Adult

In wartime Reykjavik, Iceland, a young woman is found strangled in “the shadow district,” a rough and dangerous area of the city. An Icelandic detective and a member of the American military police are on the trail of a brutal killer. A 90-year-old man is discovered dead on his bed, smothered with his own pillow. Konrad, a former detective now bored with retirement, finds newspaper cuttings reporting the WWII shadow district murder in the dead man’s home. It’s a crime that Konrad remembers, having grown up in the same neighborhood. Why, after all this time, would an old crime resurface? Did the police arrest the wrong man? Will Konrad's link to the past help him solve the case and finally lay the ghosts of WWII Reykjavik to rest?

Russell Shorto takes us back to the founding of the American nation, drawing on diaries, letters and autobiographies to flesh out six lives that cast the era in a fresh new light. They include an African man who freed himself and his family from slavery, a rebellious young woman who abandoned her abusive husband to chart her own course, and a certain Mr. Washington, who was admired for his social graces but harshly criticized for his often-disastrous military strategy. Through these lives, we understand that the revolution was fought over the meaning of individual freedom, a philosophical idea that became a force for violent change.

A hyper-fast quantum computer is the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb; whoever possesses one will be able to shred any encryption and break any code in existence. The question is: who will build one first, the U.S. or China? In THE QUANTUM SPY, U.S. quantum research labs are compromised by a suspected Chinese informant, inciting a mole hunt of history-altering proportions. CIA officer Harris Chang leads the charge, pursuing his target from Singapore to Mexico and beyond. Do the leaks expose real secrets, or are they false trails meant to deceive the Chinese? The answer forces Chang to question everything he thought he knew about loyalty, morality and the primacy of truth.

The 1968 U.S. Presidential election was the young Lawrence O’Donnell’s political awakening, and in the decades since it has remained one of his abiding fascinations. For years he has deployed one of America’s shrewdest political minds to understanding its dynamics, not just because it is fascinating in itself, but because in it is contained the essence of what makes America different, and how we got to where we are now. PLAYING WITH FIRE represents O’Donnell’s master class in American electioneering, embedded in the epic human drama of a system --- and a country --- coming apart at the seams in real time.

Bestselling romance author Jacob Churcher hasn't been home for almost 20 years --- not since his mentally ill mother kicked him out of the house when he was just 16. When a lawyer calls to inform him that his estranged mother has passed away and left her house to him, Jacob returns to try and reconcile with the past and the pain and abuse he experienced as a child. As he digs through two decades worth of clutter, he uncovers many puzzling items, including a diary left by someone named Noel, who stayed with Jacob’s family during her pregnancy. Jacob then has an unexpected visitor, Rachel, who is looking for the mother who put her up for adoption 30 years before. United by their quest to make sense of the past and rewrite their futures, Jacob and Rachel begin a search for Noel.

In MRS. OSMOND, John Banville continues the story of Isabel Archer, the young protagonist of Henry James’ beloved THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Eager but naïve, in James’ novel Isabel comes into a large, unforeseen inheritance and marries the charming, penniless, and --- as Isabel finds out too late --- cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond. Here Banville imagines Isabel’s second chapter, telling the story of a woman reawakened by grief and the knowledge that she has been grievously wronged, and determined to resume her quest for freedom and independence.

Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of a small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness. The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes.

The voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony is one of the seminal events in world history. But the poorly equipped group of English Puritans who ventured across the Atlantic in the early autumn of 1620 had no sense they would pass into legend. They had 80 casks of butter and two dogs but no cattle for milk, meat or ploughing. They were ill-prepared for the brutal journey and the new land that few of them could comprehend. But the Mayflower story did not end with these Pilgrims’ arrival on the coast of New England or their first uncertain years as settlers. Rebecca Fraser traces two generations of one ordinary family and their extraordinary response to the challenges of life in America.

Brought up in comfort and with a passion for hunting and fishing, chess and the English classics, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was radicalized after the execution of his brother in 1887. Victor Sebestyen traces the story from Lenin's early years to his long exile in Europe and return to Petrograd in 1917 to lead the first Communist revolution in history. Uniquely, Sebestyen has discovered that throughout Lenin's life his closest relationships were with his mother, his sisters, his wife and his mistress. The long-suppressed story told here of the love triangle that Lenin had with his wife and his beautiful, married mistress and comrade reveals a more complicated character than that of the coldly one-dimensional leader of the Bolshevik Revolution.

When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with the famously inconsistent European work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen. In the midst of it all, he reveals the adventure that accompanies carving out a place for yourself in a foreign country --- under baffling conditions --- while never losing sight of the magic that inspired him to move to the City of Light many years ago, and to truly make his home there.