Adult

Thirteen years ago, Assemblyman Derrick Bell was murdered in his home by an intruder. His wife, Noelle Marshall, was left for dead. The crime was unsolved, but it wasn’t forgotten. Today the FBI is tackling a fresh perspective on the case and looking to Noelle, now a detective for the Deschutes County sheriff’s office, for new clues. It is reopening everything Noelle thought was behind her. Memories of her escape from a traumatic childhood. A marriage that wasn’t the perfect love story she’d been promised. And a husband whose charm and privilege hid a dark side. But Noelle has been hiding something too: a secret about the night Derrick died that she has never told anyone.

Almost everyone looks back on their youth and thinks, I wish I knew then what I know now. FINDING HAPPY is for young adults starting their adult journey, and for those well into theirs who have not yet sighted land. It is written by a master storyteller who learned to scale walls and blew them up rather than be stopped, and who learned in the process that our happiness flows from leaving the world a better place than we found it. Ultimately, it’s about how best to channel this glorious life we are each privileged to enjoy and to make it truly happy. The book is filled with gripping adventures and misadventures that demonstrate just how possible the seemingly impossible often is.

Lucy’s hometown of Dallas has gone from home sweet home to vicious snake pit in the blink of an eye after her son makes a mistake he can’t undo. Greta’s beloved flat in Berlin is suddenly up for grabs when her husband, Otto, takes a dream job in Texas without even telling her. In their rush to leave town, Lucy and Greta make a deal, pack their bags, and have absolutely no idea what they’re getting themselves into. Trading Southern charm and barbecue for European sophistication and schnitzel, the two women get a lot more than a change of scenery as they move into each other’s houses, neighborhoods and lives. Through jet lag, culture shock, suspiciously nice neighbors, and scandals that refuse to be left behind, Lucy and Greta will have to decide if they can ever go home again.

Audrey Fisher has struggled all her life to emerge from the shadow of her famous mother by forging a career as a world-class chef. Meredith Fisher’s glamorous screen persona disguises the trauma of the tragic accident that haunts her dreams. She has one last chance to sober up and salvage her big comeback. And where else but discreet, moneyed Winthrop Island can a famous actress spend the summer without the intrusion of other people? Until Audrey discovers an old wooden chest among the belongings of her estranged bartender father, and the astonishing contents draw the women deep into Winthrop’s past and its many secrets. How did a trove of paintings from one of America’s greatest artists wind up in the cellar of the Mohegan Inn? And who is the mysterious woman portrayed on every canvas?

Stella O'Neill is just your average millennial, working at a public library and worrying about making rent. No one would suspect she's been living under an assumed name or that she was raised in a Vermont commune of "diviners" where, as a 10-year-old, she witnessed her mother’s brutal murder --- a crime that has gone unsolved for years. But her quiet, anonymous existence is upended when a true-crime obsessive posts her current name and location on the internet. Now, Stella has to get out of Boston before her mother’s killer can find her and finish the job he started all those years ago. Fed up with living in fear, she heads to the off-the-grid retreat of her childhood to confront her mother’s unhinged guru who controlled their lives for so long.

1957. Isabella Giori is 10 months into a standard seven-year studio contract when she auditions with Alfred Hitchcock. Just weeks later, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a tiny Carmel cottage, waiting and dreading. Meanwhile, next door, Léon Chazan is annoyed when Iz interrupts his work on yet another screenplay he won’t be able to sell, because he’s been blacklisted. Soon, they’re together in his roadster, speeding down the fog-shrouded Big Sur coast. 2018. Twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan, in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, finds a hidden safe full of secrets --- raising questions about who the screenwriter known simply as Chazan really was, and if she can live up to his name. 

At a party near Stanford University’s campus in 1917, Cora Trent, a graduate student raised in the rugged mining towns of the American West, meets Indra Mukherjee, an Indian revolutionary newly arrived in California. Indra is grieving the recent loss of a friend and unsure of the place violence has in the cause of national liberation, while Cora is seeking a new life that stays true to her aspirations as a writer and an idealist. They spark an instant connection and eventually marry, even as the United States is drawn into the conflict in Europe and wartime patriotism begins to give way to increasing intolerance. When news of arrests threatens their future together, they are forced to flee to New York City with the hope that they can avoid the attention of the British and American authorities. 

SONGS OF NO PROVENANCE tells the story of Joan Vole, an indie folk singer forever teetering on the edge of fame, who flees New York after committing a shocking sexual act onstage that she fears will doom her career. Joan seeks refuge at a writing camp for teenagers in rural Virginia, where she's forced to question her own toxic relationship to artmaking --- and her complicated history with a friend and mentee --- while finding new hope in her students and a deepening intimacy with a nonbinary artist and fellow camp staff member.

After Bridget Crocker’s parents’ volatile divorce, she moved with her mother from Southern California to Wyoming. Her life was idyllic, growing up in a trailer park on the banks of the Snake River --- until her mother suddenly took up a radical new lifestyle. The one constant in her life, the place Bridget felt whole and fully herself, was the river. When she discovered the world of whitewater rafting, she knew she’d found her calling. On the river, Bridget learned to read the natural world around her and came to know the language of rivers. One of the few female guides on the Snake River, she then traveled to the Zambezi River in Africa, some of the most dangerous whitewater in the world, where she faced death and learned to conquer her fears --- both on the water and off.

In 1965 America, women can’t have their own bank accounts, credit cards, or sign their own leases; divorce is scandalous and difficult; and abortion is illegal. Every week, a group of suburban housewives meet for their Tuesday canasta game. When prim and proper Lily Berg, a doctor’s wife, discovers she’s pregnant with their second child, she follows her friend Becca’s suggestion and takes in Betsy, a pregnant teen from the local home for unwed mothers. Betsy, who’s never met anyone Jewish before, is to live with the Bergs for six months, help with babysitting and housekeeping, have her own baby, and agree never to contact the family again. But things quickly get complicated. Lily, who has opened her home to the teenager, never planned on opening her heart, yet that’s exactly what happens.