Adult

One summer, Melissa Cistaro's mother drove off without explanation. Devastated, Melissa and her brothers were always tormented by the thought: Why did their mother abandon them? Thirty-five years later, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington, as her mother is dying. After decades of hiding her painful memories, she has just days to find out what happened that summer and confront the fear that she could do the same to her kids. But Melissa never expects to stumble across a cache of letters her mother wrote to her but never sent, which could hold the answers she seeks.

Jayne Marks is questioning the choices she has made in the years since college when she is given the opportunity to move to Paris with her wealthy lover and benefactor, Laurent Moller, who owns and operates two art galleries. He offers her the time and financial support she needs to begin her career as a painter and also challenges her to see who and what she will become if she meets her artistic potential. Laurent, however, seems to have other women in his life. Jayne, too, has an ex-boyfriend, much closer to her own age, for whom she still has feelings.

NO BETTER FRIEND tells the remarkable story of Royal Air Force technician Frank Williams and Judy, a purebred pointer, who met in a World War II internment camp. Judy was fiercely loyal, with a keen sense for who was friend and who was foe, and the pair's relationship deepened throughout their captivity. When the prisoners suffered beatings, Judy would interrupt by barking. She survived bombings and other near-death experiences and became a beacon for the men, who saw in her survival a flicker of hope for their own.

When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children. But as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.

Joshua Levin has a reasonably comfortable Chicago apartment, a mildly dysfunctional family sprinkled throughout the suburbs, a steady job teaching ESL, a devoted girlfriend who lives down the block, and a laptop full of screenplay ideas --- one of which he thinks might turn out to be good: Zombie Wars. But all it takes is a few unexpected events for his life to descend into chaos. As the stakes quickly move from absurd to life-and-death matters, THE MAKING OF ZOMBIE WARS takes on real consequence.

As John Banville writes in his introduction to THE LOVE OBJECT, Edna O'Brien "is, simply, one of the finest writers of our time.” The 31 stories collected in this volume provide, among other things, a cumulative portrait of Ireland, seen from within and without. Coming of age, the impact of class, and familial and romantic love are the prevalent motifs, along with the instinct toward escape and subsequent nostalgia for home. Some of the stories are linked, while others carry O'Brien's distinct sense of the comical.

Having recently turned 80, Willie Nelson is ready to shine a light on all aspects of his life, including his drive to write music, the women in his life, his collaborations, and his biggest lows and highs --- from his bankruptcy to the founding of Farm Aid. Nelson and his music have found their way into the hearts and minds of fans the world over, winning 10 Grammys and receiving the Kennedy Center Honors. Now it's time to hear the last word about his life --- from the man himself.

THE GOSPEL OF LOKI, Joanne M. Harris' latest novel, is a brilliant first-person narrative of the rise and fall of the Norse gods --- retold from the point of view of the world’s ultimate trickster, Loki. It tells the story of Loki’s recruitment from the underworld of Chaos, his many exploits on behalf of his one-eyed master, Odin, through to his eventual betrayal of the gods and the fall of Asgard itself.

Annie Darling, owner of the Death on Demand mystery bookstore, is hosting a party to celebrate successful Southern literary icon Alex Griffith and his bestselling new novel, Don’t Go Home. But not everyone in town is ready to give him a glowing review. As Annie attempts damage control, her friend Marian Kenyon gets in a heated argument with Griffith. It’s a fight Annie won’t soon forget --- especially after the author turns up dead.

As the lives of four strangers become entwined, their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, CHURCH OF MARVELS takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York --- a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger.