Adult

When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband’s 300-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days of the war on her own. By the time Major Hockaday returns two years later, Placidia is bound for jail, accused of having borne a child in his absence and murdering it. What really transpired in the two years he was away?

To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont. But most 60-year-old widowers don’t have multiple driver’s licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run. Thirty-five years ago, Chase was sent to Libya to covertly assist a rebel army. When the plan turned sour, he reacted according to his own ideas of right and wrong, triggering consequences he never could have anticipated. Just as he had begun to think himself finally safe, Chase must reawaken his survival instincts to contend with the history he has spent his adult life trying to escape.

Traveling from farm to farm at the height of the Great Depression, Sam Babb recruited talented, hardworking young women and offered them a free college education if they would come play for his basketball team, the Cardinals. With passion for the sport and heartfelt loyalty to one another and their coach, the Cardinals won every game. For author Lydia Reeder, this is a family story: coach Babb is her great-uncle. When her grandmother handed her a folder that contained newspaper articles, letters and photographs of Sam and the Cardinals, she said, “You might want to tell their story someday.” Now, with extensive research and the gathered memories of the surviving Cardinals, she has.

The women in Roxane Gay’s latest collection of stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the elder sister's marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind.

Bear Falls's own elusive and highly secretive poet, Emily Sutton, has lived her life cloistered away with her sister. But now Emily has started leaving scraps of poetry in Dora's Little Library, and Dora makes it her mission to befriend the sheltered woman. Meanwhile, Zoe Zola is hard at work on a new book, this one about the inner life of Emily Dickinson. And once again, Zoe's literary work starts making uncanny connections with the events in her own world as Emily Sutton reemerges into society. But Zoe begins to suspect that things aren't anywhere near normal at Emily's swamp house or in the lives of the people she claims have abandoned her...until looking further into the poet's half-truths leads Zoe and Dora’s daughter, Jenny, to a horrible murder.

Miss Sarah Bain, a photographer, is an independent woman with dark secrets. In the privacy of her studio, she supplements her meager income by taking illicit “boudoir photographs” of the town's local ladies of the night. But when two of her models are found gruesomely murdered within weeks of one another, Sarah begins to suspect it's more than mere coincidence. Teamed with a motley crew of friends, Sarah delves into the crime of the century. But just as she starts unlocking the Ripper's secrets, she catches the attention of the local police, who believe she knows more than she's revealing, as well as from the Ripper himself, now bent on silencing her and her friends for good.

Melanie West is getting her life back on track after a messy divorce when her grandmother, Liza Harris, asks her to open a B&B with her. Together, Liza and Melanie purchase a purportedly haunted mansion and jump right into clearing out the cobwebs. But while attempting to remove wallpaper in an upstairs bedroom, the new B&B owners stumble upon a very real skeleton in their closet. As the inn owners try to juggle renovations with their own amateur investigations, their grand opening looms closer and closer --- and a friendly ghost in their walls starts playing tricks. But it all comes crashing to a halt when a new body is found stabbed to death on the beach below the inn --- the victim chillingly close in resemblance to Melanie herself.

The body of a young woman has been found in a cranberry bog, and Detective Constance Maclean is convinced that this murder is tied to an earlier killing. The Seattle police already have a suspect in custody for that case, but Maclean suspects the lead detective is knowingly putting away an innocent man to boost his numbers and quiet his critics. Dr. James Verraday, a professor of forensic psychology specializing in eyewitness recall and criminal profiling, reluctantly agrees to use his skills as a profiler to help out with the investigation. They form an unlikely alliance and soon find themselves tied up in a deadly game to locate a serial killer whose wealth and influence make him almost untouchable.

A young man, Eric, drops out of college and lucks into a job with a small-town newspaper where he meets Anna --- a woman whose story will both haunt and inspire him for the rest of his life. Set in a remote North Dakota community in the last days before the Internet, THE WINTER IN ANNA unfolds around a romance that almost was, and a meditation on what constitutes a life well lived. In wistful, moving reflections, Eric looks back on his days with Anna and struggles to reconcile his memories with what he has since learned of her.

At the end of HUCKLEBERRY FINN, on the eve of the Civil War, Huck and Tom Sawyer decide to escape “sivilization” and “light out for the Territory.” In Robert Coover’s vision of their Western adventures, Tom decides he’d rather own civilization than escape it, leaving Huck “dreadful lonely” in a country of bandits, war parties and gold. In the course of his ventures, Huck reunites with old friends, facing hard truths and even harder choices.