Adult

When Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by St. Dunstan’s alum Sebastian Webster. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by Virginia Strauss. A neurotic overachiever, Virginia inducts Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go.

It’s Brooklyn. It’s winter. It’s so cold outside you could execute billionaires in the street about it. Sam lives with Eleanor, and they are in love. He has three or four outstanding invoices that would each cover rent for a month. At some point, the President is going to make some absolutely wild announcements that will only end in doom. In a surreal, funny and heartbreaking version of reality, Sasha Fletcher’s highly anticipated first novel occupies that rare register that manages to speak to an increasingly incomprehensible world.

Anna loves Girls’ Night with her friends. With the kids safely in bed, it’s a chance for the women to let loose, enjoy some wine and just laugh. But after one lively evening, Anna doesn’t arrive for school drop-off the next morning --- or the next, or the next. Everyone, especially her husband and young son, is frantic with worry, but none more so than Grace, her childhood best friend. Grace is certain that someone is hiding the truth about Anna’s unexplained disappearance. As rumors fly and accusations are whispered among neighbors, Grace decides to take matters into her own hands and find out what happened to Anna…or die trying.

The Heights is a tall, slender apartment building among warehouses in London. Its roof terrace is so discreet, you wouldn’t know it existed if you weren’t standing at the window of the flat directly opposite. But you are. And that’s when you see a man up there --- a man you’d recognize anywhere. He may be older now, but it’s definitely him. But that can’t be because he’s been dead for over two years. You know this for a fact. Because you’re the one who killed him.

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val suspects foul play. When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility --- a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands --- Val is his first call. Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val journeys to the Arctic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. And then Carol appears --- in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned and 30 years old. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. Soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young lady who does not yet have a clue.

Right after the sudden death of her mother and just before the launch of her high-stakes sophomore album, Greta James falls apart on stage. The footage quickly goes viral and she stops playing, her career suddenly in jeopardy --- the kind of jeopardy her father, Conrad, has always predicted. Months later, Greta reluctantly agrees to accompany Conrad on the Alaskan cruise her parents had booked to celebrate their 40th anniversary. It could be their last chance to heal old wounds in the wake of shared loss. But the trip will also prove to be a voyage of discovery for them both, and for Ben Wilder, a charming historian, onboard to lecture about THE CALL OF THE WILD, who is struggling with a major upheaval in his own life.

Harvey Fierstein’s legendary career has transported him from community theater in Brooklyn, to the lights of Broadway, to the absurd excesses of Hollywood and back. He’s received accolades and awards for acting in and/or writing an incredible string of hit plays, films and TV shows: "Hairspray," "Fiddler on the Roof," Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, "Cheers," "La Cage Aux Folles," "Torch Song Trilogy," "Newsies" and "Kinky Boots." While he has never shied away from the spotlight, Mr. Fierstein says that even those closest to him have never heard most of the tales --- of personal struggles and conflict, of sex and romance, of his fabled career --- revealed in these wildly entertaining pages.

In more than 50 pieces, Margaret Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This rollercoaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump and a pandemic. From when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to Atwood’s views on the climate crisis, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.

The seven Shaw siblings have long been haunted by two early and profoundly consequential events. Told in turns from the early 20th century through the 1950s, each sibling relays their own version of the memories that surround both their mother’s mysterious death and the circumstances of one sister’s scandalous teenage pregnancy. As they move into adulthood, the siblings assume new roles: caretaker to their aging father, addict, enabler, academic, decorated veteran, widow, and mothers and fathers to the next generation. Entangled in a family knot, the Shaw siblings face divorce, drama and death while haunted by a mother who was never truly there.