Adult

Hollywood, 1955. As head costume designer for Lux Pictures, Lena Taylor hears startling confessions from the biggest movie stars. Lena was once Elsie Gruner, the daughter of an Ohio dressmaker. Her gift for fashion design helped her win a coveted spot at an art academy in Rome. While in Italy, she became enthralled by the charismatic Julia, who drew her into a shadowy world of jazz clubs, code words and mysterious deliveries. When one of Julia’s intrigues ended in murder, Elsie found herself in the middle of a bewildering sinister international plot. So she ran. After fleeing to LA, Elsie became Lena --- but she’s never stopped looking over her shoulder. Now, as her engagement to a screenwriter throws her into the spotlight, she’s terrified her façade won’t hold up. Will she figure out the truth about her past before everything falls apart?

Sisters Nadia and Cass Brenner are heirs to Ocean House, a decades-old empire that builds superyachts for the rich and powerful. They’re a next-generation success with the design of their soon-to-be-commissioned megayacht for a Chinese billionaire. But the sisters’ entrée into the coveted Asian market is tragically cut short when Cass falls from a 40th-floor hotel balcony. A Singapore detective rules suicide. Nadia has been in the yacht business too long not to be suspicious. Especially when she discovers Cass’ involvement in dangerously illicit activities. Pulled into the same web of betrayal, lies and secrets that trapped her sister, Nadia is on the most perilous mission of her life. Because uncovering the truth behind her sister’s death could tear the Brenner family apart --- and it just might get her killed.

Aspiring investigative journalist Shannon Gibbons and her family have moved into a beautiful house in the Fabulous Forties of East Sacramento, where Shannon finds a fast connection with a new neighbor. Renowned journalist Rosella Marlow appears to have a genuine interest in giving Shannon’s own career a boost --- as personal assistant on Rosella’s new project. Appearances are deceiving. Bitter, resentful and consumed by excruciating grief, Rosella is obsessed with wiping the smiles off her contented neighbors’ faces. Now she’s watching closely, ready to expose their secrets. Secrets dark enough to destroy lives. In Shannon, Rosella has a trusting and unwitting accomplice. But Rosella is being watched, too. And when someone is found murdered, everyone on this quiet block is a suspect. Because everyone has a motive.

BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below," following the musicians as they built communes, performed at Civil Rights rallies and participated in general strikes. Perhaps most importantly, Barson locates the first emancipatory revolution in the Americas --- Haiti --- as a nexus for cultural and political change in 19th-century Louisiana. In dialogue with the work of recent historians who have inverted traditional histories of Latin American and Caribbean independence by centering the influence of Haitian activists abroad, this work traces the impact of Haitian culture in New Orleans and its legacy in movements for liberation.

In THE LOVES OF MY LIFE, legendary author Edmund White recounts the 60-plus years of sexual escapades that have inspired his many masterpieces. He explores the sex he had with other closeted boys of the ’50s Midwest, with women as a young man trying to be straight, the sex he has paid for and been paid for, sex during the Stonewall and HIV eras, and in the age of the apps. Through tales of transactional sex, mutual admiration, open relationships, domination, submission, love and loss, he paints an indelible portrait of queer history in America and abroad in a way only someone who has lived through it can.

FBI Agent Gardner Camden is an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles. He also has a blind spot on the human side of investigations, a blindness that sometimes even includes people in his own life, like his beloved seven-year-old daughter, Camila. Gardner and his squad of brilliant yet quirky agents make up the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, the FBI’s hidden edge, brought in for cases that no one else can solve. When DNA links a murder victim to a serial killer long presumed dead, the team springs into action. A second victim establishes a pattern, and the murderer begins leaving a trail of clues and riddles especially for Gardner. And while the PAR team is usually relegated to working cold cases from behind a desk, the investigation puts them on the road and into the public eye, following in the footsteps of a killer.

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and transatlantic airship aviation, making history’s first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole --- which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship. REALM OF ICE AND SKY is the riveting tale of the men who first flew the most advanced technological airships of their time to the top of the world, risking and even giving their lives for science, country and polar immortality.

In her memoir, Melania Trump reflects on her Slovenian childhood, the pivotal moments that led her to the world of high fashion in Europe and New York, and the serendipitous meeting with Donald Trump, a chance encounter that forever changed the course of her life. Melania opens up about their courtship, life in the spotlight and experiencing the joy of motherhood. She shares behind-the-scenes stories from her time in the White House, shedding light on her advocacy work and the causes close to her heart. MELANIA offers an unprecedented look into her time as a First Lady who was born outside the United States --- a role she embraced with honor and dedication. It brings readers into her world and presents an in-depth account of a woman who has led a remarkable life on her own terms.

ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents, and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality.

When Kyle McCray gets word that his father has suffered a debilitating stroke, he returns to his hometown of Potsdam, New York. Kyle left suddenly two-and-a-half years ago, abandoning people who depended on him: his father, his employees, his friends --- not to mention Casey, his wife of 16 years and a beloved teacher in town. He plans to lie low and help his dad recuperate until he can leave again. The longer he’s home, the more Kyle understands the impact his departure has had on the people he left behind. When he’s presented with an opportunity for redemption as the coach of the floundering middle-school hockey team, he begins to find compassion in unexpected places. Kyle even considers staying in Potsdam, but that’s only possible if he and Casey can come to some kind of peace with each other.