Adult

In a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto, Omer Aziz struggles to find his place as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy. He fears the violence and despair of the world around him, and sees a dangerous path ahead. In his senior year of high school, Omer quickly begins to realize that education can open up the wider world. He searches for community and identity, asking questions of himself and those he encounters, and soon finds himself in difficult situations. Yet the more books Omer reads and the more he moves through elite worlds, his feelings of shame and powerlessness only grow stronger, and clear answers recede further away. In BROWN BOY, Aziz wrestles with the contradiction of feeling like an Other and his desire to belong to a Western world that never quite accepts him.

In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is break­ing ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp --- but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she’ll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself. Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems.

For actress Meribel Mills, disturbing fan mail is part of the price of fame. So when she starts getting creepy letters written in fruit-scented marker, she’s mostly unfazed. But there’s something different about Marker Man. Meribel’s sheets smell of unfamiliar cologne, and objects are changing places inside her house. She and her daughter move from Los Angeles to Atlanta for a fresh start --- but no distance is great enough. Years of being in front of a camera have given Meribel a superpower. She can feel eyes on her, and someone definitely has her in their sights. Could Marker Man have followed her all the way across the country? Suddenly, every man in her life is a suspect, and Meribel finds herself in the fight of her life, desperate to protect those she loves as danger closes in from all sides.

Emma Carpenter lives in isolation with her golden retriever, Laika, house-sitting an old beachfront home on the rainy Washington coast. Her only human contact is her enigmatic old neighbor, Deek, and (via text) the house’s owner, Jules. One day, she reads a poorly written --- but gruesome --- horror novel by H. G. Kane and posts a one-star review that drags her into an online argument with none other than the author himself. Soon after, disturbing incidents start to occur at night. To Emma, this can’t just be a coincidence. Could he be stalking her? When Emma digs into Kane’s life and work, she learns that he has published 16 other novels, all similarly sadistic tales of stalking and murder. But who is he? How did he find her? And what else is he capable of?

For three years, women have been going missing --- and eventually turning up dead in the small bayou town of St. Augustine, Louisiana. Police detective Beau Hebert is the only one who seems to care, but with every witness quickly silenced and a corrupt police department set on keeping the cases unsolved, Beau’s investigation stalls at every turn. With nobody else to trust, Beau calls in a favor from his friend on the FBI’s Mobile Response Team. While LAPD detective Kara Quinn works undercover to dig into the women’s murders and team leader Matt Costa officially investigates the in-custody death of a witness, Beau might finally have a chance at solving the case. But it’s going to take the entire team working around the clock to unravel the truth.

When builders discover a human skeleton during a renovation of a café, they call in archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway, who is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with DCI Nelson. The bones turn out to be the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in 2002. Suspicion soon falls on Emily’s Cambridge tutor and on another archaeology enthusiast who was part of the group gathered the weekend before she disappeared --- Ruth’s friend, Cathbad. As they investigate, Nelson and his team uncover a tangled web of relationships within the archaeology group and look for a link between them and the café where Emily’s bones were found. Then, just when the team seems to be making progress, Cathbad disappears.

Sassy, streetwise Sammy is a teenage girl who is falling through the cracks. Neglected by an alcoholic mother, the problems she endures at school and home lead her into the hands of adults who don't have her best interests in mind. Meanwhile, in a small village in Eastern Europe, preternaturally beautiful and naïve Nico is about to turn 13. As her family falls upon desperate times, her father is approached to marry her off. Consequently, Nico is shuttled across the border into Ireland, where she and Sammy find one another in their new home, a suburban brothel. As Nico and Sammy journey into this dark underbelly and out the other side, their friendship --- and the unexpected acts of kindness they give and receive --- form a potent bond.

Holly and Robert Barron are attractive young real-estate investors and contestants in a competition run by To the Manor Build, the nation’s most popular home renovation app. But just hours after their picture-perfect wedding, Holly and Robert go missing, leaving behind a bloody trail. Suspicion falls quickly on Erika Turnbull, the Barrons’ assistant, who is secretly in love with Robert. Did Erika let her misguided passion turn her into a murderer? So claim the townsfolk of Snowden, Vermont, who still haven’t forgiven her for a tragic accident back in high school. But Erika’s mother is not about to let small-town gossip and a cop with an axe to grind destroy her daughter --- again. With time running out and their own lives at risk, the mother-daughter duo set out to find what really happened to the Barrons.

With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things --- no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization --- are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness? Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored and disseminated knowledge. Studded with strange and fascinating details, KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming.

Ro is stuck. She's just entered her 30s, she's estranged from her mother, and her boyfriend has just left her to join a mission to Mars. Her days are spent dragging herself to her menial job at the aquarium, and her nights are spent drinking sharktinis (Mountain Dew and copious amounts of gin, plus a hint of jalapeño). With her best friend pulling away to focus on her upcoming wedding, Ro's only companion is Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus who also happens to be her last remaining link to her father, a marine biologist who disappeared while on an expedition when Ro was a teenager. When Dolores is sold to a wealthy investor intent on moving her to a private aquarium, Ro finds herself on the precipice of self-destruction.