Adult

1950s Prague is a city of numerous small terrors, of political tyranny, corruption and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one’s neighbor is spying for the government, or what one’s supposed friend will say under pressure to a State Security agent. But there are larger terrors, too. When a little boy is murdered at the cinema where his aunt works, the ensuing investigation sheds a little too much light on the personal lives of the cinema’s female ushers, each of whom is hiding a dark secret of her own.

Judy Blume takes us back to the 1950s and introduces us to the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she herself grew up. Here she imagines and weaves together a vivid portrait of three generations of families, friends and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed during one winter. At the center of an extraordinary cast of characters are 15-year-old Miri Ammerman and her spirited single mother, Rusty. Their warm and resonant stories are set against the backdrop of a real-life tragedy that struck the town when a series of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving the community reeling.

The lives of the Barretts are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism and contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight, resulting in what would become a hit reality TV show. Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry, at which point long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast begin to surface.

It’s been two years since disgraced Illinois governor Ray Perry disappeared from a federal courthouse in Chicago moments after being sentenced to 37 years in prison on corruption charges. P.I. Michael Kelly gets an anonymous email offering to pay him nearly a quarter of a million dollars if he will find Perry. Kelly’s investigation begins with the woman Perry left behind --- his wife, Marie. Ostracized by her former friends and hounded by the feds, Marie tells Kelly she has no idea where her husband is. Like everyone else, Kelly doesn’t believe her.

Annie O’Neill has it all: a cozy Manhattan apartment, a beautiful bookshop and a network of supportive friends. But her father died in her childhood, leaving a hole she has yet to fill. When a mysterious man named Forrester enters the shop and claims to be her father’s oldest friend, she jumps at the chance to discover more. Forrester, though, seems much more interested in telling her a story about a ruthless ganglord and a decades-old betrayal --- a betrayal that has something very much to do with her.

Freedom Oliver was arrested for killing her husband, a cop, 20 years ago. She is now in witness protection, regretting ever making a deal with the Feds and missing her children with a heartache so strong it makes her ill. When she learns that her daughter possibly has been kidnapped, she ventures out on her own, and her troubled past comes roaring back at her: her husband’s vengeful, sadistic family; her brief, terrifying stint in prison; and the family she chose to adopt her kids who are keeping dangerous secrets.

Far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to “fold” dimensions, it shrinks distances so that a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step. The invention promises to make mankind’s dreams of teleportation a reality. Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn’t quite what it seems --- and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

John Rothstein is an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy kills Rothstein and empties his safe of cash, but the real treasure is a trove of notebooks containing at least one more Gold novel. Morris hides the money and the notebooks, and then is locked away for another crime. Decades later, Pete Saubers finds the treasure, and now Bill Hodges, Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson must rescue Pete and his family from Morris when he’s released from prison after 35 years.

For three decades, C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis' Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times. In THE FELLOWSHIP, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works.

In the concluding novel of his epic Civil War tetralogy that began with A BLAZE OF GLORY and continued in A CHAIN OF THUNDER and THE SMOKE AT DAWN, Jeff Shaara tells the dramatic story of the final eight months of battle from multiple perspectives: the commanders in their tents making plans for total victory, as well as the ordinary foot soldiers and cavalrymen who carried out their orders until the last alarum sounded.