Adult

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he’s fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore’s romance hotline, that’s a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and "Heartstrings" into the limelight. Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life --- or lack thereof --- she begins to question if she’s as happy as she believed. Maybe a little more romance wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending…even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final decision between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.

In 1480, the arrival of a well-dressed stranger from London upends John Collan’s life forever. John is not John Collan, the son of Will Collan, but Lambert Simnel, the son of the long-deceased Duke of Clarence. Lambert has been hidden in the countryside after a brotherly rift over the crown --- and because Richard III has a habit of making his nephews disappear. He is removed from his humble origins and sent to Oxford to be educated in a manner befitting the throne’s rightful heir. There he encounters the intractable Joan, the delightfully strong-willed daughter of his Irish patrons, who is imbued with both extraordinary political savvy and occasional murderous tendencies. Together Lambert and Joan form an alliance that will change the fate of the English monarchy.

So, who’s the best of 'em all? Tiger Woods? Jack Nicklaus? Bobby Jones? Ben Hogan? Golf fans will disagree until the end of time, but one thing is certain: For well over 100 years, the sport has provided its share of spectacular careers and indelible moments. And what about fan favorites such as Phil Mickelson, Nancy Lopez and Lee Trevino? Where do they rank on the list? Or modern players like Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth, Nelly Korda and Justin Thomas. Did they make the final cut --- and if so, where? In a joyride through golf history itself, Michael Arkush establishes a ranking system that places a heavy emphasis on the game’s major championships and profiles the most accomplished and impactful golfers ever --- men and women, known and unknown.

The first 21 months of the American Revolution --- which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton --- was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world’s most formidable fighting force. Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king’s task is now far more complicated. Fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans. Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the Revolution.

Throughout her life, Sybil Van Antwerp has used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past 10, Sybil sits down to write letters --- to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter. Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

The word atavism, coined by a botanist and popularized by a criminologist, refers to the resurfacing of a primitive evolutionary trait or urge in a modern being. This inventive collection from Lydia Millet offers overlapping tales of urges ranging from rage to jealousy to yearning. The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced that her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel’s fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard. As they pick away at the splitting seams in American culture, Millet’s characters shimmer with the sense of powerlessness we share in an era of mass overwhelm.

Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah’s help. Laboring in the warmth of a Scottish summer, Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough --- and then things go terribly wrong. Joe Mungo Reed’s novel expands from this extraordinary event, drawing together the stories of four lives reckoning with what it means to take fate into their own hands, moving from the last days of civilization on Earth through the birth of another on Mars.

After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into a man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles, and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy --- until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her.

Two-time Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner was the second most googled person in 2023…and not for his impressive filmography. On New Year’s Day 2023, a 14,000-pound snowplow crushed him. Somehow able to keep breathing for more than half an hour, he was subsequently rushed to the ICU, after which he would face multiple surgeries and months of painful rehabilitation. In MY NEXT BREATH, Jeremy writes in blistering detail about his accident and the aftermath. This retelling is not merely a gruesome account of what happened to him; it’s a call to action and a forged companionship between reader and author as Jeremy recounts his recovery journey and reflects on the impact of his suffering.

National Park Service investigator Michael Walker is battling smugglers stealing priceless artifacts when he’s dispatched to Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, where a team of scientists has gone missing. Meanwhile, in Florida’s Everglades National Park, FBI special investigator Gina Delgado traces the murder of an environmental science intern back to another U.S. Geological Survey team’s ongoing experiments that are decimating the fragile ecosystem. That is before she’s dispatched to the scene of a sunken U.S. nuclear submarine, the entire crew of which has been inexplicably killed. The connection between these disparate investigations lies in a deadly prehistoric organism, frozen for thousands of years in the ice until global warming brings it back to life in what could mean the death of all life on Earth.