Adult

With the men of Chicago off fighting WWII on distant shores, Franny Steinberg has watched the women of the city taking charge of the war effort. But amidst the war bond sales and factory shifts, something surprising has emerged. A new marvel that has women flocking to comedy clubs across the nation: the Showstopper. When Franny steps into Chicago's Blue Moon comedy club, she realizes the power of a Showstopper --- that specific magic sparked when an audience laughs so hard, they are momentarily transformed. And while each comedian's Showstopper is different, they all have one thing in common: they only work on women. After a traumatic flashback propels her onstage in a torn bridesmaid dress, Franny discovers her own Showstopper is something new.

England, 1898. When Evelyn first married the famous novelist William Aubrey, she was dazzled by his brilliance. But their newlywed bliss is brief when William is gripped by writer’s block, and he becomes jealous of Evelyn’s writing talent. When he commits the ultimate betrayal --- stealing a draft of her novel and passing it off as his own --- Evelyn decides to write her way out of their unhappy marriage. California, 2006. Abigail always wondered about her father, his identity forever lost when her mother unexpectedly died. Or so Abigail thought, until she stumbled upon his photo and a message that her great-great-grandmother was the author Evelyn Aubrey, leading Abigail on a journey to England in search for answers.

What does the life of an Amish woman really look like? Over the course of a decade, author Judy Stavisky, a curious outsider, spent hundreds of hours getting to know the women of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County Amish community to find out the answer to this question. She joined mothers and grandmothers, unmarried women and teens, on their shopping excursions for household items, fabric and groceries. They drove miles between undulating fields and shared hundreds of hours of conversation on everyday topics. As relationships evolved into enduring friendships, she grew to understand firsthand how Amish women bind their families and communities together.

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida --- war photographer, gambler and closet queen --- has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake, and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka.

Every 10 years, for the past 30 years, a dozen clergymen are killed, brutally murdered in twisted scenes emulating the deaths of Jesus and his disciples. Now, "The Martyr Maker" has set his mark on New York City. LAWS OF DEPRAVITY follows two NYPD detectives and an FBI agent as they race to catch a serial killer before he completes his last cycle of kills and disappears forever.

Laurie Notaro has proved everyone wrong: she didn’t end up in rehab, prison or cremated at a tender age. She just went gray. At past 50, every hair’s root is a symbol of knowledge (she knows how to use a landline), experience (she rode in a car with no seat belts) and superpowers (a gray-haired lady can get away with anything). Though navigating midlife is initially upsetting --- the cracking noises coming from her new old body, receiving regular junk mail from mortuaries --- Laurie accepts it. And then some. With unintentional abandon, she shoplifts a bag of russet potatoes, heckles a rude driver from her beat-up Prius, and engages in epic trolling on Nextdoor.com. That, says Laurie, is the brilliance of growing older. With each passing day, you lose an equivalent amount of fear.

NY Police Academy washout Grigg Orlov discovers an eerie piece of evidence at the scene of his father's brutal murder: a disc-shaped X-ray of a skull. It's a bone record --- what Soviet citizens called banned American songs recorded on used X-rays. But the black-market singles haven't been produced since the ’60s. What's one doing in Coney Island in 2016? Grigg uncovers a connection between his father and three others who collected bone records when they were teenage friends growing up in Leningrad. Are past and present linked? Or is the murder tied to the local mob? Grigg has too many suspects and too little time. He must get to the truth before a remorseless killer takes everything he has.

Passionate, candid, iconoclastic and gifted both on and off the court, Charles Barkley has made a lasting impact on not only the world of basketball but pop culture at large. Yet few people know the real Charles. Raised by his mother and grandmother in Leeds, Alabama, he struggled in his early years to fit in until he found a sense of community and purpose in basketball. In the NBA he went toe-to-toe with the biggest legends in the game, from Magic to Michael to Hakeem to Shaq. But in the years since, he has become a bold agitator for social change, unafraid to grapple --- often brashly --- with even the thorniest of cultural issues facing our nation today.

When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat. To help save the store, Maggie starts an underground book club, running a series of events celebrating the books readers actually love. But keeping the club quiet, selling forbidden books and dodging the literary society is nearly impossible. Especially when Maggie unearths a town secret that could upend everything.

For hundreds of years, the Targaryens sat the Iron Throne of Westeros while their dragons ruled the skies. The story of the only family of dragonlords to survive Valyria’s Doom is a tale of twisty politics, alliances and betrayals, and acts both noble and craven. THE RISE OF THE DRAGON chronicles the creation and rise of Targaryen power in Westeros, covering the history first told in George R. R. Martin’s epic FIRE & BLOOD, from Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros through to the infamous Dance of the Dragons --- the bloody civil war that nearly undid Targaryen rule for good. Packed with all-new artwork, the Targaryens --- and their dragons --- come vividly to life in this deluxe reference book.