Adult

In 1960, a young cop is murdered, shocking his close-knit community in Stamford, Connecticut. The killer remains at large, his identity still unknown. But on a beach not far away, a young Army doctor faces a chilling realization. He knows who the shooter is. In fact, the man --- a prisoner out on parole --- had called him only days before. By helping his former charge and trainee, the doctor may have inadvertently helped set the murder into motion. Alvin Tarlov, David Troy and Joseph DeSalvo were all born of the Great Depression, all with grandparents who had left different homelands for the same American Dream. How did one become a doctor, one a cop and one a convict? Journalist Lisa Belkin traces the paths of each of these three men --- one of them her stepfather.

When a years-long case against a powerful mobster finally cracks and an unimpeachable witness takes the stand, federal prosecutor Nora Carleton is looking forward to putting the defendant away for good. The mobster, though, has other plans. As the witness’s testimony concludes, a note is passed to the prosecution offering up information into the assassination of a disgraced former New York governor, murdered in his penthouse apartment just days before. It’s enough to blow the case wide open, and to send Nora into a high-stakes investigation of conspiracy, corruption and danger.

Denied a dog, a baby and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival. In BLUE SKIES, T.C. Boyle transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family is struggling to adapt to the “new normal,” in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.

In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family’s Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. She is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City’s promise lies her father’s gambling addiction, which causes him to disappear for days and leads to the loss of the restaurant. In her debut memoir, Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, about making do with what you have --- and what you don’t. What does it mean to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability --- and humor?

In 1983, deep in New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, the bodies of a young woman and two children were found. Who were they? How did they get there? Thirty years later, two women find themselves drawn to the cold case. Librarian Laura MacDonald begins her own investigation as a way to distract herself from breast cancer treatments and becomes consumed by her search for answers. Jean Martinez is a veteran detective determined to keep working cold cases for the Sierra County police force even as her family begs her to retire. With only fragments from dusty case files and a witness who doesn’t want to remember, this unlikely duo is determined --- no matter the cost --- to uncover the truth behind the murders. And with their help, the woman in the woods is finally able to tell her story on her own terms and summon the power to be found.

On August 27, 1943, news broke in the United States that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was on the other side of the world. A closely guarded secret, she had left San Francisco aboard a military transport plane headed for the South Pacific to support the troops on the frontlines of World War II. Americans had believed she was secluded at home. As Allied forces battled the Japanese for control of the region, Eleanor was there on the frontlines, spending five weeks traveling, on a mission as First Lady of the United States to experience what our servicemen were experiencing...and report back home.

NYPD detectives Phee Freeman and Quincy Cavanaugh are called to the scene of a brutal murder, where Freeman learns his older sibling is the victim. At first, the slaying looks like the random act of a vicious killer, but both detectives and FBI agent Janet Maclin soon discover this is something much more sinister. Similar ritualistic murders throughout the city leave the three investigators no choice but to join forces with Dr. Daria Zibik, a brilliant but deranged Satanic cult leader. Phee and his partners must do everything they can to stop the bloodshed and determine if the evil they are hunting and the psychopath they are trusting could actually be one and the same.

1964: Christaphine is 20 years old and determined to make a home and a life for her and her husband, Tommy. But when Christaphine discovers Tommy and his friends on the verge of committing a horrible crime, she does what she has to do to stop them. Afterwards, she knows she can't ever go home again. So she disappears. Fifty years later: When Clemmie's neighbor, Muffin, drags her from Sunday morning service at Trinity Hill Church, convinced that the man she's just spotted across the aisle is a dangerous figure from her past, at first Clemmie thinks she's being dramatic. But as Muffin reveals to Clemmie what happened in the middle of a field in South Carolina five decades ago, Clemmie realizes her friend has been keeping dark secrets --- just as Clemmie herself has.

Delhi, the near future: Bibi, a low-ranking employee of a global consulting firm, is tasked with finding a man long thought to be dead but who now appears to be the source of a vast collection of documents. Bhopal, 1984: An assassin tracks his prey through an Indian city that will shortly be the site of the worst industrial disaster in the history of the world. Calcutta, 1947: A veterinary student’s life and work connect him to an ancient Vedic aircraft that might stave off genocide. And in 1859, a British soldier rides with his detachment to the Himalayas in search of the last surviving leader of an anti-colonial rebellion. These timelines interweave, and each protagonist must come to terms with the buried truths of their times, as well as the parallel universe that connects them all.

Rosario, a Filipina novelist in New York City, has just learned of her mother’s death in the Philippines. Instead of rushing home, she puts off her return by embarking on a remote investigation into her family’s history and her mother’s supposed inheritance, a place called La Tercera, which may or may not exist. Each life Rosario explores opens onto an array of other lives and raises a multitude of new questions. But as the search for La Tercera becomes increasingly labyrinthine, Rosario’s mother and the entire Delgado family emerge in all their dizzying complexity: traitors and heroes, reactionaries and revolutionaries. Meanwhile, another narrative takes shape --- of the country’s erased history of exploitation and slaughter at the hands of American occupying forces.