Adult

U.S. soldiers who served in overseas conflicts --- from World War II, Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan --- share true stories of the actions that earned them some of America’s most distinguished military medals, up to and including the Medal of Honor. They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism and for the good of our beloved country. There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice and what it means to be an American hero.

When her mother --- addicted to cocaine and just out of prison --- had a son and then died only a few months later, Nikkya Hargrove was faced with an impossible choice. Although she had just graduated from college, she decided to fight for custody of her half brother, Jonathan. Nikkya vividly recounts how she is subjected to preconceived notions that she, a Black queer young woman, cannot be given such responsibility. Her honest portrayal of the shame she feels accepting food stamps, her family’s reaction to her coming out, and the joy she experiences when she meets the woman who will become her wife reveal her sheer determination. And whether she’s clashing with Jonathan’s biological father or battling for Jonathan’s education rights after he’s diagnosed with ADHD and autism, this is a woman who won’t give up.

A convict is brutally murdered in his locked cell deep in the heart of Scotland’s most infamous prison. Sleeping in a cell across the floor lies John Rebus, the equally notorious detective. Stripped of his badge and estranged from his police family, he is now fighting for his own life --- protected by an old nemesis but always one wrong move away from the shank. As new allies and old enemies circle, and the days and nights bleed into each other, even this legendary figure struggles to keep his head. They say old habits die hard, though. The death stirs Rebus’ deductive --- and manipulative --- impulses, setting off a domino-chain of scheming criminals, corrupt prison guards, and perhaps only one or two good souls who may see it all through. But how do you find a killer in a place full of them?

Renée Ballard and the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit get a hot shot DNA connection between a recently arrested man and a serial rapist and murderer who went quiet 20 years ago. His father was the Pillowcase Rapist, responsible for a five-year reign of terror in the City of Angels. But when Ballard and her team move in on their suspect, they encounter a baffling web of secrets and legal hurdles. Meanwhile, Ballard’s badge, gun and ID are stolen. She works the burglary alone, but her mission draws her into unexpected danger. So she knocks on the door of Harry Bosch. At the same time, Ballard takes on a new volunteer to the cold case unit: Bosch’s daughter, Maddie, now a patrol officer. But Maddie has an ulterior motive for getting access to the city’s library of lost souls --- a case that may be the most iconic in the city’s history.

When professor turned crime-fighter Brandt "Doc" Savage and his girlfriend, Kira Sunlight, land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts. But they don't have long to enjoy their newfound peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the Earth. Doc's search for Kira takes him from the coast of Brazil to northern Europe and the jungles of the Congo, and he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger than he ever could have imagined.

Summoned to an abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is devastated to learn that the victim is a man she once had an intense love affair with. The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Sal Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy, believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find that her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue. As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil.

In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city --- a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.

Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. From his good-as-gold, gentle girlfriend to the macho subcontractor guy his ex-wife left him for, not to mention his well-raised teenage kids, now exploring sex and sexuality, the secondary characters in Brock's life all contribute meaningfully to the drama, as increasing challenges to his sense of self and purpose crash over him. The final battle --- no spoilers, but there is one --- couldn't be more delightful, as BLOOD TEST reminds us to choose the best people to love, accept the ones we love even if we didn’t choose them, and love them all well.

This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians --- Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie --- the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of 20th-century America. What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America’s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. Based on more than 250 interviews, THE JAZZMEN brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid-1900s through the singular lens of the country’s most gifted, engaging and enduring African-American musicians.

John Grisham is known worldwide for his bestselling novels, but it’s his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, the first organization dedicated to exonerating innocent people who have been wrongly convicted. Together they offer an inside look at the many injustices in our criminal justice system. A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty, there is very little room to prove doubt. These 10 true stories shed light on Americans who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free.