Adult

Manil Suri grew up in a large crumbling apartment in Bombay (now Mumbai), which his parents, who were Hindu, shared with three Muslim families. At age 20, Suri broke free from their single room and came to the US, where he finally found the freedom to embrace his sexuality and find a life partner. But the room kept wrenching him back to Bombay. By now, real estate prices had risen so much that neighbors had begun conspiring to take over the room. Eventually it was only his mother, Prem, left, who had staked all her happiness on her son but was unable to escape the room’s hold on her. When a rash of mysterious incidents seemed to beset the room, Suri realized how little time he had left to convince Prem that a happier life might await beyond the four walls that both enthralled and imprisoned her.

For 30 years, Anne Enright has been paying attention: casting her lucid and distinctive gaze across the world, literature and her own life, and gifting us with her precise insights. These essays, collated from across Enright’s career, take us from Galway to Honduras, from keen-eyed memoir to urgent political writing. Enright writes about the free voices and controlled bodies of women in society. She interprets Sophocles’ Antigone through the lens of the Mother and Baby Homes in Galway, writes on Ireland’s successful 2018 referendum on abortion rights, and offers new perspectives on writers including Alice Munro, Toni Morrison, James Joyce, Helen Garner and Angela Carter.

Nineteen-year-old undocumented immigrant Hee-Jin lies on the floor of her cramped Seoul apartment, listening for footsteps. But the knock on the door isn’t the police finally coming to deport her to North Korea. Instead, sprawled on the doorstep is a disfigured, bird-like corpse --- and it has her eyes. Her younger sister, artist Hee-Young, is meant to be on an art program in America, not dead of a strange overdose. But in Hee-Young’s pocket is a plane ticket and US passport. Seeing her chance for freedom, Hee-Jin steals her sister’s identity and takes her place, determined to uncover what really happened to her. But the deeper she dives into the program’s strange workings, the closer she gets to the monstrous secret at its heart.

When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair 12 years ago, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest child left the nest. Now, while driving his college-bound daughter to Pittsburgh, he remembers his promise to himself. He is also on the run from his own health issues and a forced leave from work. So, rather than returning to his wife in Westchester, Tom keeps driving west, with the vague plan of visiting people from his past --- an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son --- en route, maybe, to California. He’s moving towards a future he hasn’t even envisioned yet while he considers his past and the choices he’s made that have brought him to this particular present.

From her impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains to international stardom as a singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman and philanthropist, Dolly Parton has exceeded everyone's expectations except her own. AIN’T NOBODY’S FOOL is a deep dive into the social, historical and personal forces that made Dolly Parton one of the most beloved and unifying figures in public life and includes interviews with friends, family members, school mates, Nashville neighbors, members of her band, studio musicians, producers and many others. It also features never-before-seen photographs and unearthed documents shedding light on her family's hardscrabble life.

Maisy Gallagher has her own dreams, but when her father passes away, she selflessly sets them aside to help her family. Chase Furst, the hardened heir to a financial empire, is primarily focused on his own life and on his work as a bank executive. His childhood was marred by his mother’s struggle with addiction, and it left him cynical and emotionally distant. But then Chase meets Maisy, a beautiful woman full of optimism and kindness who can see past his defenses. To his surprise and annoyance, she offers to help him during a time of need and declines his offer of payment. Instead, she asks him to pay it forward --- and not with money or a quick fix, but through an act of true selflessness. At a loss, Chase doesn’t know where to begin.

In April 1912, 23-year-old Lady Victoria Oldbrooke is traveling with her beloved father from England on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. But when the ship strikes an iceberg and lifeboats are lowered with women and children first, Lord Alfred gives his place to another, and they are separated. Before he goes down with the ship, he asks his friend, Bert Banning, to promise he’ll marry his daughter and care for her. As friendship turns to deeper feelings, Bert hesitates to propose. Not only is he 40 years her senior, but her marrying an industrialist will cause Victoria to be ostracized by the aristocratic world she comes from. She marries Bert anyway and --- cruelly shunned by everyone she knows --- moves to his home in Manchester. When Bert meets a tragic end, she steps into his shoes and applies everything she has learned, in spite of opposition from all sides.

For the last decade, being the owner and operator of Lena Dunham’s body has felt “like towing a wrecked car across town at midnight.” It’s not easy dragging a wrecked car anywhere, much less to the set of the hit show that you --- as a 25-year-old --- are writing, directing, producing and starring in. But Dunham does it --- even if it means interminable hospital stays, vomiting in the bathroom when she’s meant to be meeting Oprah, or terrifying those closest to her --- because she can no longer tell the difference between fighting to do what she loves and being a servant to her own ambition. All the while, she is holding out for a love that can withstand her personal and public challenges and, more than anything, yearning to feel like herself again --- if only she could remember who that self was.

1913: Junior attorney Daniel Pitt must step in for his friend, fellow attorney Toby Kitteridge, whose parents have been brutally attacked. Toby's mother is dead, and his father is barely alive. With Toby returning to the family home in rural Ipswich, Daniel remains in London to substitute for Toby and defend Peter Ward, who is on trial for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman. Daniel is convinced that Ward is innocent, yet the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Eager to assist, his pathologist wife, Miriam fford Croft, offers her forensics expertise. But despite Miriam’s involvement, Daniel finds himself distracted by his desire to help Toby. And when the evidence points to Toby’s father as the killer of Toby’s mother, Daniel faces two of the greatest challenges of his young career: proving the innocence of both Peter Ward and Reverend Kitteridge.

Harold may be an aging mutt --- but Amelia May, the romance novelist who adopted him, taught him a thing or two about the human heart before she died. And she left Harold with a final task: to help her partner, Miguel, find love again. Unfortunately, the grief-ridden recluse rarely goes out, not even to the bookstore he and Amelia owned together. Now it’s in danger of going under, and to make matters even worse, a renowned author doesn’t show up for his event. Miguel and Harold set out to find the no-show and insist he fulfill his obligation. Instead they’re greeted by his sister, Fiona, who is intent on protecting her brother’s privacy. But her precocious 11-year-old daughter, who’s also named Amelia, immediately befriends Harold…and he can’t help but wonder if his Amelia was right when she said there are no coincidences in life.