Adult

On October 26, 1881, Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and 30 bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt. Wyatt Earp was the last man standing, the only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke cleared, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West.

Molly Murphy Sullivan’s husband, Daniel, a captain in the New York City police force, is chasing a murderer whose victims have nothing in common --- except for the taunting notes that are delivered to him after each murder. And when Daniel receives a note immediately after Molly and her young son, Liam, are in a terrible train crash, Daniel and Molly both begin to fear that maybe Molly herself was the target.

Death sets the plot of DARK ROOMS in motion: the murder of 16-year-old Nica Baker. The crime is quickly solved --- a lonely classmate, unrequited love, a suicide note confession --- but memory and instinct won’t allow Nica’s older sister, Grace, to accept the case as closed. Dropping out of college and living at home, working at the moneyed and progressive private high school from which she recently graduated, Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with identifying and punishing the real killer.

The ties of family make for uncomfortable binds in Thomas McGuane’s first short story collection in nine years. A devoted son is horrified to discover his mother’s antics before she slipped into dementia. A father’s outdoor skills are no match for an ominous change in the weather. But complications arise equally in the absence of blood, as when lifelong friends on a fishing trip finally confront their deep dislike for each other. Or when a gifted traveling cattle breeder succumbs to the lure of a stranger’s offer of easy money.

Jenny is a successful family doctor, the mother of three great teenagers and married to a celebrated neurosurgeon. But when her youngest child, 15-year-old Naomi, doesn’t come home after her school play, Jenny’s seemingly ideal life begins to crumble. More than a year after her daughter’s disappearance, Jenny is still digging for answers --- and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she has trusted, everyone she thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on lampposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Both playful and seductive, THE NIGHT CIRCUS, Erin Morgenstern’s spell-casting debut, is a mesmerizing love story for the ages.

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early 40s, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. What lies behind Pagford’s pretty façade is a town at war. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

What comes next? What comes after the devastating loss of Abigail Thomas’ husband, a process both sudden and slow? What form does her lifelong platonic friendship take after a certain line is crossed? How to cope with her daughter’s diagnosed illness? Or the death of her beloved dog? And how to like it? How to accept, appreciate, enjoy? Who are our most trusted, valuable companions, and what will we do for them?

After Henry's girlfriend, Val, leaves him and transfers to another school, his grief begins to manifest itself in bizarre and horrifying ways. After weeks of sleepless nights and sick delusions, Henry decides to run away and find Val. Once on the George Washington Bridge, however, a powerful hallucination knocks him out cold. When he awakens, he finds out that he has been kidnapped by two strangers who claim to be future versions of himself.

In 1893, Sherlock Holmes and Henry James come to America together to solve the mystery of the 1885 death of Clover Adams. Holmes has faked his own death because he has come to the conclusion that he is a fictional character. This leads to serious complications for James. If his esteemed fellow investigator is merely a work of fiction, what does that make him? And what can the master storyteller do to fight against the sinister power that may or may not be controlling them from the shadows?