Adult

In THE DARKLING CHILD, the second stand-alone Shannara novel in the Defenders of Shannara series (following THE HIGH DRUID’S BLADE), Paxon Leah has joined the Druid Order as a paladin, tasked with protecting the Druids with the aid of his magical sword. But Paxon’s toughest assignment will come when he must track down a young musician with newly manifested magic before a rival sorcerer can corrupt the boy.

Eve Moran has always wanted “things,” her powers of seduction impossible to resist for those who come in contact with her toxic allure. Her daughter, Christine, compelled by love, dependency and circumstance, is caught up in her mother’s deceptions, unwilling to accept the viciousness that runs in her family’s blood. It’s only when Christine’s three-year-old brother, Ryan, begins to prove useful to her mother, and Christine sees a horrific pattern repeating itself, that she finds the courage and means to bring an end to Eve’s tyranny.

It’s been 10 years since Dr. Bill Brockton created the Body Farm --- the world’s first postmortem research facility dedicated to advancing the frontiers of forensic science --- and the researcher is at the pinnacle of his career. Calling him in for a number of high-profile cases, the FBI now wants him to identify the charred remains of a maverick millionaire, killed in a fiery plane crash. But a storm is about to hit Brockton with cataclysmic force.

Joshua Cohen’s long, rambunctious novel is the story of a Google-like Internet search firm, its mysterious leader, and the mid-level novelist hired to write the leader’s memoir. In the grand tradition of postmodern novels, the mid-level writer’s name is Joshua Cohen. That’s also the name of the company leader, better known as the Principal. Like David Foster Wallace’s works, BOOK OF NUMBERS contains dense passages of encyclopedic detail --- in this case --- details about computer technology.

Caroline MacAfee is a skilled carpenter, and her daughter Jamie is a talented architect. Together they are the faces of “Gut It!,” a home renovation series on local public television. But when Caroline is told the network wants her daughter to replace her as host, she is devastated. For Jamie, life changes overnight when, soon after learning of the host shift, her father and his new wife die in a car accident that orphans their two-year-old son. Who am I? Both women ask, as the blueprints they've built their lives around suddenly need revising.

Dorothea Benton Frank once again takes us deep into the heart of the magical Lowcountry where three amazing middle-aged women are bonded by another amazing woman’s death. Through their shared loss, they forge a deep friendship, asking critical questions. Who was their friend, and what did her life mean? Are they living the lives they imagined for themselves? Will they ever be able to afford to retire? How will they maximize their happiness? Security? Health? And, ultimately, their own legacies?

Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend, DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen’s home town. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect’s wife as an old school friend and returns home for the first time in 25 years to lend her support. As his partner faces up to a past she has tried desperately to forget and a media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have the wrong man.

National Book Award winner Jonathan Kozol is best known for his 50 years of work among our nation’s poorest and most vulnerable children. Now, in the most personal book of his career, he tells the story of his father’s life and work as a nationally noted specialist in disorders of the brain and his astonishing ability, at the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, to explain the causes of his sickness and then to narrate, step-by-step, his slow descent into dementia.

Teddy Tremble is nearing 40 and has settled into a comfortable groove, working at a stuffy law firm and living in a downtown apartment with a woman he thinks he might love. Sure, his days aren’t as exciting as the time he spent as the lead singer of the rock band Tremble, but that life has long since passed its sell-by date. But when Teddy gets a cryptic call from an old friend, he’s catapulted into contemplating the unthinkable: reuniting Tremble for one last shot at rewriting history.

In the beautiful, barren landscape of the Far North, Frances and Yasha are surprised to find refuge in each other. Frances has fled heartbreak and claustrophobic Manhattan for an isolated artist colony; Yasha arrives from Brooklyn to fulfill his beloved father's last wish: to be buried "at the top of the world." They have come to learn how to be alone. But in Lofoten, an archipelago of six tiny islands in the Norwegian Sea, they form a bond that fortifies them against the turmoil of their distant homes, offering solace amidst great uncertainty.