Adult

Thirty years ago Laura’s mother Viola went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was never found and her family never recovered. Laura, an artist herself held on to the paintings. On the back of each work her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.” The family never understood what Viola meant.

Decades later at a crossroads in her marriage and her life Laura returns to Italy where her parents met after World War II. Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood there before the family moved to New Jersey and settled into an American dream that eventually became a nightmare. Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage.

Kate wrote a novel based on a very real generation-old love story that ended in tragedy. Emily is in a dead-end job and involved with the wrong man. Both head to Heart Island, owned for generations by Birdie Burke's family. The harsh and unyielding Birdie is at one with this island, which has a terrifying history all its own. She, too, has consequences to face.

On a summer morning in Missouri, Nick and Amy Dunne are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary. Or they would be, if Amy hadn't disappeared from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. As the cops close in and the stream of lies, deceits and inappropriate behavior leaks out, everyone in town is wondering how well they know the one that they love. Did Nick kill his clever and beautiful wife? If not, who did?

Summer vacation on Great Rock Island was supposed to be a restorative time for Kate, who had lost her close friend Elizabeth in a sudden accident. But when she inherits a trunk of Elizabeth's journals, they reveal a woman far different from the cheerful wife and mother Kate thought she knew.

Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother's body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a lunatic, or is she what she claims to be: a grieving young sister intent on burying her brother according to local rites? In any case, she endangers these soldiers as well as herself in the dangerous, claustrophobic atmosphere they are in as the discussion of what to do comes to a boil.

It's back to Corduroy Mansions in London's hip Pimlico neighborhood for the third installment in Alexander McCall Smith's latest series. The residents of Corduroy Mansions are all struggling with their nearest and dearest. It seems as though the universe itself is conspiring against them. Everyone must fix their relationships with one another before Corduroy Mansions as we know it crumbles for good.

A boy literally disappears from Main Street, while an audacious bank robbery goes seriously wrong, triggering a disastrous cascade of events that ricochet across 20 different lives over the course of just 36 hours. Nick Kavanaugh and his wife, Kate, find themselves struggling to make sense not only of the disappearance and the robbery but also of a shadow world, where time has a different rhythm and justice is elusive.

People are implanted with a device that makes them capable of superhuman feats. The powerful technology has profound consequences for society, and soon a set of laws is passed that restricts the abilities --- and rights --- of "amplified" humans. On the day that the Supreme Court passes the first of these laws, twenty-nine-year-old Owen Gray joins the ranks of a new persecuted underclass known as "amps." Owen is forced to go on the run, desperate to reach an outpost in Oklahoma where, it is rumored, a group of the most enhanced amps may be about to change the world --- or destroy it.

Changing your life requires a decision to start doing things differently, and then acting on that decision. But doing things differently can be uncomfortable. The idea is to gather a small group of people who are committed to the same mission and can offer encouragement and accountability. The challenge is to do something each week that will make your life better or will make things better in the world around you.

As parents, so often we do everything we can for our kids --- unintentionally reinforcing their belief that the world revolves around them. When Kay Wyma realized that an attitude of entitlement had crept into her home, this mother of five got some attitude of her own. CLEANING HOUSE is her account of a year-long campaign to introduce her kids to basic life skills.