Adult

Art scams are so numerous today that the specter of a lawsuit arising from a mistaken attribution has scared a number of experts away from the business of authentication and forgery, and with good reason. Art scams are increasingly convincing and involve incredible sums of money. The cons perpetrated by unscrupulous art dealers and their accomplices are proportionately elaborate. Anthony M. Amore's THE ART OF THE CON tells the stories of some of history's most notorious yet untold cons.

In Kulumani, a village in present-day Mozambique, lions are killing local women, including three of the four daughters of the Mpepe family. Only 32-year-old Mariamar is left. Village elders recruit Archangel Bullseye, a hunter from Maputo who saved Mariamar from danger 16 years earlier, to end the attacks. Now, as she wonders whether or not she wants to see the hunter she once loved, Mariamar suspects that spiritual forces may be the cause of the village’s troubles.

Oscar Hijuelos was fascinated by the 37-year friendship between famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. So he began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their relationship as a starting point for a more detailed fictional account. It was a labor of love for Hijuelos, who worked on the project for more than 10 years and was still revising the manuscript the day before his sudden passing in 2013. The resulting novel blends correspondence, memoir and third-person omniscience to explore the intersection of these Victorian giants in a long-vanished world.

From the drunkenness of the Pilgrims to Prohibition hijinks, drinking has always been a cherished American custom: a way to celebrate, grieve, and take the edge off. At many pivotal points in our history, alcohol has acted as a catalyst. In DRINKING IN AMERICA, Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history.

It began in 1692 when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic.

Two-time New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly grew up on New York City's Upper West Side. He entered the police academy and served as a marine in Vietnam, living and fighting by the values that would carry him through a half century of leadership --- justice, decisiveness, integrity, courage and loyalty. In VIGILANCE, Kelly takes us inside 50 years of law enforcement leadership, offering chilling stories of terrorist plots after 9/11, and sharing his candid insights into the challenges and controversies cops face today.

The reclusive Harriet Wolf, revered author and family matriarch, has a final confession --- a love story. Years after her death, as her family comes together one last time, the mystery of Harriet's life hangs in the balance. Does the truth lie in the rumored final book of the series that made Harriet a world-famous writer, or will her final confession be lost forever? THE SEVENTH BOOK OF WONDERS offers a profound meditation on motherhood and sisterhood, as well as on the central importance of stories.

On the coast of Antibes, Sara Wiborg and Gerald Murphy built Villa America, a fragrant paradise where they invented summer on the Riviera for a group of bohemian artists and writers who became deeply entwined in each other's affairs. It was a charmed life, but these were people who kept secrets and were heartbreakingly human. When a tragic accident brings Owen, a young American aviator who fought in the Great War, to the south of France, he finds himself drawn into this flamboyant circle, and the Murphys find their world irrevocably and unexpectedly transformed.

Read by beloved Down East storyteller Tim Sample --- praised by Stephen King for his “wit and talent and good-heartedness” --- DRUNKEN FIREWORKS makes for explosive audio listening.