Adult

In 2004, as Pope John Paul II’s reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome. That same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator’s research partner, Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic priest who lives inside the Vatican with his five-year-old son. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in either crime, Father Alex undertakes his own investigation.

As World War I escalated, Germany forever altered the way war would be fought. On April 22, 1915, German canisters spewed poison gas at French and Canadian soldiers in their trenches; on May 7, the German submarine U-20 torpedoed the passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 civilians; and on May 31, a German Zeppelin began the first aerial bombardment of London and its inhabitants. While each of these momentous events has been chronicled in histories of the war, celebrated historian Diana Preston links them for the first time.

The idea of world leaders gathering in the midst of economic crisis has become all too familiar. But the meeting at Bretton Woods in 1944 was different. It was the only time countries from around the world have agreed to overhaul the structure of the international monetary system. Against all odds, they were successful. The system they set up presided over the longest, strongest and most stable period of growth the world economy has ever seen.

Patrick J. Sloyan, a young wire-service reporter during the Kennedy administration, revisits the last year of JFK’s presidency to reveal a ruthless politician. As the president prepared for his 1964 reelection bid that never was, he buried the truth and manipulated public opinion. Using Kennedy’s secret recordings of crucial White House meetings and interviews with key inside players, Sloyan offers a revelatory look into a JFK that few will recognize.

Beginning with a crazy plan hatched by a suspect prince, and an even crazier reliance on the word of the Nazis, Operation Chowhound was devised. Between May 1 and May 8, 1945, 2,268 military units flown by the USAAF dropped food to 3.5 million starving Dutch civilians in German-occupied Holland. Author Stephen Dando-Collins takes the reader into the rooms where Operation Chowhound was born, into the aircraft flying the mission, and onto the ground in the Netherlands with the civilians who so desperately needed help.

Beryl Markham's unconventional upbringing transforms her into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature’s delicate balance. But when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships. Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set. But it’s the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart.

Historian David O. Stewart restores James Madison, sometimes overshadowed by his fellow Founders, to his proper place as the most significant framer of the new nation. Short, plain, balding, neither soldier nor orator, low on charisma and high on intelligence, Madison cared more about achieving results than taking the credit. To reach his lifelong goal of a self-governing constitutional republic, he blended his talents with those of key partners.

The very roughness of Lincoln's appearance made him seem all the more common, one of us ---- as did his sense of humor about his own awkward physical nature. Nineteenth-century African Americans felt deep affection for their "liberator" as a "homely" man who did not hold himself apart. During Reconstruction, Southerners felt a nostalgia for the humility of Lincoln, whom they envisioned as a "conciliator." Later, teachers glorified Lincoln as a symbol of nationhood that would appeal to poor immigrants.

From the life of John James Audubon to the invention of the atomic bomb, readers have long relied on Richard Rhodes to explain, distill and dramatize crucial moments in history. Now, he takes us into battlefields and bomb shelters, into the studios of artists, into the crowded wards of war hospitals, and into the hearts and minds of a rich cast of characters to show how the ideological, aesthetic and technological developments that emerged in Spain changed the world forever.

For decades, Ethel Lois Payne (the “First Lady of the Black Press”) has been hidden in the shadows of history. Now, James McGrath Morris skillfully illuminates this ambitious, influential and groundbreaking woman’s life --- from her childhood growing up in South Chicago to her career as a journalist and network news commentator, reporting on some of the most crucial events in modern American history.