Adult

Bernie is in the holiday spirit and refers a potential client to Victor Klovsky, a fellow private eye. But when Victor doesn’t show up at his mom’s to light the Hanukkah candles, she hires Chet and Bernie to find him. They soon discover that Victor’s client has also vanished. The trail leads to the ruins of a mission called Nuestra Señora de los Saguaros, dating back to the earliest Spanish explorers. Some very dangerous people are interested in the old mission. Does some dusty archive hold the secret of a previously unknown art treasure, possibly buried for centuries? What does the Flight into Egypt --- when Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus fled Herod --- have to do with saguaros, the Sonoran desert cactus?

THE LAST SHADOW is the long-awaited conclusion to both the original Ender series and the Ender's Shadow series, as the children of Ender and Bean solve the great problem of the Ender Universe --- the deadly virus they call the descolada, which is incurable and will kill all of humanity if it is allowed to escape from Lusitania.

After climbing OVER THE WOODWARD WALL and making their way across the forest, Avery and Zib found themselves acquiring some extraordinary friends in their journey through the Up-and-Under. After staying the night, uninvited, at a pirate queen’s cottage in the woods, the companions find themselves accountable to its owner and reluctantly agree to work off their debt as her ship sets sail, bound for lands unknown. But the queen and her crew are not the only ones on board, and the monsters at sea aren’t all underwater. The friends will need to navigate the stormy seas of obligation and honor on their continuing journey along the improbable road.

The 10 stories in THE WANDERING EARTH, including five Chinese Galaxy Award winners, are a blazingly original ode to planet Earth, its pasts and its futures. Cixin Liu's fiction takes the reader to the edge of the universe and the end of time, to meet stranger fates than we ever could have imagined. With a melancholic and keen understanding of human nature, Liu's stories show humanity's attempts to reason, navigate and, above all, survive in a desolate cosmos.

Christmas has come early to the town of Paterson, New Jersey, in the form of a snowstorm that dumps two feet of snow on the ground. Lawyer Andy Carpenter likes snow, but it can cause problems for the walks he takes his dogs on every day. When Andy’s golden retriever, Tara, goes to play in the snow and instead discovers a body, Andy ends up on the phone with the local newspaper editor. The murder victim is Mayor Alex Oliva, who had an infamous relationship with the newspaper. Last year a young reporter published an exposé, and Oliva had him fired for libel. Now, the young reporter --- and prime suspect --- is in need of a lawyer. Andy agrees to take the case, though it’s not looking good this holiday season.

Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send.

It's been years since Nadja Kulka was convicted of a cruel crime. After being released from prison, she's wanted nothing more than to live a normal life: nice flat, steady job, even a few friends. But when one of those friends, Laura von Hoven --- free-spirited beauty and wife of Nadja's boss --- kills her lover and begs Nadja for her help, Nadja can't seem to refuse. The two women make for a remote house in the woods, the perfect place to bury a body. But their plan quickly falls apart, and Nadja finds herself outplayed, a pawn in a bizarre game in which she is both the perfect victim and the perfect murderer.

It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless --- unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

It's Zinnia Gray's 21st birthday, which is extra special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past 21. Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible. HER HONOR is an entertaining and provocative look into the hearts and minds of judges. Cordell takes you into her chambers where she haggles with prosecutors and defense attorneys, and into the courtroom during jury selection and sentencing hearings. She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures.