Adult

As Hollywood prepares for its most glamorous evening, five actresses compete to see who will claim the top prize. Adria, a dignified and highly regarded grand dame of the movie industry, is intent on cementing her legacy as one of the greatest thespians of all time. Bitty must keep a nervous breakdown --- and an increasingly debilitating alcohol addiction --- at bay as she searches for genuine closeness in an unforgiving landscape. Contessa, a former child star, is determined to make the world, and her leading man, take her seriously. Davina attempts to find her footing in superficial Los Angeles, a far cry from her roots as a serious London stage actress. And Jenny --- always the underdog to her rival, Adria --- sees this awards season as her personal redemption, a chance to atone for past mistakes and make up for missed opportunities.

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF investigates the disappearance of Austen’s heroes --- women writers who were erased from the Western canon --- to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s.

When a painting vanishes from a maritime museum and a dead body is found nearby, the newly established Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency, Freya Lockwood and her Aunt Carole, are called to investigate. Following a lead that takes them aboard a glamorous antiques cruise sailing toward the Red Sea in Jordan, they quickly discover that the ship’s art gallery is filled with stolen antiquities. Each antique is also listed in Freya’s late mentor’s journals that detail unsolved cases. In chasing a murderer with a stolen painting, they may have found something more sinister than they ever could’ve imagined. Their hunt soon turns deadly when they learn that the enigmatic and dangerous art trafficker named The Collector could be on board. Will Freya and Carole be able to discover the Collector’s identity and stop his murderous plans before the ship docks?

Isabelle Shelton has always found comfort in the predictable world of her mother’s dressmaking shop, Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, while her sister, Sylvia, turned her back on the family years ago to marry a wealthy doctor whom Izzie detests. When their mother dies unexpectedly, the sisters are stunned to find they’ve jointly inherited the family business. Izzie is determined to buy Sylvia out, but when she’s conscripted into the WAAF, she’s forced to seek Sylvia’s help to keep the shop open. Realizing this could be her one chance at reconciliation with her sister, Sylvia is determined to save Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions from closure --- and financial ruin. Through letters, the sisters begin to confront old wounds, new loves, and the weight of family legacy in order to forge new beginnings.

Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide they must set out to investigate themselves --- to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more threatening the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from and what they deserve.

In his first collection of stories, Rupert Everett takes us on exhilarating journeys with a cast of extraordinary characters. From Oscar Wilde’s last night in Paris to the ferociously unforgiving world of a Los Angeles talent agency and beyond, these stories are evocative, moving and tender. Brilliantly witty, elegiac, and drawing from the wealth of film and TV ideas Everett has worked on over the course of his illustrious career, THE AMERICAN NO will delight and surprise his many fans.

No one appears more surprised than Hailey Gelman when she comes under suspicion for the murder of her soon-to-be ex-husband, Jonah. The months leading up to Jonah’s death have been fraught, including a bitter separation and a messy custody battle over their young daughter, Maya. When Hailey files a motion to relocate to Florida, Jonah retaliates, and the divorce begins to spiral dangerously out of control. Sherry, Hailey’s mother, will stop at almost nothing to keep Jonah from getting what he wants. Nate, Hailey’s impetuous and protective older brother, can’t stand to see his little sister suffer. And Solomon, the patriarch, is keeping a secret that threatens the stability and security Sherry has worked so hard to maintain. Soon, they are forced to reckon with who they are as individuals and as a family, and just how far they will go for each other.

In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories and college aspirations for her children, even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation’s largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi’s first clients, and the relationship transforms them both.

A taxonomy of sweetness, a rhapsody of artificial flavors, and a multi-faceted theory of pleasure, SWEET NOTHINGS is made up of 100 illustrated micro essays organized by candy color, from the red of Pop Rocks to the purple Jelly Bonbon in the Whitman’s Sampler. Each entry is a meditation on taste and texture, a memory unlocked. Everyone’s favorites --- and least favorites --- are carefully considered, including Snickers and Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Cups, as well as the beloved Good n’ Plenty and Werther’s Originals. An expert guide and exquisite writer, Sarah Perry asks such pressing questions as: Twizzlers or Red Vines? Why are Mentos eaters so maniacally happy? And in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, how could Edmund sell out his siblings for, of all things, Turkish delight?

When Theresa Okokon was nine, her father traveled to his hometown in Nigeria to attend his mother’s funeral…and never returned. His mysterious death shattered Theresa as her family’s world unraveled. Now a storyteller and television cohost, Okokon sets out to explore the ripple effects of that profound loss and the way heartache shapes our sense of self and of the world --- for the rest of our lives. Using her grief and her father’s death as a backdrop, Okokon delves deeply into intrinsic themes of Blackness, African spirituality, family, abandonment, belonging, and the seemingly endless, unrequited romantic pursuits of a Black woman who came of age as a Black girl in the Wisconsin suburbs where she was --- in many ways --- always an anomaly.