Adult

Sent to a “therapeutic community” for autism at the age of 11, Todd Aaron, now in his 50s, is the “Old Fox” of Payton LivingCenter. A joyous man who rereads the encyclopedia compulsively, he is unnerved by the sudden arrivals of a menacing new staffer and a disruptive, brain-injured roommate. His equilibrium is further worsened by Martine, a one-eyed new resident who has romantic intentions and convinces him to go off his meds to feel “normal” again. Undone by these pressures, Todd attempts an escape to return “home” to his younger brother and to a childhood that now inhabits only his dreams.

Spanning 30 years, THE GREEN ROAD tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart. As they grow up, Rosaleen's four children leave the west of Ireland for lives they never could have imagined. In her early old age, their mother announces that she’s decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold.

Kirstin Valdez Quade's stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters defined by the desire to escape the past or else to plumb its depths. The deadbeat father of a pregnant teenager tries to transform his life by playing the role of Jesus in a bloody penitential Passion. A young man discovers that his estranged father and a boa constrictor have been squatting in his grandmother’s empty house. One girl attempts to uncover the mystery of her cousin's violent past, while another young woman finds herself at an impasse when she is asked to hear her priest's confession.

Looking beyond the familiar Little Italys and stereotypes fostered by The Godfather and “The Sopranos,” Maria Laurino reveals surprising, fascinating lives: Italian-Americans working on sugar-cane plantations in Louisiana to those who were lynched in New Orleans; the banker who helped rebuild San Francisco after the great earthquake; and families interned as “enemy aliens” in World War II. This book is both an exploration and celebration of the rich legacy of Italian-American life.

Ruby Wax --- comedian, writer and mental health advocate --- has been on a tough but ultimately enlightening journey that has taken her from battling depression to achieving a Masters Degree from Oxford University in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. In SANE NEW WORLD, Ruby helps us all understand why we sabotage our sanity, how our brains work, and how we can rewire our thinking --- often through simple mindfulness techniques --- to find calm in a frenetic world.

Public defender Rachel Wainwright is struggling to reopen a decades-old case, convinced that the wrong man is in prison. Homicide detective Deke Morgan doesn't want to agree. But if Rachel's hunch is correct, whoever fatally bludgeoned young, beautiful Annie Dawson 30 years ago could be the source of a new string of brutal slayings. Rachel's investigation is about to reveal answers --- but at a price she never thought to pay.

Jeremy Best, a Manhattan-based trusts and estates lawyer, has a second life as the poet Jinx Bell. To Spaulding, his boss’s daughter, 33-year-old Jeremy is, at first, already halfway to dead. When Spaulding, an aspiring 19-year-old writer, discovers Mr. Best’s alter writerly ego, the two become bound by a devotion to poetry. Their budding relationship offers them the possibility of enduring love --- or the threat of tragic loss.

Rita Jansen's mother is healing from a stroke but facing a long recovery. Without being able to run their family-owned salon, she could lose the business. Rita decides to help, but only has until Valentine's Day to come up with a plan. She finds herself renewing friendships with her childhood best friend, Marley, as well as her classmate Johnny. Though Rita believes Johnny is only being kind, with romance kindling in the air, their friendship may just fall into something more.

Despite being neighbors, Irish immigrant Maggie Malone and Elizabeth Blair, the mistress of her brother's Missouri plantation, have led such different lives that they barely know one another --- until war brings them together, and each woman discovers that both friendship and love can come from the unlikeliest of places.

The previous titles in Peter Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series have focused on writers (Chaucer and Poe), scientists (Isaac Newton) and painters (J. M. W. Turner). Now he turns to cinema with this engaging biography of Charlie Chaplin. Ackroyd’s narrative covers it all: Chaplin’s early years growing up in poverty in South London; his unprecedented fame in Keystone and First National comedies and, later, those of his own studio; and the temper and egotism that vexed his collaborators.