Adult

A violent crash has occurred. Not only is the vehicle totaled and the driver and a passenger crushed inside, a dead boy has been ejected. The first deputy to join Undersheriff Bill Gastner at the scene is rookie Robert Torrez, the department's newest hire. Before Gastner can head him off, Torrez sees that the boy is his spirited younger brother. And the girl crushed inside the SUV is a younger sister. The driver of the Suburban, also dead, is the assistant District Attorney's teenaged son. Were the three dead kids running from someone --- or something --- rather than speeding? Further investigation reveals that a fourth teen should have been in the vehicle, but is now missing. Where had the four kids been? And why?

One-named stunning actress Helen mysteriously vanished 30 years ago. An elderly family friend is unable to bear not knowing any longer and commissions Lady Frances Ffolkes to track her down. Taking on the role of Lady Sherlock, with her loyal maid Mallow drafted as her Watson, Frances finds herself immersed in the glamorous world of Edwardian theater and London’s latest craze --- motion pictures. When one of Helen’s old suitors is suddenly murdered, Frances and Mallow work quickly to uncover a box of subtle clues to Helen’s whereabouts. But someone unexpected wants that box just as badly and is willing to kill to keep it shut.

In 1899, in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Noah Whitestone is called urgently to his wealthy neighbor’s house to treat a five-year-old boy with a shocking set of symptoms. When the child dies suddenly later that night, Noah is accused by the boy’s regular physician --- the powerful and politically connected Dr. Arnold Frias --- of prescribing a lethal dose of laudanum. To prove his innocence, Noah must investigate the murder --- for it must be murder --- and confront the man whom he is convinced is the real killer. His investigation leads him to a reporter for a muckraking magazine and a beautiful radical editor who are convinced that a secret, experimental drug from Germany has caused the death of at least five local children, and possibly many more.

Just as a murderer dumps his corpse into the lake across Valley View in Lily Dale, Bella Jordan happens to be at her window. Unbeknownst to her, the killer spots her silhouette and prowls straight to her door. That is, until he’s interrupted by a black cat. A superstitious gambler, he takes off but vows to return. Jiffy Arden, a neighborhood kid looking for the black cat and stumbling across the killer, begins to have premonitions of being kidnapped during the season’s first snowstorm. Sure enough, when it strikes, he vanishes, never arriving home from the bus stop. While her son, Max, believes Jiffy has been kidnapped, Bella is convinced he has just wandered off as he typically does…until a body shows up in the lake.

May 1940. Britain is at war. The horrors of blitzkrieg have seen one western European democracy after another fall in rapid succession to Nazi boot and shell. Invasion seems mere hours away. Just days after becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill must deal with this horror --- as well as a skeptical King, a party plotting against him, and an unprepared public. Pen in hand and typist-secretary at the ready, how could he change the mood and shore up the will of a nervous people? In this gripping day-by-day, often hour-by-hour account of how an often uncertain Churchill turned Britain around, Anthony McCarten exposes sides of the great man never seen before.

As Charlotte Pitt’s grandmother, Mariah Ellison, finds herself investigating a long-unsolved slaying, it becomes clear that grappling with intrigue and foul play runs in the family. A festive Christmas package left on Mariah’s doorstep contains an ominous present, sparking memories of a 20-year-old murder that shattered her friendship with the victim’s widow. Though the gift is a bitter reminder of that tragic time, in the spirit of the season Mariah travels to Surrey in hopes of reconciling with her estranged friend and solving the crime that drove them apart. But Surrey’s picturesque hills conceal dark doings and shocking revelations that could make the holiday anything but calm and bright.

On the streets of 18th-century Cairo, Nahri is a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trades she uses to get by are all tricks, both the means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive. However, when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, to her side during one of her cons, she is forced to reconsider her beliefs. For Dara tells Nahri an extraordinary tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass --- a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

Nine mall Santas must find the imposter among them. An elderly lady seeks peace from her murderously loud neighbors at Christmastime. A young woman receives a mysterious invitation to Christmas dinner with a stranger. Sherlock Holmes' one-time nemesis, Irene Adler, finds herself in an unexpected tangle in Paris while on a routine espionage assignment. Jane Austen searches for the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s stolen diamonds. These and other adventures in this collection of 18 holiday stories will whisk readers away to Christmases around the globe --- from a Korean War POW camp to a Copenhagen refugee squat, from a palatial hotel in 1920s Bombay to a crumbling mansion in Havana.

After steaming out of New York City on December 1, 1917, laden with a staggering 3,000 tons of TNT and other explosives, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc fought its way up the Atlantic coast, through waters prowled by enemy U-boats. As it approached the lively port city of Halifax, Mont-Blanc's deadly cargo erupted with the force of 2.9 kilotons of TNT --- the most powerful explosion ever visited on a human population, save for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mont-Blanc was vaporized in 1/15 of a second; a shockwave leveled the surrounding city. Next came a 35-foot tsunami. Most astounding of all, however, were the incredible tales of survival and heroism that soon emerged from the rubble.

The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As she goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe.