Adult

TONG WARS is historical true crime set against the perfect landscape: Tammany-era New York City. Representatives of rival tongs (secret societies) corner the various markets of sin using admirably creative strategies. The city government was already corrupt from top to bottom, so once one tong began taxing the gambling dens and paying off the authorities, a rival, jealously eyeing its lucrative franchise, co-opted a local reformist group to help eliminate it. Pretty soon Chinese were slaughtering one another in the streets, inaugurating a succession of wars that raged for the next 30 years.

Acclaimed Texas historian Stephen L. Moore’s new narrative history --- the official nonfiction companion to the History Channel's dramatic series "Texas Rising" (created by the same team that made the ratings record-breaker "Hatfields & McCoys") --- tells the full, thrilling story of the Texas Revolution from its humble beginnings to its dramatic conclusion, and reveals the contributions of the fabled Texas Rangers --- both during the revolution and in the frontier Indian wars that followed.

As Allied ships prepared for the invasion of the Philippine island of Leyte, every available warship, submarine and airplane was placed on alert while Japanese admiral Kurita Takeo stalked Admiral William F. Halsey’s unwitting American armada. It was the beginning of the epic Battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest naval battle in history. In STORM OVER LEYTE, acclaimed historian John Prados gives readers an unprecedented look at both sides of this titanic naval clash, demonstrating that, despite the Americans’ overwhelming superiority in firepower and supplies, the Japanese achieved their goal, inflicting grave damage on U.S. forces.

As the crack epidemic swept across inner-city America in the early 1980s, the streets of Baltimore were crime ridden. But basketball could provide the quickest ticket out, an opportunity to earn a college scholarship and perhaps even play in the NBA. Dunbar High School had one of the most successful basketball programs, not only in Baltimore but in the entire country. In the early 1980s, the Dunbar Poets were arguably the best high school team of all time. Four starting players would eventually play in the NBA, an unheard-of success rate. In THE BOYS OF DUNBAR, Alejandro Danois takes us through the 1981-1982 season with the Poets as the team conquered all its opponents.

After meeting the Llewelyn Davies family in London's Kensington Garden, J.M. Barrie struck up an intense friendship with the children and their parents. The innocence of Michael, the fourth of five brothers, went on to influence the creation of Barrie's most famous character, Peter Pan. Barrie was so close to the family that he became trustee and guardian to the boys following the deaths of their parents. Although the relationship between the boys and Barrie was enduring, it was punctuated by the fiercest of tragedies. Throughout the heart-rending saga of Barrie's involvement with the Llewelyn Davies brothers, it is the figure of Michael --- the most original and inspirational of their number, and yet also the one whose fate is most pitiable --- that stands out.

Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor and originality found in his songs. BORN TO RUN will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed the Boss, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll.

In 1993, Thomas Harding traveled to Germany with his grandmother to visit a small house by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. It had been her “soul place,” she said --- a holiday home for her and her family, but also a refuge --- until the 1930s, when the Nazis’ rise to power forced them to leave. The trip was his grandmother’s chance to remember her childhood sanctuary as it was. But the house had changed, and when Harding returned nearly 20 years later, it was about to be demolished. Slowly he began to piece together the lives of the five families who had lived there: a wealthy landowner, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned composer, a widow and her children, and a Stasi informant. All had made the house their home, and all but one had been forced out.

Dr. George Baylor, the serial killer who escaped after murdering three coeds in LA, resurfaces on the East Coast. This time, an entire family has been slaughtered in their home outside Philadelphia, and the doctor’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene. With panic rising, the FBI seeks LAPD detective Matt Jones’ help, and the hunt for this brutal mass killer is on. But so is the hunt for the man who paid to have Jones shot. When a second family is found murdered, the search for the killer becomes frantic, and Jones’ shocking personal history explodes before his eyes.

Former NYPD star homicide detective Dave Gurney is called upon to solve a baffling puzzle: Four people who live in different parts of the country and who seem to have little in common report having had the same dream --- a terrifying nightmare involving a bloody dagger with a carved wolf’s head on the handle. All four are subsequently found with their wrists cut  --- apparent suicides --- and the weapon used in each case was a wolf’s head dagger. Troubled by odd holes in the official approach to the case, Gurney begins his own investigation --- an action that puts him in the crosshairs of not only an icy murderer and the local police but the darkest corner of the federal government.