In this thoughtful treatise spurred by the 2015 death of African-American academic Sandra Bland in jail after a traffic stop, New Yorker writer Gladwell (The Tipping Point) aims to figure out the strategies people use to assess strangers--to "analyze, critique them, figure out where they came from, figure out how to fix them," in other words: to understand how to balance trust and safety. He uses a variety of examples from history and recent headlines...

Biracial sixth-grader Stephen questions the limitations society puts on him after he notices the way strangers treat him when he hangs out with his white friends and learns about the Black Lives Matter movement.

Hope Anderson is at a crossroads. At thirty-six, she's been dating her boyfriend, an orthopedic surgeon, for six years. With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family's cottage in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future. Tru Walls has never visited North Carolina but is summoned to Sunset Beach by a letter...

Hannah's on the trail of a pie baker with a penchant for murder. It's been a sleepy summer for Lake Eden, Minnesota, and Hannah is helping with her mother's wedding plans. When she accidentally hits a stranger with her truck she's wracked with guilt-- and things get worse when she's arrested for murder! Now Hannah needs to identify the deceased, find the murderer, and still get to the church on time!

Tens of thousands of crows invading Auburn, Pennsylvania, is a problem for everyone in town except seventeen-year-old Leighton Barnes. Residents complain about the nuisance, the strangeness of the birds. But for Leighton, it's no stranger than her house, which inexplicably repairs itself every time her father loses his temper and breaks things. No stranger than growing up in a town full of people who look the other way. Leighton doesn't have time...

Tate had just been named the top student in her law school class and finally had her eating disorder under control. Why then was she envisioning putting an end to the isolation and sadness that still plagued her despite her achievements? Enter Dr. Rosen, a therapist who calmly assured her that if she joins one of his psychotherapy groups, he can transform her life. All she has to do is show up and be honest. About everything: her eating habits, childhood,...

"When Colin finds a shoebox full of letters hidden in a stranger's attic, he knows he's supposed to throw them away. That's his summer job, getting rid of junk. But Colin wants to rescue the letters--and find out what really happened to best friends Rosemary and Toby way back in the 1970s. Meanwhile, across town, Nevaeh also finds a mysterious letter. But this one reads like a confession to a crime. And Nevaeh knows her father, the 'Junk King,' expects...

Noseholes and elephants! A pet-eating monster interrupts a perfect playdate with Princess Sneezewort . . . but who is that new masked avenger? Princess Magnolia and Princess Sneezewort have plans . . . mysterious plans, like a princess playdate! They dress-up slam! They karaoke jam! They playhouse romp and snack-time stomp! But then a shout from outside Princess Sneezewort's castle interrupts their fun. It's a monster trying to eat someone's kitty!...

"Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez's ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past. Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others,...

"T. Kingfisher's A House With Good Bones is a contemporary Southern Gothic from a master of modern horror that explores the deep, dark roots of family and in which grandma's ghost haunting your house may be the least of your worries. In this ordinary North Carolina suburb, family secrets are always in bloom. Samantha Montgomery pulls into the driveway of her family home to find a massive black vulture perched on the mailbox, staring at the house....