Adult

Thirty-eight-year-old Blue Velour has finally achieved the critical acclaim she’s long been chasing. Her latest album, Blue’s Beard --- a cheeky reference to the subreddit fanatically dedicated to her suspected secret relationship with longtime producer Sasha Harlow --- has rocket-launched her reputation. Blue hires nerdy superfan Rose Lutz as her assistant to handle the pressures of the upcoming tour. When the pandemic shuts down the tour, however, Blue decides to hole up in the redwoods with Sasha to make another album. An aspiring singer herself, Rose is frothing at the mouth to be isolated in a cabin with these two legends, but what begins as a creative retreat spirals into a flurry of chaos and betrayal --- culminating in a tragic act that changes their lives forever.

Los Angeles, 2001. Sonia is a single mother who spends her time running away from PTA moms, engaging in business activities involving rich Eastern Europeans and high-tech gadgets, and raising her beloved Milosh, Mila. But Sonia’s guarded life and refusal to discuss their family has left Mila lonely and isolated. When she stumbles across emails between her mother and an unknown man, Mila’s curiosity about her father leads her to form a plan. Flashback to 1990. Eighteen-year-old Szonja Imre travels to visit her sister in LA in search of the quintessential adventure in the “land of the free.” What she doesn’t expect is the discovery that her sister Rina’s conception of the American dream is vastly different from hers. Their disparate lifestyles lead to conflict, and when Szonja ends up in a difficult situation, she makes a series of snap decisions that leave her navigating America alone as an illegal immigrant.

Thea and Alex have three things in common --- they love food, they hate where they live, and they’re both divorced. Otherwise, they couldn’t be more different. Thea’s never cooked a day in her life. Alex is a world-class chef. Alex resents feeling stuck in his hometown. Thea resents the town for not feeling more like home. Thea and her ex are in a contentious custody battle for their dog. Alex and his ex amicably coparent their daughter. Fast forward two years, and they’re truly the best of friends. Two years ago, their exes got together immediately following their divorces, and Thea and Alex found themselves spinning a spite-fueled story about being old friends and first loves. But when their exes invite them on a beach vacation, Alex and Thea start to wonder if this story they’ve spun might have gotten away from them, and if it’s led them to the last place they ever thought it could: a happy ending.

All Cleo Dang has ever wanted is to be a mother. The day she discovers she’s pregnant is the happiest of her life, especially when she learns that her best friend, Paloma, is also expecting. It’s a wonderful surprise, and together, they enjoy their pregnancies. But when they both go to the hospital in labor, something goes very, very wrong. Paloma comes home with a baby. Cleo does not. Ravaged by grief, Cleo must now navigate life after losing her baby. She alienates herself from the world, particularly her best friend, who is living the life she so desperately wanted. Forced to take leave from her demanding job as an actuary, Cleo manages to find work at a funeral home, where she meets a revolving cast of bereaved locals and discovers the power of confronting grief.

TV writer Caroline Neumann is 34 and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children. When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it --- and unbeknownst to Harry --- Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher. And when Caroline forms a real-life relationship with Teacher herself, the lines between art and life begin to blur further, shaking up Caroline’s understanding of what it means to be the “likeable female protagonist” of her own life.

A sister disappears and returns as a tiger. A mother’s voice compels the truth from any tongue. A granddaughter divines secrets in others’ dreams. These women are all of one lineage --- a Korean family split across decades and borders by Japanese imperialism. At this saga’s heart is Young-Ja, a girl who infuses food with her emotions. But her sunny childhood comes to an end in 1931 when Japanese soldiers crush her family’s defiance against the Empire. When a Korean rebel fighter notices her talents, however, she is whisked off to Manchuria to join a secretive sisterhood of beautiful teahouse spies. There, Young-Ja finds a new sense of belonging and starts using her abilities for the resistance. Decades later, Young-Ja lives alone in Seoul, withdrawn from the world until her Tokyo-born granddaughter Rinako bursts into her life with the ability to see into dreams.

Arsenio Hall holds a uniquely prominent place in American culture --- celebrated late-night host and comedic actor, famed for starring roles in the cultural touchstones Coming to America and Harlem Nights. Now, he pulls back the curtain and takes us to a different time in Hollywood. This bracingly candid memoir offers a new appreciation for this raw talent and gifted storyteller, who nightly, for six years, hosted what felt like a televised “party” that changed the landscape of late-night television and brought Black culture into living rooms across America.

In a self-running, smart house, a young and sentient Roomba listens as her owner, Harold, reads aloud to his dying wife, Edie. Mesmerized by TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and craving the human connection she witnesses in Harold’s stories, the little vacuum renames herself Scout and embarks on a journey of self-discovery. But when Edie passes away, Scout and her fellow sentient appliances discover that there are sinister forces in their midst. The omnipresent Grid, which monitors every household in the City, seeks to remove Harold from his home, a place he’s lived in for 50 years. With the help of Adrian, a neighborhood boy who grows close to Scout and Harold, as well as Kate, Harold and Edie’s formerly estranged daughter, the humans and the appliances must come together to outwit the all-controlling Grid lest they risk losing everything they hold dear.

Philadelphia in the 1770s. Peggy Shippen longs for the war she’s living through to end. Though not always appreciated at home, she finds her curiosity is welcomed by a lively and influential circle of friends, including a glamorous rising star in the British army, Captain John André. When the war separates them, Peggy is devastated --- both by his absence and the horrors of ongoing conflict --- before finding consolation in a man whose heroics for the Patriots have captured the world’s imagination: General Benedict Arnold. As she trades Loyalist balls for Patriot salons, entertaining the most prominent figures of early America, and navigating the country’s lethal political currents, she conceives of an audacious scheme to achieve peace and her family’s survival, unleashing what would become the most famous act of treason in history.

It’s March 1980, and Carol Girard and her husband are living an ordinary life in a small town in the Adirondacks. They have just had their first child, and though Carol is struggling with the challenges of new motherhood, her future seems clear. Until something extraordinary happens: an inexplicable flickering of light in the sky, which is ultimately determined to be communication from intelligent life on another planet. As humanity reels from a shifting understanding of its place in the universe, we follow the stories of the Girard family: Carol, whose fascination with this other life sparks a desperate search for spiritual meaning; Michael, her loyal son, who finds solace not in the stars above his head but in the ground beneath his feet; and Ro, Carol’s bright and ambitious daughter, whose childhood goal to work in interstellar communication will evolve into something far grander.