Adult

Jean Stein transformed the art of oral history in her groundbreaking book EDIE: American Girl, an indelible portrait of Andy Warhol “superstar” Edie Sedgwick, which was edited with George Plimpton. Now, in WEST OF EDEN, she turns to Los Angeles, the city of her childhood. Stein vividly captures a mythic cast of characters: their ambitions and triumphs as well as their desolation and grief. These stories illuminate the bold aspirations of five larger-than-life individuals and their families.

SUDDEN DEATH begins with a brutal tennis match between the bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo that could decide the fate of the world. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time. Across the ocean in Mexico, conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Mayan translator and lover, La Malinche, scheme and conquer, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the world. And in a remote Mexican colony, a bishop reads Thomas More’s UTOPIA and thinks it’s a manual.

Clio Marsh, whose bird-watching walks through Central Park are mentioned in New York Magazine, is taking her first tentative steps towards a relationship while also looking back to the secrets of her broken childhood. Her best friend, Smith Anderson, the seemingly perfect daughter of one of New York’s wealthiest families, organizes the lives of others as her own has fallen apart. And Tate Pennington has returned to the city, heartbroken but determined to move ahead with his artistic dreams. Rambling through the emotional chaos of their lives, this trio learns to let go of the past and make room for the future.

In recognition for his role in solving the Japantown murders in San Francisco, antiques dealer and sometime-PI Jim Brodie has just been brought on as the liaison for the mayor’s new Pacific Rim Friendship Program. He recruits his friend, the renowned Japanese artist Ken Nobuki, who ends up being shot by a sniper and lies comatose in the hospital. Brodie soon realizes that, with the suspicious and untimely death of Nobuki’s oldest son a week earlier in Napa Valley, someone may be targeting his friend’s family --- and killing them off one by one.

In 13th-century Sri Lanka, Asanka, poet to the king, lives a life of luxury, enjoying courtly life and a sweet, furtive love affair with a palace servant, a village girl he is teaching to write. But when Magha, a prince from the mainland, usurps the throne, Asanka's role as court poet dramatically alters. Although a cruel and calculating king, Magha --- a lover of poetry --- commissions Asanka to translate a holy Sanskrit epic into the Tamil language spoken by his recently acquired subjects. The poem will be an olive branch --- a symbol of unity between the two cultures. But in different languages, in different contexts, meaning can become slippery.

Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. But on the one-year anniversary of his wife Miriam’s death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam’s possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he’s never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s secret life before they met --- a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.

A week before Stalin's death, his final pogrom is in full swing. Three government goons arrive in the middle of the night to arrest Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, an actor from the defunct State Jewish Theater. But Levinson is a veteran of past wars, and his shocking response to the intruders sets in motion a series of events both zany and deadly as he proceeds to assemble a ragtag group to help him enact a mad-brilliant plot: the assassination of a tyrant. While the setting is Soviet Russia, the backdrop is Shakespeare: A mad king has a diabolical plan to exterminate and deport his country's remaining Jews.

As a blizzard bears down, Percy James sets off to find her troubled mother, Carletta. Fearing she is strung out on meth and that she won’t survive the storm, Percy heads for Shelton Potter’s cabin. Searching the house, she finds the two-bit criminal and his girlfriend drugged into oblivion --- and a crying baby girl. Percy knows she must save her --- a split-second decision that is the beginning of a dangerous odyssey in which she must battle the elements and evade Shelton and a small band of desperate criminals, hell-bent on getting that baby back.

It is 1937. Prue, an artist living a reclusive life by the sea, is visited by William Harrington, a British pilot she knew as a child in Jerusalem. Prue remembers an attraction between Harrington and Eleanora, the wife of a famous Jerusalem photographer, and the troubles that arose when Harrington learned Eleanora's husband was part of an underground group intent on removing the British. During his visit, Harrington reveals the truth behind what happened all those years ago, a truth that unravels Prue's world. Now she must follow the threads that lead her back to secrets long-ago buried in Jerusalem.

NSA director Theodore Anders has a simple goal: collect every phone call, email and keystroke tapped on the Internet. He knows unlimited surveillance is the only way to keep America safe. Evelyn Gallagher just wants to keep her head down and manage the NSA’s camera network and facial recognition program so she can afford private school for her deaf son, Dash. But when Evelyn discovers the existence of an NSA program code-named God’s Eye, and connects it with the mysterious deaths of a string of journalists and whistleblowers, her doubts put her and Dash in the crosshairs of a pair of government assassins.