Adult

Widowed at 40, with four children and not enough money, Nora Webster has lost the love of her life, Maurice. Wounded, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons. Yet she has moments of stunning empathy and kindness, and when she begins to sing again, she finds solace, engagement, a haven --- herself.

Fourteen-year-old Daniel Kelly is special. He knows that his astonishing ability in the swimming pool has the potential to transform his life. Everything Danny has ever done, every sacrifice his family has ever made has been in pursuit of this dream. Twenty years later, Dan is in Scotland afraid that revealing what he has done will make him unlovable. When he is called upon to return home to his family, the moment of violence in the wake of his defeat that changed his life forever comes back to him in terrifying detail, and he struggles to believe that he’ll be able to make amends. Haunted by shame, Dan relives the intervening years he spent in prison, where the optimism of his childhood was completely foreign.

Following World War II, four women in Sydney, Australia join 650 other war brides on an extraordinary voyage to England --- aboard HMS Victoria, which still carries not just arms and aircraft but a thousand naval officers. The men and the brides will find their lives intertwined despite the Navy’s ironclad sanctions. And for Frances Mackenzie, whose past comes back to haunt her far from home, the journey will change her life in ways she never could have predicted.

Handsome, unassuming Thomas Foley is an employee at the Central Office of Information whose particular background makes him just the man to oversee the “authentic British pub” that will be erected at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. It’s the first major expo after World War II, meant to signify unity, but there’s inevitable intrigue involving the U.S. and Soviet delegations. In the shadow of an immense, imposingly modern structure called the Atomium, the married Foley becomes both agent and pawn --- when he’s not falling head over heels for Anneke, his Belgian hostess.

FAMILY FURNISHINGS brings us 24 of Alice Munro’s most accomplished, most powerfully affecting stories, many of them set in the territory she has so brilliantly made her own: the small towns and flatlands of southwestern Ontario. These stories illuminate the quotidian yet extraordinary particularity in the lives of men and women, parents and children, friends and lovers as they discover sex, fall in love, part, quarrel, suffer defeat, set off into the unknown, or find a way to be in the world.

At 75, Florence Gordon has earned her right to set down the burdens of family and work and shape her legacy at long last. But just as she is beginning to write her long-deferred memoir, her son Daniel returns to New York from Seattle with his wife and daughter, and they embroil Florence in their dramas, clouding the clarity of her days and threatening her well-defended solitude. And then there is her left foot, which is starting to drag….

The latest work from the celebrated author of the historical novels WOLF HALL and BRING UP THE BODIES is a collection of 10 stories, Hilary Mantel’s first collection since 2003’s LEARNING TO TALK. Many of these contemporary tales play with the conventions of genre; there’s even a vampire tale. But the title story, about an imagined attempt on the former Prime Minister’s life, will, not surprisingly, get the most attention.

COLORLESS TSUKURU TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE is the long-awaited new novel from the award-winning, internationally bestselling author Haruki Murakami. Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present.

In a series of dramatic monologues, first-century men and women --- some real, some imaginary --- remember, often from the perspective of old age, their encounters with Jesus and reflect on the significance of those encounters. Some comprehend and welcome him as Messiah. Others comprehend him only as an extraordinary figure and remain puzzled by their memories. A few are angered by him and bitterly reject any claim their encounter might make on them.

If you crave a simpler life anchored by the priorities that matter most, roll up your sleeves: Simplified living requires more than just cleaning out your closets or reorganizing your desk drawer. It requires uncluttering your soul. By eradicating the stuff that leaves your spirit drained, you can stop doing what doesn’t matter --- and start doing what does. In SIMPLIFY, Bill Hybels identifies the core issues that lure us into frenetic living --- and offers searingly practical steps for sweeping the clutter from our souls.