Adult

Keisha Taylor lived a quiet life with her wife, Alice, until the day Alice disappeared. After months of searching, presuming she was dead, Keisha held a funeral, mourned and gradually tried to get on with her life. But that was before Keisha started to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America. Alice isn’t dead, and she is showing up at every major tragedy and accident in the country. Following a line of clues, Keisha takes a job with a trucking company and begins searching for Alice. She eventually stumbles on an otherworldly conflict being waged in the quiet corners of our nation’s highway system --- uncovering a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman.

Marilla Cuthbert is 13 years old when her beloved mother dies in childbirth, and she suddenly must bear the responsibilities of a farm wife. Her one connection to the wider world is Aunt Elizabeth "Izzy" Johnson, her mother’s sister, who managed to escape to the bustling city of St. Catharines. Aunt Izzy’s talent as a seamstress has allowed her to build a thriving business and make her own way in the world. Emboldened by her aunt, Marilla dares to venture beyond the safety of Green Gables and discovers new friends and new opportunities. However, she soon finds herself caught up in the dangerous work of politics, and abolition --- jeopardizing all she cherishes, including her bond with her dearest John Blythe.

In a small apartment in Boston, 16-year-old Daniel Fitzsimmons is listening to his landlord describe a seemingly insane theory about invisible pulses of light and energy that can be harnessed by the human mind. He longs to laugh with his brother Harry about it, but Harry doesn’t know he’s there. None of that matters, though, because the next night Harry, a Harvard football star, is murdered in an alley. Detectives “Bark” Jones and Tommy Dillon are assigned to the case. The veteran partners thought they’d seen it all, but they are stunned when Daniel wanders into the crime scene. Even stranger, Daniel claims to have known the details of his brother’s murder before it ever happened.

When V.I. Warshawski gets word that her close friend and mentor Lotty Herschel’s nephew has become a murder suspect, the legendary detective will do everything to save him. The cops found Felix Herschel’s name and phone number on the unknown victim’s remains, but Felix insists he doesn’t know why. Soon Vic discovers that the dead man was obsessed with Middle Eastern archaeology --- the first clue in a bewildering case. But the trouble multiplies when Vic’s long-lost niece, Reno, goes missing. Reno is harboring a secret that may cost her her life. V.I. can hear the clock ticking on her niece’s safety and is frantic in her efforts to find her.

After hitting his 60th home run in September 1927 --- a total that would not be exceeded until 1961, when Roger Maris did it with the aid of the extended modern season --- Babe Ruth embarked on the mother of all barnstorming tours, a three-week victory lap across America, accompanied by New York Yankees teammate Lou Gehrig. Business manager Christy Walsh called the tour a "Symphony of Swat." The Omaha World Herald called it "the biggest show since Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, and seven other associated circuses offered their entire performance under one tent." Jane Leavy recreates that 21-day circus, and in so doing captures the romp and the pathos that defined Ruth’s life and times.

How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. When the family’s one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy, he seems likely to join them. In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? Science teacher Thatcher Greenwood’s employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His friendships with a female scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town’s powerful men.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.

While Uhtred of Bebbanburg might have regained his family’s fortress, it seems that a peaceful life is not to be --- as he is under threat from both an old enemy and a new foe. The old enemy comes from Wessex, where a dynastic struggle will determine who will be the next king. And the new foe is Sköll, a Norseman, whose ambition is to be King of Northumbria and who leads a frightening army of wolf-warriors, men who fight half-crazed in the belief that they are indeed wolves. Uhtred, believing he is cursed, must fend off one enemy while he tries to destroy the other. In this new chapter of the Saxon Tales series, Uhtred returns to fight once again for the destiny of England.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a brilliant scientist, a champion of liberal causes, and a complex and often contradictory character. He loyally protected his Communist friends, only to later betray them under questioning. He repeatedly lied about love affairs. And he defended the use of the atomic bomb he helped create, before ultimately lobbying against nuclear proliferation. Through narratives that cross time and space, a set of characters bears witness to the life of Oppenheimer. As these men and women fall into the orbit of a brilliant but mercurial mind at work, all consider his complicated legacy while also uncovering deep and often unsettling truths about their own lives.

1838: Northumberland, England. Longstone Lighthouse has been Grace Darling’s home for all of her 22 years. When she and her father rescue shipwreck survivors in a furious storm, Grace becomes celebrated throughout England. But far more precious than her unsought fame is the friendship that develops between Grace and visiting artist George Emmerson. 1938: Newport, Rhode Island. A pregnant Matilda Emmerson has been sent away from Ireland in disgrace. She is to stay with Harriet, a reclusive relative and assistant lighthouse keeper, until her baby is born. A discarded, half-finished portrait opens a window into Matilda’s family history. As a deadly hurricane approaches, two women --- living a century apart --- will be linked forever by their instinctive acts of courage and love.