Adult

When Jennifer Hope Choi first stumbled upon the “curse” known as yeokmasal --- an allegedly inheritable affliction causing one to roam farther and farther from home --- she immediately consulted her mother. “Oh yeah,” Umma quipped. “I have that.” Technically this wasn’t a revelation. Since 2007, the no-nonsense open-heart surgery nurse had moved suddenly from the Golden State to the Last Frontier, shuttling over the next decade through seven states. For much of her adulthood, Choi had fancied herself nothing like her immigrant mother --- until life in Brooklyn imploded, spurring her to relocate to South Carolina and reckon with startling truths. This probing memoir follows Choi through her many former homes, from a crumbling Chinatown tenement to a haunted museum in Georgia.

Ten years have passed, and Ren Taylor is back at square one, having accepted a job at her old high school. She'd hoped to make peace with the past, but now she's thrust back into it: her murdered teenage sister is still immortalized in town, and Ren can't stop seeing her wherever she goes. She's dogged by the scandal that ruined her childhood and killed her sister. Then Ren meets physics teacher Bryson Lewis. Handsome and charismatic, all the other teachers and students seem to fall at his feet. But Ren knows men like him --- she knows they can't be trusted. The more Ren watches him, the more suspicious she becomes. And when she notices his close relationship with a girl in one of his classes --- a girl just like her sister --- she worries history is about to repeat itself.

Oregon, 1888. Amid the subterranean labyrinth of Portland's notorious Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens in an underground cell, drugged and disguised. Celia soon realizes she's a "shanghaied" victim on the verge of being shipped off as forced labor. Although well accustomed to adapting for survival --- being half-Chinese, passing as white during an era fraught with anti-Chinese sentiment --- she fears that far more than her own fate hangs in the balance. As she pieces together the twisting path that led to her abduction, revelations emerge of a child left in peril. Desperate, Celia must find a way to escape and return to a place where unearthed secrets can prove deadlier than the dark recesses of Chinatown.

A group of international players has gathered in a tiny village off the coast of Iceland for a diplomatic dinner. There's Kristján, the mayor, who is reeling from a personal tragedy; Graeme, the ambassador, who has an agenda to push; Jane, his wife, who is along for the ride on another one of her husband's many business trips; and several others, from Iceland and from abroad, each with their own reason for being there, their own loyalties and grievances. By the end of the night, one of them will be dead. And it will be up to the ambassador's wife to figure out how --- and why. What Jane soon comes to realize is that small communities can be the most dangerous of them all…and no one in their group is safe.

Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not. Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone he shares with his fiancée, he's desperate to make ends meet. Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She's exactly what Blake is looking for. Or is she? Because something isn't quite right. The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night. And soon Blake fears that someone knows his darkest secrets. Danger lives right at home, and by the time Blake realizes it, it'll be far too late. The trap is already set.

An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose. The two men have a job to do. They are hunting something precious but have only been told: You’ll know it when you see it. When they arrive at the place, an abandoned church cellar in the burned-out countryside, they find an answer they never could have predicted. Now, the job feels dubious, one that’ll surely bring them to ruin. Yet if they’re to go against orders, no step can be undone, and nothing can be taken back.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been “exiled” to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor --- a Jane Doe identifiable at first only by a streak of purple dye in her hair. At the same time, a report of poaching on a protected reserve turns into a case fraught with violence and danger as Stilwell digs into the shady past of an island bigwig. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, Stilwell doggedly works both cases.

SKIPPER takes on an ambitious Moneyball-esque premise: a deep dive into the ongoing struggle for control that often takes place behind the scenes between Major League Baseball managers and the ownership groups, and now, their data analysts. In a culture still attempting to come to terms with the Digital Age, there’s a bigger story behind the evolution of authority of managing inside the major leagues. Packed with baseball history, interviews with dozens of MLB's current stars and veterans, and an exclusive, inside look at the day-to-day life of LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, SKIPPER is a fascinating look into the highs, the lows and the inner workings of the changing world of professional baseball.

Christopher Clarey illuminates the skill and determination it took to accomplish Rafael Nadal’s most mind-blowing achievement: 14 French Open titles. Nadal has won big on tennis's many surfaces en route to becoming one of the greatest players of all time: securing two Wimbledon titles on grass and four U.S. Open titles on cushioned acrylic hardcourts. But clay, the slowest and grittiest of the game’s playgrounds, is where it all comes together best for his tactical skills, whipping topspin forehand and gladiatorial mindset. Clay is to Rafael Nadal what water is to Michael Phelps, which helps explain one of the most impressive individual sports achievements of the 21st century. Clarey draws on interviews over many years with Nadal and his team and with rivals like Roger Federer.

August 1942. When they realize the danger of remaining under the rule of the Nazi occupation, Dr. Leon Schmelzer, his wife Donya, and their baby daughter attempt to flee Romania under the cover of darkness. Joining a dozen other brave souls, they hastily board a small ship, leaving behind family, friends, and the only life they ever knew --- for a slim chance at survival. But their path to freedom does not sail over smooth waters. As endless waves threaten to drown what little hope they have, the desperate refugees find that the hatred in the hearts of men is more terrifying than any force of nature. And when they are shipwrecked and taken captive in a foreign land, Leon’s own faith and resolve are put to the ultimate test. Can he find the courage and resourcefulness to protect his wife and only daughter?