Adult

She has a full-time remote job and her rescue cat, Fred. Her best friend, Sadie, visits with her two children. There's her online support group, her jigsaw puzzles and favorite recipes, her beloved Emily Dickinson poems. Also keeping her company are treacherous memories of an unstable childhood and a traumatic event that had sent her reeling. But something is about to change. First, two new friends burst into her life. Then her long-estranged sister gets in touch. Suddenly her carefully curated home is no longer a space to hide. Whether Meredith likes it or not, the world is coming to her door.

Throughout her childhood, Carlisle Martin got to see her father, Robert, for only a few precious weeks a year when she visited the brownstone apartment in Greenwich Village he shared with his partner, James. Brilliant but troubled, James gave Carlisle an education in all that he held dear in life. Seduced by the heady pull of mentorship and hoping to follow in the footsteps of her mother, Carlisle’s aspiration to become a professional ballet dancer bloomed. However, a passionate love affair created a rift between the family, with shattering consequences that reverberated for decades to come. Nineteen years later, when Carlisle receives a phone call that unravels the events of that fateful summer, she sees with new eyes how her younger self has informed the woman she’s become.

Aspiring writers and readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this engaging book from the internationally bestselling author. Haruki Murakami now shares with readers his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists and musicians. Here are the personal details of a life devoted to craft: the initial moment at a Yakult Swallows baseball game when he suddenly knew he could write a novel; the importance of memory, what he calls a writer’s “mental chest of drawers”; the necessity of loneliness, patience and his daily running routine; the seminal role a carrier pigeon played in his career; and more.

Property speculator Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine, reflecting on his youth in the early 20th century. He recounts that after his father’s sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida to join a Shaker colony. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor, faith and charity, rejecting all temptations that lay beyond the property. Though this way of life initially saved Harley and his family from complete ruin, when Harley began falling in love with Sadie Pratt, a consumptive patient living on the grounds, his loyalty to the Shakers and their conservative worldview grew strained and, ultimately, broke. As Harley dictates his story across more than half a century, the truth about Sadie, Elder John and the Shakers comes to light.

William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s, these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for what the American West would be: a sparsely settled, wild home where Indian tribes could thrive, or a more densely populated extension of the America to the east of the Mississippi. When Sherman rose to commanding general of the Army, he was tasked with bringing Geronimo and his followers onto a reservation where they would live as farmers and ranchers and roam no more. But Geronimo preferred to fight.

Preston and Constance Whittier have built a happy life together, with a brood of six children raised in a beautiful historic Manhattan mansion. Now, with a nearly empty nest, it’s easier than ever for the Whittiers to maintain their tradition of a solo romantic “Wintermoon” ski trip. But with this year’s trip comes tragedy, and suddenly the Whittiers' adult children find themselves reuniting in the family home without their parents for the first time ever. The eldest four are forced to put aside their personal issues and their grief to keep the family together and support each other and their two youngest siblings. Selling the house, along with all the memories that live in its walls, feels like yet another devastating loss. Could there be another way, as unconventional as it seems?

In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message “Hello Everybody!” Known for shooting with her beloved Land Camera 250, Smith started posting images from her phone, including portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world. Over time, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape, and more than a million followers responded to Smith’s unique aesthetic in images that chart her passions, devotions, obsessions and whims. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world.

There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In THE LIGHT WE CARRY, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Obama believes that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress.

Once a penniless orphan, Scuff is studying medicine at a free clinic run by Dr. Crowe. But lately Crowe has been distracted, having witnessed an altercation between a wealthy former patient of his named Ellie and her controlling fiancé. It seems that someone is forcing Ellie to marry the man. So Crowe sets out to uncover the troubling connection between Ellie, her father and her betrothed. With Crowe engrossed in his investigation just weeks before the holidays, Scuff is left to run the clinic on his own, treating London’s poor and vulnerable. In the holiday spirit, he offers Mattie, a young girl in need, a warm place to stay as the winter chill sweeps through the city. Together, Scuff and Mattie also must fend off the police, who are growing suspicious of Crowe’s amateur sleuthing.

Time slips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies. C. J. Tudor’s novels are widely acclaimed for their dark, twisty suspense plots, but with A SLIVER OF DARKNESS, she pulls us even further into her dizzying imagination. In “The Lion at the Gate,” a strange piece of graffiti leads to a terrifying encounter for four school friends. In “Final Course,” the world has descended into darkness, but a group of old friends make time for one last dinner party. In “Runaway Blues,” thwarted love, revenge and something very nasty stowed in a hat box converge. In “Gloria,” a strange girl at a service station endears herself to a coldhearted killer, but can a leopard really change its spots? And in “I’m Not Ted,” a case of mistaken identity has unforeseen fatal consequences.