Adult

Mary Dunlavy didn't intend to become a professional babysitter. Of course, she didn't intend to die, either, or to become a crossroads ghost. As a babysitting ghost, she's been caring for the Price family for four generations. With her first charge finally back from her decades-long cross-dimensional field trip, with a long-lost husband and adopted daughter in tow, it's time for Mary to oversee the world's most chaotic family reunion. And that's before the Covenant of St. George launches a full-scale strike against the cryptids of Manhattan, followed quickly by an attack on the Campbell Family Carnival. It's going to take every advantage and every ally they have for the Prices to survive what's coming --- and for Mary to avoid finding out what happens to a babysitting ghost if she loses the people she's promised to protect.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events. Our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb and friendship.

When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia. With her husband frequently deployed, she is left to find her place in this new world, alone --- until she meets the wives. Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage. A love story, an unforgettable coming-of-age tale, and a bracing tour of the intractable divisions that plague our country today, THE WIVES offers a rare and powerful gift: a hopeful stitch in the fabric of a torn America.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976, and Eilis is now 40 with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades. One day, when Tony is at work, an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that, when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’ doorstep. It is what Eilis does --- and what she refuses to do --- in response to this stunning news that makes LONG ISLAND so riveting and suspenseful.

For decades, Nick Burns has been haunted by a decision he made as a young soldier in World War I, when a French artist he’d befriended thrust both her paintings and her baby into his hands --- and disappeared. In 1974, with only months left to live, Nick enlists Jenny, a college dropout desperate for adventure, to help him unravel the mystery. The journey leads them from Paris galleries and provincial towns to a surprising place: the Museum of Tears, the life’s work of a lonely Italian craftsman. Determined to find the baby and the artist, hopeless romantic Jenny and curmudgeonly Nick must reckon with regret, betrayal and the lives they’ve left behind.

Lois Saunders thought that marrying the right man would finally cure her loneliness. But as picture-perfect as her husband is, she is suffocating in their loveless marriage. In 1951, though, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce --- except in Reno, Nevada. At the Golden Yarrow, the most respectable of Reno’s famous “divorce ranches,” Lois finds herself living with half a dozen other would-be divorcées, all in Reno for the six weeks’ residency that is the state’s only divorce requirement. But it isn’t until Greer Lang arrives that Lois’ world truly cracks open. Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met --- and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her. How far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?

Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan Lieu’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother set up two successful nail salons and orchestrated every success --- until Susan was 11. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. For the next 20 years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone: Why did the most perfect person in her life want to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother’s life in Vietnam? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on operating after her mother’s death? Sifting through depositions, tracking down the surgeon’s family, and enlisting the help of spirit channelers, Susan uncovers the painful truth of her mother, herself and the impossible ideal of beauty.

It's 2015, and Tatum Vega feels that her life is finally falling into place. Living in sunny Chile with her partner, Vera, she spends her days surrounded by art at the museum where she works. More than anything else, she loves this new life for helping her forget the decade she spent in New York City orbiting the brilliant and famous author M. Domínguez. When a reporter calls from the US asking for an interview, the careful separation Tatum has constructed between her past and present begins to crumble. Domínguez has been accused of assault, and the reporter is looking for corroboration. As Tatum is forced to reexamine the all-consuming but undefinable relationship that dominated so much of her early adulthood, long-buried questions surface. What did happen between them? And why is she still struggling with the mark the relationship left on her life?

A hero is a person who faces great danger, overcomes incalculable odds, and accomplishes that which would have been thought (especially by the hero) to be impossible to achieve. This is not a book for people who might want to become heroic someday. It is for people who are in the midst of a crisis and must decide if they are going to face their situation, survive, rise above themselves, and share their newfound knowledge with others who may need salvation. Employing the 12-step framework for understanding the inner work a person must do in order to overcome addiction, Michael Cowl Gordon walks readers through the journey to inner salvation and peace. Using the hero's journey as the path on which to travel through these steps, he uncovers the deep work that it takes to be the hero in your own story.

While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, Kara Swisher developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over three decades, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom Swisher made sweat --- figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally. Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them.