Adult

Sisters Maeve and Therese Dunigan have been estranged for years. They could not be more opposite: Maeve is the rule follower, and Therese is the rebel. But when their mother’s death brings the family back together, the two find that they have inherited a painting --- one that could be worth millions and save them from the wolves at their door. The only issue is whether it’s real or a fake --- and the only way they can prove that theirs is the real McCoy is to solve the mystery of how this portrait of an Anglo-Irish aristocrat made its way to their childhood home in Savannah, Georgia. This means a road trip --- to Ireland, to their family roots, and to a mysterious crime that occurred generations ago. With tensions simmering, the two hit the road. Can they survive the journey without killing each other?

Our narrator has a lot going on. She wonders where is Eva’s husband. Their other friend Fanny is  tangled up with than three lovers. And Gertrude Stein is ruining the narrator’s life. She is trying to write an essay about Stein but it seems impossible. She knows too much and nothing at all about the leading avant-garde thinker of the early 20th century. There are the facts: Gertrude Stein studied medicine at Johns Hopkins, then quit; curated modern art in her rented apartment that would shake the world; wrote novels and libretti that are incoherent and brilliant; felt love at first sight for her wife, the subject of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS. But so much is out of reach. How do we put ourselves together? What do we lose to become modern? What do we find beyond the limits of language?

When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home. Some instances keep in touch, call each other daily, keep their lives and minds in sync in the hopes of reintegrating and resuming a life as one person. Others, like Soyoung Rose Kang, leave home at ten years old and never speak to their other selves again. Rose, in America, never imagined going back to Korea until her grandfather died and her Korean instance called her home for the funeral. She doesn’t know that Soyoung plans to steal her body and her life. How far would you go to live the choice you didn’t make?

Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, 11-year-old Meg Lefleur is now one of the unadoptable "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers that her sister's seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates --- and Meg’s --- converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan to claim what's rightfully theirs. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women's freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences. 

Recovering from a near-death collision with a giant elk, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman is back to finish her last month at the Posadas County sheriff’s office. It’s supposed to be a quiet road to retirement, until a body is found at the bottom of a water-filled quarry. The barely alive figure of the grandson of the wealthiest man in town also lies further down the ravine. Figuring out what really happened is going to take everything that Estelle and her understaffed, overworked team have. Especially when there’s a vandal on the loose targeting the local airfield and the department has its own internal issues wreaking havoc. Plunged into another tricky investigation, one Estelle hopes will be her last, she can’t help but think her retirement can’t come soon enough.

When Pixie Nolan first came to Bramble, Kentucky, the abandoned and desperate young single mother found hope, healing and a fresh start. With the loving support of her best friends, she is now happily raising her toddler son in a cozy cottage. She never expected to make an electrifying connection with a summer renter, a retired Navy SEAL with his own complicated past. Brogan Rafferty arrives with an adorable baby girl in tow and settles into the lake house next door. But it’s no coincidence that Brogan has found Pixie, and his startling revelations make it clear she’s the key to healing old regrets and building new dreams. And when a hostile stranger turns up with shocking accusations against Bramble’s new hometown hero, Pixie must put her own fears and heartbreak away for good.

Lina Mariano is stuck --- in her hometown, in her job, and in the past. And after six years of writing up local weddings as a columnist for a popular lifestyle website, she’s wholeheartedly sick of nuptials. Worse, the next one on her list is none other than Sebastian Nikolaou’s. Working high school summers with Sebastian at his mother’s iconic beach restaurant, teenage Lina was totally wrapped up in the way he made her feel --- until the night that everything changed. Even so, she’s embarrassed to admit how often she still thinks of him. It will take a careful look at her younger self, and some wisdom from the best friend who was there for it all, to see that making her dreams come true is up to her alone --- whether or not those dreams still include Sebastian.

James Holland’s deep knowledge of WWII gives him unique insight and appreciation for its historic aftermath. In tight and vivid prose, THE VISIONARIES chronicles the prelude to the Marshall Plan --- from Franklin Roosevelt’s historic “four freedoms” speech and “Good Neighbor Policy” towards Central and South America to the landmark Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944. But it was Truman who pushed for the Marshall Plan, which in 1948 kickstarted via economic assistance the fastest period of growth in European history. However, Holland warns that we in the West have become complacent, less willing to safeguard the freedoms that extended prosperity has allowed; and he makes clear the remarkably far-sighted decisions made in the wake of WWII stand in stark contrast to our transactional approach to the world today.

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. He returns to the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother. Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn't the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, the threads holding the community together become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.

In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear --- bound by clothing scraps, stuffed with sawdust, and given button eyes with a sad, longing expression --- in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set of other poor, first-generation Jewish toymakers: the Hassenfeld brothers of Hasbro, Ruth Moskowicz and Elliot Handler of Mattel, and Joshua Lionel Cowan of Lionel Trains. From Barbie and G.I. Joe to Popeye, Superman and Mr. Potato Head, PLAYMAKERS reveals how the toy industry created the idealized American childhood: an enchanted world, full of wild creatures and eternal struggles between good and evil, with endless realms of fantasy and beauty.