In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird.

Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon, they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other "shepherds" who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

The "Hollywood" where Sammy Santos and Juliana Rios live is not the West Coast one, the one with all the glitz and glitter. This Hollywood is a tough barrio at the edge of a small town in southern New Mexico. Sammy and his friends, members of the 1969 high school graduating class, face a world of racism, dress codes, war in Vietnam, and barrio violence.

It’s the summer of 2019, and Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure - not only as a Black man in Trump’s America but in his hard-earned career as an adjunct professor. Pi is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, he’s being blackmailed by a powerful professor who threatens to claim he has assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite, trapping him in a he-said-she-said with a white woman that, in this society, Pi knows he will never win.

There's no one like Etgar Keret. His stories take place at the crossroads of the fantastical, searing, and hilarious. His characters grapple with parenthood and family, war and games, marijuana and cake, memory and love. These stories never go to the expected place, but always surprise, entertain, and move.... In "Arctic Lizard", a young boy narrates a post-apocalyptic version of the world where a youth army wages an unending war, rewarded by collecting prizes. A father tries to shield his son from the inevitable in "Fly Already".

For the past 20 years, Bronson Powers, former Hollywood stuntman and converted Mormon, has been homesteading deep in the uninhabited desert outside Joshua Tree with his three wives and 10 children. Bronson and his wives, Yalulah, Mary, and Jackie, have been raising their family away from the corruption and evil of the modern world. Their insular existence - controversial, difficult, but Edenic - is upended when the ambitious young developer Maya Abbadessa stumbles upon their land. Hoping to make a profit, she crafts a wager with the family that sets in motion a deadly chain of events.

Chance’s life changes in an instant when he is falsely accused of murder and sent to prison. He loses everything - his job, his home, his girlfriend, his mother, and almost his mind. A victim of a cover-up and a corrupt prison system, Chance is subjected to attacks by prison guards and inmates, sexual abuse, and too many run-ins with death to count. The only good thing in Chance’s world is his pen pal, Deyja, who is dealing with her own painful past. He looks forward to her mail and finds himself falling in love.

Jonas, the only boy in a family of four children, has always been a fighter. From the neighborhood bullies to the stepfather who uses him and his siblings as punching bags, his life has always been one battle after another. When he crosses paths with rogue homicide detective Louis "Lou" Ceavers, he's offered a bargain that will change the course of his life. Detective Ceavers becomes like a guardian angel and surrogate father to Jonas, teaching him the game and guiding him in his quest for power.

Desire Jones is a young, hot-to-trot teen who lives life on the edge. Abandoned by her mother, she yearns for love and attention. Her uncle shelters her, but life is impossible to bear with his abusive wife. To make things worse, she gets involved with Malik, who shatters her hope and trust by leaving her pregnant and infected with HIV. Hurt and hardened, she decides to do the unspeakable - purposely infect people with her disease. Of course, no one knows of her intent, not even her best friend Jennifer, who unwittingly helps Desire find her victims.

Nasty and Soulja were ruthless kingpins on the streets of Baltimore. Now in prison, nothing has changed. They are still running things from behind the penitentiary walls. Even though they are still getting large amounts of money, it cannot solve all of their problems. Daily, they deal with the reality that they left loved ones behind.

Hit woman and thief Reed Gable works for the highest bidder, no matter where the job takes her. An orphan of circumstance, Reed knows the streets of Las Vegas better than anyone. Growing up rough has gotten her to the top of her profession, and she plans to stay there. Accountant Brinley Myers, a recent hire at the Moroccan Casino, discovers a money laundering operation orchestrated by the New York mob, and suddenly, her life and the people in it become collateral damage.

Chasing money is all Chloe has ever known. Just when she thinks she’s got it all, times get tight, and her body is put to work in the bedroom. Between sexin’ married men for hire and searching for the man who would get her out of the game, her life is shattered - and then her cousin Oshyn pulls in a drug dealer with deep pockets. Oshyn knows her conniving cousin would do anything to walk in her shoes, so she flaunts glamorous gifts and icy diamonds, given to her by new love, Brooklyn Jones. Chloe resorts to desperate measures when she can’t steal Brooklyn from Oshyn.

The night Army Specialist Merlin Mills’s identical twin brother, Gavin, slept with his wife, everything changed. Now Merlin must come to grips with the fact that Cojo may be carrying his brother’s child. For Gina Meadows, Merlin’s mother, it’s a brutal reminder of the dysfunction that has always plagued her family. Tension escalates when Gina pops up pregnant after a night of drunken revelry, and an icy finger points to her deviant son as the father. The drama that ensues forces them all to take stock of their lives.