Adult

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.

Bestselling romance novelist Truly Livingston has signed on to record a podcast sharing relationship advice. But she feels like an imposter --- her parents just announced they’re separating, she caught her fiancé cheating, and her entire view on love has been shaken to the core. Truly hopes the podcast will distract her...until she meets her cohost. Her first impression of Colin McCory is...hot, but his view on love pisses Truly off. Bickering with a cynical divorce lawyer is the last thing she needs --- so she walks out. A few days later, Truly is surprised when Colin tracks her down, asking for a fresh start. She reluctantly agrees. As they go from enemies to friends to something else entirely, Truly discovers they have more in common than she ever imagined, including their shared queerness.

James Bond is alive. Or at least he was when he left a clue at the black site where the insidious private military company Rattenfänger held him captive. MI6 cannot spare any more lives attempting to track down one missing agent. But Johanna Harwood, 003, has her own agenda. Sidelined by her superiors while she grieves the loss of a loved one, Harwood goes on an unsanctioned mission: to find 007. Meanwhile, MI6 has another problem. A bomb has detonated in London. Double O agents on the trail of the terrorists responsible acted quickly to prevent mass destruction and save lives. But MI6 failed to neutralize the nation’s enemies before they could strike, and one of their own was seriously injured in the blast. They won’t fail again.

Natalka and Edwin are perfect, if improbable, partners in a detective agency. Eighty-four-year-old Edwin is a master at surveillance, deploying his age as a cloak of invisibility. Natalka, more than 50 years his junior, is a math whiz who takes any cases concerning fraud or deception. She loves a murder, but none have come the agency’s way. That is until local writer Melody Chambers dies. Melody’s daughters are convinced that their mother was murdered. Edwin thinks that Melody’s death is linked to that of an obituary writer who predeceased many of his subjects. Edwin and Benedict go undercover to investigate and are on a creative writing weekend at isolated Battle House when another murder occurs. Are the cases linked, and what is the role of a distinctly sinister book group attended by many of the writers involved?

In the fading days of late summer 2011, self-taught astrophysicist Petra has calculated that the atmosphere will collapse in a few weeks’ time --- on September 21, at approximately 9:20 pm --- ending the world as we know it. But the distraught Petra will not have to carry the burden of this terrible news alone for long. Fate intervenes, bringing her into the orbit of a pair of unlikely companions: Johan, a man whose intellectual prowess is remarkably overshadowed by his culinary skills, and Agnes, a 75-year-old widow who has made a fortune posing as a young influencer on social media. Convincing them of the impending doom, Petra, Johan and Agnes embark on a wild adventure in a camper van that will take them from their homes in Sweden, through Europe, to their destination: Rome.

Joe Leaphorn may be long retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, but his detective skills are still sharp. His experience will be essential to solve a compelling new case: finding the birth parents of a woman who was raised by a bilagáana family but believes she is Diné based on an old photograph with a classic Navajo child’s blanket. Leaphorn discovers that his client’s adoption was questionable, and her adoptive family was not what they seem. His quest for answers takes him to an old trading post and leads him to a deadly cache of long-buried family secrets. Meanwhile, Leaphorn receives an unexpected call from a person he met decades earlier. Cecil Bowleg’s desperation is clear in his voice, but the call is cut off by an explosion and Cecil disappears. Leaphorn is determined to find the truth even as the situation grows dangerous.

Agent Seventeen, the most infamous hit man in the world, has quit. But whoever wants to become Assassin Eighteen must track him down and kill him first. So when a bullet hits the glass inches from his face, he knows who fired it. Doesn't he? It turns out that the sniper isn't the hardened killer he was expecting. It's Mireille, a mysterious silent child abandoned in the woods with instructions to pull the trigger. Reuniting with his spiky lover, Kat, Seventeen has to protect Mireille and discover who sent her to kill him and why. But the road he must travel is littered with bodies. And the answer, when it comes, will blow apart everything Seventeen thought he knew.