From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD comes the heart-wrenching journey of a family facing an unthinkable destiny, whose flawed genetic code might hold the long-sought key to a cure for dementia.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD comes the heart-wrenching journey of a family facing an unthinkable destiny, whose flawed genetic code might hold the long-sought key to a cure for dementia.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD comes the heart-wrenching journey of a family facing an unthinkable destiny, whose flawed genetic code might hold the long-sought key to a cure for dementia.

In the idyllic American town of Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, there lived a family with nine siblings, the youngest a girl named Barb. As the older children headed off to college and started their lives, only Barb was home to see their beautiful, still-young mother fall under a gothic spell, changing into someone she didn’t recognize: withdrawn, neglectful, uncaring.

Thus begins THE VANISHING FAMILY, journalist Robert Kolker’s superb follow-up to HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD (“Deeply compassionate and chilling,” wrote The Washington Post). This family, we learn, has a genetic mutation that causes dementia, but with an especially cruel twist. As early as their 40s, formerly loving parents and hard-driving executives will lose their jobs, have affairs, take up drinking --- shed all inhibitions and sense of responsibility --- and become people their families hardly know. Their former personalities seem to vanish --- and there is a 50-50 chance that it will happen to their children, too.

THE VANISHING FAMILY unfolds like a heartbreaking thriller as the siblings begin to realize that what happened to their mother is happening to them: first one, then two, three, four and more begin to change. Sue, in search of a calling, finds her place in caring for the others. Barb sets out to find a cure. Alongside their story, Kolker weaves in the dramatic scientific fight against dementia. After decades of blind alleys, this family’s rare form of FTD (frontotemporal dementia) might lead to a breakthrough in the prevention and treatment of all dementia --- including the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease.

Moving, intimate, unexpectedly hopeful and redemptive, THE VANISHING FAMILY is an enthralling narrative about one family’s fate, and a medical detective story that speaks to all of us who fear losing ourselves at the end.

In imagining the life that Oscar Wilde never had, John Boyne has written one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the iconic Anglo-Irish poet and playwright a fresh new voice and the opportunity to take an entirely different path.

In imagining the life that Oscar Wilde never had, John Boyne has written one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the iconic Anglo-Irish poet and playwright a fresh new voice and the opportunity to take an entirely different path.

Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed?

When the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite.” The most celebrated playwright of his day famously sued for libel, which led to his arrest, criminal prosecution and ultimately prison. From then on, his gilded existence spiraled into public disgrace, humiliation and an early death.

But what if he had simply ignored the insult? What direction might his life have taken? This is the premise of John Boyne’s extraordinary novel, THE WEIGHT OF ANGELS. Rather than dying in penury in Paris at age 46, what if Wilde had lived to bear witness to the momentous events and cataclysmic changes of the first part of the 20th century, and even influence some of them? What if the second half of his life was as dramatic, tumultuous and exhilarating as the first?

In imagining the life that Oscar Wilde never had, John Boyne has written one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the iconic Anglo-Irish poet and playwright a fresh new voice and the opportunity to take an entirely different path.