Adult

January 1946: Two WACs leave an officers’ club in Munich, and four Soviet NKGB agents kidnap them at knifepoint in the parking lot and shove them in the back of an ambulance. That is the agents’ first mistake, and their last. One of the WACs, a blond woman improbably named Claudette Colbert, works for the new Directorate of Central Intelligence, and three of the men end up dead and the fourth wounded. The “incident,” however, will send shock waves rippling up and down the line and have major repercussions not only for her, but for her boss, James Cronley, Chief DCI-Europe, and for everybody involved in their still-evolving enterprise.

In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler, a 28-year-old marine biologist, was backpacking with her fiancé and love of her life, Sean. But their trip took a tragic turn when a box jellyfish --- the most venomous animal in the world --- wrapped around Sean’s leg, stinging and killing him in a matter of minutes. Rejecting the Thai authorities’ attempt to label Sean’s death a “drunk drowning,” Shannon ferried his body home to his stunned family --- a family to which she suddenly no longer belonged. Her life paused indefinitely so that she could travel around the world to find healing. Travel had forged her relationship with Sean, and she hoped it could also aid in processing his death.

RUNNING follows the lives of three friends and lovers: queer English poet Milo Rollack, prep school dropout Jasper Lethe, and 17-year-old Bridey Sullivan, an American with a fascination for fire. Barely out of childhood, squatting in a crumbling hotel on the outskirts of Athens in the late 1980s, the three slip in and out of homelessness, heavy drinking and underground jobs. While working as runners for the hotel --- convincing tourists to stay there for a commission and free board --- they are befriended by an IRA fugitive and become inextricably linked to an act of terrorism that will mark each of them for life.

Patricia McConnell combines brilliant insights into canine behavior --- gained from her work with aggressive and fearful dogs --- with heartwarming stories of her own dogs and their life on the farm. Now, she reveals that it wasn’t just the dogs who had serious problems. For decades Dr. McConnell secretly grappled with her own guilt and fear, which were rooted in the harrowing traumas of her youth. Patricia is forced to face her past by her love for a young Border Collie named Will, whose frequent, unpredictable outbreaks of fear and fury shake Patricia to her core. In order to save Will from this dangerous behavior, she must find her own will to heal, and along the way learn that willpower by itself is not enough.

What starts out as an idyllic summer holiday on the Irish coast soon becomes a living nightmare with unpredictable consequences for a world-renowned composer and his family. Recently divorced and in the middle of a creative crisis, Peter Harper decides to take shelter on Ireland’s scenic and isolated Tremore Beach. But after he is struck by lightning one stormy night, he begins experiencing terrible headaches and strange dreams. As the line between his dreams and reality begins to blur, Peter realizes that his bizarre dreams may be a warning of horror still to come.

It’s May 1987. Fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin of Wetbridge, New Jersey, is a nerd, but a decidedly happy nerd. Afternoons are spent with his buddies, watching copious amounts of television, gorging on Pop-Tarts, debating who would win in a brawl (Rocky Balboa or Freddy Krueger? Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel? Magnum P.I. or T.J. Hooker?), and programming video games on his Commodore 64 late into the night. Then Playboy magazine publishes photos of their idol, "Wheel of Fortune" hostess Vanna White, Billy meets expert computer programmer Mary Zelinsky, and everything changes.

In the dazzling glitter of 1900 Vienna, Adele Bloch-Bauer meets painter Gustav Klimt. Though they enjoy a life where sex and art are just beginning to break through the façade of conventional society, the city is also exhibiting a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism, as political hatred foments in the shadows of Adele’s coffee house afternoons and cultural salons. Nearly 40 years later, Adele’s niece Maria Altmann is a newlywed when the Nazis invade Austria. When her husband is arrested and her family is forced out of their home, Maria must summon the courage and resilience that is her aunt’s legacy if she is to survive and keep her family --- and their history --- alive.

Judy Collins has had a tumultuous relationship with food. Her issues nearly claimed her career and her life. For decades she thought she simply lacked self-discipline. Today, Judy knows she suffers from an addiction to sugar, grains, flour and wheat. She adheres to a diet of unprocessed foods. This has allowed her to maintain a healthy weight, to enjoy the glow of good health and to attain peace of mind.

Can one person know another person? How do we live through other people? Is it possible to fill the gap between people? If not, can art fill that gap? Grappling with these questions, David Shields gives us a book that is something of a revelation: 70-plus essays, written over the last 35 years, reconceived and recombined to form neither a miscellany nor a memoir but a sustained meditation on otherness. The book is divided into five sections: Men, Women, Athletes, Performers, Alter Egos. Shields' sustained, piercing focus is on the multiplicity of perspectives informing any situation, on the irreducible log jam of human information, and on the possibilities --- and impossibilities --- for human connection.