Adult

Who are you? you must be wondering. I am your soulmate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of sixteen million in search of you. So begins the first letter that falls into Wang’s lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of his previous lives. As the letters continue to appear seemingly out of thin air, Wang becomes convinced that someone is watching him --- someone who claims to have known him for over a thousand years. And with each letter, he feels the watcher growing closer and closer.

Emigrating from Egypt, Samir and Nagla Al-Menshawy were determined to live the American dream. After years of hard work, Samir set up his own medical practice and the family moved to an upscale New Jersey suburb. But when a devastating turn of events leaves their eldest son and their neighbors’ daughter dead, all their years of success begin to unravel. The Al-Menshawys become pariahs in the neighborhood, and whether through religion, work or friendship, each family member struggles to move forward in his or her own way.

Letting go of her ex-husband is harder than wedding-dress designer Jenny Tate expected…especially since his new wife wants to be Jenny's new best friend. So Jenny decides to move back to her hometown, where she'll start her own business, bask in her sister Rachel's picture-perfect family life, and maybe even find a little romance of her own with Leo, her downstairs neighbor. Rachel's idyllic marriage, however, is imploding after she discovers her husband sexting with a colleague.

Grounded in place, spanning the Civil War to the present day, the stories in I WAS A REVOLUTIONARY capture the roil of history through the eyes of an unforgettable cast of characters: the visionaries and dreamers, radical farmers and socialist journalists, quack doctors and protestors who haunt the past and present landscape of the state of Kansas. In the collection’s haunting title piece, a professor of Kansas history surveys his decades-long slide from radicalism to complacency, a shift that parallels the landscape around him.

On New Year’s Eve, journalist and former Parade Editor-in-Chief Janice Kaplan makes a promise to be grateful and look on the bright side of whatever happens. She realizes that how she feels over the next months will have less to do with the events that occur than her own attitude and perspective. Relying on both amusing personal experiences and extensive research, Kaplan explores how gratitude can transform every aspect of life, including marriage and friendship, money and ambition, health and fitness.

Twelve years after a kidnapping destroyed former US Marshal Simon Fisk's family, he is newly determined to find the people responsible for taking his then-six-year-old daughter. He refuses to step away from the cold case, even after enduring months of dead ends and frustration. And then, at last, he gets a break. On a brutal January night, Simon finds an urgent message on his computer. Within a matter of hours, he is on a flight to Dublin, setting off to find a girl who may be Hailey Fisk --- before she's arrested for murder.

Paloma Batton is the granddaughter of Spanish refugees who fled Barcelona after the Civil War. She lets little get in the way of her career until she receives a mysterious pair of golden earrings. She begins exploring her Spanish heritage and becomes fascinated by la Rusa, a woman who rose from poverty to become one of the great flamenco dancers of modern times before committing suicide. As Paloma begins to unravel the secrets of the past, she discovers more than one person who had good reason for wanting la Rusa dead --- including Paloma’s own grandmother.

THE GIRL WHO SLEPT WITH GOD introduces readers to three sisters: young Frances, gregarious and strong-willed Jory, and moral-minded Grace. Their father, Oren, is a respected member of the community and science professor at the local college. Yet their mother’s depression and Grace’s religious fervor threaten the seemingly perfect family, whose world is upended when Grace returns from a missionary trip to Mexico and discovers she’s pregnant with --- she believes --- the child of God.

Following the death of his wife four years ago, Crawford Hunt fell into a downward spiral and lost custody of his five-year-old daughter, Georgia, to her grandparents. But he has cleaned up his act and met all the court-imposed requirements, and now the fate of his family lies with Judge Holly Spencer. When a masked gunman barges into the courtroom during the custody hearing, Crawford saves Holly from a bullet. After uncovering a horrifying truth about the gunman, he realizes that the unknown person behind the shooting remains at large…and a threat.

In six masterly stories, Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. He returns to his signature subject, North Korea, in the title story, which depicts two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. FORTUNE SMILES gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering a new way of looking at the world.