Adult

When Jenny Weston moves home to Bear Falls, Michigan, she’s faced with the ultimate mystery after her mother’s library is destroyed. The next door neighbor, Zoe Zola suspects local curmudgeon Adam Cane, but when he’s suddenly found dead in Zoe’s fairy garden, all roads lead back to her. Jenny believes Zoe is innocent, and the two team up to find the true culprit.

When ex–military contractor John Knox receives a text from partner Grace Chu warning that she fears her cover may have been blown while on assignment, he jumps into action. Knox must locate her overseas handlers, convince them of the threat, and then try to retrace the well-hidden steps of a woman who had been attempting to determine how one million euros’ worth of AIDS vaccine disappeared, all while eluding angry poachers on a parallel trail. As the threat from Al-Shaabab militants interferes with his pursuit of Grace, Knox finds himself pitted against the most savage and suicidal fighters in the world.

New Yorkers Michael, a famous writer, and Lizzie, a journalist, travel to Italy with their friends from Maine --- Finn; his wife, Taylor; and their daughter, Snow. “From the beginning,” says Taylor, “it was a conspiracy for Lizzie and Finn to be together.” Told Rashomon-style in alternating points of view, the characters expose and stumble upon lies and infidelities past and present. Snow, 10 years old and precociously drawn into a far more adult drama, becomes the catalyst for catastrophe as the novel explores collusion and betrayal in marriage.

Are you trying to do this mothering thing alone? Are you so focused on the kids that you’re hungry for friendships of your own? Do you have great friendships that you want to make even better? Jill Savage, mother of five, knows those challenges well, and she’s here to help. Presenting a compelling vision of motherhood as a group effort among friends, BETTER TOGETHER shows how you can combat isolation, increase your social confidence, deepen your friendships, strengthen trust and increase your joy.

History remembers Robert F. Kennedy as a racial healer, a tribune for the poor, and the last progressive knight of a bygone era of American politics. But Kennedy’s enshrinement in the liberal pantheon was actually the final stage of a journey that had its beginnings in the conservative 1950s. Larry Tye peels away layers of myth and misconception to paint a complete portrait of this singularly fascinating figure. To capture the full arc of his subject’s life, Tye draws on unpublished memoirs, unreleased government files and 58 boxes of papers that had been under lock and key for the past 40 years.

Adam Knox runs a clinic near Los Angeles’s Skid Row, making ends meet by making house calls on those too famous or too criminal to seek other medical care. When a young boy is abandoned at his clinic, Knox is determined to find the boy’s family and save him from the not-so-tender mercies of the child welfare bureaucracy. But Knox’s search for the volatile woman who may or may not be the boy’s mother leads him and his friend, a former Special Forces operator, into a labyrinth of human traffickers, Russian mobsters and corporate security thugs; and squarely into the sights of a powerful, secretive and utterly ruthless family that threatens to destroy Dr. Knox and everything --- and everyone --- he holds dear.

Inspired by antique photographs, these five short stories capture the surprising intersections of love and friendship that alter life's journeys. In “Angels in Italy,” childhood friends learn the enduring power of a first love. “Sister Flora's First Day of Freedom” introduces us to a young nun who makes a difficult decision to leave the sisterhood and finds delightful new riches in the big city of Edinburgh. "Dear Ventriloquist” tells of a mishap at a Canadian circus that sparks unexpected magic between a gifted puppeteer and a dapper lion tamer. Changing a tire changes the life of a young Irish teacher in “The Woman with the Beautiful Car.” And a young New Zealander learns what matters in life from his grandfather, a WWII veteran, in “He Wanted to Believe in Tenderness."

Natalie is a Bloomingdale’s salesgirl mooning over her ex-boyfriend; Felicia has been quietly in love with her boss for 17 years; and Andie is a cynical private detective who specializes in cheating husbands. For these three women, as well as many others --- a young model fresh from Alabama, a Hollywood star making her Broadway debut, an unemployed Brown grad who’s been faking a fabulous life on social media --- everything is about to change...and all thanks to the power of one perfect little black dress.

In 1917, in that sliver of border land between Georgia and Alabama, Pearl Jewett ekes out an existence as a dispossessed farmer along with his three criminally-minded sons: Cane, Cob and Chimney. Hundreds of miles away, another farming family, the good-natured Fiddlers, have been swindled out of their family fortune while reeling from the disappearance of their son Eddie, who left to fight the Germans. When a crime spree sets the Jewetts on a collision course for the Fiddlers, an unlikely --- and turbulent --- relationship begins between the families.

Daniel Sullivan leads a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and his wife, Claudette, is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Together, they have made an idyllic life in the country, but a secret from Daniel’s past threatens to destroy their meticulously constructed and fiercely protected home.