Adult

Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of an extended family that she thought she left behind 16 years ago. Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement. Then there are her grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins, all of whom still live in the house and resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out, and her star author --- and occasional lover --- is suddenly determined to make things serious. As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence.

Charlie Webb is a third-rate lawyer who graduated from a third-rate law school and has opened his own law firm, where he gets by handling cases for dubious associates from his youth and some court-appointed cases. In AN INSIGNIFICANT CASE, he’s appointed to be the attorney for a decidedly crackpot artist who calls himself Guido Sabatini (born Lawrence Weiss). Sabatini has been arrested --- again --- for breaking into a restaurant and stealing back a painting he sold them because he was insulted by where it was displayed. But as Lawrence Weiss, he’s also an accomplished card shark and burglar; while he was there, he stole a thumb drive from the owner’s safe. When this minor theft case becomes a double homicide, and even more, Charlie is faced with the most important and deadliest case of his life.

Travis Devine has become a pro at accomplishing any mission he's given. But this time it’s not his skills that send him to Seattle to aid the FBI in escorting orphaned, 12-year-old Betsy Odom to a meeting with her uncle, who’s under investigation for RICO charges. Instead, he’s hoping to lay low and keep off the radar of an enemy --- the girl on the train. But as Devine gets to know Betsy, questions begin to arise around the death of her parents. Devine digs for answers, and what he finds points to a conspiracy bigger than he ever could’ve imagined. It finally might be time for Devine and the girl on the train to come face to face. Devine is going to find out the difference between his friends and his enemies --- and in some cases, they might well be both.

“Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole.” It was a constant truism that Youngmi Mayer’s mother would say threateningly after she would make her daughter laugh while crying. Her mother used it to cheer her up in moments when she could tell Youngmi was overtaken with grief. The humorous saying would never fail to lighten the mood, causing both daughter and mother to laugh and cry at the same time. Her mother had learned this trick from her mother, and her mother had learned this from her mother before her: it also had helped an endless string of her family laugh through suffering. In I'M LAUGHING BECAUSE I'M CRYING, Youngmi jokes through the retelling of her childhood as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know.

Of all the books written on Abraham Lincoln, there has been one surprising gap: the drama of how the “railsplitter” from Illinois grew into his critical role as U.S. commander-in-chief and managed to outwit his formidable opponent, Jefferson Davis, in what remains history's only military faceoff between rival American presidents. Confronted with the most violent and challenging war ever seen on American soil, Lincoln seemed ill-suited to the task. But in a Shakespearean twist, he summoned the courage to make a climactic decision: issuing as a “military necessity” a proclamation freeing the 3.5 million enslaved Americans without whom the South could not feed or fund their armed insurrection. The new war policy doomed the rebellion, and the fate of President Davis was sealed.

Al Ward lives on an isolated mining claim in the high desert of central Nevada 50 miles from the nearest town. A grizzled man in his 60s, he survives on canned soup, instant coffee, and memories of his ex-wife, friends and family he’s lost, and his life as a touring musician. Al finds himself teetering on the edge of madness and running out of reasons to go on --- until a horse arrives on his doorstep: nameless, blind and utterly helpless. Is the animal real, or a phantom conjured from imagination? As Al contemplates the horse’s existence --- and what, if anything, he can do --- his thoughts are interspersed with memories, from the moment his mother’s part-time boyfriend gifts him a 1959 butterscotch blonde Telecaster, to the day his travels begin.

Attorney Jane Smith is mounting an impossible criminal defense. Her client, Rob Jacobson, is the unluckiest of the unlucky. No sooner is he accused of killing a family of three in the Hamptons than a second family is gunned down. It’s not double jeopardy. It’s not double murder. It’s double triple homicide. Jane’s career has spanned from NYPD beat cop to Hamptons courtroom. She’s tough to beat. She’s even tougher to kill. The defense may never rest. 

It’s 2011, and Deecie Jeffries’ missing person’s case in Austin, Texas, is still cold. New mom Bee, struggling with postpartum depression, is living in Portland, Maine, having left Austin --- and those memories --- far behind. Until Leo, her childhood crush and her estranged twin Gus’ best friend, suddenly resurfaces, drawing Bee back into their shared past. Bee’s predictable life is upended, pushing her to return to her childhood home and piece together a neighborhood’s shattered history. Bee becomes consumed with a need to uncover the truth about Deecie’s disappearance and what happened to the families who lived across the field from one another --- Gus, Leo and their mothers: Mary, a homemaker, whose only escape is the local community theater, and Diana, a serious academic dedicated to her studies.

Single, 6’2” and 30 years old, Julia McWilliams took a job working for America's first espionage agency, years before cooking or Paris entered the picture. THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD traces Julia's transformation from ambitious Pasadena blue blood to Washington, DC file clerk, to head of General "Wild Bill" Donovan's secret File Registry as part of the Office of Strategic Services. The wartime journey takes her to South Asia's remote front lines of then-Ceylon, India and China, where she finds purpose, adventure, self-knowledge --- and love with mapmaker Paul Child. The spotlight has rarely shone on this fascinating period of time in the life of Julia Child, and this lyrical story allows us to explore the unlikely world of a woman in a World War II spy station who has no idea of the impact she'll eventually impart.

On December 1st, renowned puzzle setter, loner and Christmas curmudgeon Edie O'Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside, six jigsaw pieces. When fitted together, the pieces show part of a crime scene --- blood-spattered black and white tiles and part of an outlined body. Included in the parcel is a message: “Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.” It's signed, Rest In Pieces. Edie contacts her nephew, DI Sean Brand-O'Sullivan, and together they work to solve the clues. But when a man is found near death with a jigsaw piece in his hand, Sean fears that Edie might be in danger and shuts her out of the investigation. As the body count rises, however, Edie knows that only she has the knowledge to put together the killer's murderous puzzle.