Adult

In this concluding volume to Greg Iles’ Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage sees his family and his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised, and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Despite Penn's experience as a prosecutor in major murder trials, his father has frozen him out of the trial preparations --- preferring to risk dying in prison to revealing the truth of the crime to his son. The trial sets a terrible clock in motion, and unless Penn can pierce the veil of the past and exonerate his father, his family will be destroyed.

The Flow is an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars. Riding the Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. Just as a river changes course, the Flow changes as well. In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that the entire Flow is moving, possibly separating all human worlds from one another forever, three individuals must race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he’d always wondered if there’d be a day of reckoning. He’s not wondering any longer. Joe knows they’re coming after him and his family now. He has his friend Nate by his side, but will that be enough this time? All he can do is prepare...and wait for them to make the first move.

A legendary charter captain and guide named Tootsie Barlow has come to Doc Ford, muttering about a curse. The members of his extended family have suffered a bizarre series of attacks, and Barlow is convinced it has something to do with a multiple murder in 1925, in which his family had a shameful part. Ford doesn’t believe in curses, but as he and his friend Tomlinson begin to investigate, following the trail of the attacks from Key Largo to Tallahassee, they, too, suffer a series of near-fatal mishaps. Is it really a curse? Or just a crime spree? The answer lies in solving a near-hundred-year-old murder…and probing the mind of a madman.

If not for her loving but controlling parents, Beth Prudhomme might never have taken charge of her life and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she’s reconnected with her spirited Aunt Sunshine and found a job as a high school music teacher. If not for her friend Nichole, Beth would never have met Sam Carney, although first impressions have left Beth with serious doubts. Sam is everything Beth is not --- and her parents’ worst nightmare: a tattooed auto mechanic who’s rough around the edges. When shocking secrets from Sam’s past are revealed, Beth struggles to reconcile her feelings. But when Beth goes a step too far, she risks losing the man and the life she’s come to love.

With no money and no husband, Kate Warne finds herself with few choices. The streets of 1856 Chicago offer a desperate widow mostly trouble and ruin --- unless that widow has a knack for manipulation and an unusually quick mind. In a bold move that no other woman has tried, Kate convinces the legendary Allan Pinkerton to hire her as a detective. Battling criminals and co-workers alike, Kate immerses herself in the dangerous life of an operative, winning the right to tackle some of the agency's toughest investigations. But is the woman she's becoming --- capable of any and all lies, swapping identities like dresses --- the true Kate? Or has the real disguise been the good girl she always thought she was?

As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal and every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city. There is the market trader, the detective, the beloved internet star and the building's manager. There also are two boys who don't live there, but have no other home --- and who are more important to its future than anyone might imagine. Lastly there are the coders, temporary residents on the roof, whose disappearance triggers a sequence of events that threatens the existence of all --- and even the long-hidden foundations on which the city rests.

Five years ago, Rosa walked to the pier in the dead of night, looked into the swirling water and jumped. She was a brilliant young Cambridge student who had just lost her father. Her death was ruled a suicide. But Rosa’s boyfriend, Jar, still can’t let go. He sees Rosa everywhere and is obsessed with proving that she is still alive. Then he gets an email: “Find me, Jar. Find me, before they do…” As Jar digs into the past, he enters a dark underworld where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. He is soon thrust into the heart of a larger intrigue that may finally shed some light on Rosa’s death…even as it dangerously threatens his own life.

Chief Investigator Isaac Bell of the Van Dorn Detective Agency has had many extraordinary cases before, but none quite like this. Hired to find a young woman named Anna Pape who ran away from home to become an actress, Bell gets a shock when her murdered body turns up instead. Vowing to bring the killer to justice, he begins a manhunt that leads him into increasingly more alarming territory. Petite young blond women like Anna are being murdered in cities across America, and the pattern goes beyond the physical resemblance of the victims. There are disturbing familiarities about the killings themselves that send a chill through even a man as experienced with evil as Bell.

The body of Sir John Halberd, the Queen’s confidant, has been found in the shallow water of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, bearing the evidence of a fatal blow to the head. At Her Majesty’s request, Sir John had been surreptitiously investigating Alan Kendrick, a horse-racing enthusiast who seems to have had an undue amount of influence on her son, the Prince of Wales. Now Thomas Pitt must navigate the corridors of power with the utmost discretion and stealth, for it seems certain that Sir John’s killer is a member of the upper classes. Aided by his wife, Charlotte, and her social contacts, Pitt seeks out the hidden motives behind the polite façade of those to the manner born --- and uncovers a threat to the throne that could topple the monarchy.