Adult

Before Jodie Rattler became a star, she was a girl growing up in St. Louis. One day in 1955, when she was just six years old, her uncle Drew took her to the racetrack, where she got lucky --- and that roll of two-dollar bills she won has never since left her side. Jodie thrived in the warmth of her extended family, and then --- through a combination of hard work and serendipity --- she started a singing career, which catapulted her from St. Louis to New York City, from the English countryside to the tropical beaches of St. Thomas, from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and back again. Jodie comes of age in recording studios, backstage, and on tour, and she tries to hold her own in the wake of Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Joni Mitchell. Yet it feels like something is missing. 

December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever. Because the trail of murder he uncovers will lead him across the Pacific, far from home and the woman he loves. And though the U.S. doesn't know it yet, a Japanese fleet is already steaming toward Pearl Harbor.

Rick Cahill's fiancée, Leah Landingham, is pregnant with their first child, and Rick is doing PI work that pays well and keeps him out of danger. Then a doctor gives him the bad news about the headaches he’s been suffering --- CTE, which leads to senility and early death --- a secret he keeps from Leah and his best friend, Moira MacFarlane. When Moira asks him to monitor her son, Luke --- who’s broken a restraining order to stay away from his girlfriend --- a simple surveillance explodes into greed, deceit and murder. Luke goes missing, and Rick’s dogged determination compels him to follow clues that lead to the exploration of high finance and DNA cancer research. Ultimately, Rick is forced to battle sadistic killers as he tries to find Luke and stay alive long enough to see the birth of his child.

From his first year in Rookie ball, when Tommy Lasorda ordered him to send a letter to the Dodgers’ starting shortstop informing him that he should retire early to make way for the young phenom, to appearing in disguise in the Mets’ dugout following an ejection, Bobby Valentine was a lightning rod for mischievous controversy, grabbing headlines wherever he went. Mavericks are seldom welcomed to upset the status quo, and Major League Baseball was no exception. In astonishing detail, Bobby Valentine reflects on the many remarkable moments that comprised his playing and managerial careers.

A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a tree; a schoolgirl who keeps dolls' brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever heard of. These are some of the inhabitants of PEOPLE FROM MY NEIGHBORHOOD. In their lives, details of the local and everyday --- the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office --- slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In 26 "palm of the hand" stories --- fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand and brief enough to allow for dipping in and out --- Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.

Inspired by Jules Verne’s hero, Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch --- chair of Harvard University’s department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature --- set out to counter a pandemic’s restrictions on travel by exploring 80 exceptional books from around the globe. Following a literary itinerary from London to Venice, Tehran and points beyond, and via authors from Woolf and Dante to Nobel Prize winners Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka, Mo Yan and Olga Tokarczuk, Damrosch explores how these works have shaped our idea of the world, and the ways in which the world bleeds into literature.

1965: Growing up in the well-to-do town of Round Hill, North Carolina, Ellie Hockley has chosen to spend her summer break as a volunteer helping to register Black voters. But as she follows her ideals fighting for the civil rights of the marginalized, her scandalized parents scorn her efforts, and her neighbors reveal their prejudices. 2010: Architect Kayla Carter and her husband designed a beautiful house for themselves in Round Hill’s new development, Shadow Ridge Estates. It was supposed to be a home where they could raise their three-year-old daughter and grow old together. Instead, it’s the place where Kayla’s husband died in an accident. And her neighbor, Ellie Hockley, is harboring long-buried secrets about the dark history of the land where her house was built.

Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, Rosalind Franklin feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets. Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture --- one more after thousands --- she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins, who would rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her. Then it finally happens --- the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind never could have predicted.

Four years have passed since Cecilia Karlsson disappeared from the island of Gräsö in Roslagen. When Ann Lindell receives a tip that she has been seen alive, she cannot help getting involved, even though she is no longer with the police. The black sheep of the island, Nils Lindberg, has never forgotten Cecilia Karlsson, with whom he was in love as a teenager. He may not be completely sober all the time, but he has no doubt of what he saw out on the bay just before Cecilia disappeared. While Ann struggles to put the jigsaw puzzle together, she is trying to establish herself in her new life together with her lover, Edvard. At the same time, someone is hiding in a cottage in a remote part of the island. Someone who is looking for revenge.

When Miss Rebecca Lane returns to her home village after a few years away, her brother begs for a favor: go to nearby Swanford Abbey and deliver his manuscript to an author staying there who could help him get published. Once there, Rebecca begins noticing strange things, including a figure in a hooded black gown gliding silently through the abbey's cloisters. She then encounters Sir Frederick, who long ago broke her heart. When the famous author is found murdered in the abbey, Sir Frederick quickly discovers that several people held grudges against the man, including Miss Lane and her brother. Haunted by a painful betrayal in his past, Sir Frederick is torn between his growing feelings for Rebecca and his pursuit of the truth. For Miss Lane is clearly hiding something.