Adult

A young boy has fled his home. He’s pursued by dangerous forces. What lies before him is an infinite, arid plain, one he must cross in order to escape those from whom he’s fleeing. One night on the road, he meets an old goatherd, a man who lives simply but righteously, and from that moment on, their paths intertwine. OUT IN THE OPEN tells the story of this journey through a drought-stricken country ruled by violence. A world where names and dates don’t matter, where morals have drained away with the water. In this landscape, the boy --- not yet a lost cause --- has the chance to choose hope and bravery, or to live forever mired in the cycle of violence in which he was raised.

Hazel has moved into a trailer park of senior citizens after running out on her marriage to Byron Gogol. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked. But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human “mind-meld,” Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. As she tries to carve out a new life for herself, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron’s virtual clutches once and for all.

In this collection of nine works of short fiction, Sarah Hall uses her piercing insight to plumb the depth of the female experience and the human soul. A husband’s wife transforms into a vulpine in "Mrs. Fox," winner of the BBC Short Story Prize. In "Case Study 2,” a social worker struggles with a foster child raised in a commune. A new mother runs into an old lover in "Luxury Hour." In prose that is full of rich observations and striking clarity, Hall has composed nine wholly original pieces --- works of fiction that will resonate long after the final page is turned.

Though her mind is still sharp, Elizabeth's eyes have failed. With the help of Morgan, a delinquent teenager performing community service, Elizabeth goes through her late father's journals, which have been found amid the ruins of an old shipwreck. Entry by entry, these unlikely friends are drawn deep into a world far removed from their own --- to Porphyry Island on Lake Superior, where Elizabeth’s father manned the lighthouse 70 years before. As the words on these musty pages come alive, Elizabeth and Morgan begin to realize that their fates are connected to the isolated island in ways they never dreamed.

Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns everything over to the day shift. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two assignments she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Against orders and her partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the investigations entwine, they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job.

When Silas Van Loy flees home on horseback to avoid capture for his brother’s murder, he is soon followed by both the police and his brother’s wife, Lena, who is intent on exacting revenge. She reluctantly lets her trusted stable assistant join her in a journey across the wilds of Northern California in the hopes of catching Silas for one final showdown. Author Ian Stansel follows the chase and shares the story of the brothers’ rise from hardscrabble childhood to their reign as the region’s preeminent horse trainers, tracking the tense sibling rivalry that ultimately leads to the elder’s death.

Take a trip back to Jane Austen's world and the many places she lived as historian Lucy Worsley visits Austen's childhood home, her schools, her holiday accommodations, the houses --- both grand and small --- of the relations upon whom she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister towards the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House and a small rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a "life without incident." She examines the rooms, spaces and possessions that mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons.

Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, 30-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents’ home to find that situation more complicated than she'd realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth’s mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic. But as Ruth's father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming all her grief.

Two years ago, Jane Norton crashed her car on a lonely road, killing her friend David and leaving her with amnesia. At first, everyone was sympathetic. Then they found Jane's note: I wish we were dead together. From that day, the town turned against her. But even now, Jane is filled with questions: Why were they on that road? Why was she with David? Did she really want to die? Most of all, she must find out who has just written her an anonymous message: I know what really happened. I know what you don't remember...

After being beaten and left for dead, Steven finds himself stranded alongside the 101 in a small Northern California town. When a mysterious stranger named Quinn offers a hand in exchange for help reuniting with his daughter in San Francisco, Steven gets in the car and begins a journey from which there is no return. With a coked-up sadist ex-cop chasing Quinn, and two mismatched small town cops chasing the ex-cop, Steven is unaware of the violent tempest brewing. Corrupt cops and death-dealing gangsters manipulate the maze each of them must navigate to get to the one thing they're all after: Teresa, the girl holding the secret that will rip open a decades-old scandal and scorch San Francisco's City Hall.