Adult

After leaving her position with Charlotte and Thomas Pitt to get married, Gracie thought her days as a maid were behind her. But when her good friend’s daughter, Millie, turns up on her doorstep just before the holidays, frantic because things are going missing from the kitchen in the household she serves, Gracie knows she has to find out what is happening. Millie can’t risk being accused of theft and getting thrown out on the street, with no character references for a new position. So Gracie takes on Millie’s job herself, claiming Millie is sick and needs a few days to recuperate. She soon begins to realize that Granny is suffering from neglect --- and rather than helping her, the husband and wife have decided she isn’t dying fast enough.

In the rolling hills of upstate New York, a group of friends and friends-of-friends gathers in a country house to wait out the pandemic. Over the next six months, new friendships and romances will take hold, while old betrayals will emerge, forcing each character to reevaluate whom they love and what matters most. The unlikely cast of characters includes a Russian-born novelist; his Russian-born psychiatrist wife; their precocious child obsessed with K-pop; a struggling Indian American writer; a wildly successful Korean American app developer; a global dandy with three passports; a Southern flamethrower of an essayist; and a movie star, the Actor, whose arrival upsets the equilibrium of this chosen family.

What causes people to forsake their country and take up arms against it? In his powerful new history of the American Revolution, this is the question that H. W. Brands answers. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels, with Washington standing at the apex of Virginia society and Franklin more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams, known for his cantankerous temperament, might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, but even so, he revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British empire that fostered their success.

In March 2020, at the request of the Los Angeles Times, Charles Finch became a reluctant diarist: As California sheltered in place, he began to write daily notes about the odd ambient changes in his own life and in the lives around him. The result is WHAT JUST HAPPENED, where Finch brings us into his own world: taking long evening walks near his home in L.A., listening to music, and keeping virtual connections with friends across the country as they each experience the crisis. And drawing on his remarkable acuity as a cultural critic, he chronicles one endless year with delightful commentary on current events, and the things that distract him from current events: Murakami’s novels, reality television, the Beatles.

On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle: Martha Gellhorn, who got the scoop on Ernest Hemingway on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller, who went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, a “society girl columnist” turned combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth, the first English journalist to break the news of World War II; and Helen Kirkpatrick, the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men. In Judith Mackrell's THE CORRESPONDENTS, these six women are captured in all their complexity.

Miranda Reynolds always thought she would rather die than live in Femlandia. But that was before the country sank into total economic collapse and her husband walked out, leaving her and her 16-year-old daughter with nothing. The streets are full of looting, robbing and killing, and Miranda and Emma no longer have much choice --- either starve and risk getting murdered, or find safety. And so they set off to Femlandia, the women-only colony that Miranda's mother established decades ago. There are no men allowed in the colony, but babies are being born --- and they're all girls. Miranda discovers just how the all-women community is capable of enduring, and it leads her to question how far her mother went to create this perfect, thriving, horrifying society.

Rebecca Solnit’s new book is a reflection on George Orwell’s passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, and the natural world illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and the intertwined politics of nature and power. Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the surviving roses he planted in 1936, Solnit’s account of this understudied aspect of Orwell’s life explores his writing and his actions --- from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left), to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism.

Barbara "Babe" Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill --- they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. These women captivated and enchanted Truman Capote --- and at times, they infuriated him as well. He befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and shocking way possible. Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S in 1958 and IN COLD BLOOD in 1966, when Capote struggled with a crippling case of writer's block.

Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian’s family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea.

Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president --- some would say dictator --- of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive. When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny and fascinating.