Adult

By all accounts, Carl and Roy Opgard are doing quite well for themselves. Or at least they’re doing as well as can be expected in a small town like Os. Carl manages the area’s swanky and successful spa and hotel, while Roy runs a nearby gas station and harbors grand plans to build it out into an entire amusement park, complete with a roller coaster. But when news breaks about a new highway to be built nearby, bypassing Os and leaving the town cutoff and isolated, it’s clear that something has to be done…even if the methods are bound to be dirty. Fortunately, Carl and Roy have experience with just that kind of work. Meanwhile, the town sheriff has gotten his hands on new technology that will enable him to take a deeper look at a slate of unsolved murders from years past --- including that of his own father.

An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, GLIFF explores how and why we endeavor to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data --- something easily categorizable and predictable --- Ali Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.

New York City, 1947: Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime Jessup Quincannon is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she’s guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will” Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it. With Lillian locked away in the House of D --- New York City’s infamous women’s prison --- Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? Maybe it was his jilted lover? Or his beautiful, certainly-sociopathic bodyguard? And what about the mob hitman who just happened to disappear after the shots were fired?

It’s a Friday night in a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is pontificating about music again. Hall and Oates is on the jukebox, and Percy --- who has no talent for music, just lots of opinions about it --- can’t stop herself from overanalyzing the song, indulging what she knows to be her most annoying habit. But something is different tonight. The guy beside her at the bar, fellow student Joe Morrow, is a songwriter. And he could listen to Percy talk all night. Joe asks Percy for feedback on one of his songs --- and the results kick off a partnership that will span years, ignite new passions in them both, and crush their egos again and again. Is their collaboration worth its cost? Or is it holding Percy back from finding her own voice?

In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters melds traditional storytelling with beautiful, spare prose to describe the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure. A young man returns from residential school only to realize he no longer can communicate with his own parents. A grieving mother finds purpose and healing on the front lines as a water protector. And a nervous child dances in her first Mawi’omi. The collection also includes the Indigenous Voices Award-winning and title story “Waiting for the Long Night Moon.” At times sad, sometimes disturbing but always redemptive, these stories will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.

Two teens appear out of nowhere, ransacking a small-town grocery store and attacking the police officers who come to investigate. Their clothes are torn and filthy, their hands and bare feet callused, and they have fangs. They’re sister and brother, alone against the world. Where did they come from? Raised by wolves, they say. Kai and Holo are taken in by the police chief and his wife, and they begin adjusting to life in a small town, attending school and going on dates. But humans, they find, are the most vicious animals. And the mystery of their upbringing brings dark and powerful forces to Kokanee Creek, tearing the town apart and threatening the lives of everyone they love. How will the wolves survive? How will Kai and Holo?

It’s Christmas Eve at Scranton’s finest paper company, and Michael Scott is nowhere to be found. As the office dozes off after their raucous holiday party, two mysterious visitors sneak in: a Santa peddling holiday cheer and that’s what she said jokes, and his beet-loving, dutiful, right-hand elf. Armed with absurd gifts for the staff, tacky decorations for the office, and absolutely nothing good for Toby, the two prepare to give Dunder Mifflin a holiday they’ll never forget. A hilarious twist on a Christmas classic, THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AT DUNDER MIFFLIN is a rollicking, festive and heartwarming jaunt through everyone’s favorite office, the perfect holiday treat for any fan of the show.

In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world. Raw, outrageous and expressive, R.E.M.’s distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen. In the tumultuous transition between the wide-open ’80s and the anxiety of the early ’90s, R.E.M. challenged the corporate and social order, chasing a vision and cultivating a magnetic, transgressive sound. In this rich, intimate biography, critically acclaimed author Peter Ames Carlin looks beyond the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll to open a window into the fascinating lives of four college friends who stuck together at any cost, until the end.

It’s 1998, and female students are going missing at Southern State University in North Carolina. But freshman Jessica Fadley is going through her own struggles. Just as her life seems to be careening dangerously out of control, she suddenly disappears. Twenty-four years later, Jessica’s sister, Lindsey, is desperately searching for answers and uses the momentum of a new chart-topping true crime podcast that focuses on cold cases to guide her own investigation. Soon, interest reaches fever pitch when the bodies of the long-missing women begin turning up at a local lake, which leads Lindsey down a disturbing road of discovery. In the present, one sister searches to untangle a complicated web of lies. In the past, the other descends ever deeper into a darkness that will lead to her ultimate fate.

These new, recent and reformulated stories by Joyce Carol Oates, collected here for the first time, showcase a wide range of crime fiction and psychological suspense. A young, insecure woman finds her relationship changing as she grows more and more dependent on a man who likes to take her on long walks beside a dangerously roaring creek. Another woman, nervous around men, not quite knowing how to act when paid a compliment, becomes flustered when a doctor suggests they go out for coffee, or possibly a drink. She finally decides that she will join him when he suggests they meet at his home. A man is so forgetful that his wife panics and yells into his phone, asking where their daughter has gone. A woman resents that a colleague has achieved greater success and thinks she ought to do something about it.