Adult

As Indigenous scientist and author of BRAIDING SWEETGRASS Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth --- its abundance of sweet, juicy berries --- to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival.

Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin and filth of her apartment was a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. Inside was a lost world that centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-the-heel section of Hollywood: 7406 Franklin Avenue, a combination salon-hotbed-living end where writers and artists mixed with movie stars, rock ’n’ rollers and drug trash. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion. It also was the breaking and then the remaking --- and thus the true making --- of another great American writer: Eve Babitz. Didion and Babitz formed a complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity. Didion, in spite of her confessional style, is so little known or understood. She’s remained opaque, elusive. Until now.

For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery has kept a flock of chickens in her backyard. Each chicken has an individual personality and connects with Sy in her own way. In WHAT THE CHICKEN KNOWS, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable creatures. Only hours after leaving the egg, they are able to walk, run and peck; relationships are important to them, and the average chicken can recognize more than a hundred other chickens; they remember the past and anticipate the future; and they communicate specific information through at least 24 distinct calls. Visitors to her home are astonished by all of this, but for Sy what’s more astonishing is how little most people know about chickens, especially considering there are about 20 percent more chickens on earth than people.

In 2002, Bill Zehme landed one of the most coveted assignments for a magazine writer: an interview with Johnny Carson. Shortly after Carson’s death in 2005, Zehme signed a contract to do an expansive biography. He toiled on the book for nearly a decade before a cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments halted his progress. Yet the hundreds of pages Zehme managed to complete are astounding both for the caliber of their writing and how they illuminate one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history. In one passage, Zehme notes that when asked by an interviewer for the secret to his success, Carson replied simply, “Be yourself and tell the truth.” Completed with help from journalist and Zehme’s former research assistant Mike Thomas, CARSON THE MAGNIFICENT offers just that: an honest assessment of who Johnny Carson really was.

Anne Boleyn has mesmerized the general public for centuries. Her tragic execution at the Tower of London on May 19, 1536 --- orchestrated by her own husband --- never ceases to intrigue. While many stories of Anne’s downfall have been told, few have truly traced the origins of her grim fate. In THORNS, LUST, AND GLORY, Estelle Paranque takes us back to where it all started: to France, where Anne learned the lessons that would set her on the path to becoming one of England's most infamous queens.

Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of an extended family that she thought she left behind 16 years ago. Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement. Then there are her grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins, all of whom still live in the house and resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out, and her star author --- and occasional lover --- is suddenly determined to make things serious. As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence.

Charlie Webb is a third-rate lawyer who graduated from a third-rate law school and has opened his own law firm, where he gets by handling cases for dubious associates from his youth and some court-appointed cases. In AN INSIGNIFICANT CASE, he’s appointed to be the attorney for a decidedly crackpot artist who calls himself Guido Sabatini (born Lawrence Weiss). Sabatini has been arrested --- again --- for breaking into a restaurant and stealing back a painting he sold them because he was insulted by where it was displayed. But as Lawrence Weiss, he’s also an accomplished card shark and burglar; while he was there, he stole a thumb drive from the owner’s safe. When this minor theft case becomes a double homicide, and even more, Charlie is faced with the most important and deadliest case of his life.

Travis Devine has become a pro at accomplishing any mission he's given. But this time it’s not his skills that send him to Seattle to aid the FBI in escorting orphaned, 12-year-old Betsy Odom to a meeting with her uncle, who’s under investigation for RICO charges. Instead, he’s hoping to lay low and keep off the radar of an enemy --- the girl on the train. But as Devine gets to know Betsy, questions begin to arise around the death of her parents. Devine digs for answers, and what he finds points to a conspiracy bigger than he ever could’ve imagined. It finally might be time for Devine and the girl on the train to come face to face. Devine is going to find out the difference between his friends and his enemies --- and in some cases, they might well be both.

“Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole.” It was a constant truism that Youngmi Mayer’s mother would say threateningly after she would make her daughter laugh while crying. Her mother used it to cheer her up in moments when she could tell Youngmi was overtaken with grief. The humorous saying would never fail to lighten the mood, causing both daughter and mother to laugh and cry at the same time. Her mother had learned this trick from her mother, and her mother had learned this from her mother before her: it also had helped an endless string of her family laugh through suffering. In I'M LAUGHING BECAUSE I'M CRYING, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know.

Of all the books written on Abraham Lincoln, there has been one surprising gap: the drama of how the “railsplitter” from Illinois grew into his critical role as U.S. commander-in-chief and managed to outwit his formidable opponent, Jefferson Davis, in what remains history's only military faceoff between rival American presidents. Confronted with the most violent and challenging war ever seen on American soil, Lincoln seemed ill-suited to the task. But in a Shakespearean twist, he summoned the courage to make a climactic decision: issuing as a “military necessity” a proclamation freeing the 3.5 million enslaved Americans without whom the South could not feed or fund their armed insurrection. The new war policy doomed the rebellion, and the fate of President Davis was sealed.