Life Age

Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who’ve all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for “dishonoring” their name.

You go to wake up your eighteen-year-old son on Sunday morning for church and you find him dead in his bed. Only later do you learn he bought a single Xanax pill on Snapchat for fifteen dollars to calm his anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic. He took the pill then ordered food from Door Dash, but he never lived to eat it. It was a counterfeit pill that contained over three times the lethal dose of fentanyl—that one pill killed him.

Teddi Overman found her life’s passion in turning other people’s castoffs into beautifully restored antiques. Leaving her hardscrabble Kentucky childhood behind, Teddi opens her own store in Charleston. She builds a life as unexpected and quirky as her many customers, but nothing alleviates the haunting uncertainty she’s felt since her brother Josh mysteriously disappeared. When signs emerge that Josh might still be alive, Teddi returns to Kentucky, embarking on a journey that could help her come to terms with her shattered family - and find herself.

In rural North Carolina, in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind".

Fabienne a 30 ans et tout pour être heureuse. Indépendante de fortune, elle est peintre et sa carrière est prometteuse. Sa maison, construite sur un grand terrain boisé, au pied de la montagne, est flanquée d’un atelier, son "phare". Mais à quoi bon tout cela, désormais? La dépression a fauché la jeune femme. Du gros chat orange errant qu’elle nourrit, elle dit : "Celui-là était comme moi : perdu." Fabienne est peut-être perdue, mais elle n’est pas seule.

Tessa has just months to live. Fighting back against hospital visits, endless tests, drugs with excruciating side-effects, Tessa compiles a list. It’s her To Do Before I Die list. And number one is Sex. Released from the constraints of ‘normal’ life, Tessa tastes new experiences to make her feel alive while her failing body struggles to keep up. Tessa’s feelings, her relationships with her father and brother, her estranged mother, her best friend, and her new boyfriend, all are painfully crystallised in the precious weeks before Tessa’s time runs out.

All is well until the Whitmans - an apparently traditional family with new money and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter - raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace. With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: First, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

Eve Fletcher is trying to figure out what comes next. A 46-year-old divorcée whose beloved only child has just left for college, Eve is struggling to adjust to her empty nest when one night her phone lights up with a text message. Sent from an anonymous number, the mysterious sender tells Eve, "U R my MILF!" Over the months that follow, that message comes to obsess Eve. Before long, Eve's online fixations begin to spill over into real life, revealing new romantic possibilities that threaten to upend her quiet suburban existence.

The summer Berie was 15, she and her best friend, Sils, had jobs at Storyland in upstate New York where Berie sold tickets to see the beautiful Sils portray Cinderella in a strapless evening gown. They spent their breaks smoking, joking, and gossiping. After work they followed their own reckless rules. But no matter how wild, they always managed to escape any real danger - until the adoring Berie sees that Sils really does need her help - and then everything changes.

The Butler family has had their share of trials - as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest - but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives. Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with, and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband, Proctor, are arrested, and in a heartbeat, the family goes from one of the most respected in town to utter disgrace.

Josh Moore lives with his family on the "wrong side" of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in Southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth, and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind.

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister, Cassandra, enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways.

A riveting, brilliantly written debut novel, The Death of Bees is a coming-of-age story in which two young sisters attempt to hold the world at bay after the mysterious death of their parents. Marnie and Nelly, left on their own in Glasgow's Hazlehurst housing estate, attempt to avoid suspicion until Marnie can become a legal guardian for her younger sister.

In the story of Russell and Corrine Calloway, set against the world of New York publishing, McInerney provides a stunningly accomplished portrayal of people contending with early success, then getting lost in the middle of their lives.

Caden Bosch is on a ship that's headed for the deepest point on Earth: Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench. Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior.

Mack Sutton is a normal guy who just happens to attend a very abnormal school. In a college where the pretty girls can kill you with a whisper and most of the guys can bench press a car, Mack and his sister Jetta are just run of the mill people—or are they?

Thirteen-year-old Simon Renier has no idea when he boards the M.S. Orion with his cousin Forsyth Phair that their journey to Venezuela will be a dangerous one. His original plan - to return a family heirloom, a portrait of Simon Bolivar, to its rightful place - is sidetracked when cousin Forsyth is found murdered. When the portrait is stolen, all passengers and crew are suspects. Simon's newfound friends, Poly and Charles O'Keefe, and their scientist father help Simon try to find his painting, and his cousin's murderer. But will they succeed before they land?

With breathtaking scope and unparalleled knowledge of the game, The Age of Football explores soccer's vital role in our social, political, and economic lives: its connections to social discord in the Middle East and political division in Europe; the reasons behind its surprising surge in popularity in China, India, and the United States; and its use (and misuse) in the global advance of equality and human rights. Goldblatt proves that whether you call it football or soccer, you can't make sense of the modern world without understanding its most popular sport.

2023, The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History: A costume conservator is preparing an exhibition featuring movie costumes from the 1920s to present day. As she gingerly places a gown once worn by Greta Garbo on a mannequin, she discovers another name hidden beneath the designer's label, leaving her to wonder—who is Zora Lily?

The grandfather of the NDE (near death experience) movement, Raymond Moody has, in the words of Dr. Larry Dossey, author of The Power of Premonitions, "radically changed the way modern humans think about the afterlife." Paranormal, essential listening for fans of Dannion Brinkley and Jeffrey Long, is "a thrilling and inspiring literary experience. Anyone who is not grateful for Moody's immense contribution to human welfare ought to check his pulse."