Adult

When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled THE DOUBLE HELIX on her bed. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.

Ambrosia Wellington receives in the mail an invitation to her 10-year reunion, along with an anonymous note that reads “We need to talk about what we did that night.” It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past aren’t as buried as she’d believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with: larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, her former best friend, who could make anyone do anything. At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester. This person wants revenge for what they did and the damage they caused --- the extent of which Amb is only now fully understanding.

When Katharine “Kay” Swift --- the restless but loyal society wife of wealthy banker James Warburg and a serious pianist who longs for recognition --- attends a performance of Rhapsody in Blue by a brilliant, elusive young musical genius named George Gershwin, her world is turned upside down. Transfixed, she’s helpless to resist the magnetic pull of George’s talent, charm and swagger. Their 10-year love affair, complicated by her conflicted loyalty to her husband and the twists and turns of her own musical career, ends only with George’s death from a brain tumor at the age of 38.

When her body began to change at 11 years old, Melissa Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. In GIRLHOOD, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power and pleasure that women have long been taught to deny.

When her late grandfather’s dying deputy calls Mercy to his side, she and Elvis inherit the cold case that haunted him --- and may have killed him. But finding Beth Kilgore 20 years after she disappeared is more than a lost cause. It’s a Pandora’s box releasing a rain of evil on the very people Mercy and Elvis hold most dear. The timing couldn’t be worse when the man who murdered her grandfather escapes from prison and a fellow Army vet turns up claiming that Elvis is his dog, not hers. With her grandmother Patience gone missing, and Elvis’ future uncertain, Mercy faces the prospect of losing her most treasured allies, the only ones she believes truly love and understand her. She needs help, and that means forgiving Vermont Game Warden Troy Warner long enough to enlist his aid.

In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. She is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother, a Cuban immigrant named Carmen, and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbor detained by ICE. Still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, Carmen must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy. Ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left --- a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn --- have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened. Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice: They are not alone.

Caroline lives a full, happy life --- a thriving career, three feisty children, an enviable marriage, and a close-knit extended family. However, she is about to discover that her fundamental beliefs about them all are wrong. Sela lives a life in shades of gray, suffering from irreversible kidney failure. Her marriage crumbled in the wake of her illness. Her beloved mother, always her closest friend, unexpectedly passed away. She refuses to be defined by her grief, but still, she worries what will happen to her two-year-old son if she doesn’t find a donor match in time. She’s the only one who knows Caroline is her half-sister and may also be her best hope for a future. But Sela’s world isn’t as clear-cut as it appears --- and one misstep could destroy it all.

Dr. Blair Harbour, once a wealthy, respected pediatric surgeon, is now an ex-con down on her luck. She’s determined to keep her nose clean and win back custody of her son. But when her former cellmate begs for help to find her missing daughter, Blair is compelled to put her new-found freedom on the line. Detective Jessica Sanchez has always had a difficult relationship with the LAPD. And her inheritance of a multi-million-dollar mansion as a reward for catching a killer has just made her police enemy number one. It’s been 10 years since Jessica arrested Blair for cold-blooded murder. So when Jessica opens the door to the disgraced doctor late one night, she expects abuse, maybe even violence. What comes next is a plea for help.

In Tasha Alexander’s 15th Lady Emily mystery, Colin Hargreaves’ focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter’s palazzo in Florence. He and his wife, Lady Emily, travel to Tuscany where a stranger is thrown to his death from the roof onto the marble palazzo floor. Colin’s trusted colleague and fellow agent, Darius Benton-Stone, arrives to assist Colin, who insists their mission must remain top secret. Finding herself excluded from the investigation, Emily secretly launches her own clandestine inquiry into the murder, aided by her spirited and witty friend, Cécile. They soon discover that the palazzo may contain a hidden treasure dating back to the days of the Medici and the violent reign of the fanatic monk, Savonarola.