Adult

If life is a journey --- with detours, paths from which to choose, and myriad roadblocks to overcome --- then Otto Ringling is most certainly on the journey of a lifetime. His first 50 or so years were pretty good. He felt he had it all, until one day he didn’t. Seeking understanding, he calls on Volya Rinpoche, a wise man and spiritual leader. But it turns out that Rinpoche is experiencing his own time of doubt. In hopes of finding answers to life’s mysteries, the two embark on a journey through America, an amusing and enlightening road trip that becomes a lesson in love and gratitude.

With food rationed and money scarce, Charlotte struggles to keep her family well fed during World War II. When their upcoming cherry harvest is threatened, she helps persuade local authorities to allow German war prisoners from a nearby camp to pick the fruit. But when Charlotte’s husband befriends one of the prisoners, a teacher named Karl, and invites him to tutor their daughter, the implications of Charlotte’s decision become apparent --- especially when she finds herself unexpectedly drawn to Karl.

Every week, a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport, shipped by German banks to the Federal Reserve. A select group of trusted workers moves the bags through Customs and loads them into armored trucks. Ruban Betancourt has always played by the rules. But the bank taking his house and his restaurant business going bust have driven him over the edge. He and his wife deserve more than life has handed them, and he’s come up with an elaborate scheme to get it.

When he finds his parents approaching the end of their lives, Bob Morris begins to see his relationship to them in a whole new light, and it changes his way of thinking. How does an adult child with flaws and limitations figure out how to do his best for his ailing parents while still carrying on and enjoying his own life? And when their final days on earth come, how can he give them the best possible end? BOBBY WONDERFUL recounts two poignant deaths and one family's struggle to find the silver lining in them.

On June 17, 1815, the Duke of Wellington amassed his troops at Hougoumont, an ancient farmstead not far from Waterloo. The next day, the French attacked, sparking a brutal, day-long skirmish that left 6,000 men either dead or wounded. William is a white rabbit living at Hougoumont today. Under the tutelage of his mysterious and wise grandmother Old Lavender, William attunes himself to the echoes and ghosts of the battle. Through a series of adventures, he comes to recognize how deeply what happened at Waterloo 200 years before continues to reverberate.

BITTER BRONX, Jerome Charyn's new collection, is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with the author's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row.

Thirteen-year-old Callie is accused of bullying at school, but Rebecca knows the kind and gentle girl she’s raised is innocent. While Callie is eventually exonerated, threatening notes from her alleged victim, Robyn, begin to surface, and as the notes become suicidal, Rebecca is determined to save the unbalanced Robyn. As Rebecca navigates school disapproval and mean moms while trying to comfort Callie and help Robyn, she recalls her own intense betrayals and best friendships at that age.

Kate Garrett keeps life simple --- working hard, riding her beloved horses, playing cards with her brothers. Lately, though, she feels a bit restless, especially when family friend Jack Monaghan is around. Sexy and shameless, Jack is the kind of trouble you don't tangle with unless you want your heart broken. Still, Kate could always use his help in learning how to lasso someone a little less high risk.

1870s India. In a tiny village where society is ruled by a caste system and women are defined solely by marriage, young Biren Roy dreams of forging a new destiny. When his mother suffers the fate of widowhood, Biren devotes his life to effecting change. Just when his vision for the future begins to look hopeless, he meets Maya, the independent-minded daughter of a local educator, and his soul is reignited. It is in her love that Biren finally finds his home, and in her heart that he finds the hope for a new world.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was wakened from its slumber of isolationism. To help him steer the nation through the coming war, President Franklin Roosevelt turned to the greatest “team of rivals” since the days of Lincoln: Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Admiral Ernest J. King and General George C. Marshall. Together, these four men led the nation through history’s most devastating conflict and ushered in a new era of unprecedented American influence, all while forced to overcome the profound personal and political differences that divided them.