At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.

Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

When “The Fourth State of Matter”, her now famous piece about a workplace massacre at the University of Iowa, was published in The New Yorker, Jo Ann Beard immediately became one of the most influential writers in America, forging a path for a new generation of young authors willing to combine the dexterity of fiction with the rigors of memory and reportage, and in the process extending the range of possibility for the essay form. Now, with Festival Days, Beard brings us the culmination of her groundbreaking work.

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver's enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 - "Q" is for "question mark". A world that bears a question....

"As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I'm still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me...." Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story. Welcome to Christine's life.

In the early days of the new millennium, pages of a worn and weathered original sonata manuscript - the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens - come into the hands of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist whose concert piano career was cut short by an injury. To Meta's eye, it appears to be an authentic 18th-century work; to her discerning ear, the music rendered there is commanding, hauntingly beautiful, clearly the undiscovered composition of a master. But there is no indication of who the composer might be.

To be admired by someone we admire - we all yearn for this: the private, electrifying pleasure of being singled out by someone of esteem. But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world. Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at 63, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world.

Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in London presiding over cases in family court. She is fiercely intelligent, well respected, and deeply immersed in the nuances of her particular field of law. Often the outcome of a case seems simple from the outside, the course of action to ensure a child's welfare obvious. But the law requires more rigor than mere pragmatism, and Fiona is expert in considering the sensitivities of culture and religion when handing down her verdicts.

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster's fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.

Paris, 1974. Lara Orlov and her family arrive from Moscow at the height of the Cold War, thanks to her father’s position as a diplomat. The years pass, and Lara becomes more and more enamored with the City of Lights. As a teenager in Paris, she falls deeply in love with a fellow Russian expat: the passionate, intellectual Sasha, who opens her eyes to the ills of the Soviet Union.

Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, 34-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.

Ada Sibelius is raised by David, a single father and head of a computer science lab in Boston. Homeschooled, she accompanies her loving father - brilliant, eccentric, socially inept - to work every day. By 12 she is a painfully shy prodigy. At the same time that the lab begins to gain acclaim, David's mind begins to falter, and his mysterious past comes into question. When her father moves into a nursing home, Ada is taken in by one of David's colleagues. She embarks on a mission to uncover her father's secrets.

I shouldn’t have let him blackmail me. Now look at us. I couldn’t believe it when my mom married Wolfe Knight’s dad. He’s the school bully, and he’s my best friends ex. He destroyed her, and I can’t stand him. But then he discovers a secret of mine, and I’m at his mercy. He’s brutal. Yet beautiful. He’s also off limits.

Lola de La Peña yearns to be free from the societal expectations of a young Mexican lady of her station. She spends her days pretending to be delicate and proper while watching her mamá cure the sick and injured with sal negra (black salt), a recently discovered magic that heals even the most mortal of sicknesses and wounds. But by night, she is Salvación, the free-spirit lady vigilante protecting the town of Coloma from those who threaten its peace and safety among the rising tension in Alta California after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

New York, 1931. The manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited by law, but behind this prohibition, organized crime flourishes—so, too, do bank robbers, bootleggers, assassins, and homunculi. Some want money, some are chasing the secret to immortality, and others just want to have a really good time. You know what they say, though: You can't always get what you want.

Sady Doyle, hailed as "smart, funny, and fearless" by the Boston Globe, takes listeners on a tour of the female dark side, from the biblical Lilith to Dracula's Lucy Westenra, from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park to the teen witches of The Craft. She illuminates the women who have shaped our nightmares: Serial killer Ed Gein's "domineering" mother Augusta; exorcism casualty Anneliese Michel, starving herself to death to quell her demons; author Mary Shelley, dreaming her dead child back to life.

I was a Hunter, and I honored the Code. For my services to humanity and for leading a "proper" life, I was to be rewarded. A new life after death, and a new world to give me some well-deserved rest. But something went wrong. Once again, I must fight. The Monsters that face me here are far more terrifying than those of my past life. They are cleverer, crueler, more unpredictable. And their name is.

