Adult

Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone and flees town. She meets Blue, a female bartender who offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya (now Amelia) accepts. It’s almost impossible to live off the grid today, but Amelia (now Debra) and Blue have the courage, ingenuity and desperation to try. Hopscotching from city to city, Debra especially is chased by a very dark secret. Can she outrun her past?

The day Aubrey Hamilton’s husband is declared dead by the state of Tennessee should bring closure so she can move on with her life. But Aubrey doesn’t want to move on; she wants Josh back. It’s been five years since he disappeared, since their blissfully happy marriage screeched to a halt and Aubrey became the prime suspect in his disappearance. Why didn’t Josh show up at his friend’s bachelor party? Was he murdered? Did he run away? And now, all this time later, who is the mysterious yet strangely familiar figure suddenly haunting her new life?

The Plumb family is spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of tensions finally reach a breaking point as Melody, Beatrice and Jack Plumb gather to confront their older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got in a car accident that has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Now, the siblings must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.

Since her father’s untimely death, Samantha Whipple is the presumed heir to a long-rumored trove of diaries, paintings, letters and early novel drafts passed down from the Brontë family. When she enrolls at Oxford University, long-lost objects from the past begin rematerializing in her life. Her father’s distinctive copy of JANE EYRE, which should have perished in the fire that claimed his life, mysteriously appears on her bed. Annotated in her father’s handwriting, the book is the first of many clues in an elaborate scavenger hunt derived from the world’s greatest literature.

Vlad, a stranger from Eastern Europe masquerading as a healer, settles in a small Irish village where the locals fall under his spell. One woman, Fidelma McBride, becomes so enamored that she begs him for a child. All that world is shattered when Vlad is arrested, and his identity as a war criminal is revealed. A disgraced Fidelma flees to England and seeks work among the other migrants displaced by wars and persecution. But it is not until she confronts him --- her nemesis --- at the tribunal in The Hague that her physical and emotional journey reaches its breathtaking climax.

INNOCENTS AND OTHERS is about two best friends who grow up in LA in the ’80s and become filmmakers. Meadow and Carrie have everything in common --- except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. Their lives collide with Jelly, a loner whose most intimate experience is on the phone. Jelly is older, erotic and mysterious. She cold calls powerful men and seduces them not through sex but through listening. She invites them to reveal themselves, and they do.

Before downtown Manhattan was scrubbed clean, gentrified, and overrun with designer boutiques and trendy eateries and bars, it was the center of a burgeoning art scene. Running from the shipwreck of her glamorous and unstable childhood with a volatile mother, Wendy Lawless landed in the center of it all. She navigated this demi-monde of jaded punk rockers, desperate actors, pulsing parties and unexpected run-ins with her own past as she made every mistake of youth, looked for love in all the wrong places, and eventually learned how to grow up on her own.

Detective Jonathan Stride is haunted by his first wife Cindy’s death, even as he maintains a relationship with fellow detective Serena Dial. When Serena witnesses a brutal murder outside a bar, she stumbles onto a case that goes back to the last year of Cindy's life. At the time, Stride and Cindy were on opposing sides of an investigation that ended up sending Cindy’s friend, Janine, to prison for shooting her husband. During the current investigation, Serena finds a gun used in the murder of a woman connected to an organized crime syndicate --- a gun that turns out to be the same one used to kill Janine’s husband. Two unrelated cases years apart suddenly have a mysterious connection, and Stride must not only investigate, but also confront his past.

Jack Swyteck is called to action when teenager Sashi Burgette vanishes on her way to school. The night after Sashi’s disappearance, ex-con Dylan Kyle was stopped for drunk driving and a piece of her clothing was found in his truck. A police videotape of his drunken explanation under interrogation sealed his fate at trial. Now, just days from Kyle’s execution, Sashi’s mother visits Jack and delivers shocking news: “Sashi called me.” Unconvinced that the case is closed, Jack jumps into the investigation. But the deeper he digs, the more he discovers that nothing is what it appears to be.

The pages of FOR A LITTLE WHILE reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Rick Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements. The intricate stories collected here --- brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery --- have the power both to devastate and to uplift.