Adult

What if you knew exactly when you’d meet the love of your life? Edie Meyer knows. When her Grandma Gloria was a young woman, she had a vision of the exact day she would meet her soul mate --- and then Grandpa Ray showed up. Since then, Gloria has accurately predicted the day every single member of the family has met their match. Edie’s day arrives on June 24, 2022, when she’s 29 years old. That morning, she boards an airplane to her twin sister’s surprise engagement, and when a handsome musician sits beside her, she knows it’s meant to be. But fate comes with more complications than Edie expected, and she can’t fight the nagging suspicion that her perfect guy doesn’t have perfect timing.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee and head out. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise? As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

Three years after her mother’s death, Ruth Galloway is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of her own Norfolk cottage --- before she lived there --- with a peculiar inscription on the back. Ruth returns to the cot­tage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk’s first cases of COVID-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there and befriend a kind neighbor, Zoe. Meanwhile, Nelson is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links a case to an archaeological dis­covery, he breaks curfew to visit Ruth and enlist her help. But the further Nelson investigates the deaths, the closer he gets to Ruth’s isolated cottage --- until Ruth, Zoe and Kate all go missing, and Nelson is left scrambling to find them before it’s too late.

After losing her husband, Derrick, in what appears to have been a random street crime, thirtysomething Emma has built a new life with widower Tom, who is kind, handsome, driven and successful. Emma is finally able to feel safe again, both in her relationship with Tom and in the home they've made together on the Connecticut shore. Then one day a homicide detective shows up at Emma and Tom’s door asking questions. Though Emma had been cleared of her husband’s murder, it appears that law enforcement is taking another look at her and the case. What do they know? Are they on the right track this time? And most importantly, will the renewed investigation ruin Emma’s chances of a happy life?

We all live like we’re famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. In Jess Walter’s collection of stories, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy 21-year-old studying Latin in Rome during “the year of my reinvention” finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams.

Berlin, Germany, 1930. When the Nazis rise to power, Sofie von Meyer Rhodes and her academic husband benefit from the military ambitions of Germany’s newly elected chancellor when Jürgen is offered a high-level position in their burgeoning rocket program. Although they fiercely oppose Hitler’s radical views, it soon becomes clear that if Jürgen does not accept the job, they will lose their lives. Huntsville, Alabama, 1950. Twenty years later, Jürgen is one of many German scientists pardoned and granted a position in America’s space program. But when rumors about the Rhodes family’s affiliation with the Nazi party spread among her new American neighbors, idle gossip turns to bitter rage, and the act of violence that results tears apart a family.

What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. In the waning days of World War II, Eleanor's daughter, Alice, is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her 13-year-old daughter, Penn. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets, and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.

Albert Entwistle is a private man with a quiet, simple life in his northern England village. He lives alone with his cat, Gracie. And he’s a postman. At least he was a postman until, three months before his 65th birthday, he receives a letter from the Royal Mail thanking him for decades of service and stating he is being forced into retirement. At once, Albert’s sole connection with his world unravels. Rather than continue his lonely existence, Albert forms a brave plan to start truly living. It’s finally time to be honest about who he is. To seek the happiness he’s always denied himself. And to find the courage to look for George, the man who, many years ago, he loved and lost --- but has never forgotten.

Pregnant and abandoned by her husband, Alice Butterworth leaves Chicago’s bitter cold and travels to New Orleans, where she offers sewing lessons at an orphanage. Young widow Constance Halstead has thrown herself into charity work since her husband’s death. Seeing Alice’s skill, she offers lodging in exchange for help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all-female krewe of Mardi Gras. As the breathtaking gown takes shape piece by piece, it becomes a symbol of empowerment for them both. But overshadowing all is the Black Hand, the vicious New Orleans gang to whom Constance’s husband was deep in debt. As Mardi Gras draws near, a secret emerges that will cement the bond between Alice and Constance, even as it threatens the new lives each is building.

Six people, six secrets, six different backgrounds. They would never have met if not for their connection to the Metropolis Storage Warehouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When someone falls down an elevator shaft at the facility, each becomes caught up in an intensifying chain of events. We meet Serge, an unstable but brilliant street photographer; Marta, an undocumented immigrant finishing her dissertation and hiding from ICE; Liddy, an abused wife and mother, who recreates her children’s bedroom in her unit; Jason, a former corporate lawyer now practicing in the facility; Rose, the office manager, who takes illegal kickbacks to let renters live in the building; and Zach, the building’s owner and an ex-drug dealer, who scans Serge’s photos as he searches for clues to the accident. But was it an accident?