Adult

One day, the preschool office calls and says Janie needs to come in to talk about her four-year-old son, Noah. And life as she knows it stops. For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has stopped. A deadly diagnosis has made him realize he is approaching the end of his life. He spent his life searching for that something else. And with Noah, he thinks he's found it. Soon Noah, Janie and Anderson will find themselves knocking on the door of a mother whose son has been missing for eight years --- and when that door opens, all of their questions will be answered.

Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, AND I STILL RISE explores the last half-century of the African American experience. More than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of Black Power, the United States has both a black president and black CEOs running Fortune 500 companies --- and a large black underclass beset by persistent poverty, inadequate education and an epidemic of incarceration. Harvard professor and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. raises disturbing and vital questions about this dichotomy.

By Winston Churchill’s own admission, victory in the Second World War would have been “impossible without her.” Until now, however, the only existing biography of Churchill’s wife, Clementine, was written by her daughter. Sonia Purnell finally gives Clementine her due with a deeply researched account that tells her life story, revealing how she was instrumental in softening FDR’s initial dislike of her husband and paving the way for Britain’s close relationship with America. It also provides a surprising account of her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt and their differing approaches to the war effort.

Kateryn Parr, a 30-year-old widow in a secret affair with a new lover, has no choice when a man old enough to be her father who has buried four wives --- King Henry VIII --- commands her to marry him. Despite being a leader of religious reform and the first woman to publish in English, Kateryn cannot save the Protestants, under threat for their faith, and Henry’s dangerous gaze turns on her. The traditional churchmen and rivals for power accuse her of heresy. The punishment is death by fire, and the king’s name is on the warrant.

Mother’s Rest is a tiny place hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields, with a railroad stop, sullen and watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes Reacher for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation she thinks must have started small and then turned lethal. Before long, Reacher is plunged into a desperate race through LA, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco, and ultimately back to Mother’s Rest, where he must confront the worst nightmare he could imagine.

On the morning of August 31, 1984, in the South Central section of Los Angeles, three armed men broke into a house, brutally murdering two women and two young boys. The victims were Ebora Alexander, Dietra Alexander, Damani Garner and Damon Bonner --- the mother, sister and nephews of retired All-Pro cornerback for the San Francisco 49ers Kermit Alexander. In his own words, Kermit finally shares the full story of what happened to his loved ones and the aftermath of that tragic day.

Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does; born before independence, she is 11 when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child, and they fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. When their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself. But there is a cost to living inside a lie.

Twenty-five years after her mother was murdered and her father mysteriously disappeared, Sally has found a modicum of peace as a mortician’s beautician, able to take solace from the voices of the dead that trailed her for years wherever she went. Yet a grisly murder reawakens her “gift,” forcing her to turn to Jersey Castle --- homicide detective by day, punk rock drummer by night. But what Sally doesn’t know is that someone has been hunting for her all this time.

On New Year's Day, a wealthy family is found slaughtered inside their exclusive gated community, their youngest child stolen away. The murder weapon leads homicide detective Max Wolfe to a dusty corner of Scotland Yard's Black Museum devoted to a mass murderer who, 30 years ago, was known as The Slaughter Man. But The Slaughter Man has done his time and is now old and dying. Is he really back in the killing game? And was the slaughter of a happy family a mindless killing spree, or a grotesque homage by a copycat killer, or a contract hit designed to frame a dying man?

Practicing nurse and New York Times columnist Theresa Brown invites us to experience not just a day in the life of a nurse, but all the life that happens in just one day on a busy teaching hospital’s cancer ward. In the span of 12 hours, lives can be lost, life-altering treatment decisions made, and dreams fulfilled or irrevocably stolen. Unfolding in real time, THE SHIFT gives an unprecedented view into the individual struggles as well as the larger truths about medicine in this country. By shift’s end, we have witnessed something profound about hope and humanity.