Adult

In the '70s and '80s, “The Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson was the country's highest-paid entertainer and its most enigmatic. He was notoriously inscrutable, as mercurial (and sometimes cruel) off-camera as he was charming and hilarious onstage. During the apex of his reign, Carson's longtime lawyer and best friend was Henry Bushkin, who now shows us Johnny Carson with a breathtaking clarity and depth that nobody else could.

The year is 1848 and Rachel Verinder has just inherited an Indian yellow diamond on her eighteenth birthday --- only for the stone to be stolen. Eleven different narrators, all directly related to the crime, explain the hunt for the diamond. As they reveal more details about the night of Rachel's party they complicate the diamond's recovery with unexpected twists and turns. First published in the United States by Harper & Brothers in 1868, THE MOONSTONE is considered the very first detective novel in the English language and remains as riveting today as it did a century and a half ago.

In ULYSSES S. GRANT we see a life that unfolds like a true Horatio Alger story. Korda reveals how Grant's unwavering determination helped him overcome numerous obstacles and setbacks-from humble beginnings as the son of a tanner in Ohio, a lack of early success in the army, and assorted failed business ventures-to rise through the ranks of military leadership and into the presidency. But while the general's tenacity and steadfastness contributed to his success on the battlefield, Korda argues that those characteristics both aided and crippled Grant's effectiveness in the White House.

Fifty years after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, presidential historian Robert Dallek delivers a new portrait of the president and his inner circle of advisors --- their rivalries, personality clashes and political battles. Here, Dallek analyzes the brain trust whose contributions to the successes and failures of Kennedy’s administration --- including the Bay of Pigs, civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam --- were indelible.

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease. We owe our good health to a humble parasite --- a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation.It's been successful beyond scientist's wildest dreams and now nearly every human being has a SymboGen parasite living in them. But now the parasites are getting restless.

Robert Hilburn tells the unvarnished truth about a musical icon whose personal life was far more troubled and his artistry much more profound than even his most devoted fans have realized. Drawing upon his personal experience with Johnny Cash and a trove of never-before-seen material from the singer's inner circle, Hilburn gives us a compelling, human portrait of one of the most iconic figures in modern popular culture.

Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis explore the swirling forces that led many people to warn President Kennedy to avoid Dallas on his fateful trip to Texas. They lead us through intimate glimpses of the Kennedy family and the machinations of the Kennedy White House, to the obsessed men in Dallas who concocted the climate of hatred that led many to blame the city for the president's death.

Kevin Wylie's crooked boss wants to run him out of town, and Kevin's long-time girlfriend is ready to take a hike. He decides that now is the time to leave Miami, visit his father, who he hasn't seen in 28 years, and get some answers. Heading back to his hometown, he doesn't realize that he and his dad will become embroiled in a murder case involving one of the richest and most hated corporate criminals in America.

His students knew Jerry Kupchynsky as "Mr. K," their Ukrainian-born music teacher who made them better than they had any right to be. Away from the classroom, though, life seemed to conspire against him at every turn. STRINGS ATTACHED takes you on his remarkable journey, which is told in alternating chapters by two childhood friends who reconnected decades later: journalist Joanne Lipman, his former student; and Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Melanie Kupchynsky, his daughter.

A classic since its original landmark publication in 1980, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is the first scholarly work to tell America’s story from the bottom up — from the point of view of, and in the words of, America’s women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers.