Adult

In 1999, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology admitted to discriminating against women on its faculty, forcing institutions across the country to confront a problem they had long ignored: the need for more women at the top levels of science. Written by the journalist who broke the story for The Boston Globe, THE EXCEPTIONS is the untold story of how 16 highly accomplished women on the MIT faculty came together to do the work that triggered the historic admission. It centers on the life of Nancy Hopkins, a reluctant feminist who became the leader of the 16 and a hero to two generations of women in science.

Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age 15, she had to face the reality that she would never meet the impossibly high standards of the hyper-competitive ballet world. After she quit, she tried to avoid ballet --- only to realize, years later, that she was still haunted by the lessons she had absorbed in the mirror-lined studios of Lincoln Center, and that they had served her well in the wider world. The traits ballet takes to an extreme --- stoicism, silence, submission --- are valued in girls and women everywhere. Profound, nuanced and passionately researched, DON’T THINK, DEAR is Robb’s excavation of her adolescent years as a dancer and an exploration of how those days informed her life for years to come.

Generations of Montrose women --- Augusta, Victoria, Willow --- have always lived together in their quaint California bungalow. They keep to themselves, and their collection of tinctures and spells is an unspoken bond between them. But when young Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, their quiet lives are thrown into disarray. For the family has withheld a crucial secret from Nickie all these years: any person a Montrose woman falls in love with will die. Their surprise guest forces each woman to reckon with her own past choices and mistakes. And as new truths about the curse emerge, they're set on a collision course dating back to 1950s New Orleans’s French Quarter --- where a hidden story in a mysterious book may just hold the answers they seek in life and in love.

In these 14 masterful stories, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions and race. In the title story, a closeted gay man in 1980s Kolkata seeks to have a child with his lover’s wife. An Indian widow, engaged to a Jewish man, struggles to balance her cultural identity with the rituals and traditions of her newfound family. An American musician travels to see his guru for the final time --- and makes a promise he cannot keep. A young woman from an Indian village arrives in Brooklyn to care for the toddler of a biracial couple. And a mystical agent is sent by a mother to solve her son’s domestic problems.

Surrounded by the failure of systems, including his family, the public school system and democratic society, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling like he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, most lessons were taught through violence, and, to make matters worse, he always seemed to be hungry. To escape these foes, he began retreating inward. In SINK, Thomas queries the possibility of escape through fantasy worlds, while grappling with children’s inability to change their circumstances. In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the trouble of cruelty without heroics or reprieve and explores how the cycle of hostility permeates our environments. And yet, even in the depths of isolation, there are unexpected moments of joy carved out as Thomas finds kinship.

In the final days of the First World War, a young Chinese woman, Pauline Deng, runs away from her uncle’s home in Paris to evade a marriage being arranged for her in Shanghai. To prevent the union, she needs the help of her cousin Theo, who is working as a translator for the Chinese Labour Corps in the French countryside. In the town of Noyelles-sur-Mer, Camille Roussel is planning her escape from an abusive marriage, and to end a love affair that can no longer continue. When Camille offers Pauline a room for her stay, the two women become friends. But it’s not long before Pauline uncovers a perilous secret that Camille has been hiding from her. As their dangerous situation escalates, they are forced to make a terrible decision that will bind them together for the rest of their lives.

Charlie Wynwood and Silas Nash have been best friends since they could walk. They've been in love since the age of 14. But as of this morning, they are complete strangers. Their first kiss, their first fight, the moment they fell in love...every memory has vanished. Now Charlie and Silas must work together to uncover the truth about what happened to them and why. But the more they learn about the couple they used to be, the more they question why they were ever together to begin with. Forgetting is terrifying, but remembering may be worse.

For 14-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah's country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky. When an accident takes her father's life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state's shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn't always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.

Deep in the Yukon wilderness, a town is being built. A place for people to disappear, a fresh start from a life on the run. Haven’s Rock isn’t the first town of this kind, something detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, know firsthand. They met in the original town of Rockton. But greed and deception led the couple to financing a new refuge for those in need. This time around, they get to decide which applicants are approved for residency. There’s only one rule in Haven’s Rock: stay out of the forest. When two of the town's construction crew members break it and go missing, Casey and Eric are called in ahead of schedule to track them down. When a body is discovered, Casey and Eric must find out what happened to the dead woman and locate those still missing.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later. Eccentric to the point of madness, history tells us that in the years before he died, Ludwig engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom --- a place he could retreat into and rule as he wished. But a question remains: Did he succeed? Enter Cotton Malone. After many months, Malone’s protégé, Luke Daniels, has managed to infiltrate a renegade group intent on winning Bavarian independence from Germany. In a race across Bavaria for clues hidden in Ludwig’s three fairy-tale castles --- Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee --- Malone and Daniels battle an ever-growing list of deadly adversaries, all intent on finding the last kingdom.