Adult

Sisters Emma and Agathe were thick as thieves when they were young but have always been as different as can be. Five years older, Emma was the defender, protector and worrier for her fiery younger sister until tragedy marred their relationship. For a long time, Emma has kept her distance from Agathe and her chaos. But when their adored grandmother dies, they must return together to Spain to empty out her house and, in the process, reconcile, remember and pour out what is hidden inside their hearts. Alternating between the sisters' childhood and the present day, Virginie Grimaldi's delicately wrought prose paints complex portraits of the two women, asking if the scars of the past can ever truly be healed, and what, in the end, is a good life.

The relics of St. Nicholas are among the most divine and prized possessions in the Christian world, said to hold the power to heal the most incurable diseases. Biblical archaeologist Maggie Shepherd has a chance to extract and study one of these priceless artifacts buried in the tomb of the man who is now known as Santa Claus. In just a few weeks, on Christmas Eve, the Pope will present the venerated relic of St. Nicholas to the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Moscow in the hope of reuniting East and West after a 1,000-year schism. Driven by rumors of the relic’s legendary power, many people want to control it, including a Russian mob boss who coerces Malachi Popov into stealing it for him before the ceremony. Once in possession of the miraculous relic, Popov witnesses its awesome power and regrets his action. But before he can set things right, it vanishes.

As Americans increasingly question how each of us fits into our nation's cultural tapestry, I LIVED TO TELL THE WORLD presents 13 inspiring profiles of refugees who have settled in Oregon. They come from Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, Syria and more --- different stories and different conflicts, but similar paths through loss and violence to a new, not always easy, life in the United States. The in-depth profiles are drawn from hours of interviews and oral histories. Journalist Elizabeth Mehren worked collaboratively with the survivors to honor the complexity of their experiences and to ensure that the stories are told with, and not just about, them. Mehren also weaves in historical, cultural and political context alongside these personal stories of resilience.

Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, war and an international system studded with catastrophic risk. The early decades of the 21st century may be the most revolutionary period in modern history. But it is not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What are these revolutions, and how can they help us to understand our fraught world? In AGE OF REVOLUTIONS, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates the eras and movements that have shaken norms while shaping the modern world.

Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for 12 hours each day. Once home to Vanessa, a famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared 20 years ago. Now home to Grace, a solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation. But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling. And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge.

Use neuroscience to retrain your brain and make better life choices. Dr. Helen McKibben's approach combines the study of the body, the brain, and the interaction between emotion and memory. She enables us to tap into the biomechanics of emotions, resolve triggered feelings and make better life choices. DROP is filled with interviews that illustrate how real people have applied this method to their lives. Dr. McKibben guides us through her revolutionary and innovative self-help technique of dropping to the blank screen to learn how to manage triggered feelings and to understand why we feel the way we do. By monitoring neuromuscular signals that indicate unconscious triggered emotions, we can work with the brain rather than against it. She teaches us a practical, self-reliant method to retrain our brains and change our responses to life's stressors.

It’s been two years since Nora Carleton left the job she loved at the US Attorney’s Office to become lead counsel at Saugatuck Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. The career change also meant a change of scenery, relocating her to Westport, Connecticut, 50 miles north of New York City. But it was worth it to get her daughter, Sophie, away from the city. Plus, she likes the people she works with. Especially Helen, who recruited Nora because of her skills as an investigator. Then Nora's new life falls apart when a coworker is murdered and she becomes the lead suspect. Nora calls in her old colleagues from the US Attorney’s Office, Mafia investigator Benny Dugan and attorney Carmen Garcia. To clear Nora’s name, Benny and Carmen hunt for the true killer's motive, but it seems nearly everyone at Saugatuck has secrets worth killing for.

After the perils of a case that landed much too close to home, Hana Westerman turned in her badge and abandoned her career as a detective in the Auckland CIB. Hoping that civilian life will offer her the opportunity to rest and recalibrate, she returns to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she moves back in with her beloved father, Eru. Yet the memories of the past are everywhere, and as she goes for her daily run on the beach, Hana passes a local monument to Paige, a high school classmate who was murdered more than 20 years ago and hidden in the dunes overlooking the sea. A Māori man with a previous record was convicted of the crime, although Eru never believed he was guilty. When her daughter finds another young woman’s skeleton in the sands, Hana soon finds herself awkwardly involved.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. Yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived. This experience spurred Junger --- a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical --- to undertake a scientific, philosophical and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die.

Writing as Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler has led several generations of young readers into that special and curious space of being hopelessly lost, and joyfully finding yourself, in the essential strangeness of literature. The wondrous and perilous journey of the Baudelaire orphans sprung from the author’s own path, from his childhood discovery of Baudelaire’s poetry through the countless peculiarities of his pursuit of a literary life --- abject failure and startling success, breakthrough and breakdown, concordance and controversy --- lit along the way by the books and culture he loved best. AND THEN? AND THEN? WHAT ELSE? is a book not just for anyone curious about the creator of Lemony Snicket, but for anyone who loved books when they were a child and still loves them now.