Adult

At 66 years old, Winston Kemper has always been a nonentity. No one notices him. His simple existence barely registers for those who come into contact with him. Winston is a collector of voices, and his magnum opus --- The Butterfly Girls --- is a sprawling epic of untapped imagination. It has no single canvas, no particular frame. It is everywhere: scribbled on the walls, the floor and countless notebooks. Winston is creating a fantasia that exists in words, images and blood. As part of his “art,” he has been murdering forgotten women. Poor souls who slip through the cracks of society, who no one is looking for. Winston takes their lives, their voices. But now he can hear them. They whisper to him. They talk of revenge. Winston might not believe in ghosts, but he is about to learn they are very real. And they are very, very angry.

Anne of Brittany was a child when France invaded and drove her royal father to his death. Now she is a young woman and France means to crown their conquest by marrying her to their king. Anne refuses to be the last duchess of Brittany, so she arranges a secret betrothal to Charles of France’s greatest rival. But secrets are hard to keep in a world where rival courts spy on each other with diviners. The forest of Brocéliande was once the haunt of Merlin the Enchanter and the long-lost faerie queen. But magic is long gone from Broceliande, except for the occasional sight of a unicorn and one critical quirk: This ancient forest is completely hostile to divination. While pretending compliance with France, Anne plans a unicorn hunt in Brocéliande. A bit of pointless pageantry. A diversion so she can wed in secret. Or so she thinks.

THE WINDSOR AFFAIR recreates the cataclysmic events that nearly toppled the monarchy and incited the power struggle between Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Wallis Simpson. Told from the perspective of both women, the novel propels readers into the fabulous world of the debonair Prince of Wales, café society of the 1930s, and the glittering private lives of the Windsors. As Queen, Elizabeth would become the symbol of British courage during World War II and remain a British institution the rest of her long life. Wallis goes from being admired to vilified and, ultimately, pitied. Against the backdrop of the Abdication Crisis, World War II, coronations, funerals, births, and deaths, these two women maintain a biting, sharp-tongued feud --- until age and the long arm of history bring about a kind of understanding.

METROPOLITANS is for Mets fans, New York partisans, and everyone interested in the Mobius strip dynamic of sports and politics, the history of the national game, or the beautiful contradiction of baseball itself: a middle-class game owned by billionaires, in which the players --- like the spectators --- look to traverse the diamond and ultimately safely escape its many dangers. Along the way, A.M. Gittlitz reintroduces us to an eccentric cast of Metsian characters: Joan Payson, the first woman to buy a Major League Baseball team; a young Tom Seaver with an interest in progressive politics; and the contentious but beloved Mike Piazza. Gittlitz leads us through baseball’s amateur beginnings to the Mets’ first heady World Series on the heels of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in which many Mets players participated.

Lieutenant Carl Sarabia, a newly retired homicide detective, moves with his wife, Greta, from Houston, Texas, to Glamis, Connecticut, to be closer to their daughter, Sarah, and her family. The idyllic river town is upended when Merlin Glenmore is found murdered on April Fools' Day, midway through his seance-themed birthday party at the place he despised the most, The Glenmore-Pace Castle, a gothic mansion built by his great-great grandfather, and now a museum run by his sister, Jade. Merlin is notorious in Glamis for his abrupt second marriage to a much younger woman only a month after his first wife's tragic death. There is no shortage of suspects present at the party who wanted Merlin dead. Only two of the guests do not have alibis --- and one of them is Carl's son-in-law.

London, 1953. Buckingham Palace and its many employees find themselves in bedlam as the Queen’s coronation quickly approaches. Caroline, assistant dresser to the queen, is worn thin by her gambler husband. Can she, like the queen, find the strength to define her own future? Lucy, a junior wardrobe assistant, is eager to become a famous singer. A handsome, wealthy man at the palace promises to help her on her way to stardom, but he’s asking things of her that she’s not quite sure about. Miranda is a temporary secretary in the palace. The job is a perfect way to gather information for the article she’s writing about the coronation; the article that will keep her boss from firing her because of her gender. If they want to carve places for themselves in this world, they’ll have to do it together.

In 1957, newly orphaned Aria Jones is sent to live with her aunt, a fading star who hides away in Hollywood’s infamous Chateau Marmont. But the Marmont isn’t meant for small girls with big hearts, and Aria’s first few nights reveal an insidious secret that continues to haunt her as she grows up in the hotel’s halls. If Aria can just stay invisible and invite no trouble as she saves money, then she can leave the Marmont and live life on her own terms. Her carefully laid plans fall apart when the hotel is bought by Theo Winchester, a reclusive rock star turned unexpected caretaker of his daughter, Adele. To earn the last bit of money she needs to escape, Aria becomes Adele’s tutor, which brings Aria closer to Theo and ignites a passion she never expected.

Chloe Weaver is the oldest daughter in a conservative Christian family of Fayetteville, Arkansas. As she turns 30 and remains unmarried, Chloe begins to wonder if she’ll ever have the happy marriage and many kids she has been led to believe constitutes the perfect life. When her parents allow her to court Barnabas Anderson, Chloe knows she should be ecstatic. Instead, she is uncomfortable with the 12-year age gap between her and Barnabas. Besides, Barnabas has always been a little...weird. When Barnabas’ brother visits the Weavers, bringing tales of Barnabas’ previous wife and her untimely death, Chloe realizes how little she knows about Barnabas. As she prepares for a prayer assembly in San Francisco, where Barnabas used to live, Chloe decides to investigate his past and his wife’s death.

Guadalajara, Mexico, 1977. In a quiet residential neighborhood, children witness things they can never forget: a serpent girl weeping in a carnival glass box, a neighbor who dangles his dog from a tree and a ghost who returns night after night, desperate to tell its story. Meanwhile, the grown-ups drift through the season half oblivious, their spirits eroding as the relentless summer wears on. Told in colliding voices --- children and adults, ghosts and the haunted, the living and the almost-invisible --- THE SUMMER OF THE SERPENT is a prismatic portrait of the past, where memory is shot through with myth. Each narrator offers a fragment of the truth, until the stories twist together into a shape as elusive and mesmerizing as the boa constrictor that winds its way through the neighborhood.

Tensions simmer in small-town Connecticut. A city transplant is haunted by the deer carcass hanging in her neighbor’s garage. A psychiatric patient believes she’s becoming a bird. A disgraced oil executive invites his granddaughter’s kindergarten class to tour his home menagerie --- what could go wrong? THE ANIMAL ROOM delves deep into the town of Old Cranbury and its eclectic mix of residents. Incisive and moving, these stories chart the interconnected lives of neighbors, relatives, coworkers, enemies, lovers and the animals around them, turning an unflinching eye to the natural world to shed light on human nature.