Adult

Emma Averell loves her life, but it wasn’t always so perfect. When she was just five years old, Emma and her older sister went into foster care because of a deeply disturbing incident with their mother. Her sister can remember a time when their mother was loving and “normal,” but Emma can only remember her as one thing --- a monster. And that monster emerged right around their mother’s 40th birthday, the same milestone Emma is approaching now. Emma desperately wants to keep her childhood trauma in the past, but as she stops being able to sleep, she also can’t stop thinking about what happened all those years ago. Is the madness in her blood? Could she end up hurting her family just like her mother? Or is there another explanation for the strange things that keep happening around her?

What makes puzzles --- jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus --- so satisfying? A.J. Jacobs --- New York Times bestselling author, master of immersion journalism and nightly crossworder ---- set out to determine their myriad benefits. And maybe, in the process, solve the puzzle of our very existence. Well, almost. In THE PUZZLER, Jacobs meets the most zealous devotees, enters (sometimes with his family in tow) any puzzle competition that will have him, unpacks the history of the most popular puzzles, and aims to solve the most impossible head-scratchers, from a mutant Rubik’s Cube, to the hardest corn maze in America, to the most sadistic jigsaw.

As the older sibling to identical twins Violet and Lily, Cami Porter was always the odd sister out. The divide grew even wider when their parents split up. While the twins stayed in Cape Sanctuary with their free-spirited mother, 14-year-old Cami moved to LA with her attorney father. Nearly 20 years later, when Cami gets the terrible news that Lily has drowned saving a child’s life, her mother begs her to return home to help untangle the complicated estate issues her sister left behind. Cami readjusts to the family and community she hasn’t known for decades, including the neighbor who stands in the way of her late sister’s dream. Violet grieves the loss of her twin and struggles to figure out who she is now, without her other half, as the little girl Lily saved pulls her back into the orbit of the man she once loved.

As children, Sam and Elli were gorgeous identical twins. Once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to pills and booze. Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil. Now she has stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is Elli just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult?

At age 22, Veronique Vincent is one of the most sought-after models in fashion, gracing the covers of magazines and walking the runways of haute couture shows across the globe. Yet, despite being the consummate professional, Veronique wants little of the glamorous life that modeling affords her. The beloved daughter of a hardworking single mother, she has always preferred spending time at home or with her kindhearted boyfriend to attending lavish parties. When a quick getaway presents a welcome break on the heels of Paris Fashion Week, Veronique is thrilled, eager to escape the mayhem of her busy schedule. Then, out of nowhere, a tragic explosion at Zaventem Airport in Brussels changes her life forever.

On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution and her 16th birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence --- a forbidden city unto itself --- that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. She gradually separates herself from the other recruits to become the Chairman’s confidante --- and paramour. When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor. But the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear.

What really matters in life? What truly lasts in our hearts and minds? Where can we find community, history, humanity? In WRITE FOR YOUR LIFE, the answer is clear: through writing. This is a book for what Anna Quindlen calls “civilians,” those who want to use the written word to become more human, more themselves. It argues that there has never been a more important time to stop and record what we are thinking and feeling. Using examples from past, present and future --- from Anne Frank to Toni Morrison, from love letters written after World War II to journal reflections from nurses and doctors today --- WRITE FOR YOUR LIFE vividly illuminates the ways in which writing connects us to ourselves and to those we cherish.

A serial killer is roaming the streets of London, and Daniel Pitt’s university chum Ian, now a member of the police, is leading the search. The murders happen on rainy nights, but Ian knows the victims must have something in common beyond the weather. He turns to Miriam fford Croft, Daniel’s good friend and now officially one of the first female pathologists in London, to tap her scientific know-how to find details he and Daniel have missed. With Miriam involved in the murder investigation, Ian passes Daniel the case of Nicholas Wolford, their former university professor. Charged with assault after reacting violently to an accusation of plagiarism, Wolford is loath to admit he was in the wrong. But Daniel must defend him --- whether he likes him or not.

Sergeant Jim Chee is on a quest to unravel a sacred mystery that his mentor, the Legendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, stumbled across decades earlier. Chee’s journey takes a deadly turn when he spots a body floating in the lake. The dead man, a Navajo with a passion for the canyon’s ancient rock art, lived a life filled with many secrets. Discovering why he died and who was responsible involves Chee in an investigation that puts his own life at risk. Meanwhile, Officer Bernadette Manuelito is driving home when she witnesses an expensive sedan purposely kill a hitchhiker. The search to find the killer leads her to uncover a dangerous chain of interconnected revelations involving a Navajo Nation cannabis enterprise.

TRUE BIZ plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they will meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin and February find their lives inextricable from one another --- and changed forever.