Adult

When a girl goes missing on Election Night, 1996, in the neighborhood of Pleasantville, Jay Porter is deeply disturbed. She was a volunteer for one of the local mayoral candidates, and her disappearance complicates an already heated campaign. When the nephew of one of the candidates is arrested, Jay reluctantly finds himself serving as a defense attorney. With a man’s life and his own reputation on the line, Jay is about to try his first murder in a case that will also put an electoral process on trial.

On a cold and rainy night during the Christmas season, a woman who has suffered great personal loss and a successful businessman from Orange County meet by chance at a gas station in Los Angeles County. They have nothing in common, but as they engage in conversation and move from con games to assault to robberies, within hours they end up sequestered in an upscale hotel room. During intimacy, they continue to confide in each other and try to come to grips with their problems and their seasonal loneliness.

When 16 bodies turn up in London riddled with small puncture holes, everyone is stumped and seems to be hiding something. That’s when John Gower, a poor poet but excellent trader of secrets, is at his best. Summoned to investigate these strange murders, Gower finds only treachery and the possibility of a very real threat to the city and its inhabitants: a terrifying new weapon very few know of --- the handgonne.

At the center of Toni Morrison’s first novel to be set in our current moment is a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There’s also Booker, the man Bride loves but loses to anger; Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths; and Bride’s mother, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”

In London, George Fowler heads a lucrative criminal syndicate that specializes in the production and distribution of “blue films” --- nasty illegal pornography. But his entire world is in jeopardy. Someone is undermining his empire from within, and he becomes increasingly ruthless in his pursuit of the unknown traitor. As his paranoia envelops him, Fowler loses trust in just about everyone, including his closest friends and associates, and begins to rely on the opinions of an increasingly smaller set of advisors.

Doing a good deed for a relative offers the perfect opportunity for Sergeant Jim Chee and his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, to get away from the daily grind of police work. But two cases will call them back from their short vacation and separate them --- one near Shiprock, and the other at iconic Monument Valley. Under the guidance of their mentor, retired Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, Bernie and Chee will navigate unexpected obstacles and confront the greatest challenge yet to their skills, commitment and courage.

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot. Who were these men, and how was it that they achieved what they did? David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

After a showdown with the notorious Yemeni terrorist known as The Panther, John Corey has left the Anti-Terrorist Task Force and returned home to New York City, taking a job with the Diplomatic Surveillance Group. Although Corey's new assignment with the DSG --- surveilling Russian diplomats working at the U.N. Mission --- is thought to be "a quiet end," he is more than happy to be out from under the thumb of the FBI and free from the bureaucracy of office life. But Corey realizes something the U.S. government doesn't: the all-too-real threat of a newly resurgent Russia.

Jon Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of several women in Missoula --- the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors and defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them. Krakauer’s dispassionate, carefully documented account of what these ladies endured cuts through the abstract ideological debate about campus rape.

Helicopter pilot Lt. Sara Denning joins a navy battle group with little fanfare. Her philosophy is simple --- blend in, be competent, and above all, never do anything to stand out as a woman in a man's world. Somewhere along the way, Sara lost herself --- her feminine, easygoing soul is now buried under so many defensive layers, she can't reach it anymore. When Sara's life is on the line, can she find her true self again and follow the orders of her heart before it is too late?