Adult

Firefighters walk boldly into battle against the most capricious of elements. Their daughters, mothers, sisters and wives walk through the world with another kind of strength and another kind of sorrow, and no one knows that better than the women of the Keegan-O’Reilly clan. In ASHES OF FIERY WEATHER, debut novelist Kathleen Donohoe takes us from famine-era Ireland to New York City a decade after 9/11, illuminating the passionate loves and tragic losses of six generations of women in a firefighting family.

As members of the yearbook committee, Nick, Zola, Matt and Christina are eager to capture all the memorable moments of their junior year at Lewis and Clark High School. But how do you document a horrific tragedy --- a deadly school shooting by a classmate? Struggling to comprehend this cataclysmic event, these four survivors vow to honor the memories of those lost and the memories forgotten in the shadow of violence. But the shooting is only the first inexplicable trauma to rock their small suburban St. Louis town. A series of mysterious house fires have hit the families of the victims one by one, pushing the grieving town to the edge.

We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In THE BOOK, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages --- of civilizations, empires, human ingenuity and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today.

Independence Day, 1861. The schooner S. J. Waring sets sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limps back into New York’s frenzied harbor with the ship's black steward, William Tillman, at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has been lost to history. Now reclaiming Tillman as the real American hero he was, historian Brian McGinty dramatically returns readers to that riotous, explosive summer of 1861, when the country was tearing apart at the seams and the Union army was in near shambles following a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run.

At just 47 years old, William Giraldi’s father was killed in a horrific motorcycle crash while racing on a country road. This tragedy, which forever altered the young Giraldi and devastated his family, provides the pulse for THE HERO’S BODY. In the tradition of Andre Dubus III’s TOWNIE, this is a deep-seeing investigation into two generations of men from the working-class town of Manville, New Jersey, including Giraldi’s own forays into obsessive bodybuilding as a teenager desperate to be worthy of his family’s pitiless, exacting codes of manhood.

After a harrowing, otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachusetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive --- only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown. And by the time Proctor discovers the truth, a terrifying engine has stirred --- and it may already be too late.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka’s parents survived the Nazis only to have to escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into. From World War I to the present, Slouka pieces together a remarkable story of refugees and war, displacement and denial --- admitting into evidence memories, dreams, stories, the lies we inherit, and the lies we tell --- in an attempt to reach his mother, the enigmatic figure at the center of the labyrinth.

Before Joe and Rose Kennedy’s children emerged as leaders on the world stage, they were a loving circle of brothers and sisters who played football, swam, read and pursued their interests. They were children inspired by parents who instilled in them a strong work ethic, deep love of country, and intense appreciation for the sacrifices their ancestors made to come to America. "No whining in this house!" was their father’s regular refrain. It was his way of reminding them not to complain, to be grateful for what they had, and to give back. In THE NINE OF US, Jean Kennedy Smith --- the last surviving sibling --- revisits this singular time in their lives.

Recent business school graduate Penny Baker has rebelled against her family her whole life --- by being the conventional one. But all that changes when her father dies, and she inherits his childhood home in New Jersey. She goes to investigate the property and finds it occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters who have renamed the property "Nicotine." The Nicotine residents (united in defense of smokers’ rights) possess the type of passion and fervor Penny feels she’s desperately lacking. As the Baker family’s lives begin to converge around the fate of the house, Penny grows ever bolder and more desperate to protect it until a fateful night when a reckless confrontation between her old family and her new one changes everything.

“Mister Monkey” --- a screwball children’s musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee --- is the kind of family favorite that survives far past its prime. Margot, who plays the chimp’s lawyer, knows the production is dreadful and bemoans the failure of her acting career. She’s settled into the drudgery of playing a humiliating part --- until the day she receives a mysterious letter from an anonymous admirer…and later, in the middle of a performance, has a shocking encounter with Adam, the 12-year-old who plays the title role.