Adult

When Cassie Fitzgerald was at school in the late ’90s, she and her friends killed a fellow student. Almost 20 years later, Cassie is a happily married mother who loves her job --- as a police officer. She closely guards the secret she has all but erased from her memory. One day, her husband finally persuades her to go to a school reunion. But then, shockingly, one of her old friends, Garfield Rice, is found dead in the school bathroom, supposedly from a drug overdose. Garfield was an eminent --- and controversial --- MP, and the investigation is high profile. The trouble is, Cassie can’t shake the feeling that one of them has killed again. Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies?

It’s December 22nd, and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.

In ancient Greece, a skilled marble sculptor has been blessed by a goddess who has given his masterpiece --- the most beautiful woman the town has ever seen --- the gift of life. After marrying her, he expects Galatea to please him, to be obedience and humility personified. But she has desires of her own and yearns for independence. In a desperate bid by her obsessive husband to keep her under control, Galatea is locked away under the constant supervision of doctors and nurses. But with a daughter to rescue, she is determined to break free, whatever the cost.

Jane and William are enjoying their honeymoon at an exclusive couples-only resort until Jane receives a chilling note warning her to “Beware of the couple at the table nearest to yours.” At dinner that night, five other couples are present, and none of their tables is any nearer or farther away than any of the others. It’s almost as if someone has set the scene in order to make the warning note meaningless. But why would anyone do that? Jane has no idea. But someone in this dining room will be dead before breakfast, and all the evidence will suggest that no one there that night could have possibly committed the crime.

Edda Mussolini was the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s oldest and favorite child. At 19, she was married to Count Galleazzo Ciano, Il Duce’s Minister for Foreign Affairs during the 1930s, the most turbulent decade in Italy’s fascist history. In the years preceding World War II, Edda ruled over Italy’s aristocratic families and the cultured and middle classes while selling fascism on the international stage. How a young woman wielded such control is the heart of Caroline Moorehead’s fascinating history. The issues that emerge reveal not only a great deal about the power of fascism, but also the ease with which dictatorship so easily took hold in a country weakened by war and a continent mired in chaos and desperate for peace.

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. His strength was legendary, and his power was unmatched. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, and turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat. He became the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports and overtook Michael Jordan as America’s most recognizable pitchman. Then, almost overnight, he was gone. He was Bo Jackson. Drawing on an astonishing 720 original interviews, Jeff Pearlman captures as never before the elusive truth about Jackson, Auburn University’s transcendent Heisman Trophy winner, superstar of both the NFL and Major League Baseball, and ubiquitous “Bo Knows” Nike pitchman.

In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout INCITING JOY, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection and also, crucially, how we can expand it. Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, INCITING JOY offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?

Shelby Springfield has spent the last 10 years trying to overcome her past, sanding it away like the rough spots on the vintage furniture she makes over. But as a former child star, it’s hard to forget a widely documented meltdown and huge public breakup with her former co-star, Lyle Jessup. It’s also hard to forget her other co-star and childhood sweetheart, Cameron Riggs, the one who got away. Anytime Shelby has called, Cameron has come running. Then he runs right off again to chase stories around the world by making documentaries, too scared to admit what he really wants. But when Lyle stirs the pot, getting the two back in the spotlight with a home renovation show, Cameron can't help but get on board. There's something in it for everyone --- almost.

In THE ABYSS, Max Hastings turns his focus to one of the most terrifying events of the mid-20th century --- the 13 days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Hastings looks at the conflict with fresh eyes, focusing on the people at the heart of the crisis --- American President John F. Kennedy, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, and a host of their advisors. As the action moves back and forth from Moscow to Washington, DC, to Havana, Hastings seeks to explain, as much as to describe, the attitudes and conduct of the Soviets, Cubans and Americans, and to recreate the tension and heightened fears of countless innocent bystanders whose lives hung in the balance.

It was 1998 in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and Liên struggled to care for her newborn twin girls. Hà was taken in by Liên’s sister, and she grew up in a rural village with her aunt. Hà’s twin sister, Loan, was adopted by a wealthy, white American family who renamed her Isabella. Isabella grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with a nonbiological sister, Olivia, also adopted from Vietnam, and they attended a predominantly white Catholic school. But when Isabella’s adoptive mother learned of her biological twin back in Vietnam, all of their lives changed forever. Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members. She brings the girls’ experiences to life on the page, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life.