Adult

In the winter of 1966, Katherine Reid moves to an isolated cabin deep in Georgia’s Appalachian Mountains, where she plans to spend her time in peaceful solitude. Twenty-year-old Vietnam veteran Danny lives not far from Katherine’s cabin. Haunted by war and enclosed by walls of moldering books, he becomes fixated on Katherine. What starts as cautious observation grows to obsession. When these two souls collide, the passion that ignites between them is all-consuming --- and increasingly dangerous.

A 10-member wedding party is kidnapped in front of the groom’s family mansion in Mexico City. The perpetrator is a small-time gangster who wants nothing more than to make his crew part of a major cartel and hopes that this crime will be his big break. Jessica Juliet Wolfe is a bridesmaid and close friend of the bride who hails from a family of notorious outlaws that has branches on both sides of the border. When the Wolfes learn of Jessie’s abduction, they fear that the kidnappers will kill the captives after receiving the ransom --- unless they rescue Jessie first.

On October 26, 1881, Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and 30 bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt. Wyatt Earp was the last man standing, the only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke cleared, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West.

Molly Murphy Sullivan’s husband, Daniel, a captain in the New York City police force, is chasing a murderer whose victims have nothing in common --- except for the taunting notes that are delivered to him after each murder. And when Daniel receives a note immediately after Molly and her young son, Liam, are in a terrible train crash, Daniel and Molly both begin to fear that maybe Molly herself was the target.

Death sets the plot of DARK ROOMS in motion: the murder of 16-year-old Nica Baker. The crime is quickly solved --- a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession --- but memory and instinct won’t allow Nica’s older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed. Dropping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school from which she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with identifying and punishing the real killer.

The ties of family make for uncomfortable binds in Thomas McGuane’s first short story collection in nine years. A devoted son is horrified to discover his mother’s antics before she slipped into dementia. A father’s outdoor skills are no match for an ominous change in the weather. But complications arise equally in the absence of blood, as when lifelong friends on a fishing trip finally confront their deep dislike for each other. Or when a gifted traveling cattle breeder succumbs to the lure of a stranger’s offer of easy money.

Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers and married to a celebrated neurosurgeon. But when her youngest child, 15-year-old Naomi, doesn’t come home after her school play, Jenny’s seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. More than a year after her daughter’s disappearance, Jenny is still digging for answers --- and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she has trusted, everyone she thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on lampposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Both playful and seductive, THE NIGHT CIRCUS, Erin Morgenstern’s spell-casting debut, is a mesmerizing love story for the ages.

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early 40s, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. What lies behind Pagford’s pretty façade is a town at war. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

What comes next? What comes after the devastating loss of Abigail Thomas’ husband, a process both sudden and slow? What form does her lifelong platonic friendship take after a certain line is crossed? How to cope with her daughter’s diagnosed illness? Or the death of her beloved dog? And how to like it? How to accept, appreciate, enjoy? Who are our most trusted, valuable companions, and what will we do for them?