Adult

Thomas Kell thought he was done with spying. A former MI6 officer, he devoted his life to the Service, but it has left him with nothing but grief and a simmering anger against the Kremlin. Then Kell is offered an unexpected chance at revenge. Taking the law into his own hands, he embarks on a mission to recruit a top Russian spy who is in possession of a terrifying secret. As Kell tracks his man from Moscow to London, he finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, in which it becomes increasingly difficult to know who is playing whom. As the mission reaches its boiling point, the threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack looms over Britain. Kell is faced with an impossible choice: loyalty to MI6, or to his own conscience?

Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at 48 years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera. And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout.

Every night, Marc Laurent, an American taken hostage in Pakistan, is bound and blindfolded. And every night, a woman he knows only as Josephine visits his cell. At first, her questions are mercenary: Is there anyone back home who will pay the ransom? But when Marc can offer no name, she asks him a question about his daughter that is even more terrifying than his captivity. And so begins a strange yet increasingly comforting ritual, in which Josephine and Marc tell each other stories. As these stories build upon one another, a father and daughter start to find their way toward understanding each other again.

Between the first revolution in February 1917 and Lenin’s Bolshevik coup in October, Petrograd (the former St Petersburg) was in turmoil --- felt nowhere more keenly than on the fashionable Nevsky Prospekt. There, the foreign visitors who filled hotels, clubs, offices and embassies were acutely aware of the chaos breaking out on their doorsteps and beneath their windows. Among this disparate group were journalists, diplomats, businessmen, bankers, governesses, volunteer nurses and expatriate socialites. Many kept diaries and wrote letters home. Helen Rappaport draws upon this rich trove of material, much of it previously unpublished, to carry us right up to the action.

Leaving the safety of America, Teera returns to Cambodia for the first time since her harrowing escape as a child refugee. She carries a letter from a man who mysteriously signs himself as “the Old Musician” and claims to have known her father in the Khmer Rouge prison where he disappeared 25 years ago. In Phnom Penh, Teera finds a society still in turmoil, where perpetrators and survivors of unfathomable violence live side by side, striving to mend their still beloved country. She meets a young doctor who begins to open her heart, immerses herself in long-buried memories and prepares to learn her father’s fate.

As Lt. Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband Roarke are driving home, a young woman suddenly stumbles out in front of their car. Daphne Strazza is rushed to the ER, but it’s too late for her husband, Dr. Anthony Strazza. A brilliant orthopedic surgeon, he now lies dead amid the wreckage of his obsessively organized town house, his three safes opened and emptied. Daphne would be a valuable witness, but the only description of the perp she can offer is repeatedly calling him “the devil.” While it emerges that Dr. Strazza was cold, controlling and widely disliked, this is one case where the evidence doesn’t point to the spouse. What does the devil look like? And where will he show up next?

On the family homestead by the sea where she grew up, Martha Mary saw ghosts. As a young woman, she hopes to distance herself from those spirits by escaping to an inland college town. There, she is absorbed by a budding romance, relieved by separation from an unstable sister, and disinterested in the flyers seeking information about a young woman who has disappeared --- until one Indian summer afternoon when the missing woman appears beneath Martha’s apartment window, wearing a down coat, her hair coated with ice.

This collection of essays features 12 “heroes” from the American West. Jack Schaefer profiles pioneers of the West --- the doctors, explorers and cowboys who settled the challenging landscape and built communities in the Old West. These unsung champions highlight the unglorified work of the West that was achieved without violence and gunslinging. Schaefer shares the lives of Grizzly Adams, George A. Ruston, John “Snowshoe” Thompson, John Phillips, Washakie, John S. Chisum, Thomas J. Smith, Valentine T. McGillycuddy, Charles Fox Gardiner and Elfego Baca.

The dynamic Río Grande has run through all the valley’s diverse cultures: Puebloan, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo. Photography arrived in the region at the beginning of the river’s great transformation by trade, industry and cultivation. In RIO, Melissa Savage has collected images that document the sweeping history of that transformation --- from those of 19th-century expeditionary photographer W. H. Jackson to the work of the great 20th-century chronicler of the river, Laura Gilpin. The photographs are assembled in thematic bundles --- river crossings, cultivation, trade, floods, the Mexican insurrection, the Big Bend region, and the estuary where the river at last meets the Gulf of Mexico.

Four years after a tragic mission decimated his team, Cole "Tox" Russell has been disavowed by the United States. But when a dormant, centuries-old disease is unleashed, he is lured back into action. Tox and his former Special Forces team regroup to work with FBI deception expert Kasey Cortes and fiery archaeologist Tzivia Khalon to search the globe for answers --- and a cure. As the mission leads from one continent to another, it becomes clear they're not just fighting a plague but battling an ancient secret society whose true goals remain hidden. Tox and his team soon realize that their sole chance might be to reach back through centuries of silence to find the only answer that can save them all.