Adult

Molly Gray has always loved the holidays. When Molly was a child, her gran went to great lengths to make the season merry and bright, full of cherished traditions. The first few Christmases without Gran were hard on Molly, but this year, her beloved boyfriend and fellow festive spirit, Juan Manuel, is intent on making the season Molly’s most joyful yet. But when a Secret Santa gift exchange at the Regency Grand Hotel raises questions about who Molly can and cannot trust, she dives headfirst into solving her most consequential --- and personal --- mystery yet. Molly has a bad feeling about things, and she starts to wonder: Has she yet again mistaken a frog for a prince?

It is spring in 1963, and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war against the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor that Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But in his absence, the shadows of Moscow have lengthened. Smiley soon finds himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come and set him on a collision course with the greatest enemy he will ever make.

A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. They set out across a breathtaking yet treacherous wilderness in search of the last of their people. Down the coast, raiders deliver the children's mother, along with the rest of their human cargo, to the last port city of a waning empire. Determined to reunite with her family, she plots her escape --- while her fellow captives plan open revolt. At the center of power in this crumbling city, a young scholar inherits his father's business and position of privilege, along with the burden of his debts. As the empire's elite prepare to flee to new utopia across the sea, he must decide where his allegiance lies. With a rapidly changing climate shifting the sands beneath their feet, these three paths converge in a struggle for the future of humanity.

Ruth-Ann Baker is a college dropout, a bartender --- and an amateur detective who just can’t stay away from true crime. Nineteen years ago, her childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she is determined to find his deadly partner in crime. Embarking on a global investigation, Ruth becomes close to three very different women --- one of whom just might hold the key to what happened to the missing girl. And her childhood friend, all those years ago.

On a sunny morning in June, Margaret Carpenter wakes up to find a new iPhone on her doorstep. She switches it on to find a text from her best friend, Charity Atwater. The problem is, Charity has been missing for over a month. Most people in town --- even the police --- think she’s dead. Margaret and Charity have been lifelong friends. They share everything and know the most intimate details about one another. Except for the destructive secret hidden from them both. A secret that will trigger a chain of events ending in tragedy, bloodshed and death. And now Charity wants Margaret to know her story --- the real story. In a narrative that takes place over one feverish day, Margaret follows a series of increasingly disquieting breadcrumbs as she forges deeper into the mystery of her best friend --- a person she never truly knew at all.

Born into poverty in rural Alabama, John Lewis would become second only to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. He was a Freedom Rider who helped to integrate bus stations in the South, a leader of the Nashville sit-in movement, the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, and the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he made into one of the major civil rights organizations. He may be best remembered as the victim of a vicious beating by Alabama state troopers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he nearly died. David Greenberg’s biography traces Lewis’ life through the post-Civil Rights years, when he headed the Voter Education Project, which enrolled millions of African American voters across the South.

The best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal. Doesn’t it? In SHOCK INDUCTION, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite.

John Edgar Wideman’s “slaveroad” is a palimpsest of physical, social and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this groundbreaking work that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history and fiction. The slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans since then and the many insidious ways that slavery separates, wounds and persists. An impassioned, searching work, SLAVEROAD is one man’s reckoning with a uniquely American lineage and the ways that the past haunts the present: “It’s here. Now. Where we are. What we are. A story compounded of stories told, retold, untold, not told.”

Ever since the untimely death of their parents, Anne, Beatrix and Violet Quigley have made a business of threading together the stories that rest in the swirls of ginger, cloves and cardamon that lie at the bottom of their customers’ cups. Their days at the teashop are filled with talk of butterflies and good fortune. That is, until the Council of Witches comes calling with news that the city Diviner has lost her powers, and the sisters suddenly find themselves being pulled in different directions. As Anne’s magic begins to develop beyond that of her sisters’, Beatrix’s writing attracts the attention of a publisher, and Violet is enchanted by the song of the circus --- and perhaps a mischievous trapeze artist threatening to sweep her off her feet --- it seems a family curse that threatens to separate the sisters is taking effect.

Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing, and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina. Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases --- Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby and Ongoing --- through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between raccoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches and more.