Adult

At 21, Brenda Coffee surrendered herself to her marriage and became a woman who would do almost anything her charismatic and powerful older husband, Philip Ray, wanted. Regardless of whether it was dangerous, adventurous, sexual or illegal, she wanted to be the one woman he couldn’t live without. Brenda and Philip’s life together was a fairy tale until it wasn’t. Until Philip, the founder of two high-profile, groundbreaking public companies, began making real cocaine in their basement and became addicted. Until the Big Six tobacco companies threatened their lives for creating the first smokeless cigarette --- Brenda coined the terms vape and vaping --- and brutal Guatemalan military commandos forced her into the jungle at gunpoint.

Everyone in Foss Butcher’s village knows what happens when the magic-workers come. They harvest human hearts to use in their spells. But Foss never expected that anyone would want hers. So when a sorcerer snags a piece of Foss’ heart without meaning to, she is furious. She stomps toward the grand City to keep his enchanted House and demands that he fixes her before she keels over and dies. But the sorcerer, Sylvester, is not what she expected. Petulant, idle and new to his powers, Sylvester has no clue how to undo the heart-taking, or how to do much of anything. Foss’ only friend is a talking cat, and even the House’s walls themselves have moods. As Foss searches for a cure, she accidentally uncovers that there is much more to the heart-taking --- and to the magic-workers themselves --- than she ever could have imagined.

Joan Didion opened THE WHITE ALBUM (1979) with what would become one of the most iconic lines in American literature: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Today, this phrase is deployed inspirationally, printed on T-shirts and posters, used as a battle cry for artists and writers. In truth, Didion was describing something much less rosy: our human tendency to manufacture delusions that might ward away our anxieties when society seems to spin off its axis. Nowhere was this collective hallucination more effectively crafted than in Hollywood. In this riveting cultural biography, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion’s influence through the lens of American mythmaking.

At 25 years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after 13 days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city's history. THE MAN NOBODY KILLED recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart’s life and death.

The unnamed Iranian-Indian American narrator of LIQUID has always believed herself to be the smartest person in the room. And from an early age, she and her best friend --- a poet-turned-marketer named Adam --- have turned their noses up at other peoples’ riches. But two years after earning a PhD from UCLA, the narrator is no closer to the middle-class comfort promised to her by the prestige of her fancy, scholarship-funded education and the successes of her immigrant parents. After Adam jokingly suggests that she just "marry rich," our protagonist makes a spreadsheet and outlines a goal: 100 dates with people of all genders and a marriage proposal in hand by the official start of the fall semester. Only a tragedy in Tehran and an overdue familial reckoning can alter the narrator’s increasingly manic trajectory and force her to confront the contradictions of her life in Los Angeles.

Love enters our lives in many forms: friends, family, intimate partners. But all of these relationships are deeply influenced by the love we have for ourselves. If we see our relationships as opportunities to be fully present in our healing and growth, then we can transform and meet one another with compassion instead of judgment. In HOW TO LOVE BETTER, Yung Pueblo examines all aspects of relationships --- from the rose-colored early days when you may be hesitant to show your full self, to the challenges that can arise without clear communication, to dealing with heartbreak and healing as you close a chapter of your life. Ego and attachment can become barriers in a relationship, so the more self-aware you become, the more you can support both your partner and yourself.

Batavia, New York --- between Rochester and Buffalo --- hosted its first professional baseball game in 1897. Despite decades of deindustrialization and evaporating middle-class jobs, the Batavia Muckdogs endured. When Major League Baseball cravenly shut them down in 2020 --- along with 41 other minor league teams --- the town fought back, reviving the Muckdogs as a summer league team comprised of college players. As MLB considers further cuts and private equity buys up what remains, the mom-and-pop operations once prevalent in baseball are endangered. But for now, the sights and sounds of local baseball live on in Batavia. Will Bardenwerper's HOMESTAND exposes the beating heart of small town America, friends and neighbors coming together as the crack of the bat echoes in the summer twilight.

In ACCIDENTS HAPPEN, F.H. Batacan explores the darkest corners of human experience, depicting with pitch-black humor the systems of class and politics that her characters are trapped in and the moments of violence that can shatter their lives. In particular, Batacan shines an unsparing light on the epidemic of violence against women in the Philippines. When a wealthy politician’s 12-year-old son disappears, the family’s driver witnesses the aftermath. A field investigator for the World Health Organization travels the globe giving presentations about a biomedical enzyme that will lead to the extinction of the human race. And Father Augusto Saenz, the Jesuit priest and forensic anthropologist from SMALLER AND SMALLER CIRCLES, returns to investigate the murder of a woman whose secretive life holds the key to her death.

After not securing an NHL contract with the Seattle Rainiers, Jaylen “JJ” Jones decides to bid the city farewell with a final night of fun, blowing off steam with an anonymous one-night stand. But when a last-minute roster spot opens up on the Rainiers, he connects his luck to the girl he spent the night with. Superstitious Jaylen is desperate to keep her around; his career depends on it. Aspiring tattoo artist Lucy Ross isn’t so sure about the proposition to remain Jaylen’s lucky charm. But stuck in a career slump, Lucy has everything to gain. Hoping for an apprenticeship hasn’t offered much stability, and Jaylen is willing to pay any price to get Lucy to agree. So maybe sending him a routine text message before each game won’t be too hard. What starts as an agreement to trade favors quickly turns into sizzling chemistry that’s too delicious to deny.

When Charlotte Sitterly’s husband is arrested for a white-collar crime, she and her daughter, Iris, are locked out of their house by the FBI and thrust into the spotlight of @JuniperShoresSocialite, the town’s snarky anonymous Instagram account. Cut off from her bank accounts and feeling desperate, Charlotte takes up an acquaintance’s offer to stay at a beachfront former bed-and-breakfast that’s home to a community of single mothers and draws plenty of gossip in the small coastal North Carolina town. But when the women discover a secret link between them, it changes everything they thought they knew about the unconventional family they’ve created and leaves them wondering if their coming together was a coincidence at all.