Adult

Visiting her family’s South Carolina estate, socialite Gray Godfrey wakes from a night out to an empty bed. Her husband Paul is gone, and a thrashing hangover has wiped her memory clean. At first, she’s relieved for the break from her tumultuous marriage. But when his car is found abandoned on the highway, Gray must face the truth: Paul is gone. When a stranger named Annie calls claiming to know Paul’s whereabouts, Gray reluctantly accepts her help. But this ally is not what she seems: soon Annie is sending frightening messages and revealing disturbing secrets only Gray could know. As Annie’s threats escalate and Gray’s grip on reality begins to slip, the life she thought she had and the dark truth she’s been living begin to merge.

As a college freshman, Kurt Eichenwald awoke one night on the floor of his dorm room, confused and in pain. In the aftermath of that critical moment, his once-carefree life would be consumed by confrontations with medical incompetence, discrimination that almost cost him his education and employment, physical abuse, and dark moments when he contemplated suicide. This is the story of one man’s battle to pursue his dreams despite an often incapacitating brain disorder. From his early experiences of fear and denial to his exasperating search for treatment, Eichenwald provides a deeply candid account of his years facing this misunderstood and often stigmatized condition.

Before beginning her dream job as sous chef in one of Seattle’s hottest new restaurants, Josie Avery takes a summer position cooking at a lakeside lodge in the remote Alaskan town of Ponder. Josie falls for the rustic charms of the local community --- in particular, famed master swordsmith Palmer Saxon, who would like nothing more than to make Josie his wife. But Josie can’t imagine abandoning her mother and sacrificing her career to stay in this isolated town --- not even for a man she’s quickly coming to love. Fate has other plans, though. Josie misses the last boat out of town before winter sets in, stranding her in Ponder and putting her dream job at risk. As the holidays approach, Josie and Palmer must grapple with the complications that arise when dreams confront reality.

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center --- a women’s reproductive health services clinic --- its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage. After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages, he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his 15-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic. But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters.

Henry Worsley spent his life idolizing Ernest Shackleton, the 19th-century polar explorer, who tried to become the first person to reach the South Pole, and later sought to cross Antarctica on foot. Worsley was related to one of Shackleton's men, Frank Worsley, and spent a fortune collecting artifacts from their epic treks across the continent. In 2008, Worsley set out across Antarctica with two other descendants of Shackleton's crew, battling the freezing, desolate landscape, life-threatening physical exhaustion, and hidden crevasses. Yet, when he returned home, he felt compelled to go back. On November 13, 2015, at age 55, Worsley bid farewell to his family and embarked on his most perilous quest: to walk across Antarctica alone.

Pete Banning was Clanton, Mississippi’s favorite son --- a decorated World War II hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor and faithful member of the Methodist church. Then, one cool October morning, he rose early, drove into town, walked into the church, and calmly shot and killed his pastor and friend, the Reverend Dexter Bell. As if the murder wasn’t shocking enough, it was even more baffling that Pete's only statement about it --- to the sheriff, to his lawyers, to the judge, to the jury and to his family --- was: "I have nothing to say." He was not afraid of death and was willing to take his motive to the grave.

The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in AMERICAN DIALOGUE Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts. He discusses Thomas Jefferson and the issue of racism, John Adams and the specter of economic inequality, George Washington and American imperialism, James Madison and the doctrine of original intent.

In this comprehensive, revelatory biography --- 15 years of interviews and research in the making --- historian Jane Sherron De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, and her meticulous jurisprudence. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs is her Jewish background, specifically the concept of tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to “repair the world,” with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II.

A thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious 13-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist’s home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors.

When he is hired as the personal piano tuner for a brilliant pianist, Brodie Moncur suddenly finds himself swept up into a life of luxury that he never could have imagined. But while accompanying his new employer on tours from Paris to St. Petersburg, Brodie falls madly in love with the Russian soprano Lika Blum: beautiful, worldly, seductive --- and forbidden. Though seemingly doomed from the start, Brodie’s passion for Lika only grows as their lives become increasingly more intertwined, more secretive and, finally, more dangerous.