Adult

In a future America that feels increasingly familiar, you are your credit score. Extreme wealth inequality has created a class of have-nothings: Subprimes. Their bad credit ratings make them unemployable. Fugitives who must keep moving to avoid arrest, they wander the globally warmed American wasteland searching for day labor and a place to park their battered SUVs for the night. THE SUBPRIMES follows the fortunes of two families whose lives reflect this new dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-financially-fittest America.

In 1776, 13 American colonies declared themselves independent states that only temporarily joined forces in order to defeat the British. Once victorious, they planned to go their separate ways. The triumph of the American Revolution was neither an ideological nor a political guarantee that the colonies would relinquish their independence and accept the creation of a federal government with power over their autonomy as states. THE QUARTET is the story of this second American founding and of the men most responsible: Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay and James Madison.

A baseball rules book. A tape measure. A lottery ticket. These were in the pocket of Bengie Molina’s father when he died of a heart attack on the rutted Little League field in his Puerto Rican barrio. The items serve as thematic guideposts in Molina’s memoir about his father, who through baseball taught his three sons about loyalty, humility, courage and the true meaning of success.

As a young woman, Kate Betts nursed a dream of striking out on her own in a faraway place and becoming a glamorous foreign correspondent. After college --- and not without trepidation --- she took off for Paris, renting a room in the apartment of a young BCBG (bon chic, bon genre) family and throwing herself into the local culture. She was determined to master French slang, style and savoir faire, and to find a job that would give her a reason to stay.

Today it is the most valuable book in the world. Recently one sold for over five million dollars. It is the book that rescued the name of William Shakespeare and half of his plays from oblivion. THE MILLIONAIRE AND THE BARD tells the miraculous and romantic story of the making of the First Folio, and of the American industrialist whose thrilling pursuit of the book became a lifelong obsession.

Legendary New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada discusses the key moments and plays that shaped teams and forged a legacy that came to define Yankee baseball for a generation. With pitch-by-pitch recall, he looks back across the years, explaining how he helped to reestablish the Yankees as a dynasty and win five World Series. Going beyond his all-star career, Jorge also shares his life in full for the first time, examining how his remarkable journey to the big leagues began in the most unexpected of ways.

No one in 1840s New York likes fires, but Copper Star Timothy Wilde least of all. So when an arsonist with an agenda begins threatening Alderman Robert Symmes, a corrupt and powerful leader high in the Tammany Hall ranks, Wilde isn’t thrilled to be involved. His reservations escalate further when his brother Valentine announces that he’ll be running against Symmes in the upcoming election, making both himself and Timothy a host of powerful enemies.

Ken Kalfus’ latest collection of short fiction is a mix of experimental works and stories that borrow from recent news items. The piece that likely will receive the most attention is the title novella, in which a figure based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn has a sexual encounter with a housekeeper from Guinea at New York’s Sofitel hotel. Other stories in this provocative book touch upon topics like the Iraq War, the Large Hadron Collider, and execution by lethal injection.

Small and sullen, Aron is eight years old when his family moves from a rural Polish village to hectic Warsaw. At first gradually and then ever more quickly, his family’s opportunities for a better life vanish as the occupying German government imposes harsh restrictions. Officially confined to the Jewish quarter, with hunger, vermin, disease and death all around him, Aron makes his way from apprentice to master smuggler until finally, with everyone for whom he cared stripped away from him, his only option is Janusz Korczak, the renowned doctor, children’s rights advocate and radio host who runs a Jewish orphanage. And Korczak, in turn, awakens the humanity inside the boy.

Ben Sawyer was a big-city cop, until he nearly killed a helpless suspect in public. Now a detective in the tiny Wisconsin town where he and his wife grew up, Ben suspects that higher-ups are taking payoffs from local drug lords. Before long, Ben is off the force. His wife is accused of murder. His only ally is another outcast, a Latina rookie cop. Worse, a killer has escaped from jail with vengeance on his mind, and Newburg --- and Ben Sawyer --- in his sights.