Adult

2000: Isabelle Whitmore vanishes at Sherman Ranch in Anhalt, Texas, without a trace. 2025: The Lone Star Princess Pageant is about to begin, but this year it’s offering more than an annual dose of rhinestone heels and plunging necklines. Ingrid fled Anhalt in the wake of her sister Isabelle’s disappearance and has now returned; the pageant brings up past traumas that Melanie can't forget; Cat, newly sober, starts to feel threatened in ways that bring back old demons; and Sarah Lynn, who comes from a long line of pageant winners, knows that losing is not an option. When old resentments and new confrontations reach their boiling point, temperatures drop to deadly degrees as a record-setting storm brings down the state’s power grid. With everyone trapped under one roof, scores will be settled, and more than one person will end up dead.

In a complicated marriage and raising her children in Los Angeles’s toxic playground of privilege and power, Cecilia Chen is struggling to find her real self among the many labels assigned to her: wife, mother, artist, daughter. Until the moment she crashes --- literally --- into the Anouk Ferrand. It’s been 20 years since she last encountered the enigmatic model on a photo shoot in Mexico. And it’s this chance second meeting that will upend Cecilia’s life. Seeing Anouk again forces Cecilia to revisit their brief time together and question where she truly fits in. Can the renewed intensity of her explosive physical and emotional entanglement with Anouk finally give her an answer?

At 32, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling through adulthood. When she learns she has inherited his stake in a sizable Tennessee farm she sees an opportunity to get out of the city --- and to erase a mounting pile of debt. Watching her arrival with great interest are four ghosts --- Aubrey’s ancestors, who’ve staked their own claims to the farm and who never hesitate to pass judgment on the mistakes made by the living, whether romantic, financial or sartorial. As Aubrey reconnects with her living family, another story unfolds in parallel: the history of the land, beginning with its purchase by Thomas, Aubrey’s great-grandfather. Now, as the clock ticks on a potential sale of the farm, the ghosts fear expulsion from the home they’ve made, and Aubrey must weigh the hopes and burdens of her forebears with the very real needs of her future.

Poppy Stringer was born to be a star. An aspiring fashion influencer by day, Poppy moonlights as a grave robber to make ends meet, wheeling and dealing dead bodies across Palm Springs. When her hero, the flamboyant, piano-slamming rock star Eddie Michaels, unexpectedly dies, Poppy gets a call to retrieve his body from the medical examiner’s office for a lucrative sum. It could be the last job she’ll ever need --- if everything goes to plan. But the night’s delivery quickly veers off course when Eddie wakes up. Now Poppy must fight for her life if she hopes to survive this blood-soaked joyride of carnage and extravagant entertainment.

New York Times bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead has penned an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings to life 1980s New York in this magnificent final volume of his Harlem Trilogy. With his usual pitch-perfect prose, Whitehead paints a portrait of a city in transition, where shimmering skyscrapers rise to the heavens as displaced people huddle in abandoned tunnels below. In a dazzling display of protean imagination, COOL MACHINE roves all over the city, from Windows on the World to the Meadowlands, to show that in New York and in the lives of Whitehead’s vivid characters, it’s what’s below the surface that reveals the truth.

When the Pickford siblings arrive at The Grand Hotel, they have every intention of spending the long weekend making nice. Pete is keen to wade around the lake in search of a rare and exciting Carthusian snail. Viv is determined to put on a brave face for her daughter. And Corey has lucked into five pounds of cocaine he plans to sell to the first dumb rich guy he can find. But when Pete falls for the alluring mother of a local kid, when Viv’s daughter gets up to teenage trouble, and when Corey finds the wealthy guests less interested in party drugs than golf clubs, the long weekend of family bonding veers into disaster. Why did their father bring them to this cushy island resort in the first place? And why does Corey seem to be the only one who knows the truth?

When an offshore rig explodes and unleashes a catastrophic spill, the people of Pelerin Parish face a reckoning. As the toxic plume of oil advances across the Gulf, Boy finds himself raising a daughter he barely knows. His dying aunt, Rosa, tries to right the misdeeds of the past yet finds herself thwarted by her husband, Jacot, a retired landman for big oil who refuses to give up claim to the plot of ground where Boy makes his living. Meanwhile, the parish priest, Father Fabian lends his assistance to Boy’s all-but-motherless daughter, only to be met with suspicion. When a powerful hurricane threatens to turn an already dire situation into a total cataclysm, this sharp-edged cast of characters collides in a thunderclap of resentment and violence.

It’s hard enough to be a teenager, and Dilo is tasked with hustling to help her family get by. After Dilo’s born-again Christian mother, Mary, and Aunt Anji relocated, one thing’s become blindingly clear --- the “rags-to-riches” fairytale they were promised is bullshit. Their family operates on the margins and when both matriarchs unexpectedly lose their jobs, desperation begins to set in. With eviction imminent, they are thrown a lifeline when they meet Mark, a day-trader. At last, a miracle and the family quickly become his apostles. But they soon discover what really fuels Mark’s seemingly endless generosity and when the markets turn they are left to navigate treacherous but familiar terrain. They must do what they always have, find a path where there isn’t one --- survive.

As a principal dancer with a prestigious New York ballet company, Devyn Lee is far from her hometown of Hope Harbor on the Oregon coast. But when a family emergency compels her to return, her visit turns into an extended stay after complications arise. Widowed mill worker Aaron Steele pays no attention to the buzz in Hope Harbor about the famous dancer in town. Until his grieving nine-year-old daughter takes a fancy to Devyn after she agrees to help with a fundraising show for a local charity in which the young girl is performing. As the show --- and Devyn --- begin to lift his daughter's spirits, his own life is brightened by the beautiful ballerina as she slowly but surely captures his heart. But what are the odds that such an accomplished, polished woman from the city could ever fall for a small-town lumberman with two left feet? 

Sonia is a Hungarian immigrant who is raising her daughter, Mila, on her own in sunny Los Angeles. Her days are a blur of not-quite-illegal business activities, dodging PTA moms, and baking birthday cakes laced with rum. Mila, meanwhile, is juggling violin and swimming lessons and navigating the treacherous social politics of school with the help of a less-than-helpful guidebook on how to be cool in the sixth grade. Sonia is sure that their bond will be enough to satisfy her daughter. But her guarded lifestyle has left Mila lonely, isolated and ready to write herself into a bigger story. When she stumbles across emails between her mother and a man she’s never met, Mila decides to take matters into her own hands and forms a plan that will implode their carefully constructed lives.