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CALL ME ADAM

Louie lives in a tiny town in Northern Michigan and is considered by all, including himself, a lifelong loser. An out-of-work mechanic, he decides to kill himself, but he fails repeatedly; for reasons he cannot understand, he is immortal, a peculiar condition for a man who longs to end his own life. Even stranger is the fact that everyone else is dying—the world is engulfed by a flulike virus, a “biotic crisis” that’s mercilessly killing nearly every human in a mass extinction event, a horrifyi

THE KNIFE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

The star of the season is the Cliffs Hotel, a marvelous restored Victorian mansion overlooking the ocean. Building contractor Shannon Hammer and her crew are working on plans for a Christmas Fun Zone on the grounds highlighted by a carousel and of course Santa. Shannon is close to Bill and Lillian Garrison, who own the Cliffs, and their children, who all work there except for the eldest, Logan, who is in the Navy. Logan’s stunning but awful wife, Randi, is a close friend to Shannon’s archenemy,

DEADLY TO THE CORE

Still mourning the loss of her husband and healing from the car crash that took Brian’s life, Kate Mulligan is ready to turn the page. So when she inherits her great-uncle Stan’s orchard, she leaves her home in Pittsburgh for rural Orchardville. Working in a cidery has given her the tools she needs to turn Stan’s apples into cider, and watching Brian restore houses has taught her how to frame walls and build a bar and tasting room. But no one’s taught her how to solve crimes. So when Carl Rando

HOW TO CATCH SANTA CLAUS

Oddly, previous installments saw the children trying (and failing) to catch an elf and a reindeer, but both are easily captured in this story. Santa, however, is slippery. Tempted but not fooled by poinsettias, a good book (attached to a slingshot armed with a teddy bear projectile), and, of course, milk and cookies, Santa foils every plan. The hero in a red suit has a job to do. Presents must be placed, and lists must be checked. He has no time for traps and foolery (except if you’re the elf,

REAL TOADS, IMAGINARY GARDENS

For Rekdal, all poems, regardless of form or any other apparently defining feature, require individuals to pay “conscious attention to how [they] think about and use language.” Readers must therefore dispense with interpretations they may bring to a poem and instead become literary “detective[s].” To work toward that end, she dedicates each chapter to in-depth discussions of poetic elements—diction, rhyme, meter, etc.—and to what she calls “forensic” analyses of those elements that she accompli

SACRED MONEY

Most people probably wouldn’t use the adjective “sacred” when talking about money; for the author, that’s a problem. “Our society separates the inner, spiritual self and the outward world of money, economics, and finances,” laments Mitchell in her introduction. “Using our money, our resources, and our commitment to the Earth, we can bring this spiritual connection to our finances, and to our choices to help create a new world…” Raised to believe that women had little value outside of their trad

LIVING THE ASIAN CENTURY

A descendant of Hindu Sindhi people who left what became Pakistan during Partition, Mahbubani (b. 1948), author of The Great Convergence, was born in Singapore, where his father worked as a laborer. Often drunk and mired in gambling debts, his father was not a stable provider, and the author, his mother, and his sisters struggled to make ends meet. At the same time, they lived amicably among Malay, Chinese, and Muslim neighbors, as Singapore was an entrepreneurial hub fighting for independence

STRANGE SALLY DIAMOND

Sally’s father, a psychiatrist, diagnosed her as “socially deficient,” so although she’s 42, she’s always lived with him outside the small Irish village of Carricksheedy. He'd always said that she should “put [him] out with the trash” when he dies, so when it happens, she tries to burn his body in their incinerator. In the flurry of public attention that follows, ranging from concern about Sally’s ability to function on her own to outraged theories that she must have murdered her father and was

EVERYONE HERE IS LYING

After being dumped by his lover, William Wooler comes home to find Avery, his precocious, difficult 9-year-old daughter, alone in the kitchen when she’s supposed to be at choir practice. A confrontation ensues, and William leaves. Several hours later, it appears that Avery is missing. The police are immediately on the case, interviewing the family and the neighbors for information, but instead of providing clarity, each conversation seems to complicate the investigation. Why does it take Willia

FORCE OF NATURE

In 2004, celebrating her 50th birthday, the author, along with her best friend, Z, threw an “over-the-top party.” Only days later, Z was killed by a drunk driver. Attempting to come to terms with the loss, Griffin escaped to Yosemite, where she camped and read. There she found inspiration in the words of the Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue: “When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of the mountains...” She felt the sudden desire

