Adult

Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He’s perfectly happy working low-stakes embezzlement cases --- that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a mystery only he can solve. The son of a wealthy couple has washed up dead on the shores of San Francisco Bay with drugs in his system and a head injury. The police are calling it an accident. But the parents are adamant something’s not right --- and as Clay digs deeper, he uncovers a horrifying tangle of betrayal and lies.

Facing their first Christmas without their beloved Grams, the woman who lovingly raised them, Reed and Avery decide to spend the holiday together at Reed’s home. However, their plans take an unexpected turn when the ferry Avery’s traveling on stalls in the middle of Puget Sound, stranding its passengers and leaving Reed waiting a now undetermined length of time for her arrival. What is at first an inconvenience threatens to ruin the plans of a number of commuters, but Avery and Reed soon discover that this unforeseen delay might end up being be a perfectly timed blessing in disguise. In this tale of holiday magic, the Bond siblings find themselves taking a chance on love, proving that sometimes the best moments in life come when we least expect them.

The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents’ non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings’ mischievousness. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother’s sudden death and another’s suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother --- the mother she’d seen only twice in 30 years --- Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family. In NEXT OF KIN, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with.

The new year had barely begun when Grace White and Henry Adler both lost their spouses. Now, nearly a year later, the first holiday season since their "Great and Terrible Sadnesses" approaches. It’s clear that neither is ready to date again. Yet no one understands what they are going through better than each other, and a delicate friendship is born. When Henry sees an ad for a Christmas movie marathon, Grace offers to watch some films with him. Her two young kids, Ian and Bella, also join in whenever possible --- bedtimes permitting, of course. With each movie, Grace and Henry’s shared grief eases as they start to see a life beyond the sadness. But as they draw closer, other romantic possibilities leave them uncertain about their future together.

When New York architect Tate Donovan arrives in Cape Cod, he is still wrestling with the pain of losing his beloved sister. Sylvia’s deathbed revelation --- that she can see spirits who are still tethered to the living world, a gift that runs in their family --- sits uneasily with Tate. But when he takes up residence at a historic bed-and-breakfast on the Cape, he encounters a beautiful young woman named Wren who will challenge every assumption he has about his logical and controlled world. But Tate gradually discovers that below the surface of Wren’s idyllic small-town life, hatred, jealousy and greed are festering, threatening their fragile relationship just as it begins to blossom. Tate realizes that in order to free Wren from an increasingly desperate fate, he will need to unearth the truth about her past before time runs out.

On the eve of the American Revolution, the slave trade was flourishing, even as the 13 colonies armed themselves to defend against the idea of being governed without consent. This paradox gave birth to what one of our most admired historians, Joseph J. Ellis, calls the “great contradiction”: How could a government that had been justified and founded on the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence institutionalize slavery? With narrative grace and a flair for irony and paradox, Ellis addresses the questions that lie at America’s twisted roots --- questions that turned even the sharpest minds of the Revolutionary generation into mental contortionists. He discusses the first debates around slavery and the treatment of Native Americans, from the Constitutional Convention to the Treaty of New York.

Gish’s mother is born in 1924 to a wealthy Shanghai family whose girls are expected to restrain themselves. She is constantly reprimanded: “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” Agnes finds solace in books and, in 1947, announces her intention to pursue a PhD in America. Lonely and adrift in New York, she begins dating Jen Chao-Pe, an engineering student. They do their best to block out the increasingly dire plight of their families back home and successfully establish a new American life. By the time Gish is born, though, the news from China is proving inescapable; their marriage is foundering; and Agnes, confronted with a strong-willed, outspoken daughter distinctly reminiscent of herself, is repeating the refrain --- “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” --- as she recapitulates the harshness of her own childhood.

Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it. Once he hooks the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. But soon her story begins to crack. When she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder. Simon knows he’s innocent. But he also knows the circumstantial evidence is against him, and he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. To save himself, he must find the real killer.

In these nine peerless stories, a family boating trip veers into emotional disaster while very narrowly avoiding the physical; a would-be cheater hands over his car --- his prized possession --- for a shot with a pretty girl; a furniture magnate and his filmmaker daughter visit his impoverished hometown; a doctor’s long-ago affair returns with a bitter pill. Crackling with wry humor, shot through with both wisdom and pain, these are stories of grifters and dreamers, of the lovelorn and the lawless, stories of the ongoing dissonance between the lives we want and the lives this world will allow.

In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter and her elderly father are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, containing their treasured immigration documents, has been stolen. Set over the course of one week, A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom.