Adult

FROG opens with a playwright nicknamed Tadpole, who plans to write about his aunt. In her youth, Gugu --- the beautiful daughter of a famous doctor and staunch Communist --- is revered for her skill as a midwife. But when her lover defects, Gugu’s own loyalty to the Party is questioned. She decides to prove her allegiance by strictly enforcing the one-child policy, keeping tabs on the number of children in the village, and performing abortions on women as many as eight months pregnant.

Set in 1960s London, FUNNY GIRL is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingénue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters. Insightful and humorous, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny, if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process.

Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men --- John Chatterton and John Mattera --- are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. Soon, however, they realize that cutting-edge technology and a willingness to lose everything aren’t enough to track down Bannister’s ship. They must travel the globe in search of historic documents and accounts of the great pirate’s exploits, face down dangerous rivals, and battle the tides of nations, governments and experts.

Anna had been living a normal life until she started developing worrying symptoms: her face felt like it was burning whenever she was in front of the computer. Soon this progressed to an intolerance of fluorescent light, then of sunlight itself. The reaction soon spread to her entire body. Now, when her symptoms are at their worst, she must spend months on end in a blacked-out room. In GIRL IN THE DARK, Anna brings us into the dark with her, a place from which we emerge to see love, and the world, anew.

On a sprawling estate on the coast of Rhode Island, at the nation’s oldest and most prestigious think tank, an unfathomable tragedy takes place. No one knows what to make of the disturbing evidence left behind. Then reports begin to surface of increasingly bizarre behavior among the organization’s distinguished scientists. Called upon to investigate these strange happenings, history professor and analyst of inexplicable phenomena Jeremy Logan comes across an ingeniously concealed room in a long-dormant wing of the mansion. What he discovers within may provide answers --- and, in the process, unleash a new wave of catastrophe.

Aurore Dupin leaves her estranged husband, a loveless marriage, and her family’s estate in the French countryside to start a new life in Paris. There, she gives herself a new name --- George Sand --- and pursues her dream of becoming a writer, embracing an unconventional and even scandalous lifestyle. Though considered the most gifted genius of her time, she works to reconcile the pain of her childhood, of disturbing relationships with her mother and daughter, and of her intimacies with women and men.

The sinking of the Lusitania is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. DEAD WAKE brings to life a cast of evocative characters --- from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.

Kazuo Ishiguro, one of the best novelists working today, is also one of the most surprising. He has written drawing-room novels, dystopian fiction, surrealist works, and now a post-Arthurian tale of knights and ogres, of elderly villagers searching for their long-lost son, and of a she-dragon rumored to be the cause of a mist of forgetfulness that has plagued the land. As in past books, Ishiguro uses his story to meditate on memory and loss.

Abby and Red Whitshank, and their four grown children, have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the 21st century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.