Adult

Written in the form of a standardized test, MULTIPLE CHOICE invites the reader to respond to virtuoso language exercises and short narrative passages through multiple-choice questions that are thought-provoking, usually unanswerable and often absurd. It offers a new kind of reading experience, one in which the reader participates directly in the creation of meaning, and the nature of storytelling itself is called into question. At once funny, poignant and political, MULTIPLE CHOICE is about love and family, authoritarianism and its legacies, and the conviction that, rather than learning to think for ourselves, we are trained to obey and repeat.

In the early summer of 2014, Farida Khalaf was a typical Yazidi teenager living with her parents and three brothers in her village in the mountains of Northern Iraq. In one horrific day, she lost everything: ISIS invaded her village, destroyed her family and sold her into sexual slavery. THE GIRL WHO ESCAPED ISIS is her incredible account of captivity and describes how she defied the odds and escaped a life of torture, in order to share her story with the world.

When Eve Carrington is chosen to participate in an exclusive writers workshop, she knows it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For one month, she will live, write and share her work with nine other aspiring authors. The top three will get a chance to be published. But when the building they're staying in isn't ready and Eve sees the old mansion they'll be moved into, she starts having second thoughts. Not only is the mansion isolated but the deadlines are tight, the pressure intense, and the competition incredibly fierce. Her biggest rival, Angela, is writing a murder mystery based on the workshop and its participants. But when life begins to imitate art, death begins to knock out the competition.

Newly arrived in New York City, 22-year-old Tess lands a job working front of house at a celebrated downtown restaurant. What follows is her education: in champagne and cocaine, love and lust, dive bars and fine dining rooms, as she learns to navigate the chaotic, enchanting, punishing life she has chosen. In SWEETBITTER, Stephanie Danler deftly conjures the nonstop and high-adrenaline world of the food industry and evokes the infinite possibilities, the unbearable beauty, and the fragility and brutality of being young and adrift.

A young man named Samuel dies in a horrible car crash. Was it an accident, or was it suicide? To answer that question, an unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to map Samuel’s last day alive. Through conversations with friends, relatives and neighbors, a portrait of Samuel emerges: the loving grandchild, the reluctant bureaucrat, the loyal friend, the contrived poseur. The young man who did everything for his girlfriend Laide and shared everything with his best friend Vandad. Until he lost touch with them both.

A would-be Miss America auditions for a shady local talent scout over vodka and Sunny D; a NASA engineer begins to wonder if the woman he’s having an affair with is slowly poisoning her husband; a Boy Scout troop leader, recovering from a stroke, tries to protect one of his scouts from being bullied by his own sons; a grandmother, sentenced to driver’s ed after a traffic accident, surprises herself by falling for her instructor. THE DREAM LIFE OF ASTRONAUTS balances heartbreak with wry humor as its characters try to make sense of the paths they find themselves on.

College professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So he agrees, at the stranger’s behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments and once-living skins. From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok’s interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.

While in the midst of the Great Depression, Big Sam sees himself as a righteous, truth-seeking patriot, defending the American way against a rising tide of left-wing unionism, strikes and disruption that plague his home town. At the same time, he makes monthly, secret overnight trips on behalf of Cousin Joseph, a mysterious man on the phone he has never laid eyes on, to pay off Hollywood producers to ensure that they will film only upbeat movies that idealize a mythic America. But Sam himself is not in for a happy ending, as step by step the secret of his unseen mentor's duplicity is revealed to him.

Catriona Sinclair and her husband, James, have been struggling to have a baby. They succeed at last through in vitro fertilization but decide to make their "spare" frozen embryo available to another family, unwilling to risk the heartbreak of another miscarriage. Diana and Liam Simmons are overjoyed to learn that they are the recipients of the embryo donation. As Diana is finding delight in every aspect of motherhood, Catriona slips into a deep depression. Just as she begins to find her way back to normalcy, one of the babies is kidnapped. Suddenly, all of their lives begin to unravel and intertwine, and none of them will ever be the same.

A century ago, the Sleeping Beauty Murders terrified picturesque Mundy’s Landing. The victims, like the killer, were never identified. Now, on the 100th anniversary, the Historical Society’s annual “Mundypalooza” offers a hefty reward for solving the notorious case. Annabelle Bingham, living in one of the three Murder Houses, can’t escape the feeling that her family is being watched --- and not just by news crews and amateur sleuths. Having unearthed the startling truth behind the horrific crimes, a copycat killer is about to reenact them --- beneath the mansard roof of Annabelle’s dream home.