Adult

Corporal Elijah Russell is assigned to an elite Special Forces unit preparing to stage a secret mission in eastern Afghanistan. His task is to train the Green Berets --- fiercely loyal to their enigmatic commander, Captain Wynne --- to ride the horses they will use to execute this mission through treacherous mountain terrain. But as the team presses farther into enemy territory, the nature of their operation only becomes more mysterious and Wynne’s charismatic power takes on a darker cast.

Olivia and Brody have chosen the perfect location for their destination wedding: a friend’s idyllic inn in the Mediterranean town of Cassis. However, the weekend is quickly thrown off balance by guests. Olivia’s daughters, one reckless and one practical, both make brash decisions. Brody’s mother is coping with the fallout of her own marriage, and then there is Jake, the playboy best man. In the middle is Olivia, navigating the dramas and joys of starting a new life.

Eddy Harkness is a brilliant young detective who currently empties parking meters and struggles to redeem his disgraced family name. One night Harkness’s police-issue Glock disappears. Unable to report the theft, Harkness starts a secret search --- just as a string of fatal accidents lead him to uncover a new, dangerous smart drug, Third Rail. With only a plastic disc gun to protect him, Harkness begins a high-stakes investigation that leads him into the darkest corners of the city.

Kim Philby’s story is not a tale of one spy, but of three: Philby, his fellow Englishman Nicholas Elliott, and the American James Jesus Angleton. These men supposedly served the same cause, but Philby was channeling all of their confidences to his Soviet handlers. As the web of suspicion closed around him, Elliott and Angleton never abandoned him. When the truth was revealed, it would have profound consequences on those who thought they knew him best.

Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for NPR's "Fresh Air," points out that, while THE GREAT GATSBY may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power. Offering a fresh perspective on what makes GATSBY so great and utterly unusual, SO WE READ ON takes us into archives, high school classrooms, and even out onto the Long Island Sound to explore the novel's hidden depths.

Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family's 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. All her money and all her real estate could not protect her in her later life from being manipulated by shady hangers-on and hospitals that were only too happy to admit (and bill) a healthy woman. But what happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious, young socialite into a recluse? And what was her life like inside that gilded, copper cage?

At 23, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. She is tasked with answering Salinger’s voluminous fan mail. Drawn inexorably into the emotional world of Salinger’s devotees, she abandons the agency’s form response and begins writing back herself. Over the course of the year, she finds her own voice by acting as Salinger’s, on her own dangerous and liberating terms.

Ellen Cooney’s latest novel is the story of two women and a whole pack of dogs who, having lost their way in the world, find a place at a training school --- and radical rescue center --- called the Sanctuary. It is a story of strays and rescues, kidnappings and homecomings, moving on, holding on and letting go. And it is, ultimately, a moving and hilarious chronicle of the ways in which humans and canines help each other find new lives, new selves and new hope.

LOVELY, DARK, DEEP is a collection of 10 mesmerizing stories from Joyce Carol Oates that maps the eerie darkness within us all. Fearful that her husband is “disappearing” from their life, a woman becomes obsessed with keeping him in her sight in “The Disappearing.” “A Book of Martyrs” reveals how the end of a pregnancy brings with it the end of a relationship. And in the title story, the elderly Robert Frost is visited by an interviewer, an unsettling young woman, who seems to know a good deal more about his life than she should.

Ruth has always stood firmly beside her husband, Peter, the legendary chief of New England’s Derry School for boys. The aging Peter will soon have to retire, and Ruth is wondering what they will do in their old age, separated from the school into which they have poured everything, including their savings. The narrative takes us back through the years, revealing the explosive spark and joy between Ruth and Peter.