as a high school teacher, but her students won’t listen to her. When Collin enters her world, he inspires her to think bigger. Nina wants to return the favor, even if it means losing him.

A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts. Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block. A generous offer of money convinces her to go undercover and infiltrate Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets. But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise.

The Four Lands has been at peace for generations, but now a mysterious army of invaders is cutting a bloody swathe across a remote region of the land. No one knows who they are, where they come from, or what they are after --- and most seem content to ignore these disturbing events. The only people who sense a greater, growing threat and wish to uncover the truth are society’s outcasts: an exiled high Druid, a conflicted warrior, a teenage girl struggling to master a prodigious magic…and a scrappy young orphan, improbably named Shea Ohmsford.

BEFORE EVERYTHING is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of women who have known each another since they were girls. They’ve faced everything together, from youthful sprees and scrapes to mid-life turning points. Now, as Anna, the group’s trailblazer and brightest spark, enters hospice, they gather to do what they’ve always done --- talk and laugh and help each other make choices and plans, this time in Anna’s rural Massachusetts home. Helen, Anna’s best friend and a celebrated painter, is about to remarry. The others face their own challenges --- Caroline with her sister’s mental health crisis; Molly with a teenage daughter’s rebellion; Ming with her law practice --- dilemmas with kids and work and love. 

After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. “I was in ‘the void,’” she writes, “a vast emptiness that fills your heart and lungs and restricts your ability to think or even breathe.” Her friend Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. We are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle that everyone can build. OPTION B combines Sheryl’s personal insights with Adam’s eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity.