The author confronts his greatest challenge: to understand—and, if possible, answer—the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists,...

"The Great Recession of 2008 left many young professionals out of work. Promising careers were suddenly ended as banks, hedge funds, and law firms engaged in mass lay-offs and brutal belt tightening. Samantha Kofer was a third year associate at Scully & Pershing, New York City's largest law firm. Two weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, she lost her job, her security, and her future. A week later she was working as an unpaid intern in a legal aid...

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become...

Acclaimed author V.S. Naipaul's novel of an Indian man who must make a new life for himself in a recently independent African state is just as timely today as when first published in 1979. Both man and country struggle to establish an identity as they are challenged by their changing circumstances.

"When John Puller's older brother Robert inexplicably escapes from the military's most secure prison, where he's being held for national security crimes, Puller finds himself part of an investigation to hunt down his own brother. As he digs more deeply into the case, Puller discovers troubling details about his brother's conviction and that someone is out there who doesn't want the truth to ever come out." --

The legend of the Golem of Prague has endured through the ages: a creature fashioned by a sixteenth-century rabbi to protect his congregation, now lying dormant in the garret of a synagogue. But the Golem is dormant no longer ... Detective Jacob Lev wakes one morning, dazed and confused: He seems to have picked up a beautiful woman in a bar the night before, but he can't remember anything about the encounter, and before he knows it, she has gone....

"With San Francisco under siege and everyone a suspect, the Women's Murder Club must risk their lives to save the city-and each other" -- "With a beautiful baby daughter and a devoted husband, Detective Lindsay Boxer can safely say that her life has never been better. In fact (for a change), things seem to be going well for all the members of the Women's Murder Club as they gather to celebrate San Francisco Medical Examiner Claire Washburn's birthday....

" When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But...

Law professor Ray Atlee and his troublesome younger brother Forrest are called home to Clanton, Mississippi by their dying father, Judge Atlee, but when the judge dies before the meeting can take place, Ray is left to untangle an old family secret.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother - who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and...