Adult

Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she also might miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family. How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope.

Fifteen-year-old equestrian prodigy Roan Montgomery has only ever known two worlds: inside the riding arena, and outside of it. Both, for as long as she can remember, have been ruled by her father, who demands strict obedience in all areas of her life. The warped power dynamic of coach and rider extends far beyond the stables, and Roan's relationship with her father has long been inappropriate. She has been able to compartmentalize that dark aspect of her life, ruthlessly focusing on her ambitions as a rider heading for the Olympics, just as her father had done. However, her developing relationship with Will Howard, a boy her own age, broadens the scope of her vision.

Tom Stoppard is a towering and beloved literary figure. Known for his dizzying narrative inventiveness and intense attention to language, he deftly deploys art, science, history, politics and philosophy in works that span a remarkable spectrum of literary genres: theater, radio, film, TV, journalism and fiction. His most acclaimed creations --- "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," "The Real Thing," "Arcadia," "The Coast of Utopia," "Shakespeare in Love" --- remain as fresh and moving as when they entranced their first audiences. Hermione Lee's absorbing biography seamlessly weaves Stoppard's life and work together into a vivid, insightful and always riveting portrait of a remarkable man.

As the US enters the Second World War, college graduate Aline Griffith is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes. Aline’s life changes when, at a dinner party, she meets a man named Frank Ryan and reveals how desperately she wants to do her part for her country. Within a few weeks, he helps her join the Office of Strategic Services --- forerunner of the CIA. With a code name and expert training under her belt, she is sent to Spain to be a coder, but is soon given the additional assignment of infiltrating the upper echelons of society, mingling with high-ranking officials, diplomats and titled Europeans, any of whom could be an enemy agent.

Rebecca and Brian Unsworth appear to have it all: a nice house in the suburbs of Washington, DC, two well-behaved, healthy teenage children, and important government jobs. However, their marriage isn’t as perfect as it seems. After two decades together, they’ve drifted apart, talking little and having sex even less. Seeking to revive their strained relationship, they decide for their 20th wedding anniversary to take their two kids, Kira and Tony, on a European getaway. They have a blast…until one night in Barcelona when Kira doesn’t come home from a dance club. She’s gone. Abducted. Over the course of a single weekend, the Unsworths will do everything possible to find her --- as Kira herself discovers just how far she’ll go to break free of the trap that’s been set for her.

In Asbury Park, New Jersey, 10-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured for the first time. Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces --- religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics and America’s Jim Crow racial violence.

Rachel is 24, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, through obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting --- until her therapist encourages her to take a 90-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Rachel soon meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam, and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk and honey.

When the Wilde family moves to the suburbs of Long Island, they trigger their neighbors’ worst fears. Dad Arlo is a gruff has-been rock star with track marks. Mom Gertie has a thick Brooklyn accent, with high heels and tube tops to match. Their weird kids cuss like sailors. They don’t fit with the way Maple Street sees itself. Though Maple Street’s Queen Bee, Rhea Schroeder, welcomed Gertie and her family at first, relations went south during one spritzer-fueled summer evening, when the new best friends shared too much. The Wildes are now outcasts. As tensions mount, a sinkhole opens in a nearby park, and Rhea’s daughter Shelly falls inside. The search for Shelly brings a shocking accusation against the Wildes.

Rebecca Carroll grew up the only Black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic --- and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young white woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her Blackness and self-esteem. Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity.

MASTER OF THE REVELS picks up where THE RISE AND FALL OF D.O.D.O. left off, as Tristan Lyons, Mel Stokes and their fellow outcasts from the Department of Diachronic Operations (D.O.D.O.) fight to stop the powerful Irish witch Gráinne from using time travel to reverse the evolution of all modern technology. Chief amongst Gráinne’s plots: to encrypt cataclysmic spells into Shakespeare’s “cursed” play, “Macbeth.” When her fellow rogue agents fall victim to Gráinne’s schemes, Mel is forced to send Tristan’s untested, wayward sister Robin back in time to 1606 London, where Edmund Tilney, the king’s Master of Revels, controls all staged performances in London. And now Gráinne controls Tilney.