AN AMERICAN BEAUTY

Arabella Yarrington is helping to support her family in post–Civil War Richmond when Collis Potter Huntington, an industrialist and railroad tycoon, happens to visit the gambling saloon where she serves champagne to patrons. Immediately attracted to the woman 30 years his junior, Collis begins visiting the boardinghouse Belle’s mother owns. Quick to spot an opportunity to help her family escape the grinding struggle to make ends meet, Belle sets about using Collis’ affection to secure financial

ABUELO, THE SEA, AND ME

The young narrator visits Abuelo several times a year, and they always go to the beach near his home. Starting in summer, the child gets glimpses into the life Abuelo led before he fled Cuba. “In Havana,” he says, “marlín and delfín would leap right there!” Though he smiles at the memories of pineapple, guava, and coconut ice cream, his reminiscences are tinged with sadness, too. Abuelo won medals for his swimming prowess, but he left them behind in Cuba. He misses his homeland “so much it hurt

PLAYING WITH WILDFIRE

Early on, a woman named Gretel—the closest thing to a central character you’ll find here—explains her situation: “I live on the evacuation perimeter of what is now Colorado’s largest wildfire, which has been burning for months.” That she does so as part of a grant application—the text of which is one of several found documents included in the book—is an early indication that this novel isn’t a simple narrative of humanity at the mercy of a changing climate. Later, Pritchett includes the text of

THE HUNTER

In fictional Ardnakelty, on Ireland’s west coast, lives retired American cop Cal Hooper, who busies himself repairing furniture with 15-year-old Theresa “Trey” Reddy and fervently wishes to be boring. Then into town pops Trey’s long-gone, good-for-nothing dad, Johnny, all smiles and charm. Much to her distaste, he says he wants to reclaim his fatherly role. In fact, he’s on the run from a criminal for a debt he can’t repay, and he has a cockamamie scheme to persuade local townsfolk that there m

THE PERENNIALS

Guillén is a professor of management at the Wharton School, and his book 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything demonstrated his ability to tackle big-picture issues. Here, the author expands on themes he has touched on previously, looking at the interaction of increased longevity and accelerating technological trends. He argues that the idea of a linear life of compartmentalized stages is no longer appropriate and that concepts like retirement are no

THE KNIGHT THIEVES

Twelve-year-olds Rosebud and Wilda make it their mission to steal from the army of their kingdom’s tyrannical usurper, Otto the Torch. Their small gang, known as the Blackhearts, is accompanied by Wilda’s “mostly tame” lynx, Wryclaw. Otto’s reign has been marked by the burning of much of the country of Rin and the murder of its citizens, including Rosebud’s father, Sir Herman the Loyal. The girls agree to journey with Prince Timo, who’s fleeing from Otto, into the enchanted Nowhere Wood to find

THE POSTCARD

The arrival in 2003 of an unsigned postcard, delivered to her mother Lélia’s postbox in Paris, bearing the names of four family ancestors murdered at Auschwitz, forces Anne Berest properly to consider her Jewish heritage. The result is this autofiction sharing the tragic saga of one branch of her forbears, the Rabinovitches, seeking peace and a safe home in the shifting European landscape of the 20th century. Lélia, who has methodically pieced together the story of her grandparents, now shares

NERO

To borrow a philosopher’s phrase opining on another era, life in ancient Rome was nasty, brutish, and short—and being on top of the heap didn’t seem to help much. In the year 37 CE, the brutal Emperor Tiberius is dying. Agrippina is related to him by marriage and has a young son, Lucius, who will one day become known as Nero. Sit back and enjoy—or cringe at—this bloody tale that is littered with the bodies of the powerful, the ambitious, and the innocent. The story roughly follows Agrippina and

LOOT

Abbas, the hero of James’ lively and symbolically rich third novel, is a poor 17-year-old artisan in Mysore in 1794 when he’s recruited by Tipu Sultan, the local ruler, to apprentice with Lucien Du Leze, a French clockmaker. Together they are charged with making an automaton of a tiger attacking a British soldier. The experience hones his carving skills, but just as importantly it introduces him to an intercontinental power play: Tipu, aka the Tiger of Mysore, is attempting to fend off an incur

BINDING 13

Beautiful, waiflike, 15-year-old Shannon has lived her entire life in Ballylaggin. Alternately bullied at school and beaten by her ne’er-do-well father, she’s hopeful for a fresh start at Tommen, a private school. Seventeen-year-old Johnny, who has a hair-trigger temper and a severe groin injury, is used to Dublin’s elite-level rugby but, since his family’s move to County Cork, is now stuck captaining Tommen’s middling team. When Johnny angrily kicks a ball and knocks Shannon unconscious (“a so