Adult

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family --- and the family business --- together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident, and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger. Roman, a financial whiz, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills.

On a remote island nestled off the coast of Sweden, four friends meet every year. The idea is to drink beer, dance by the water, and shake off the weight of life's expectations. The location of the island is a secret to everyone but them. Ten Years Later. Ever since she was a teenager, Tessa Nilsson has been consumed by the story of four friends who disappeared. Her best friend, Anneliese, wants to have a bachelorette party before she walks down the aisle. The destination is Baltic Vinyasa, a sleek, sophisticated yoga retreat on a small island off the coast --- one with such similar characteristics to the tragedy years ago that it raises the hair on Tessa’s neck. Tessa will not pass this up. It’s her last chance to find out what happened to the four women. And it’s someone else’s last chance to get revenge.

When a former classmate begs Pleiti for help on behalf of her cousin --- who’s up for a prestigious academic position at a rival Jovian university but has been accused of plagiarism on the eve of her defense --- Pleiti agrees to investigate the matter. Even if she has to do it without Mossa, her partner in more ways than one. Even if she’s still reeling from Mossa’s sudden isolation and bewildering rejection. Yet what appears to be a case of an attempted reputational smearing devolves into something decidedly more dangerous --- and possibly deadly.

1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. 1827. London. A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow --- but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined. 2019. Boston. College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, present and future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers…and revenge.

Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor, can envision her future anew at Harvard. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel anti-aging drug. Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.

The daughter of Korean bodega owners, Jia Song has just made junior partner at her prestigious Manhattan law firm, and she is about to score the ultraluxe gold-on-gold Birkin bag of her dreams. So when her boss asks her to sit in on the hush-hush family implosion of a high-level client, she accepts without hesitation --- only to find out that it is one of the most famous Korean families in the world. The Park family’s net worth is estimated at a billion dollars, and their mega-successful Korean beauty brand has shaped the culture for the past two decades. But the patriarch is filing for divorce while his wife is dying, and their three children can’t stop snapping at one another. With both the family fortune and legacy under threat from the worst kind of scandal, it’s up to Jia to set things right --- and she only has a month to do it.

For 24-year-old Jane, finding love in New York City is even harder than making it as a playwright. So when Jane meets Colin, she can’t believe her luck: they’re perfect for each other. Even when Colin breaks off their relationship after six dates, Jane knows this is just a stumbling block. She’ll get him back. She knows she will. That is, until Colin starts dating Zoe --- perfect, luminous Zoe. Even worse, she’s actually kind of nice. But Zoe doesn’t have what it takes to love Colin. All Jane has to do is prove it, and they’ll be so happy together. But when Jane sneaks into Colin’s apartment, she makes a shocking discovery --- one that will ensnare them all in a dark web of lies, secrets and murder.

Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner’s status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped the Union win the Civil War and ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In this comprehensive but fast-paced narrative, Zaakir Tameez presents Sumner as one of America’s forgotten founding fathers, a constitutional visionary who helped to rewrite the post–Civil War Constitution and give birth to modern civil rights law.

One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; he lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to North Korea. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her Midwestern family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences. But now it is just Anne and Louisa, adrift and facing the challenges of ordinary life in the wake of great loss. What really happened to Louisa’s father?

They were crop dusters and debutantes, college girls and performers in flying circuses --- all of them trained as pilots. Because they were women, they were denied the opportunity to fly for their country when the United States entered the Second World War. But Great Britain, desperately fighting for survival, would let anyone transport warplanes. Thus, 25 daring young aviators bolted for England in 1942, becoming the first American women to command military aircraft. In SPITFIRES, Becky Aikman follows the stories of nine of the women who served, drawing on unpublished diaries, letters and records, along with her own interviews, to bring these forgotten heroines fully to life.