Adult

Driving home from a dinner party in the village of Sumpton Harcourt, Rory and Molly Devere, the new vicar and his wife, strain to see the road ahead --- and then suddenly brake, screeching to a halt. Right in front of them, aglow in the headlights, a body hangs from a gnarled tree at the edge of town. An elderly spinster has been murdered --- and the villagers just can’t fathom who among them could commit such a crime. Agatha Raisin rises to the occasion (a little glad for the excitement, she must admit, after a long run of lost cats and divorces on the books). But when two more murders follow the first, Agatha begins to fear for her reputation and, since the village happens to have its own coven of witches, her own life.

“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.” The book also examines the new voices, ideas and movements for justice that emerged over this period --- and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history.

Pregnant, alone and riddled with guilt, 23-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly gives up her budding career as a nurse and ends her engagement to the love of her life. She turns to the baby’s father for help and agrees to marry him, moving to the small, rural town of Hickory, North Carolina. Tess’ new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who shows her no affection, and she quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out. When a sudden polio epidemic strikes Hickory, the townspeople band together to build a polio hospital. As Tess works to save the lives of her patients, can she untangle the truth behind her husband’s mysterious behavior and find the love --- and the life --- she was meant to have?

Bringing a poetic sensibility to her prose to stunning effect, Julie Lythcott-Haims briskly and stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The only child of a marriage between an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. REAL AMERICAN expresses also, through Lythcott-Haims’ path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other."

When Asheville, NC, private eyes Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson are asked by an 80-year-old client to investigate the suspicious death of her brother, they warn her there is little chance of success. Paul Weaver died nearly 70 years earlier. The only documentation she has is the sole surviving copy of a coroner's report stating his death was caused by an accidental fall while hiking. There's a red flag: local son Weaver knew every inch of the mountain trails. The returning World War II veteran had enrolled at Black Mountain College, which is currently being portrayed in a film being shot on the site of its former location. The plot is based on a book by a local author. The research behind both may provide a lead in the Weaver case.

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller DO NO HARM, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In ADMISSIONS, he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering.

Days after the pet store owner next door to Redondo Travel is poisoned, travel agent Cyd Redondo wins a free safari. She and her recent fling, Roger Claymore, arrive in Africa --- luggage lost --- to find two of Cyd's elderly clients in a local jail. She manages to barter them out, only to discover smugglers have hidden $500,000 worth of endangered parrots, snakes, frogs and a lone Madagascan chameleon in the clients' outbound luggage. When Roger steals the bags --- is the U.S. Embassy in on the contraband ring? --- Cyd and the chameleon helicopter into the jungle to go after Roger on their own.

Detective Steven Paul has had the same nightmare for as long as he can remember, a strange symbol figuring prominently into his terror. He decided long ago that the recurring dreams are nothing more than an unfortunate side effect of his often traumatic profession. Until, that is, he's assigned to the case of Emily Lindsey, the beautiful, elusive and controversial blogger found alone, who can't possibly know the symbol from his nightmares...unless she does.

In HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts and girls-with-bells-for-eyes.

Art Garfunkel writes about his life before, during and after Simon & Garfunkel --- about their folk-rock music in the roiling age that embraced and was defined by their pathbreaking sound. He writes about growing up in the 1940s and '50s (the son of a traveling salesman); meeting Paul Simon in school; their going to a recording studio in Manhattan to make a demo of their song, "Hey Schoolgirl," (for $7!) and the actual record (with Paul's father on bass) going to #40 on the national charts, selling 150,000 copies; their becoming Simon & Garfunkel, taking the world by storm; his slow unfolding split with Paul and its aftermath; and so much more.