Adult

Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They're celebrating her birthday --- and her latest #1 bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs. But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century. Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built...With a television crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email --- and preserve her legacy and multimillion-pound career. But when push comes to shove, and it's time to tell the truth will anyone actually believe her?

Ewer’s Rock, Virginia, 1917. Roy Young is restless, eager to leave this isolated rural valley for university and return with the technical knowledge to modernize his family’s farm. Samantha Hatton, Roy’s best friend since childhood, knows that both Roy and the town expect them to marry. But Samantha hungers for more. Above them on the mountain is silent Ennis Duke, the mysterious wild boy whose arrival in the valley will upend Ewer’s Rock. Within a year, the lives of these three young people will be dramatically transformed. America has joined the Great War, and Roy and Ennis feel duty-bound to join the fight. In the crucible of conflict, thousands of miles from the familiarity of home, the two men forge a fierce bond. Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Samantha’s love and courage endure unthinkable sacrifice in a corner of the world fractured by violence.

The Shipman sisters are returning to their picturesque summer home on the New Hampshire coast for what they believe is a family reunion, the first without their late mother. However, their tranquil setting quickly becomes a stage for drama when their father, Calvin, drops the bombshell news that he plans to sell the cherished beach house. Mae, the youngest daughter, is distraught, already dealing with her own emotional scars. Natalie, the middle sister and social media darling, is equally anxious, especially since her flawless public image is on the verge of imploding. Meanwhile, Jordan, the eldest, is ready to be rid of the house so she can tend to her own professional disaster. As old memories are stirred up, the arrival of Calvin’s new wife pushes Jordan, Natalie and Mae to decide how far they’re willing to go to preserve the Shipman bond.

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods. In one, she and her brother live in the wooded shadow of their family's isolated farmhouse; in the other, the pages of their mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where their magical adventures have made them household names. In reality, Guinevere's childhood isn't the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine. As the books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame --- until the night it all goes up in flames. Now an adult coasting on her mother's name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family's legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled, simply, Mother. As rumors swirl, Guinevere’s public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she's spent the last 20 years running from.

Sandwiched between caring for her mother and rebuilding the relationship with her estranged daughter, Emma, Rosie Lucas’s life is full. In the best way. With Emma and her three-year old daughter, Olive, back home, Rosie has a chance to fix the past. What she doesn’t have time for is a romantic relationship. And even if she did, Andrew Morgan is the last person she’d choose. Still as an irresistible flirtation builds between them, he becomes her unexpected confidante on the distance Rosie can’t seem to overcome with Emma. Emma isn’t proud of her past. But she’s pulled herself up by the bootstraps, caring for her own daughter, and protecting her mom at all costs. But some secrets refuse to stay buried, and sometimes the truth is more shocking than fiction. Rosie and Emma will have to navigate an unimaginable path forward. Together. 

Lindy has the summer of a lifetime planned at her family’s beloved cottage in Summerland Cove, Maine, where she’s spent summers all her life and where she and her husband David met as teenagers. She’s slated big events three weekends in a row: David’s 50th birthday party, her parents’ 50th anniversary party and her oldest daughter Hailey’s wedding. But when David doesn’t show up for his own party, everything about the life they’ve created together is thrown into question. Has he been in an accident? Or is it something more cliché --- a midlife crisis, an affair? Surely, he’ll show up for his beloved daughter’s wedding --- won’t he? The agonizing days tick by and still no David. Lindy’s four nearly grown children are panicked. Lindy struggles to remain calm, even as long-buried details of the family’s past begin to surface.

Sixtysomething, twice-divorced Barbara is at a crossroads. In the midst of her emotional uncertainty, she looks back on the dissolution of the nine best friendships of her life, in hopes of figuring out how to optimize finding her 10th, and hopefully last, best friend. Barbara is acerbic, opinionated and wrong about many things, but she also doesn't shy away when she's at fault. The turning point of her predicament comes from Barbara’s choice, in friends, between (too-young) Caitlyn and the (unsuitable) Other Barbara. Will she repeat the exciting mistakes of the past, or will she try a new kind of mistake for a change? She feels like an out-of-season Scrooge who is unexpectedly, and all at once, surprised and entirely transformed by the possibility of joy.

Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the US employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on the US’s most dangerous nuclear rival. The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division --- The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas and harsh conditions, the Plantation’s 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States’ Soviet intelligence even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War 30 years later. In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time.

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now 53, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Long before every moment of our lives was tracked by technology, Phill Branch was under surveillance. His father treated him as if he were defective and continually searched for proof to support this belief. Phill paid greatly for his failures at boyhood, especially when he was caught playing jump rope with girls. This taught him there were standards to be met, codes that were not to be violated, and strict punishment for any deviation from a Black man’s assigned position in the world. In this poignant, illuminating personal narrative, Branch reckons with the patriarchy and tradition of these social structures in Black America, their legacy, and how they molded and silenced him. His is an insightful and surprisingly humorous reflection on identity, masculinity, and the quiet, radical act of choosing to exist on your own terms.