Adult

One night in New York City's Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And…another. Soon nothing is quite what it seems as the city becomes awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What would normally pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger as our heroine, the recently engaged Lola, must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship but the fact that both her best friend and her former boss, a magazine editor turned mystical guru, might have an unhealthy investment in the outcome. Is it possible to have a happy ending in an age when the past is ever at your fingertips and sanity is for sale?

Joey is a Reality Controller in near-future Delhi. Her job is to supervise the multimedia multi-reality livestreams of Indi, one of South Asia’s fastest rising online celebrities --- who also happens to be her college ex. Rudra is a recluse estranged from his wealthy and powerful family. When his father’s death pulls him back into his family’s orbit, an impulsive job offer from Joey becomes his only escape from the life he never wanted. But as Joey and Rudra become enmeshed in multiple conspiracies, their lives start to spin out of control. When a bigger picture begins to unfold, they each must decide how to do the right thing in a world where simply maintaining the status quo feels like an accomplishment.

When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews that her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O’Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started 40 years earlier. As a lifelong O’Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun. But the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O’Hara’s past, but also her father’s…and her own. The result is a groundbreaking and kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond.

Army-CID-officer-cum-unofficial-PI Mick Hardin is home on leave, recovering from an IED attack, when a body is found in the center of town. It’s Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an occupational hazard. But when Barney’s mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a look, it appears there’s more to the killing than meets the eye. Mick should be rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers and getting out of town --- and, most of all, staying out of the way of his sister Linda’s reelection as Sheriff. But he keeps on looking, and suddenly he’s getting shot at himself.

Deep in the California woods, Jane Pearson is camping with her husband, Leo, and their five-year-old son, Benjamin. As dusk sets in, she drifts softly to sleep in a hammock strung outside the tent where Leo and Benjamin are preparing for bed. At that moment, every single person with a Y chromosome vanishes around the world. Leo and Benjamin are gone. After the Disappearance, Jane forces herself to enter a world she barely recognizes, one where women must create new ways of living. Meanwhile, strange video footage called “The Men” is being broadcast online showing images of the vanished men marching through barren, otherworldly landscapes. Is this just a hoax, or could it hold the key to the Disappearance?

In 1951, former debutante Jacqueline Bouvier is hard at work as the Inquiring Camera Girl for a Washington newspaper. Her mission in life is “not to be a housewife,” but when she meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy at a Georgetown party, her resolution begins to falter. As Jackie is drawn deeper into the Kennedy orbit, and as Jack himself grows increasingly elusive and absent, she begins to question what life at his side would mean. For answers, she turns to his best friend and confidant, Lem Billings, a closeted gay man who has been instructed by the Kennedy family to seal the deal with Jack’s new girl. But as he gets to know her, a deep and touching friendship emerges, leaving him with painfully divided alliances and a troubling dilemma: Is this the marriage she deserves?

Theodora Morgan, the founder of a wildly popular online shopping service, prefers to keep a low profile, especially over the last months. It was a year ago when her husband, industry mogul Matthieu Pasquier, and their son were kidnapped and held for ransom --- a nightmare that ended in tragedy. The case has gone cold, despite evidence linking the crime to Matthieu’s Russian competitors. Theo has reluctantly gone back to work running her company. On the flight to a launch party for one of her highly anticipated pop-up shops in New York City, she crosses paths with high-society networker Pierre de Vaumont. Theo politely invites him to her event --- unaware that Pierre has been flagged by the CIA.

Introvert Gina Mulley is determined to become a tattoo artist, and to find somewhere she belongs in her conventional Long Island town. But this is 1985, when tattooing is still a gritty, male-dominated fringe culture, and Gina’s funky flash is not exactly mainstream tattoo fare. The good news is that her older brother Dominic owns a tattoo shop, and he reluctantly agrees to train her. Gina has a year to prove herself, but her world is turned upside down when a mysterious psychic and his striking assistant, Anna, arrive on the scene. With Anna’s help, Gina recognizes that the only way she has a shot at becoming a professional tattoo artist is to embrace her quirkiness both in her art and her life.

Every day, Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the 10 stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. She sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver. This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people with almost nothing in common except their commute discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more.

Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, believes his mother died giving birth to him. One of Marek’s few consolations is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina. For some people, Ina’s ability to receive transmissions of sacred knowledge from the natural world is a godsend. For others, Ina’s home in the woods is a godless place. The people’s desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by their depraved lord and governor, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord’s family, new and occult forces arise to upset the old order. By year’s end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, and the natural world and the spirit world will prove to be very thin indeed.