Adult

An ambitious young environmental scientist hoped to establish a sustainable farm on a small patch of river-bottom land nestled among the Mississippi hills. Jay Mize convinced his wife, Sandy, to move their six-year-old son away from town and to a rich and lush parcel. He did not know that within a year he’d be ruined, that flood and pestilence would invade his fledgling farm, or that his wife and son would leave him. When Jay discovers a corpse on his property, he is sure his bad luck has come to a head and he is being framed.

When the British Empire sets its sights on India in the mid-19th century, it expects a quick and easy conquest. India is fractured and divided into kingdoms, each independent and wary of one another, seemingly no match for the might of the English. But when they arrive in the Kingdom of Jhansi, the British army is met with a surprising challenge. Instead of surrendering, Queen Lakshmi raises two armies and rides into battle, determined to protect her country and her people.

Detective Zach Jordan and his partner, Kylie MacDonald, are called to the home of billionaire businessman Hunter Alden, Jr. after he makes a grisly discovery in his townhouse garage. When Alden's teenage son goes missing soon afterwards, and his father seems oddly reluctant to find him, Zach and Kylie find themselves in the middle of a chilling conspiracy that threatens everyone in its wake --- especially their city's most powerful citizens.

Soon after her parents' separation, nine-year-old Lizzie Vogel moves with her siblings and newly single mother to a tiny village in the English countryside, where the new neighbors are horrified by their unorthodox ways and fatherless household. Lizzie's theatrical mother only invites more gossip by spending her days drinking whiskey, popping pills and writing plays. The one way to fit in, the children decide, will be to find themselves a new man at the helm.

Almost four years after the end of World War II, the city of Berlin is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. However, almost from the start, things go fatally wrong.

The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The Empire teeters. Amid this crisis comes opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, one of the most notorious and brilliant personalities of Victorian England. Along with his irrepressible daughter, Emily, and their Scotland Yard companions, Ryan and Becker, De Quincey finds himself confronted by an adversary who threatens the heart of the nation.

Nina MacLaughlin spent her 20s working at a Boston newspaper, sitting behind a desk and staring at a screen. Yearning for more tangible work, she applied for a job she saw on Craigslist --- Carpenter’s Assistant: Women strongly encouraged to apply --- despite being a Classics major who couldn't tell a Phillips from a flathead screwdriver. She got the job, and in HAMMER HEAD she tells the rich and entertaining story of becoming a carpenter.

Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears without a trace. Unbeknownst to 11-year-old Eddie, now left behind in a panic-stricken search for her, Darlene has been lured away with false promises of a good job and a rosy life. A shady company named Delicious Foods shuttles her to a remote farm, where she is held captive.

Ali Reynolds’ longtime friend and Taser-carrying nun, Sister Anselm, rushes to the bedside of a young pregnant woman hospitalized for severe injuries after she was hit by a car on a deserted Arizona highway. The girl had been running away from The Family, a polygamous cult with no patience for those who try to leave its ranks. Something about her strikes a chord in Sister Anselm, reminding her of a case she worked years before when another young girl wasn’t so lucky.

Nearly 25 years ago, Nicholson Baker published U AND I, the groundbreaking tale of his literary relationship with John Updike. U AND I inspired a whole sub-genre of engaging, entertaining writing about reading, but what no story of this type has ever done is tell its tale from the moment of conception, that moment when you realize that there is a writer out there in the world who you must read. B & ME is that story, the story of J.C. Hallman discovering and reading Nicholson Baker --- and discovering himself in the process.