Adult

On an unseasonably warm spring day in 1924, 22-year-old Jane Fairchild, a maid at an English country house, meets with her secret lover, the young heir of a neighboring estate. He is about to be married to a woman more befitting his social status, and the time has come to end the affair --- but events unfold in ways Jane could never have predicted. As the narrative moves back and forth across the 20th century, what we know and understand about Jane --- about the way she loves, thinks, feels, sees and remembers --- expands with every page.

When Woodrow Cain leaves North Carolina for New York City, he also leaves behind a wife who had left him, a daughter in the care of his sister, and a career as a police officer marred by questions surrounding his partner’s murder. He gets a job with the NYPD --- hoping to start anew --- but comes into contact with a man who calls himself Danzinger. He speaks five languages and has the appearance of a “crackpot,” yet he is the only person who can help Cain identity a body just found floating in the Hudson. Who is this mysterious man, and how does he know so much about Cain? The more Cain and Danzinger investigate, the nearer they come to the center of a citywide web of traitorous corruption from which neither of them may get out alive.

LAB GIRL is a collection of stories detailing acclaimed scientist, Hope Jahren’s childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and father, how she found sanctuary in science and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”, the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries of scientific work. At the core of the book is her relationship with Bill, a brilliant and wounded man who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the US and back again, over the Atlantic to the North Pole and tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.

The man who brutally murdered Uncle Harry is dead. In an effort to recover from the confrontation and collect himself, Jack Dana takes refuge on Torcello, a small island in the Venetian lagoon, to return to his writing career. Even more urgently, he wants to win back Kerry, the beautiful lawyer who rejected him after the bloody episode with Harry's assassin. But events beyond Jack's control intervene: Kerry loses her life in circumstances that contradict everything Jack thinks he knew about her. Soon death begins to stalk Jack himself. It is impossible not to recognize in its drumbeat the machinations of Abner Brown, the man who orchestrated Harry's demise.

The Johannssens are a sailing family: adventurous, fanatical, and, for now, a complete and total mess. Ruby, a prodigiously talented skipper, has taken off for Africa. Bernard is god-knows-where at sea. And at 31 years old, Josh Johannssen, the middle child, is fixing up an old family boat and trying to figure out where it all went wrong. When Josh’s father coaxes his children home for one last yacht race, the Johannssens find themselves reunited under thrilling circumstances that will change the course of their lives.

A New Yorker endures a romantic getaway with a cash-strapped pot grower to a “clothing optional resort” in California; a nerdy high-schooler has her first sexual experience at Geology Camp; an unemployed college grad returns to her childhood home after her father’s funeral and encounters a surprise in his browser history. With bone-dry humor and unexpected tenderness, Rebecca Schiff’s stories offer a singular view of growing up (or not) and finding love (or not) in today’s ever-uncertain landscape. THE BED MOVED is a wry and irreverent take on the human connections --- no matter how fleeting --- that make us who we are.

New York, 1993. Alice Culvert is a caring wife, a doting new mother, a loyal friend and a soulful artist --- a fashion designer who wears a baby carrier and haute couture with equal aplomb. In their loft in Manhattan’s gritty Meatpacking District, Alice and her husband, Oliver, are raising their infant daughter, Doe, delighting in the wonders of early parenthood. Their life together feels so vital and full of promise, which makes Alice’s sudden cancer diagnosis especially staggering. In the span of a single day, the couple’s focus narrows to the basic question of her survival.

Meet Will Rhodes: travel writer, recently married, barely solvent, his idealism rapidly giving way to disillusionment and the worry that he’s living the wrong life. Then one night, on assignment for the award-winning Travelers magazine in the wine region of Argentina, a beautiful woman makes him an offer he can’t refuse. As he’s drawn further into a tangled web of international intrigue, it becomes clear that nothing about Will Rhodes was ever ordinary, that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy with terrifying global implications --- and that the people closest to him may pose the greatest threat of all.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. In A MOTHER’S RECKONING, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible.

On one side, there is Grace: prize-winning author Diana Abu-Jaber’s tough, independent sugar-fiend of a German grandmother, wielding a suitcase full of holiday cookies. On the other, Bud: a flamboyant, spice-obsessed Arab father, full of passionate argument. The two could not agree on anything: not about food, work, or especially about what Diana should do with her life. Grace warned her away from children. Bud wanted her married above all --- even if he had to provide the ring. Caught between cultures and lavished with contradictory “advice” from both sides of her family, Diana spent years learning how to ignore others’ well-intentioned prescriptions.