Adult

It’s September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband got a suite on board the Sonata. Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s 70th birthday. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close. Also on board is Doug, an aging actor and former star of "Starlight Voyages," the hit "Love Boat"–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata. A now sober Doug has reluctantly joined his former castmates on a reunion cruise for fans of the show. Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise. ALL THE WORLD CAN HOLD beautifully explores how we balance our needs and our wants, as well as the regrets we live with and the chances to set them right.

With contributions from Isabel Allende, Chris Bohjalian, Bonnie Garmus, Roxane Gay, Emily Henry, Ann Leary, Tova Mirvis, Jodi Picoult, Elizabeth Strout, Amy Tan, Adriana Trigiani, Nick Trout, Paul Yoon and Laura Zigman, THE BEST DOG IN THE WORLD captures the full range of the canine-human connection, from the joy of welcoming a new puppy to the heartache of saying goodbye to a beloved friend. A love letter to the loyal companions who enrich our lives and teach us about empathy, joy and unconditional love, this anthology is the perfect gift for dog lovers everywhere, offering a blend of laughter, tears and inspiration that will resonate with anyone who has been fur-ever touched by the love of a dog.

The women of the Novak family were each born with a gift: they can, just once, turn back time. Lauren has known that her mother, Marcella, saved Lauren’s father from a deadly car accident. Her own mother, Sylvia, is her polar opposite. Lauren has spent her life between these two role models. Then one summer, Lauren’s husband takes a job in New York and she moves back to Broad Beach Road. Lauren looks forward to surfing with her dad again and perhaps repairing an unspoken fracture in her relationship with her mother. What she doesn’t expect is for the boy next to door to return home as well. As Lauren falls into familiar patterns, with her family and more dangerously, Stone, she finds herself thinking about all the choices, large and small, that have brought her to this moment. And wondering, finally, if one of them should be undone.

It’s the summer of 1939. Iris Hawkins has a chance encounter with Geoff. What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into a nightmare of otherworldly pursuit --- into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes droning overhead. In a time when death falls randomly from above each night, the defense of the city is in the hands of its women. But Iris has more to contend with than just the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, through the vast night sky and across the tiny screens of early television, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand and only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.

“River of Bones” returns to the Sixth World series from Kai’s perspective, as he and Maggie travel back to where he grew up to save his ex from his ex’s family. Based on the Tewa fable of Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden, “A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy” explores the tradition of celestial-based storytelling, set in a future where virtual reality is nearly indistinguishable from the real world and celebrities can project their images into space as literal stars. “Falling Bodies” follows a young student at a space station university caught between two disparate worlds as he searches for his place in the universe. Through a range of contemporary to outright fantasy and science fiction, these stories will immediately capture your attention.

Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness.

On a cold night in the remote Irish village of Ardnakelty, a girl goes missing. Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river. In a close-knit small town, a death like this isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now, and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.

Twins Tessa and Theo are roots of the same tree, in tune with one another’s every thought and desire. As World War II takes hold across Europe, both are eager to do their part. Theo is recruited by the RAF and disappears into the skies, while Tessa jumps at the chance to join the Special Operations Executive, devoted to spying and sabotage behind enemy lines. Two years later, Theo comes home. Tessa does not. Theo, wounded, broken by the loss of his fellows and his sister, is indefatigable, angry, driven, a clandestinely gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal --- and he will pay a price for pursuing answers about Tessa’s fate. Decades later, PhD candidate Edie is deep into her research on the Special Operations Executive during the war. When she finds Theo in London, they form an unlikely partnership, and together they finally uncover the truth about Theo’s beloved sister.

In a sprawling complex in Delhi, the sons and daughters of SP Chopra live together vying for influence in a family shaped by the great man's legacy. By the late 1970s, his descendants are scrambling to define their own futures in a still-young nation on the brink of transformation. Sachin Chopra leaves for America, with his bride Gita following not long after, as the newlyweds are eager to forge their own lives beyond the pressures of the family compound. Yet Delhi remains an inescapable force, one that keeps pulling them back, even as Gita is menaced by Sachin’s predatory uncle, Laxman. A man of restless ambition, Laxman ascends through the ranks of a rising Hindu nationalist movement, caught between his political aspirations and his personal transgressions. Meanwhile, Vibha, his sister, tries to keep the peace and the reputation of the family intact even as she wrestles with her own exile.

In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse. Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma’s own father, a Dutch student conscripted into forced labor in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported workers. Buruma gives due weight to his and their experiences, which give the book a special added dimension. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means sentimental: again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. It’s a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.