Laurel Nightingale wants to start again. However, after discovering a dead body shortly after arriving in the tight-knit community, she wonders if village life is as wholesome as she first thought. . . Local police are convinced the death was accidental, but Laurel suspects murder, and enlists new friend Maggie to join her quest in uncovering the truth. When a second body is found, Laurel ruffles feathers by pointing the finger at one of the locals. But, when her accusation backfires, she's left alienated and afraid.

So many important questions, so much confusing, contradictory misinformation! In this age of click bait, pseudoscience, and celebrity-endorsed products, it's easy to be overwhelmed - whether it's websites or advice from well-meaning friends, uneducated partners, and even healthcare providers. So how do you separate facts from fiction? OB/GYN Jen Gunter, an expert on women's health - and the internet's most popular go-to doc - comes to the rescue with a book that debunks the myths and educates and empowers women.

Even when the dauphin’s own mother betrayed him, Yolande of Aragon, Queen of Sicily, fought to save her son-in-law and his claim to the throne. But the enemy seemed invincible. Just as French hopes dimmed, an astonishingly courageous young woman named Joan of Arc arrived from the farthest recesses of the kingdom, claiming that she carried a divine message. Now, on the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc, this beautifully written book explores the relationship between these two remarkable women.

I’ll burn Chicago to the ground before I let her marry a Volkov. Maeve Callaghan is my forbidden obsession. The reason I left for Europe three years ago. We were on the edge of crossing a line that could get us killed. Now I’m back and my desire returns with a vengeance. When my boss announces her engagement to a Russian, I know I’d die before I let her marry him. Maeve flees, taking the decision from my hands. Her father makes the grave mistake of sending me to retrieve her. I’ll betray the clan for her, hell, I’d die for her. Maeve doesn’t know the monster behind the man.

So what if the pandemic response was run by national security agencies according to a biodefense/counterterrorism playbook, rather than by public health agencies according to public health guidelines? And why is it surprising that most countries responded in similar ways? Put simply, if it had been a regular public health response, Covid would not have differed from any of the viral epidemics or pandemics of the last century: The public would have been told to remain calm, wash hands frequently, and stay home if sick. Public health agencies would have tracked clusters of severe disease and ...

As an Agent of Death, Madeline Black is responsible for escorting the souls of the dearly departed to the afterlife. It's a 24/7 job with a lousy benefits package. Maddy's position may come with magical powers and an impressive wingspan, but it doesn't pay the bills. And then there are her infuriating boss, tenant woes, and a cranky, popcorn-loving gargoyle to contend with. Things start looking up, though, when tall, dark, and handsome Gabriel Angeloscuro agrees to rent the empty apartment in Maddy's building

Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, hoping the paycheck from the sugar beet harvest will cover the rent on their Brooklyn apartment. Amidst the grueling work and familiar anxieties about her finances, Elise starts noticing strange things: threatening phone calls, a mysterious rash, and snatches of an ominous voice coming from the beet pile. When Tom and other coworkers begin to vanish, Elise is left alone to confront the weight of her past, the horrors of her uncertain future, and the menacing but enticing siren song of the beets.

Nineties girl band Breathe were the girls every teenage girl wanted to be – until the lead singer, Enola, went missing at the height of her fame and was never found. Conspiracy theories abounded, and the people closest to her came under suspicion; her boyfriend Max, her manager, her stepdad, and even Angel, the lead singer of rival girl band Attitude. But no evidence of any wrongdoing was ever found and, bar various unverified sightings of her over the years, no trace of Enola has ever been found.

Who has not come to know and love the impeccable Jeeves and the inimitable Bertie? Together with Lord Emsworth, his prize sow the Empress of Blandings, Psmith, and a whole host of redoubtable Wooster aunts, they form a cast of characters, immortalized in print and on screen, whose sharply observed antics are as popular now as when they first appeared in 1919.

When her husband left her with a baby, a toddler, and a fledgling business, Francesca managed - she wasn't always gentle or patient, but the business thrived and Chris and Angelina had food to eat. At nearly 70, she feels she's earned a peaceful retirement. But when a massive stroke leaves her voiceless, partially paralyzed, and wholly reliant on the staff of an extended care facility, it seems her freedom is lost. However, Francesca is still clear-headed and sharp, and she knows one thing: She wants to live.