Adult

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war, their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled. The two regiments would play each other in a football game as close to the real thing as you could get in the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal. The bruising and bloody game that followed became known as “The Mosquito Bowl.”

In the title story of WALK BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS, a woman sits down next to a man at a bar and claims she has ESP. In “Thirteen Days,” passengers on a cruise line are quarantined, to horrifying and hilarious effect. And “Hyena” begins simply: “That was the day the hyena came for him, and never mind that there were no hyenas in the South of France, and especially not in Pont-Saint-Esprit --- it was there and it came for him.” A virtuoso of the short form, T.C. Boyle returns with an inventive, uproarious and masterfully told collection of short stories characterized by biting satire, resonant wit and a boundless, irrepressible imagination.

When a frantic Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn’t know quite what to make of the situation. The cocreator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie’s true identity. Robin decides that the agency can’t help with this --- and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart. Robin and her business partner, Cormoran Strike, find themselves embroiled in a case that threatens them in new and horrifying ways.

In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks --- young Trian and old Cormac --- he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?

Emily Atkinson leads a complicated life in New York City. She’s a successful marketing executive who lives in a luxury apartment and enjoys a glamorous existence until she lands in the hospital with a double diagnosis: she parties too much --- and she’s pregnant. Her nurse and new best friend, Betsey, helps Emily rediscover how much she loves morning runs in the park and quiet nights at home. But as a series of women in her wealthy social circles go missing, Emily’s pregnancy becomes decidedly high-risk.

Imani Banks lives in a posh Brooklyn Heights neighborhood that has just been rocked to its core. An acclaimed movie director has been murdered, and his blond trophy wife --- Imani’s closest friend --- is missing. Their neighbors, along with the media, jump to the conclusion that Melissa Walker has killed her husband in a fit of rage and is on the run. Recently, Imani and her chef husband rented some extra rooms in their house to a struggling waitress from his restaurant. Tonya Sayre has moved in with her teen daughter, and the convenient timing and her suspicious behavior soon lead Imani to suspect that the true killer is living right under her own roof. Now all she has to do is prove it.

Sam Capra is working for America's most secret espionage agency, known as Section K, when he is informed that Markus Bolt is missing. Bolt is the last American traitor, who had turned over allied agent names and military secrets to the Russians. He fled to Moscow when he was discovered, but now a trusted source inside Russia tells Section K that Markus Bolt has vanished from Moscow --- and the Americans need to find him before the Russians do. Sam is charged with making contact with Bolt's abandoned American daughter, Amanda, and determining if she's had any contact with her father. He must discover the reason behind Bolt's unexpected run and protect Amanda from the killers hunting her father.

A young woman puts on a white coat for her first day as a student doctor. So begins A HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS, which follows our unnamed narrator through cadaver dissection, surgical rotation, difficult births, sudden deaths and a budding relationship with a seminarian. In the troubled world of the hospital, where the language of blood tests and organ systems so often hides the heart of the matter, she works her way from one bed to another --- from a man dying of substance use and tuberculosis, to a child in pain crisis, to a young woman, fading from confusion to aphasia to death. The long hours and heartrending work begin to blur the lines between her new life as a physician and the lifelong traumas she has fled.

Nearly a decade into the second wave of America's overdose crisis, pharmaceutical companies have yet to answer for the harms they created. As pending court battles against opioid makers, distributors and retailers drag on, addiction rates have soared to record-breaking levels during the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, there is scant consensus between law enforcement and medical leaders, nor an understanding of how to truly scale the programs that are out there, working at the ragged edge of capacity and actually saving lives. In RAISING LAZARUS, Beth Macy takes us into the country’s hardest hit places to witness the devastating personal costs that one-third of America's families are now being forced to shoulder.

Former Super Bowl MVP quarterback Zach Bridger’s ex-wife, Rebecca Pratt, has been placed on life support after a violent assault. Four years later, her attacker, Eban --- the scion of a wealthy family in Atlanta --- gets an early release from prison. State prosecutor Kate Lennon is determined to bring him to justice. Rebecca’s parents have kept her alive all these years, but if she were to die, Eban could be retried on a new charge: murder. It isn’t lost on Zach that in order for Eban to be charged with Rebecca’s murder, Zach must actually be the one to kill her. Eban, realizing the jeopardy he’s in, plots to make certain that neither Zach nor Kate lives to see the death of Rebecca --- and the end of his freedom.