Adult

Flora Fraser provides us with a brilliant account of the public George Washington and of the war he waged, and gives us, as well, the domestic Washingtons, whether at Mount Vernon before and during the war or in New York and Philadelphia during his presidency. This is a remarkable story of a remarkable pair as well as a gripping narrative of the birth of a nation --- a major, and vastly appealing, contribution to the literature of our founding fathers…and founding mother.

At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul --- an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city --- people were looking toward an uncertain future. In beguiling prose and rich character portraits, Charles King brings to life a remarkable era when a storied city stumbled into the modern world and reshaped the meaning of cosmopolitanism.

Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her “weak and feeble woman’s body” to do so for political gain. But in ELIZABETH, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia and Turkey, Hilton’s fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince and used Machiavellian statecraft to secure that position.

November 1942: Japanese and American forces have been fighting for control of Guadalcanal, a small but pivotal island in Japan’s expansion through the South Pacific. Both sides have endured months of grueling battle under the worst circumstances. The Japanese call Guadalcanal Jigoku no Jima --- Hell's Island. A remarkable story of grit, guts and heroism, THE BATTLE FOR HELL’S ISLAND reveals how command of the South Pacific, and the outcome of the Pacific War, depended on control of a single dirt airstrip --- and the small group of battle-weary aviators sent to protect it with their lives.

Caleb Maddox is a San Francisco toxicologist studying the chemical effects of pain. He’s out drinking after a bad breakup when a hauntingly seductive woman sits down at his side. He talks to Emmeline over absinthe, but their encounter is fleeting. She brushes her lips on his ear and disappears. He must find her. As Caleb scours the city, he begins helping the city’s medical examiner with a serial-murder investigation. Soon the search for the killer entwines with Caleb’s hunt for Emmeline, and the closer he gets to each, the more dangerous his world becomes.

Giving voice to the voiceless, the Chicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott founded The Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a "Modern Moses," becoming one of the first black millionaires in the process. Drawing on dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, Ethan Michaeli brings to life the reporters who braved lynch mobs and policemen’s clubs to do their jobs.

When private investigator Cal Weaver looks into a break-in at the home of a recently deceased man, he uncovers far more than he is prepared for after he finds a hidden room that was used for salacious activities. Detective Barry Duckworth is doggedly trying to solve two murders, one of which is three years old. He believes the killings are connected, since each featured a similar distinctive wound. And the key to his mystery may lie with Cal Weaver’s own case. As the lies begin to unravel, and another murder occurs, Cal and Barry find themselves headed straight into the heart of dark secrets as they uncover more startling truths about Promise Falls.

Trying his best to weasel out of an appointment with the neurologist his only child, Máire, has cornered him into, the poet Thomas Murphy contemplates his sunset years. Máire worries that Murph is losing his memory, while Murph wonders what to do with the rest of his life. Into his world comes the lovely Sarah, a blind woman less than half his age, who sees into his heart as he sees into hers. Brought together under the most unlikely circumstance, Murph and Sarah begin in friendship and wind up in impossible possible love.

In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets Elihu Hoopes --- the “man without a shadow” --- whose devastated memory, unable to store new experiences or to retrieve the old, will make him the most famous and studied amnesiac in history. Over the course of the next 30 years, Margot herself becomes famous for her experiments with E. H. --- and inadvertently falls in love with him, despite the ethical ambiguity of their affair. Though he remains forever elusive and mysterious to her, she is haunted by mysteries of the past.

When Jack Morgan stops by Private's Paris office, he envisions a quick hello during an otherwise relaxing trip. But he is quickly pressed into duty after getting a call from his client, Sherman Wilkerson, asking him to track down his young granddaughter, who is on the run from a brutal drug dealer. Before Jack can locate her, several members of France's cultural elite are found murdered in stunning, symbolic fashion. The only link between the crimes is a mysterious graffiti tag. As religious and ethnic tensions simmer in the City of Lights, only Jack and his Private team can connect the dots before the smoldering powder keg explodes.