Adult

Caroline MacAfee is a skilled carpenter, and her daughter Jamie is a talented architect. Together they are the faces of “Gut It!,” a home renovation series on local public television. But when Caroline is told the network wants her daughter to replace her as host, she is devastated. For Jamie, life changes overnight when, soon after learning of the host shift, her father and his new wife die in a car accident that orphans their two-year-old son. Who am I? Both women ask, as the blueprints they've built their lives around suddenly need revising.

Dorothea Benton Frank once again takes us deep into the heart of the magical Lowcountry where three amazing middle-aged women are bonded by another amazing woman’s death. Through their shared loss, they forge a deep friendship, asking critical questions. Who was their friend, and what did her life mean? Are they living the lives they imagined for themselves? Will they ever be able to afford to retire? How will they maximize their happiness? Security? Health? And, ultimately, their own legacies?

Tom Thorne is on holiday with his girlfriend, DS Helen Weeks, when two girls are abducted in Helen’s home town. When a body is discovered and a man is arrested, Helen recognizes the suspect’s wife as an old school friend and returns home for the first time in 25 years to lend her support. As his partner faces up to a past she has tried desperately to forget and a media storm engulfs the town, Thorne becomes convinced that, despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the police have the wrong man.

National Book Award winner Jonathan Kozol is best known for his 50 years of work among our nation’s poorest and most vulnerable children. Now, in the most personal book of his career, he tells the story of his father’s life and work as a nationally noted specialist in disorders of the brain and his astonishing ability, at the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, to explain the causes of his sickness and then to narrate, step-by-step, his slow descent into dementia.

Teddy Tremble is nearing 40 and has settled into a comfortable groove, working at a stuffy law firm and living in a downtown apartment with a woman he thinks he might love. Sure, his days aren’t as exciting as the time he spent as the lead singer of the rock band Tremble, but that life has long since passed its sell-by date. But when Teddy gets a cryptic call from an old friend, he’s catapulted into contemplating the unthinkable: reuniting Tremble for one last shot at rewriting history.

In the beautiful, barren landscape of the Far North, Frances and Yasha are surprised to find refuge in each other. Frances has fled heartbreak and claustrophobic Manhattan for an isolated artist colony; Yasha arrives from Brooklyn to fulfill his beloved father's last wish: to be buried "at the top of the world." They have come to learn how to be alone. But in Lofoten, an archipelago of six tiny islands in the Norwegian Sea, they form a bond that fortifies them against the turmoil of their distant homes, offering solace amidst great uncertainty.

Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet. In 1967 she shocked the world by defecting to the United States, leaving her two children behind. With access to KGB, CIA and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life.

Mazie Phillips is the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. When the Great Depression hits, she opens the doors of The Venice to those in need, becoming the beating heart of the Lower East Side. More than 90 years after Mazie began her diary, it is discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. Who was Mazie Phillips, really? A chorus of voices from the past and present fill in some of the mysterious blanks of her adventurous life.

How well can you really know another person? How far would you go to find the truth about someone you love? When Julia learns that her sister has been violently murdered, she must uncover why. But Julia's quest quickly evolves into an alluring exploration of her own darkest sensual desires. Becoming involved with a dangerous stranger online, she's losing herself, losing control, perhaps losing everything. Her search for answers will jeopardize her marriage, her family and her life.

For Princess Mia, the past five years since college graduation have been a whirlwind of activity. Her gorgeous longtime boyfriend, Michael, managed to clear both their schedules just long enough for an exotic (and very private) Caribbean island interlude where he popped the question. But now Mia has a scandal of majestic proportions to contend with: Her grandmother’s leaked “fake” wedding plans to the press that could cause even normally calm Michael to become a runaway groom. Worse, a scheming politico is trying to force Mia’s father from the throne.