Adult

Ali Reynolds’ longtime friend and Taser-carrying nun, Sister Anselm, rushes to the bedside of a young pregnant woman hospitalized for severe injuries after she was hit by a car on a deserted Arizona highway. The girl had been running away from The Family, a polygamous cult with no patience for those who try to leave its ranks. Something about her strikes a chord in Sister Anselm, reminding her of a case she worked years before when another young girl wasn’t so lucky.

Nearly 25 years ago, Nicholson Baker published U AND I, the groundbreaking tale of his literary relationship with John Updike. U AND I inspired a whole sub-genre of engaging, entertaining writing about reading, but what no story of this type has ever done is tell its tale from the moment of conception, that moment when you realize that there is a writer out there in the world who you must read. B & ME is that story, the story of J.C. Hallman discovering and reading Nicholson Baker --- and discovering himself in the process.

Andrew Morton tells the story of the feckless Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor; his American wife, Wallis Simpson; and the bizarre wartime Nazi plot to make him a puppet king after the invasion of Britain and the attempted cover-up by Churchill, General Eisenhower and King George VI of the duke's relations with Hitler. From the alleged affair between Simpson and the German foreign minister to the discovery of top secret correspondence about the man dubbed "the traitor king" and the Nazi high command, 17 CARNATIONS is a saga of intrigue, betrayal and deception.

Famed detective and mystery writer Lawrence Block takes the helm as guest editor for DARK CITY LIGHTS, the fourth edition of the Have a NYC series. Here are 23 thrilling, hilarious and poignant short stories --- all based in New York City --- written by new and acclaimed fiction masters, including Robert Silverberg, Ed Park, Jim Fusilli, Parnell Hall, SJ Rozan, Brian Koppelman, Elaine Kagan and more. Additional authors include Thomas Pluck, Warren Moore, Erin Mitchell and Tom Callahan.

A powerful historical novel by the late Ariana Franklin and her daughter, Samantha Norman, THE SIEGE WINTER is a tour de force mystery and murder, adventure and intrigue, a battle for a crown, told by two courageous young women whose fates are intertwined in 12th-century England’s devastating civil war.

Alice is a young woman living on her father-in-law’s farm on the edge of an Australian country town, while her husband is held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian anarchist at the prisoner-of-war camp down the road, is assigned to work on the farm, she hopes that being kind to him will somehow influence her husband’s treatment. What she doesn’t anticipate is how dramatically Giancarlo will expand her outlook and self-knowledge.

Twin boys grow up in the same family and in the same town. Dramatically different, they become bitter enemies, even as children. One leaves his peaceful hometown, but when all else fails, the prodigal son returns 20 years later. The reunion of brothers, sweet and healing at first, exposes shattering revelations of good and evil. Danielle Steel tells a story of suspicion, betrayal and a life-and-death struggle for survival. Which twin is good and which is evil, as the tables turn again and again?

When Harry Clifton visits his publisher in New York, he learns that he has been elected as the new president of English PEN, and immediately launches a campaign for the release of a fellow author, Anatoly Babakov, who's imprisoned in Siberia. Babakov's crime? Writing a book called Uncle Joe, a devastating insight into what it was like to work for Stalin. So determined is Harry to see Babakov released and the book published that he puts his own life in danger.

A hundred years after her sinking, Lusitania remains an evocative ship of mystery. Was she carrying munitions that exploded? Did Winston Churchill engineer a conspiracy that doomed the liner? Lost amid these tangled skeins is the romantic, vibrant and finally heartrending tale of the passengers who sailed aboard her. Authors Greg King and Penny Wilson resurrect this lost, glittering world to show the golden age of travel and illuminate the most prominent of Lusitania’s passengers.

Jonathan Lethem’s third collection of stories uncovers a father’s nervous breakdown at SeaWorld; a foundling child rescued from the woods during a blizzard; a political prisoner in a hole in a Brooklyn street; and a crumbling, haunted “blog” on a seaside cliff. As in his novels, Lethem finds the uncanny lurking in the mundane, the irrational self-defeat seeping through our upstanding pursuits, and the tragic undertow of the absurd world(s) in which we live.