Adult

THE BUTCHER tells the riveting true story of a hit man who loved his work too much—a maniac believed responsible for more than sixty remarkably brutal murders—whom even organized crime’s most cold-blooded assassins feared. 

Edwidge Danticat’s first work of fiction since 2004’s THE DEW BREAKER is comprised of eight interlocking stories set in early 21st-century Haiti. The tales revolve around a seven-year-old girl named Claire, whose mother died in childbirth and whose father, a fisherman, now wants to give her away so that she will have a better life. CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT is a riveting portrait of Haitian villagers and is told in Danticat’s lyrical prose.

Goldy Schulz knows her food is to die for, but she never expects one of her best friends to actually keel over when she's leaving a birthday party Goldy has catered. What looks like a coronary turns out to be a generous serving of cold-blooded murder. When a colleague --- a woman who resembles Goldy --- is stabbed, and Goldy is attacked outside her house, it becomes clear that the popular caterer is the main course on a killer menu.

In 1950s Ireland, the Catholic Church controls the lives of nearly everyone. But when Quirke’s daughter Phoebe loses her close friend Jimmy Minor to murder, Quirke can no longer play by the Church’s rules. Along with Inspector Hackett, his sometime partner, Quirke investigates Jimmy’s death and learns just how far the Church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.

With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money 10 years ago. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to 15 months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187-424 --- one of the millions of women who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system.

Twelve-year-old William Eng has lived at Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage ever since his mother’s listless body was carried away from their small apartment five years ago. On his birthday --- or rather, the day the nuns designate as his birthday --- William and the other orphans are taken to the historical Moore Theatre, where William glimpses an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that the movie star is his mother.
 

A jury found Katherine McCall not guilty of her sister’s murder. Not everyone agreed with the decision, and Kat’s only choice was to go into hiding. But she carried a dark secret with her, one that made her worry she might actually have had something to do with Sara’s death. Now, 10 years later, Kat receives a chilling anonymous letter that makes the past impossible to ignore.

While in Rome, American Jesuit priest Thomas Kelly is called upon to reclaim a centuries-old document that was stolen from the Vatican. An enigmatic letter guides him to the work of a 19th-century poet, in which Thomas discovers cryptic messages that might lead to the missing manuscript. His search is unexpectedly entwined with that of Italian art historian Livia Pietro, who tells him that destructive forces are threatening to expose the document’s contents.

Nate Piven, a rising star in Brooklyn’s literary scene, has his pick of both magazine assignments and women. In this 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance? Nate thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety --- he is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down.