Adult

Self-educated and brown-skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother’s laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for “colored music” and dreams of life as a big city radio star. These teenaged girls are half-sisters. And when they catch wind of their wayward father’s inheritance coming down in Virginia, they hitch their hopes to a road trip together to claim what’s rightly theirs. In an old junk car, with a frying pan, a ham and a few dollars hidden in a shoe, they set off through the American Deep South of the 1950s, a bewitchingly beautiful landscape as well as one bedeviled by racial strife and violence.

Jonathan Trefoil’s boss is unhinged, his relationship baffling, and his apartment just the wrong side of legal. His girlfriend wants to marry someone just like him --- only richer and with a different sense of humor. He doesn’t remember life being this confusing, back before everyone expected him to act like a grown-up. When his brother asks him to look after his dogs, Jonathan's world view begins to shift. Could a border collie and a cocker spaniel hold the key to life, the universe and everything? Their sly maneuvering on daily walks and visits to the alluring vet suggest that human emotional intelligence may not be top dog after all.

Twenty-six archival magazine covers from 1912 to 1932, by 10 celebrated illustrators living here and abroad, take you back to a more playful and whimsical moment of boas, bows, hats and headpieces, fans, pearls and gloves, and even exotic animals. Coloring book fans of all ages can try their hand at the Art Deco patterns and letters from A to Z and the lively drawings of women dressed for the task at hand, whether it is driving their own car, pruning morning glories in the garden, feeding a dragon, steering a gondola, sitting on a crescent moon, perched on a peacock or riding a zebra --- side-saddle, of course.

Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for --- and so the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

When Michael sees his wife, Nancy, chatting with a stranger at a party, his intuition tells him that he’s watching her with the man she should have married. He quickly begins a campaign to replace himself within his own family with this other man --- who, to him, is worthier, better and kinder --- all so that Nancy and their two children can live the lives they deserve. While Michael pursues this man’s friendship, their daughter, Ryan, goes through a period of sexual awakening and rebellion, and the quiet, weak Nancy becomes increasingly befuddled and frustrated by the behaviors of her husband and daughter.

When America’s sweetheart, Charlotte “Charlie” Silver, makes a pact with the devil --- the infamously brutal tennis coach Todd Feltner --- she finds herself catapulted into a world of celebrity stylists, private parties, charity matches aboard mega-yachts, and secret dates with Hollywood royalty. Under Todd’s new ruthless regime, Charlie the good girl is out. Todd wants “Warrior Princess” Charlie all the way. Celebrity mags and gossip blogs go wild for Charlie as she jets around the globe chasing Grand Slam titles and Page Six headlines. But as the Warrior Princess’s star rises on and off the court, it comes at a cost.

Paris, 1917. The notorious dancer Mata Hari sits in a cold cell awaiting freedom…or death. Alone and despondent, she is as confused as the rest of the world about the charges she’s been arrested on: treason leading to the deaths of thousands of French soldiers. As she waits for her fate to be decided, she relays the story of her life to a reporter who is allowed to visit her in prison. Beginning with her carefree childhood, Mata Hari recounts her father’s cruel abandonment of her family as well her calamitous marriage to a military officer. Taken to the island of Java, she refuses to be ruled by her abusive husband and instead learns to dance, paving the way to her stardom as Europe’s most infamous dancer.

Deep in the jungle of Peru, where so much remains unknown, a black, skittering mass devours an American tourist whole. Thousands of miles away, an FBI agent investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Kanpur, India earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. During the same week, the Chinese government “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. As these incidents begin to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at a Washington, D.C. laboratory. The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake.

George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, almost singlehandedly decided to invade Iraq. Jean Edward Smith demonstrates that it was not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Rice, but President Bush himself who took personal control of foreign policy. Bush drew on his deep religious conviction that important foreign-policy decisions were simply a matter of good versus evil. BUSH is a comprehensive evaluation of the Bush presidency --- including Guantanamo, Katrina, No Child Left Behind and other important topics --- that will surely surprise many readers.

Kennedy --- a private airport security contractor --- knows more about airports than the head of the TSA, and he feels more comfortable in his British Airways Club World flatbed seat than in his own home. Haunted by the memory of his sister’s death on 9/11, Kennedy takes his job and the protection of the American people very seriously. So when he’s kidnapped and recruited into a CIA ghost operation known as Red Carpet, he jumps at the opportunity to become a civilian asset working with a team of some of the CIA’s best counterterrorism analysts and spec ops soldiers as they race against the clock to stop the greatest terrorist threat the United States will ever face.