Adult

Adrift in Cambodia and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher, 28-year-old Englishman Robert Grieve decides to go missing. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future. And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events --- involving a bag of “jinxed” money, a suave American, a trunk full of heroin, a hustler taxi driver, and a rich doctor’s daughter --- that changes Robert’s life forever.

At the age of 48, Cicero is in exile, his great power sacrificed on the altar of his principles. By promising to support his political enemy, Caesar, he is granted return to Rome. There, he fights his way back to prominence. DICTATOR encompasses some of the most epic events in ancient history --- the dissolution of the Roman Republic, the murder of Pompey, the assassination of Julius Caesar. But the central problem it presents is a timeless one: how to keep political freedom unsullied by personal ambition. 

Meet the women of AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE. They wear lipstick, pearls and sunscreen, even when it’s cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies from the oven. Taking us from a haunted pre-war Manhattan apartment building to the unique initiation ritual of a book club, these 12 delightfully demented stories are a refreshing and wicked answer to the question: “What do housewives do all day?”

Ginny Carter was once a rising star in TV news, married to a top anchorman, with a three-year-old son and a full and happy life in Beverly Hills --- until her whole world dissolved in a single instant on the freeway two days before Christmas. In the aftermath, she pieces her life back together and tries to find meaning in her existence as a human rights worker in the worst areas around the globe. Then, on the anniversary of the fateful accident --- and wrestling with the lure of death herself --- she meets a boy who will cause her life to change forever yet again.

In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries --- and fails --- to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape. When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over. But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend, enemy…or something else altogether?

THE LOST TUDOR PRINCESS is the first biography of Margaret Douglas, the beautiful, cunning niece of Henry VIII of England who used her sharp intelligence and covert power to influence the succession after the death of Elizabeth I. Drawing on decades of research and myriad original sources --- including many of Margaret’s surviving letters --- Alison Weir brings this captivating character out of the shadows and presents a strong, capable woman who operated effectively and fearlessly at the very highest levels of power.

In the same year he has celebrated his hundredth birthday, Herman Wouk finally reflects on the life experiences that inspired his most beloved novels. Written with the wisdom of a man who has lived through two centuries and the wit of someone who began his career as professional comedy writer, the first part of Wouk’s memoir (“Sailor”) refers to his Navy experience and writing career, the second (“Fiddler”) to what he’s learned from living a life of faith.

Nan Lewis, a creative writing professor, hits a deer while driving home from a faculty holiday party. But when she gets out of her car to look for it, the deer is nowhere to be found. The next morning, Nan is informed that one of her students was killed in a hit-and-run the night before. And because of the damage to her car, Nan is a suspect. In the days following the accident, Nan finds herself shunned by the same community that rallied around her when her own daughter was killed in an eerily similar accident. When she begins to find disturbing tokens that recall the death of her daughter, Nan suspects that the two accidents are connected.

Four terminally ill patients have been selected for the SUBlife pilot program, which will grant them brand-new, genetically perfect bodies that are exact copies of their former selves --- without a single imperfection. But the fresh start they’ve been given is anything but perfect. Without their old bodies, their new physical identities have been lost. As each tries to re-enter their previous lives and relationships, they are faced with the question: How much of your identity rests not just in your mind, but in your heart?

Littlefield, Massachusetts, named one of the Twenty Best Places to Live in America, is full of psychologists and college professors, proud of its fine schools, girls’ soccer teams, leafy streets and quaint village center. Yet when sociologist Dr. Clarice Watkins arrived in Littlefield to study the elements of “good quality of life,” someone begins poisoning the town’s dogs. Are the poisonings in protest to an off-leash proposal for Baldwin Park --- the subject of much town debate --- or the sign of a far deeper disorder?